My personal question for the day is: what are the most prestigious publications for poetry, and how/why did they come to that status? (I'm only going to look at one for now).
I get the mail for my landlord, and among his mail is the New Yorker. Yeah, you're not supposed to open other people's mail, but what if it's a magazine that's already open? I used to shake my head at the covers, (half the time not understanding what on earth they were conveying), but I had been wondering what was so great about them, so I opened it.
The New Yorker may not be the most prestigious platform for poetry publication, but it sure seems like its among the most well-known. When I was still in college and starting to seek publication, I sent a piece off to the New Yorker just to get the rejection out of the way. Judging by the amount of hits on a search for "New Yorker rejection", I was not alone. What makes it so elite, especially since its mainly centered around just one of fifty states? Longevity may be one factor (it was first published in 1925), with the continuity of many features such as style and layout; the contribution of many authors we now consider "great"; commitment to editing and fact-checking, or maybe something else. My searches didn't help me much in this, hopefully I will stumble across a better analysis at some point. Let's get into the verse instead (these are both from the August 25th issue)
Blacktail
by Lucia Perillo
Like tent caterpillars, we cover the landscape with mesh
because of the deer, the ravenous deer.
They enter the yard with the footwork
of cartoon thieves--the stags were preposterous
inverse chandeliers, the does bearing fetuses
visibly kicking inside of their cage. And who
can not-think of that crazy what-if: what if
a hoof tears through? Would you call
the dogcatcher or an ambulance?
The problem's their scale--you might as well park
a Cadillac in the house. Or go be a hunter
inside a big plastic goose, a fibreglass burger
on top of a hamburger stand. The way they tiptoe
past the bird feeder, rattling the seed
that squirrels have spilled. Then they eat
something outrageous, like the pansy
all the way up the stoop. Before they leap
into the ravine with a noise like cymbals!
But isn't that how things end, with a cymbal crash? Leaving
you at the window with not even your rage.
Because you cannot rage at such delicate skeletons--
that is a social misdemeanor--though they have stepped
toward us the way the founding fathers
must have approached the natives, with their arms
extended, though they bore disease.
What a wonderful visual treatment of the deer. We have a fairly high number of them in our area, and they certainly can be pests, especially on the roads. I have a great amount of sympathy for the speaker in this case, but for the deer also. I really liked the comparison to structures, with the "inverse chandeliers", cage-like bodies, moving haphazardly through the spaces of the yard and garden. Nature is sometimes absurd when you think about it. I also really like the enjambed lines; the sentences have full structure which is great for flow, but the enjambment breaks them up for a little more tempo and harshness.
The Lost Art of Letter Writing *
By Eavan Boland
The ratio of daylight to handwriting
Was the same as lacemaking to eyesight.
The paper was so thin it skinned air.
The hand was fire and the page tinder.
Everything burned away except one
Place they singled out between fingers
Held over a letter pad they set aside
For the long evenings of their leave-takings,
Always asking after what they kept losing,
Always performing--even when a shadow
Fell across the page and they knew the answer
Was not forthcoming--the same action:
First the leaning down, the pen becoming
A staff to walk fields with as they vanished
Underfoot into memory. Then they letting up,
The lighter stroke, which brought back
Cranesbill and thistle, a bicycle wheel
Rusting: an iron circle hurting the grass
Again and the hedges veiled in hawthorn
Again just in time for the May Novenas
Recited in sweet air on a road leaving
To another road, then another one, widening
To a motorway with four lanes, ending in
A new town on the edge of a city
They will never see. And if we say
And art is lost when it no longer knows
How to teach a sorrow to speak, come, see
They way we lost it: stacking letters in the attic,
Going downstairs so as not to listen to
The fields stirring and night as they became
Memory and in the morning as they became
Ink; what we did so as not to hear them
Whispering the only questions they knew
By heart, the only one they learned from all
Those epistles of air and unreachable distance,
How to ask: is it still there?
I struggle with how to treat nostalgia, and I think this is a very apt treatment. It's very persistent, and I like to let the feeling of it wash over me. I think my favorite was the "even when a shadow / Fell across the page" and the expectations there.
So, thanks to the New Yorker for having something great for me, even if my other queries are unanswered.
* I have chosen to break this up into 3 line stanzas as it appeared in the magazine, rather than the wall-o-text from the webpage.
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