blurbs get behind me

The poet was pleased her reputation had risen to the point she was no longer obliged to gather blurbs.

critical concern

The critic worried that after his take-down of the Apollonian poet he might be smitten with donkey ears.

teaching poets

You can be too good a teacher-poet: One begins being thought of as a better teacher but a lesser poet.

poetry got small

Like the character Norma Desmond from the 1950 film Sunset Boulevard, she was the kind of poet you could imagine responding to an interviewer who'd suggested her reputation had faded, with the line: “I am big. It’s poetry that got small.”

against fiat

Critical reputations are made on grand claims. Yet I’m suspicious of all grand claims, finding hedged hypotheses sufficient to most subjects, conjectures able to brush past any exceptions.

I know (of) it well

There are long poems that are read and there are long poems that have reputations but aren’t read.

pun at his expense

He released a collected poems when a selected would do. But then, his work was always a little oeuvre the top.

each one build one

A canon of your own.

no room for pseudonym

Put your name on a poem: The poem is your name.

follows the money

After his death, the poet’s reputation slipped in proportion to the fewer pages in major anthologies carrying his work, which in turn was a result of the hefty fees his rights holders asked for permission to reprint his poems.

until the name alone would suffice

The length of a poet’s bio is in inverse relationship to the size of her/his reputation.

famous poet

“I’d like to introduce you to the famous poet, X Y,” he said. “Ah,” she replied, “his lack of reputation shadows him.”

pauca sed bona

A poet, middle-aged, stated in his bio that he was ‘the author of over 30 collections’. Yet he was virtually unknown even in the rather small world of poetry. Would that he’d authored over 50 collections made a whit of difference to his reputation?

small chevalier

Lowering one’s flimsy lance, charging uphill at the literary windmill of the great poet’s reputation. But no one’s inside anyway, and you look small due to scale.

few or many

There are poets who readily have a few poems that speak for them, that make their reputations, and then there are those poets who exist only in oeuvre, only after reading the body of work can one see fully their achievement.