The end of last year and the beginning of this one has produced a fine crop of poetry publications. Though each of these volumes deserves its own separate review, happily I'm able to give these works exposure here.
In May's installment last year, I wrote about Irving Stettner's small publication house Stroker. Stettner's gifts as an artist are many: He's edited the avant-garde review Stroker since 1974, and is a watercolorist, prose writer and poet.
When Henry Miller was 85, Stettner met him at his house in Big Sur several times. In his essay "Henry Miller, Anais Nin and Me," Stettner writes how Miller was generous not only with his time and finances (he bought two of Irving's watercolors), but that "Henry had passed on to me the creative flame." In the context of Miller's work, he writes that the artist's job is "To awaken, even jolt us awake, to life and its miracle, infinite possibilities. To awaken us to ecstasy, yes!" Stettner could easily be talking about his own work, because, like Whitman, he's a spreader of joy, expansive in his enthusiasm.