[Gail White]

Poetry Magazine of Chicago, in its write-up in "Poet's Market", states that it "consistently publishes the best poems being written in English." That is a staggering claim. I would like to poll the Eratospherians on the following questions:
How many of us subscribe to Poetry or read it
regularly?
How many think the poems are really that great?

Full disclosure: I am a current subscriber undecided about renewing, have loved the prose articles, but think there is better poetry in the average issue of the Atlanta Review.
What do you-all think?

[David Landrum]

I subscribe. I think Poetry has mostly very good poems. It has taken a swing toward formalism of late. You see sonnets and rhyming/metrical poetry in it. I think Poetry is a good thing to read to sort of get the pulse of where poetry is the USA.

[Carol Taylor]

I've decided to let my subscription lapse because I have a pile of unread back issues. I've found the selection disappointing on the whole and have never submitted to the magazine.

I feel so much better knowing somebody else thinks the same!

Carol

[Clay Stockton]

I subscribe to it and I read it. Well, maybe I should say that I crack each issue open. Lots of the poems don't strike my fancy, but that's always the case, even in (sometimes especially in) formal-only mags.

I think David has a point about Poetry's being a good way to take the national pulse. A lot of stuff in the mag comes from schools/movements/poets who really just don't have a chance with me, as I probably don't have a chance with them. But every once in a while there's something in there that's (A) delightful and (B) never, ever, EVER going to be in Measure.

--CS

P.S. I also subscribe to Measure, and I think it's the bee's knees!

[RCL]

I subscribe and read most issues. Only two or three poems per issue move me, but the prose is often interesting, moreso than the poems. The latest issue, PEOTRY, the humor issue, isn't, except for the cover, any more humorous than last year's, which made me retch. Someone over there should read Folly.

------------------
Ralph

[Quincy Lehr]

I'd go a step further than Clay and say that I generally like Poetry more than many formalist mags, if only for the prose. (It's nice to be able to read William Logan's reviews without all the right-wing New Criterion crapola surrounding them, for example.) But the poetry itself is often interesting, sometimes really goddamn good.

Quincy

[Rose Kelleher]

Actually, Gail was comparing it to Atlanta Review, which is not a formalist magazine. I subscribe to both, and now that you mention it, Gail, I think I do usually find more to get excited about in AR than in Poetry (prose aside). In both (and pretty much all) cases, most of the poems seem okay but not memorable, there are a handful I dislike, and a handful that stir me in some way. So we're talking about a few versus a slightly bigger few.

[jack edwards]

Poetry vs. Atlanta Review is an interesting comparison. Reading Parisi's Poetry always seemed (to me) a very 'safe' affair -- the poetry was very polished, and I couldn't find much to complain about, but sometimes I wished for poems that were more risky, and maybe less stately (or sedated). The quality was there, but there were few surprises, and I would end up sort of flatlining.

Wiman's version seems (again, to me) to be more of a mixed bag, with some fresh names now and then, and a greater range not merely of styles, per se, but of depths, or scopes. He seems more of an aesthete to me, probably because of the number of formally accomplished but depth-challenged pieces I've found in there. Yet still, it's nice to be surprised now and again. And yes, I subscribe.

I thought at least Goldbarth's PEOTRY offering was a hoot.

Atlanta Review, on the other hand, has always seemed a mixed bag -- international issues, theme issues, contest winners, and lots of new/newer names. I subscribed for a couple of years, and could always find at least a few poems I truly admired. I could also find, always, one or two very coarse, unsubtle poems wherein the sound devices were employed like jackhammers, with alliteration, internal rhyme and consonance so overbearing that I wondered if the words were the "best words" after all. Seems Veach sometimes has an odd sweettooth for super-conspicuous device that I do not share.

But the upshot is probably that I'm picky, or just nuts, and somebody (probably lots of somebodies) out there can appreciate any given poem appearing in either journal. History and reputations aside, if I could only toss one journal into the time capsule, it'd be Poetry. Not nearly as oddly homogenous as it used to be, but it's still pretty solid, and like Landrum suggested, it can be useful for calibrating your instruments.

[Susan McLean]

I don't subscribe to POETRY but do browse through issues when I am in the library, looking for poets whose work I know I like and for some of the prose pieces. I find the majority of poems in any issue to be uninteresting--at least to me--and I suspect Wiman of practising tokenism toward formalism. That is better than nothing, of course, but not enough to make me want to subscribe. I was irritated to get the impression from Goldbarth's poem in the latest "humor" issue that Wiman is soliciting humorous poems from certain poets instead of actually trying to judge poems that come in by whether or not they are funny. That might explain why there are so few laughs in the humor issues in general. POETRY seems to be trying to have a foot in every camp of contemporary poetry, which may broaden its readership, but also increases the chance that most people will find most issues uneven.

I prefer to support journals that are more open to formalism, so I subscribe to MEASURE, THE DARK HORSE, IAMBS AND TROCHEES, BLUE UNICORN, LIGHT, etc. I figure that I can always browse some of the others in the library or at a good bookstore.

Susan

[David Mason]

My favorites in the humor issue were by Wendy Videlock and XJ Kennedy. But really, I think the magazine is livelier than it has been since JF Nims edited it many years ago. I don't really care if everything in a magazine is to my taste. I read it to find out what's going on. And formally purist magazines can be boring too.

Dave