NewPages Blog :: New Magazine Issues

As the newly established editor of this long-standing publication, Poetry Magazine, Adrian Matejka welcomes readers with an ethusiastic Editor’s Introduction, expounding on all the ways she had intended to drive the content to “showcase the beautiful confluence of voices in contemporary poetry” and “to offer an idea of what Poetry might look like in the future.” Instead, Matejka admits, she “began this job in a convergence of ignorant and well-meaning ambition,” and she has no reservations in sharing this, as “one of the things you’ll get from me while I’m an editor here is transparency of process and editorial proclivity.” Tempering the ambitions, Matejka assures, “Instead of trying to curate a single issue celebrating the 110th year of Poetry, we are using this historic issue to begin a multi-year, long-form interrogation of the magazine’s complicated archive in hopes of illuminating some of the brilliant poets who weren’t given access in the previous decades. You get to see the beginning of that excavation in this issue as we highlight the gorgeous work of Carolyn Marie Rodgers, author of numerous books, cofounder of Third World Press, long-time Chicago resident, and a vital Black poet whose work never appeared in the pages of Poetry until now.”

Other poets whose works are featured in this issue include Adrian Matejka, Alex Dimitrov, Dāshaun Washington, Martín Espada, Ruth Ellen Kocher, Yusef Komunyakaa, Karyna Mcglynn, Trevor Ketner, Edgar Kunz, Eugene Gloria, Victoria Chang, Myronn Hardy, Winniebell Xinyu Zong, Ladan Osman, and Diane Seuss.

One of my absolute favorite monthly publications, Poetry Magazine never ceases to engage me in the thresholds of change in our literary community. The September 2022 issue, with guest editor Esther Berlin, addresses concerns we have all witnessed and/or been part of transforming. “Dear Reader,” opens: “Honor, celebration, and memory come to mind when I think about the idea of monuments. The process of harnessing collective moments into a physical manifestation, something representational of the essence that surges a person’s core—that’s a monument. All the feels—rage, suffering, release, distrust, comfort, melancholy, ambivalence, ache, compassion, mercy, the urgency to remedy—contribute to constituting and dismantling monuments.” And, addressing both the internal workings at the Poetry Foundation, itself in a process of rebuilding, and those in our surrounding communities, Berlin continues, “This special issue brings attention to the idea of monuments in order to map and reframe contrived or mythical systems of power, to extend narratives through repositioning focal points.” And closes, “In my last issue as guest editor, I invite you to celebrate with me poetry as monuments, as unifying offerings, the revising of history of so many existing monuments, erased and rubbed out, and now redrawn. The unsaid no longer ruminating, no longer a hungry ghost, no longer a missed call.”

Contributors to this issue include Martín Tonalmeyotl, Kierstin Bridger, Lucas Jorgensen, Mansi Dahal, Rena Priest, Janelle Tan, Vance Couperus, Henk Rossouw, Crisosto Apache, Keith S. Wilson, Amber McCrary, Kenzie Allen, Lesley Wheeler, Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach, Krystyna Dąbrowska, Serena Rodriguez, Daniela Ema Aguinsky, Spring Ulmer, Joan Naviyuk Kane, Bes Bajraktarević, Tyler Mitchell, Ajibola Tolase, Christopher Shipman, Joan Wickersham, A. Van Jordan, and Walter Ancarrow.