Poets are a curious bunch. We mean that poets often (and properly) exist in what Dickinson calls a ‘slant’ relationship to the world. But we also mean that poets are questioners, inquirers and explorers. Both in their verse and in their writings about verse, poets want to know how poetic things work, what they mean and why they matter. As we discussed in the introduction and Chapter 1, this professional curiosity extends to the ways we value poetry. Matthew Zapruder and many of the respondents to Kent Johnson’s Mayday ‘Roundtable’ want to know how we value contemporary poetry. So do René Wellek, Alberta Turner, Patrick Bizzaro, H.L. Hix and Marjorie Perloff. So does Paul, who ran the unauthorized experiment (mentioned in Chapter 2) to test the nation-based category on which the Contemporary American Poetry Editorial Review (CAPER) study was established.

Such inquiry and experimentation are woven throughout poetic history, with no sign of abating even in the course of modernity and postmodernity. Consider the poetic hoax. What is a hoax if not a form of axiological testing and experimentation? In “‘Imp of Verbal Darkness’: Poetry Hoaxes & the Postmodern Politic”, Rebecca Warner (2003) notes that ‘[p]oetry hoaxes raise a number of questions that test our notions of literary value, authenticity, and authorial intention’. Hoaxes, including the Australian Ern Malley and the American Spectra and Yasusada hoaxes focused on in Warner’s article, ask and offer a variety of answers to a variety of questions. Referring to the kinds of questions poet John Ashbery raises about hoaxes, Warner wonders,