[New-Poetry] Re: Changing of the guard

[Rsgwynn1 at cs.com]

In a message dated 3/3/2008 11:29:51 PM Central Standard Time, 
grahamd at ripon.edu writes: 
> 
> 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.  
> 
> 
> 
> 
It always seemed to me that The New Yorker was the ideal venue for light 
verse--as it was for so many years--but shifted course about 30 years ago into the 
SERIOUS category.  I still crack up over some of the stuff that Updike 
contributed in the 50s.   
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