Abstract
ABSTRACT There are many kinds of minor poets, but one subcategory can be defined by a particular predicament: being at risk of both extinction and success. While the threat of obscurity is intuitive, this essay shows how the latter is equally salient, as exemplified in the case of John Wieners. Rather than asking whether minor poets can become ‘spoiled’ when they achieve popularity, this article argues that we should ask what in their work produces a certain anxiety over spoilage in the first place. In the case of Wieners, the poet's minor status rises to the surface precisely at the moment when he emerges as potentially over-exposed, which always already seems to be the case, because that risk is built into his very poetics of need and dependency. Wieners generates a relationship to the reader that asks to be seen and covered up at the same time.
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