One is tempted, cynically perhaps, to classify all of them as realists, albeit realists of a peculiarly modern kind. They are more likely to be found drafting applications for tenure-track teaching posts than drawing up manifestoes.
Poetry can take root anywhere and there are some poets who flourish in a university environment.
While the teaching of poetry is now an activity capable of providing secure employment and a career structure for many of America's poets, the poets themselves are not altogether happy. In the midst of so much love, And such comfort, Still to feel unsafe and be afraid . . . Though his search for balance can sometimes lead to blandness, David Lehman's informative and elegant forewords, as series editor, are one of the reasons I look forward to each year's Best American Poetry volume. Lehman's essays are a kind of State of the Poetry Union address and have appeared since the anthology was inaugurated in 1988. One minor task I have in mind for the slammers is to shoo away some of the angels, who are so common in American writing as to have become the pigeons of the poetry world.