Hi David!
I kinda like Chrisso. A great big name like Christopher seems inappropriate: I'm tiny, even by Welsh standards.
When is inclusiveness vitalizing, and when is it enervating?
I read a pretty neat article on this by Sheenagh Pugh just last month:
http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/ma...rd.asp?id=1054
She seems to be arguing that you open the canon, and let the shit in. Because the shit goes away after a while (Laurence Eusden isn't even on the web).
I think that is about right. We need to challenge ourselves as readers, or we might miss some really good stuff. I remember it took me years to get the point of Whitman (I'm ridiculously European).
Ebenezer Cooke I clicked with straightaway.
I never tried to stop anybody else from reading Whitman (in one very important sense, you can never read too much).
I'm still trying to get more people aboard SS Cooke with me.