Preservation Issues

Post-modern ethos and praxis aside, poetry isn't meant to be ephemeral. It's meant for an educated, adult audience, who like not only their hearts and crotches but their brains touched. As such, I start the new year on a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it is a wonderful gift for me and many others that The Argotist, Great Works, and Tears in the Fence are being archived by the British Library. The page for The Argotist, which is representative, is here. What bothers me is that there don't seem to be any American counterparts. Why aren't American online journals being archived? Why doesn't the Library of Congress (or someone) get involved? The message from America and American libraries to poets and poetry is clear: they're not interested in us. Whether we've earned their solicitation or not is an open question. But the issue needs to be raised, if America is ever going to develop a serious literary heritage of its own, to rival some of our European counterparts. And it needs to be dealt with soon.