It’s Not Dead Yet…Parnassus Lives

Parnassus Lives
August 12th, 2007 by Jeremy Axelrod for the Kenyon Review
Parnassus: Poetry in Review will not be closing shop with Volume 30, after all. Until recently, financial woes made that round, impressive number seem like a sensible finale for the journal’s magnificent run. As Meg Galipault noted on KR Blog [Kenyon Review Blog], Willard Spiegelman wrote in the Wall Street Journal about its “commitment to intelligence and beautiful writing” — an achievement that’s sadly not enough to fill the till. But sometimes poetry does make things happen, or at least poetry critics do. A very generous reader of the Wall Street Journal saw Spiegelman’s article and offered to fully fund Parnassus for two more years. In the last few months, many magazines and newspapers have lamented the end of Parnassus and praised its decades of excellence. Nobody spoke too soon. When the donation materialized, it was an utter surprise for everyone. [Read the rest on KR Blog]