Lets play: What's up with your prestigious Poetry magazine

The magazine in question has not really been good for a very long time. It is rooted in the 1950s-1970s academic style. A recent feature had a series of mediocrities condescend to famous poets who were better than them. Does anyone really care whether McClatchy doesn't care for Rilke or someone I've never heard of doesn't like Whitman? That Dobyns doesn't like Frost? Dobyns shouldn't even be allowed to have an opinion about Frost! Of course William Logan hates Hopkins. William Logan hates poetry of all kinds.

Do we need a magazine featuring W.S. DiPiero in every fricking issue? Do we need mediocre light verse pantoums by A.E. Stallings? Essays by Joseph Epstein and John Simon?

They repeatedly publish the worst poets of our age, the Pinskys, the Collinses. If they go New York School they stick to Koethe and Lehman.

There are some reviews worth reading, but the prose is increasingly crowding out the poetry. Have you noticed? More prose features, letters to the editor, exchanges that are much more interesting than any poem in the magazine. (The discussion on "greatness" is downright irritating though.) Less poetry, and poetry of lesser quality. Let's promote poetry by showing how dull it can be!

I'm sure I'm being unfair. I haven't read every poem in the magazine to make sure they are all dull. If you are readiing this blog and published a good poem there in the past few years, I'm sure it just slipped through the cracks. Nothing can be perfectly dull, not even Poetry Magazine.

Thank you for playing "What's up with your prestigious poetry magazine." And apologies to Jimmy Behrle who inspired the title of my game.