One of New Mexico's most remarkable resources for the study and enjoyment of poetry is surely the Web publication "The Drunken Boat" (www.thedrunkenboat.com). Currently displaying its fourth issue, this e-magazine is edited by its founder, Rebecca Seiferle, award-winning poet and teacher of English and creative writing at San Juan Community College in Farmington.

"The Drunken Boat"-the title comes from Rimbaud's poem "Le bateau ivre"-appears quarterly. The current issue, Winter 2000-2001, presents a feast of offerings. With translations as necessary, there is, for example, poetry from Australia, Ecuador, Israel, Poland Italy, and the United States. There is a spirited commentary by Joyce Wilson entitled "Poetry Criticism: What Is It For"? There are featured websites and links to various journals and cultural enterprises. There are photographs and artwork, including an exhibit of digital paintings by Reva Sharon accompanied by the poems of Charles Fishman. There is biographical information on the artists and writers. There are excerpts from featured books. There are book reviews, including an illuminating long commentary by Rebecca Seiferle on "Open Me Carefully: The Intimate Letters of Emily Dickinson to Susan Huntington Dickinson." And more.

As I hope the above paragraph suggests, "The Drunken Boat" is wide-ranging and eclectic. Every issue contains the unexpected. The inaugural issue, for example, offers previously untranslated poems by Robert Desnos, Leah Rudintsky, Karen Alkelay-Gut, and Ben Zion Tomer (the original languages are French, Yiddish, and Hebrew). The second issue contains an interview with Wyoming poet David Romveldt that focuses on his work-in-progress, "Powder River Breaks: A Cowboy's Introduction to American Poetry," along with a selection of poems from the book. The third issue offers selected translations from Sam Hamill's "Crossing the Yellow River: Three Hundred Poems from the Chinese." And so on. The range is astonishing.

Every issue of "The Drunken Boat" opens with a quotation. John F. Kennedy introduces issue 1:

"When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses."

"Whoever speaks in primordial images speaks with a thousand voices. . . This is the secret of great art. . . the unconscious activation of an archetypal image and. . . elaborating and shaping this image into the finished work. By giving it shape, the artist translates it into the language of the present, so makes it possible for us to find our way back to the deepest springs of life. Therein lies the social significance of art; the artist is constantly at work educating the spirit of the age, conjuring up the forms in which the age is most lacking. The. . . artist reaches back to the primordial image. . . which is best fitted to compensate the inadequacy and one-sidedness of the present. . . seizes on this image, and . . . brings it into relation with conscious values, thereby transforming it until it can be accepted by the minds of his contemporaries according to their powers."

The Chinese poet Meng Chiao (752-814), as translated by Sam Hamill, introduces issue 3:

"Despise poetry, and you'll be named to office./ But to love poetry is like clinging to a mountain . . .."

"You see I am an enthusiast on the subject of the arts. But it is an enthusiasm of which I am not ashamed, as its object is to improve the taste of my countrymen, to increase their reputation, to reconcile to them the respect of the world, and procure them its praise."

As the quotations suggest, "The Drunken Boat" is concerned with more than the forms, styles, and substances of poetry. Granted, these are far from negligible matters; and they deserve widespread discussion; still, there are larger concerns, including the place of poetry-and, by extension, of art-in a life, in a society and in a civilization. The latest issue, for example, notes that "In 1998, the United Nations General Assembly declared 2001 as the "United Nations Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations" to foster tolerance, respect and cooperation among peoples," and it points its readers toward various ways of observing this declaration through art and poetry. This is exactly right. Critics often ask, these days, "Does poetry matter?" The answer is clear: yes, it does. If only we knew.