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Spring/Summer 2007
Editor’s Note
by Chris Pappas, Co-editor
I write to you now from a small college town
somewhere in the United States. The new poets have arrived to begin
their arduous four-year journey for the coveted M.F.A. degree. Last
weekend there was a party to send off the ones who recently
finished. This weekend there is a party to indoctrinate the ones who
just made it. There will be much drinking and talking about what
we’re doing here. This is the point, I think.
Some have come for the community, others under the
delusion of being recognized, finally. "So they left in obscurity
and misery."
In this place, I have come to know many worthwhile
poets (and some not worth quite as much while). I have to say,
however, it’s not about who’s good and who’s not. But it is about
who matters. As a friend said recently, some will leave here more
arrogant and less competent than when they arrived. Others will use
this four-year fantasy-camp to write themselves out of themselves.
But if we’re lucky, we stumble into a small group of people as naïve
as we are: people who think poetry is the most important thing. It’s
what we sing about, talk about, have wet dreams about, and it is
what we do. For complete text.
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Spring/Summer 2007
Hypocrite Lecteur
by Jacob Shores-Argüello, Guest Editor
Poetry is in imminent and dangerous decline. It floats ominously in
the sky with the word Hindenburg stamped into its side. It is dying,
dead, zombied, and decapitated. It is a joke that isn’t funny
anymore, a jacket without its buttons, a metaphor that is badly
formed.
Or so I’ve read. Recently these
collective anxieties have tended to gather into similarly titled
essays: Why I Hate Poetry (the magazine), Why I Hate Poetry (the
general state of), Why I Hate John Barr (or Dana Gioia), Why Dana
Gioia (or John Barr) Hates Poetry (either the magazine or the state
of).
These essays somehow
attempt a salvation of poetry by reinforcing the significance of
prose. Clearly, poets should not be obsessing poems, but the
structure of this artful commentary.
For complete text.
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