Well, once or twice, anyway. Here's the whole story of Alice Quinn and the Persistent Poet, now celebrating its tenth anniversary. In 1995 I got very exercised about this. Now it's just funny, not to mention actual magazine history. Bob Holman writes as introduction: "We proudly bring you yesterday's eternal news today, the personal diaries of the poet who is our National Town Crier..." Here's part of Sparrow's first report in his diary of the time (all reprinted on Holman's and Margery Snyder's About.com poetry site):

I sit on the subway (the No. 6), approaching 42nd Street. In my lap I hold two rolled up posters:

GIVE OUR POEMS HOEMS

and

I'M DOROTHY PARKER
WITH A MAGIC MARKER.

I am heading uptown, towards the office of The New Yorker. Will any of the other Unbearables be there? Or will I be alone, an embarrassed ruffian in an unpopular beard, handing out flyers?

And, in fact, I have eight flyers, which I have xeroxed at the local candy store, in my coat pocket. They read:

How Much Misery
has been created by the rejection slips given out, daily, by The New Yorker? How many suicides have they induced? And worse, how many poets have been silenced? How many stopped writing sonnets and maritime ballads? How much writerly paralysis is directly invoked by these small 3" x 5" notes, which begin: “We regret...”?

The Unbearables have a resolution to this poetic blight -- a suggestion that is both fair and militant. We demand, and suggest, that The New Yorker publish once a year all the poetry that is submitted unto it. This yearly 5203 page poetry issue will be the first egalitarian literary journal in history. Finally, great poets like Mark Strand will coexist with awful poets like Claude Hollister-Melnode. For once, readers will see how delightful great poets are, and how nauseating are poetasters. And perhaps, by a miracle, we will find another poet as brilliant as Brad Leithauser.

Let us begin! Poetic utopia is within our grasp, if we act quickly!