In different ways, all of these works are grappling with the very troubled relationship of language to meaning and power in an age of corporate speak and legalese and political double-talk and Internet nonsense—a problem, Edmundson rightly points out, simply glossed over by the elderly quietudes of the “contemporary poets” he is reading.

Mr. Edmundson, you’re right. The days when old white people really had a thing or two to tell us about the world, gosh darn it: those days are behind us. In one of the essay’s most uncomfortable moments, he bemoans: “How dare a[n old] white male poet speak for anyone but himself? And even then, given the crimes and misdemeanors his sort have visited, how can he raise his voice above a self-subverting whisper?”

The old white male is welcome to speak for whomever he pleases and say whatever he wants. But, thank God, contemporary American poetry has decided (as have so many others) that he’s often full of shit, or at least has little to say about anything that matters now. Don’t let his shortcomings turn you off the whole field, Mark. The rest of us—the young, the queer, the people of all colors who have read the theory you scoff at and grappled with questions of power and privilege and language—have plenty to say for ourselves. And some of it’s pretty damned interesting, if you care to listen.

The Editors,

Wag’s Revue

P.S. For this issue, we issued a challenge to poets to defy conventions of authorship and identity by writing under heteronyms. We received some amazing submissions, the most deft and defiant of which we’ve published here. For our money, contemporary poetry seems alive and well.