The Museum of American Poetics About Us |
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The
idea for the Museum of American Poetics (MAP) began upon the death of American
poet Allen Ginsberg on April 5, 1997. Jim Cohn, a poet and former teaching
assistant to Mr. Ginsberg at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics,
had a dream the night Ginsberg died that much of the wisdom and compassion
found in the growingly diverse demotic lineages of U.S. poetry would be
dissipated under the influx of the Big Data Age. Since coming online in 1997,
MAP has documented major poetic international, diversity, and media trends
through its collection of twenty-one poetry exhibits; its archive of annual Napalm
Health Spa poetry journals (1990-2014); the lineage of poetics
transmissions focused on 1) 20th century schools of poetic thought leading to
and emanating from the Beat Generation, and 2) 21st century Postbeat activist scholarship by and about the leading after-the-beats poets directly
influenced by Ginsberg and associated poets before them; featured MAP Channel
video presentations; and the MAP Store where visitors may purchase literary
rarity gems. MAP also features a “What’s New” page that logs additions over
time, an exhaustive site map, and links to Internet Archive which provide
documentation of MAP’s development of webpages via snapshots taken since its inception. A June
22, 2000 New York Times brief on MAP
resulted in the grassroots site gaining an audience that helped it become one
of the most significant platforms for American poetry outside the institutional
poesy world. Celebrating the diversity of experimental, outrider, and signed
poetries with a spotlight on the Postbeats, MAP
places special emphasis on poets working on the front lines against oppression.
Dedicated to the energy and vitality that characterizes the distinct
shapeliness of ars poetica,
the mission of the Museum of American Poetics is to reflect the persistent,
lucid, investigative spirit of bards and their contribution of American
language arts to planetary consciousness.
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