Sharing the New Directions Baton

I grew up as a reader in the 1970s with New Directions. In my late teens/early twenties, three publishers earned my trust. From each of them, I'd buy new books from writers I didn't know because City Lights, Black Sparrow, and New Directions never let me down. Never (and that's not an easy word to use).

I intend to pass the New Directions baton to my students (worried though I may be that "parent" corporation W. W. Norton will muddy the depths of its body). With glee, I recently snapped up World Beat: International Poetry Now, edited by someone I trust, Eliot Weinberger, hoping it's rich enough to adopt for a World Lit class I'll be teaching.

So far, the Paz, Luljeta Lleshanaku, Dunya Mikhail, and Gu Cheng selections trip up the narrow U.S. axis of what poetry is/does, especially the Iraqi poet Mikhail selection which I read "appropriately" over the 4th of July (see Jordan Stempleman for a link to an NPR interview).