[New-Poetry] Dorset Prize Dustup

[TheOldMole]

I'm not sure I completely follow this. I do like Levine's response.

jforjames at aol.com wrote:
> http://www.pw.org/mag/0703/newslarimer.htmnew
>  
>  
> Jeffrey Levine's Dorset Prize Dustup
> By Kevin Larimer 
>
> Jeffrey Levine
> ILLUSTRATION BY NATHAN KISSEL
>
>  
> Up until last fall, the closest Jeffrey Levine had come to a 
> controversial contest was when he agreed to publish Priscilla Sneff's 
> poetry collection, O Woolly City, the 2004 winner of the Kenyon Review 
> Prize (the book had been orphaned when Neil Azevedo's Zoo Press ceased 
> operations early last year). Levine's Tupelo Press, founded eight 
> years ago, had been almost universally praised for setting a new 
> standard among independent literary presses and for sponsoring three 
> successful poetry contests: the Snowbound Series Chapbook Award, the 
> Tupelo Press Poetry Contest, and the Dorset Prize, all of which 
> include a cash prize and publication.
> But, in the opinion of many, the solid reputation the press had 
> established by publishing nearly fifty books by such poets as Ray 
> Gonzalez, Joy Katz, Anna Rabinowitz, Floyd Skloot, and Matthew 
> Zapruder and fiction writers Lewis Buzbee and David Petruzelli, was 
> tarnished late last year by allegations of unfairness stemming from 
> Levine's administration of an open submission period in July 2006 and 
> his subsequent invitation to a number of poets whose work was rejected 
> during that period to submit to the Dorset Prize—where, he said, they 
> would automatically pass through the first round of competition.
> The controversy that followed prompted Levine to say, "The world is 
> full of a lot of burning effigies of me at the moment."
>  
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