"Kenneth you really are the backbone of a tremendous poetry nervous system / which keeps sending messages along the wireless luxuriance / of distraught experiences and hysterical desires so to keep things humming / and have nothing go off the trackless tracks"
--Frank O'Hara
The fovea is the place on the back of the eye where the nerves gather and take signals from the eye to the brain. Ironically, the fovea is the only place on the back of the eye that does not imprint an image. Instead the brain fills in the image based on information around it so that we don't have a small spot in our vision.
We think the term is, well, poetic and sums up in a metaphor a lot of what it means to find, and "to see," excellent poems.
The poets whose work appears on this website agree in part or in whole with the following manifesto:
-
1. We believe that it makes no sense to say one form of poetry is more valid or more artistic than any other.
2. We believe that the old model of submission/rejection is but only one way for finding and publishing the best poetry.
3. We want poets rather than poet/editors to have more editorial authority in general. Poets should be able to champion people they love and have their opinions "matter."
4. We think La Fovea will encourage poets to read each other's poems because they will want to know who else is on their nerve. They will want to ask, "With whom am I related?"