Well, I'm not through with the idea:

To digress: it strikes me that no poet I know seems to be striving for Ultimate Recognition. Of course, it'd be a pretty empty ambition if that were all one was striving for, but I can't remember any of my friends in poetry telling me, or mentioning it in print, that he wanted, like Keats, to be "among the English poets," or the equivalent. Has it become taboo to want to be better than others at what one does?

My own wording of this particular ambition of mine takes a little of the competitive rawness out of it. I say I want to contribute something of importance to my culture, and one can only do that by rising above others doing what it is that one does--that is, we can't all contribute something of importance to our culture. Actually, that wording leaves out my need for recognition. It should be: "I want confirmation of my having contributed something of importance to my culture."

Not that prizes, positive criticism, and the like, is certain confirmation, but it's as close to it as one get get in one's lifetime--and more often accurate than not, especially if one ignores recognition from the obviously less than first-rate--the prizes, publication by socially elite presses, praise from academics and journalists--and counts only praise from one's peers in the field and Clement-Greenberg-level judges. Perhaps more important are signs of one's work's having influenced others--as, above, Aram Saroyan's has mine. I do believe that a number of first-rate fellow poets have been influenced by me. Not one of them has not had more influence on me than I on him, though!

The poet I know who does seem nakedly ambitious for True Ultimate Recognition is Richard Kostelanetz, although I don't recall his ever saying he was. And he is flawed by my standards by rating quantity of recognition like the number of presses that have published him, and appearances in knownstream reference books, higher than I ever would.

My own ambitiousness connects directly to my near-addiction to rather dopey solitaire games, the computer game, Civilization, being the latest of these, along with FreeCell. My motive for playing them is simple: if I win, it's confirmation that I'm doing something right! Although it's mainly only a matter of simple luck, and I lose Civilization almost every time I play, now that I no long play it at the lowest level. Nonetheless, even when I only do well in a losing round of it for a half hour or so (the game takes hours to play), it can trememdously buoy me, as now. I'm making winning moves in Civilization; therefore, I am competent; therefore, it is not insane for me to believe I can eventually gain the kind of recognition I yearn for! Yo ho!

Above do that, though, is "merely" the enjoyment of making things I like, and that others seem also to like. As I've said before, I'd far rather succeed in private for myself and a few others, or even for myself along, at something that I have to use a maximal amount of myself to do, than do something trivial, like become president of the United States, and make it into the Permanent Reference Books.