Chekhov's Mistress
In Case You Had Any Doubts (or What $70,000 and change Used to Buy)
In “Gourevitch Moves The Paris Review To Terra Tribeca” the inimitable New York Observer serves up a little publishing reality:
This on the magazine’s long-time poetry editor, Richard Howard, who was…
famous for accepting far more work than the Paris Review could accommodate, much of it from his students at Columbia University’s M.F.A. poetry program.
The result was that, at any given time, there were two or more years’ worth of work in the pipeline that had been accepted for publication. It was known among Mr. Howard’s Columbia students that he would pluck his favorites out of obscurity and put them into the Paris Review queue;
Learning how to write poetry at Columbia costs a little more than $70,000 ($35,327 for two semesters for two years, plus $3,000 fee for the time it takes to write your thesis). For that kind of money you very fucking well please better get a poem or two in The Paris Review.**
Unfortunately for those who paid more than a lifetime of poetic income to hone their art, the new staff has reneged on most all of the backlog and has put in place a strategy that should, according to the article, have the effect of the magazine publishing only poets with a well-established body of work – sure to put an end to the slush-pile altogether.
**editorial note: the editorial board of Chekhov’s Mistress has met and decided to selectively use expletives since using one last week in a fit of anger, we were amused by a link to the post repeating “(caution — f-word)” that forced us into a Richard Pryoresque rave of using words like son-bitch and damn! with great emphasis on the ‘sone’ and ‘daaa’).
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About this Post
- Posted by: Bud Parr
- Date: September 18, 2005
- Filed Under:
Wise Men Fish Here: Literature
- Comments:0
- Links to this Post: Technorati
