When I hear the young poets describe the algorithmsby which search engines will generatesundry fragments and whimsical text-stubsfrom which to cut-and-paste their latestaleatory verses, I think, yes,I too shall stick needles in my eyesin order that I might see,and when I dance on the raw stumpsfrom which my feet have been roughly butcheredthe scrawls of blood I smear across that floorwill compose the greatest poemin the history of the fucking world.
When I Hear the Young Poets
Campbell McGrath
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Copyright © 2025 by Campbell McGrath.
Originally published in Poetry London, Issue 110.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Campbell McGrath is the author of twelve books of poetry, among them Fever of Unknown Origin (Knopf, 2023) and XX: Poems for the Twentieth Century, a 2019 Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He has received several major prizes for his work, including the Kingsley Tufts Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a MacArthur Fellowship, a USA Knight Fellowship, and a Witter-Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress. His poetry has appeared in scores of literary reviews,
quarterlies and anthologies, along with periodicals including Harper’s, The Atlantic, The Nation, and the op-ed page of the New York Times; The New Yorker has published his poems in five different decades. Born in Chicago, he lives in Miami Beach and teaches at Florida International University, where he is the Philip and Patricia Frost Professor of Creative Writing and a Distinguished University Professor of English.
110
London
England
Poetry Editor
André Naffis-Sahely
Reviews Editor
Isabelle Baafi
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