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Why You Should Care That Paul Muldoon Is The New Yorker's New Poetry Editor
Filed under: Headline Shooter Tagged: Alice Quinn, masthead, Paul Muldoon, poetry, Seymour Hersh, W.H. Auden
Just kidding. I’ll send one of Muldoon’s books to any reader who writes in to challenge the fundamental truth of the necessity of poetry (and reading poetry, for you philistines) in civilization, especially a civilization whose mantle, as last night’s dinner companion suggested, is thinner and closer to barbarism than we might have supposed.
Anyway, here are some responses to the recent news.
Dean Olsher (“The Next Big Thing”): “Can it be a coincidence that her departure comes on the heels of the magazine’s decision to publish this poem by Joni Mitchell?”
Joseph Campana for the Kenyon Review: “Quinn presided over the magazine’s controversially uncontroversial slate of poems often referred to as ‘New Yorker poems,’ which espoused less an aesthetic school than a cult of personality.”
Eyewear: “He’s the Auden of his generation (with perhaps some different habits) in terms of precocious ability, verbal style, intellectual vigour, and expatriated address. Hopefully he will get the magazine to publish more poems and more poetry reviews.”
Paul Muldoon, quoted in the Guardian: “I sincerely hope that every poem I publish there will have it in it to make a profound change in the reader,” he said. “That’s certainly my aim.”
New York magazine’s Vulture: “In other news, Paul Muldoon doesn’t want to publish your sestina, either.”
I wouldn’t be so sure about that.
(Also, unrelated: Here’s a brief Q. & A. with Seymour Hersh in the Jewish Journal.)
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Hello! We're a small band of media enthusiasts, culture addicts, and journalists based in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Emdashes, formerly a New Yorker fan site, is our collection of conversations—mostly civilized—about magazines, movies, politics, design, punctuation, and other things that stir us.
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Dashes, some say, “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.” Emdashes—like an em dash itself—provides a thoughtful pause amid the hubbub.
Emdashes, founded in 2004, is written and drawn by Emily Gordon, Martin Schneider, Pollux, Jonathan Taylor, and Benjamin Chambers, as well as occasional guest contributors. All posts before October 2008 are by Emily Gordon.
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Additional drawings are by Carolita Johnson and Pollux (author of our web comic, "The Wavy Rule"). The Emdashes pencil logo is by Jennifer Hadley, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad.
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- Writing on theater: reviews (for Time Out Chicago; imperfect but workable search results)
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- Feature: Rea Irvin: visionary art director, bon vivant, New Yorker founding father (for Print)
- Slide show: the Coney Island Mermaid Parade (for NYCgo.com)
- Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands, and an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (for Print)
- Review: King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
- Homage: Celebrating lindy-hop legend Frankie Manning (for NYCgo.com)
- Inquiry: Does a New Republic redesign mean a change of tune? (for Print)
- Interview: James Surowiecki on what's next for the wisdom of crowds (for Assignment Zero)
- Interviews: four up-and-coming designers under 30 (for Print)
- Profile: novelist and dance critic Laura Jacobs (for Newsday)
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Comments
I was glad to hear this news — Muldoon should have some (more) interesting picks. This always struck me as probably the easiest job at the NYer (or anywhere) — pick 2 poems per week, okay, done — which made me wonder when I read that Quinn said she was leaving so it wouldn’t take away the time she needs to edit another Eliz. Bishop project. Thanks for the round-up of comments on this news. —MT
oh, thank GOD they’ve shunted quinn out of there. the last few weeks’ worth of poems must have been her revenge or something—i thought nothing could get worse than that bizarro bit about the coral, but then they ran that joni mitchell poem, and i started to wonder if maybe the poetry submissions were being handled by enviroconscious eight-year-old interns, or perhaps manatees. but now all will be well.
The ice age may have ended at The New Yorker. I’m cheered out here in the West. Maybe the cult of “the New Yorker poem” will expand into something as broad as the Dublin-Santa Fe school…
and I’m cheered. The Irish, as a friend at the LA Times put it, “invented literatoor.”