Poetry Matters Home Notes from Milledgeville Essays on poetry matters by Martin Lammon Poets Who Matter Poems, interviews, essays, and more, featuring a poet who matters to me and, I hope, to you Poems that Matter A poem, past or present, formal or free verse, that matters. Reader Response Selected correspondence from readers who matter News that Matters Links to Internet media articles on poetry, other news and events Arts & Letters home The web pages of the print version of Arts & Letters
			Wherever I’ve lived— Ohio, West Virginia, Costa Rica, and since 1997 in Milledgeville, Georgia—I’ve met men and women for whom poetry matters, from college students to nurses to executives to an oil rig worker.
	“I think that, finally, Gioia’s idea of what mattered was determined first by how many people bought poetry books and literary journals; and second, given that the numbers for poetry and the other literary arts would never challenge the ‘mass audience’ of popular culture, by how many of the right people cared about poetry (and presumably other marginalized artistic forms). If you were the editor of The New York Times Book Review, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, or a priest at St. John’s, you mattered.” —Martin Lammon From the editor’s introduction “What Matters,” Arts & Letters #4
			Notes from Milledgeville “The Wisdom of Solomon: A Response to Dana Gioia” At the end of his essay “Can Poetry Matter?” Dana Gioia offers “six modest proposals for how this dream might come true.” What those proposals revealed, however, was just how out of touch Gioia was with what really was happening across the country. Continue reading...
	Although I remain strongly committed to editing and publishing the printed journal, Arts & Letters has become (much to its benefit) the product of a large staff of senior and assistant editors. Lately, I have found that I want to address matters relating to contemporary poetry that the journal’s pages cannot always afford or accommodate. Poetry is my passion, has been for 30 years, and here I hope to present poets and poems, news, ideas, and observations that express how and why poetry matters to me and, I hope, to you. From time to time, I will be posting “Notes from Milledgeville,” essays in which I discuss why poetry does matter. My first, appropriately, is a response to “Can Poetry Matter?” by Dana Gioia, first published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1991. In this essay, I offer an elaboration of the introduction I wrote for Arts & Letters #4 (fall 2000). Although published 15 years ago, Gioia’s essay continues to be topical, especially in light of his role as current NEA chairman.
			Alice Friman is poet-in-residence at Georgia College, an Associate Editor at Arts & Letters, a friend, and a “far tar” poet indeed. See “Poets Who Matter” for more on Alice Friman.
	Arts & Letters: Poetry Matters allows me to offer poems, commentary, interviews, and other features that highlight “Poets Who Matter.” There is no submission process: From time to time I will select poets whose work matters to me and, I hope, to you (see “Reader Response” for how you might recommend someone for “Poets Who Matter”). Poets may be older or younger, alive or dead, from the United States or from anywhere in the world, contributors to the journal’s print version or not, poets I know or poets who are strangers to me. I may offer a few words of introduction or merely let the poet’s words stand alone. Arts & Letters: Poetry Matters will also include single poems that, to paraphrase Emily Dickinson, take the top of my head off. Poems will represent an eclectic range of style, form, topic, and voice, and like the poets who matter, may come from any time, any place. I will also maintain an archive of all the “Poems that Matter” appearing here. See “Reader Response” for how to recommend a poem for “Poems that Matter.” Here is a poem that matters: “If By Dull Rhymes Our English Must Be Chained,” by John Keats
			Martin Lammon is an award-winning poet, essayist, editor, and teacher, a past president (2000-2002) of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) and director of the MFA Program at Georgia College.
	While I cannot include all responses, this page will feature some of the more interesting correspondence I receive. I also welcome suggestions from our readers for our “Poets Who Matter” and “Poems that Matter” features. See Reader Response for details on how to join the conversation. I will also offer links to media stories, on-line essays and interviews, web sites devoted to poetry and contemporary literature, information about readings and other events, and more. See News that Matters for more information. Again, see “Reader Response” for how to submit suggestions you may have for items to be included in “News that Matters.”
	For the Arts & Letters print version web site, follow this link. And I hope you will return to Arts & Letters: Poetry Matters in the near future.