Hold up. You are overlooking amazing work by Terrance Hayes, Brian Blanchfield, Christopher Soto, Carl Marcum, Douglas Kearney, Fred Moten, Reginald Dwayne Betts, — and these are just the guys I can think of without heading to Google.
I mean, come on. Terrance Hayes just snagged a MacArthur genius grant a couple of years ago. And geez, I left out Jim Daniels! He writes amazing stuff and is right across the street from Hayes. Both are Pittsburgh guys.
I think there is a lot of good male poetry going on out there. Betts writes about his time in prison, and just released a new book. Daniels is a Detroit native who gets into the grit of that, and Carl Marcum just wraps his head around the Latino experience.
Try on some new stuff, and you’ll see that there is more to it than the guys who write on behalf of the ladies.
Atticus is just for greeting cards.