Drown the Resume

Rigoberto may be right when he says of The Best American Poetry series that “there's something for everyone, usually, and like it or not the series is here to stay and to say something about the contemporary poetry scene.” There’s no denying po-biz exists, and this is one yardstick by which to measure the seductive racket.
But I worry, given the market pressures on young poets who invest in MFA’s, that little notches on one’s publishing belt are seen as be-all end-alls of poetry. Your resume and your poetry have no necessary relation to each other. None at all. Here are just three links to poets and poetry that cast a cool eye on the standard poetry career:

Interview with Conversation with Clayton Eshleman and John Olson:
… poetry "is about the extending of human consciousness, making conscious the unconscious, creating a symbolic consciousness that in its finest moments overcomes all the dualities in which the human world is cruelly and eternally, it seems, enmeshed." This is a provocative statement. It suggests that poetry is something more than a cognitive titillation, more than intellectual candy, but a powerful agency, a transcendent force. D.H. Lawrence describes this phenomenon as "the soul and the mind and the body surging at once, nothing left out." You would think people would hunger for poetry as they do food and sex, yet very few appear able to make this connection; it is as if there were some sort of stranglehold on people's consciousness.
Dale Smith satirizing poetic careers
Jasper Bernes guest-edits Counterpath
There are many, many more poets attempting work that won’t get rewarded by wide publication and prizes. I don’t pretend to be entirely above it all—and I like successful poets like Paul Muldoon, August Kleinzahler, Mary Kinzie and of course the most successful of all, John Ashbery—just to name a few--but it’s vitally important that young poets have something to aspire to other than institutional recognition.