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September202007

Paul Muldoon Will Be The New Yorker's New Poetry Editor

Filed under: Headline Shooter   Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

Alice Quinn is stepping down to work on a further Elizabeth Bishop volume, and Muldoon is taking the post. Here’s the Times story.
Mr. Muldoon quickly emerged as the leading candidate after Ms. Quinn announced her intentions. “It’s not just a matter of picking the best poet you can think of,” said David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker. “It’s also somebody who would know how to be in touch with an enormous range of poets, and that narrows it down a little bit more. And also somebody who’s not in Alaska.”
…
Mr. Muldoon said he had no particular agenda for the job, which is a part-time post. “One would want to be absolutely open to the poem that one simply did not expect to have made its way into the world and somehow suddenly falls on one’s desk,” he said.
As Brian Sholis adds, it’s really Muldoon’s week:
Not only will Paul Muldoon succeed Alice Quinn as poetry editor at The New Yorker, but yesterday it was announced that Muldoon has hired novelist Jeffrey Eugenides at the Center for Creative and Performing Arts at Princeton University, where he serves as chair. Muldoon was quoted as saying, “‘We’re thrilled to have Jeffrey Eugenides join our permanent faculty. He’s quite simply the finest writer of his generation and we look forward to allowing Princeton students to be the beneficiaries of his extraordinary talent as a teacher.”
The image I cherish of Muldoon is that of him reading and playing music at Williamsburg’s old Pete’s Big Salmon series a couple of years ago, whooping it up with writers of several generations; as Shanna Compton wrote at the time, “Paul Muldoon was mellifiluous and changed into the tee shirt Maureen made him that said ‘i am famous in japan’ to play with his band and that’s probably true.” He’s like the best-loved camp counselor you ever knew who can also write a bang-up poem.

In other masthead news, managing editor Jacob Lewis is leaving the magazine to join Portfolio.
2 comments

Comments

Starved for Genius

This day, this hour, this minute, this second is new,
Shall I sit by and watch it grow old?
Should I play it like ball
And whack it out of the park?
At my age – sixty two
I must first wink
As if I could possibly know
And then try to think.
If it was tough for Descartes
Where am I?
In a killing world.
I decide!
I’ll commit chronocide!
Every moment I kill
Will be a premeditated thrill
Until the moment I’m caught
And given a pill.
X hours awake, X hours asleep,
Three meals, hello to the wife,
Appointments to keep,
Pick up the mail, the routine is bought.
Is this it? I forgot but I see;
To march to the music of drum and fife?
If I’m free what does free mean?
Is it akin to the meaning of life?

David WeberDecember 23, 2007

I am trying to locate a copy of The New Yorker magazine issue which ran a cartoon that to the best of my 54 year old memory depicted to gentlemen up to above their chins in some hellish firely soup, with one seemingly about to speak up and say something to the other, and the caption of the one who hushed his hellmate reading, “Don’t rock the boat.” I purchased a recent New Yorker coffee table book of cartoons, however this one was not among them. Any leads? Any help? I tried to find the Cartoons Editor’s e-mail, but no luck so far.
Thank you most kindly,
TR Stone
poet/writer/& mgr. of an east coast state of mind self help center for adults with MI’s in Middlesex county New Jersey among other pastimes and other-inclusive Self-pursuits.
I may also be contacted at:
tonucki@cspnj.org
and at
agape4usall@optonline.net

TR StoneJune 10, 2008

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