[New-Poetry] Re: Changing of the guard

[David Graham]

The New Yorker publishes maybe 50 poems a year?  I wonder if anyone  
here has ever sat down & read through a whole year's crop?  My  
suspicion is that, poem for poem over the years, their editors have  
done about as well as the editors of most quarterlies in picking  
poems.  In proportion, do they really publish a *lot* more stinky  
stuff than, say, Hudson Review or Kenyon?  Of course it's all  
mainstream poetry.  But, since it's the NYorker, they typically have  
their pick of the luminaries.

Anyway, when you read two poems in a given week and don't much care  
for one of them, then maybe hate both of the poems next week--it's  
easy to form the opinion that they *never* publish any good  
material.  But I think they do, and always have--again, if you don't  
automatically hate anything mainstream.

A lot of Milosz & Syzmborska, for instance, first appeared there, as  
well as many poems I've admired by poets such as Wilbur, Levine,  
Kinnell, Kleinzahaler, Chas. Wright, Gluck, et al.

========================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu

Home Page:
http://web.mac.com/drjazz

Poetry Library:
http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/DGPoLibrary.html
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On Mar 3, 2008, at 12:48 PM, TheOldMole wrote:

> Anyone have any thoughts on Paul Muldoon at the New Yorker? He's  
> going for the tried and true -- a couple of poems by Merwin in the  
> last issue I read, looks like Merwin and Stephen Dunn in the  
> current issue. For myself, I have no problem with this. It's better  
> poetry than we're used to seeing in the New Yorker, and these guys  
> have earned their place at the top of the food chain. The New  
> Yorker is a general audience magazine, after all.
>
> David Graham wrote:
>> Mary Karr takes over the Poet's Choice column at The Washington Post.
>> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/28/ 
>> AR2008022803507.html
>>
>>
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