Media The New Yorker has a new poetry editor…
posted by on September 20 at 11:37 AM
…and it’s Paul Muldoon. Reading the news this morning reminded me of a piece by Jonathan Safran Foer in LA Weekly in 2002, a year before Muldoon won the Pulitzer and the last thing I can remember enjoying in LA Weekly (don’t read it much, granted):
I SPENT TWO MONTHS LAST SUMMER IN A SMALL, seaside town in Spain, hoping to make an unrealistic amount of headway into my second novel. Because of a postage snafu, the two dozen books that were supposed to meet me there were never heard from again, leaving me with the following English reading material: my passport, about 30 U.S. dollars, the label on my family-size bottle of multivitamins, the face of my Casio watch, my last name (sewn, by my mother, into my oldest socks) and Paul Muldoon’s Poems: 1968 -1998, a book I had stuffed into my carry-on at the last minute, in no small part because of my love of the dust jacket…
It’s a swell little piece. Whole thing’s here.
Can you believe this shit? Can you believe he's STILL writing about the new yorker and jonathan safran foer? Why does he always have to genuflect to this hipster shit? Why doesn't he just move to new york already? Doesn't he realize there are other magazines and other writers out there? Or has he just not read any of them? Or... And...
Just wanted to get you guys started.
ZZZZZZzzzzzzzz
What's Dan doing right now? Why don't you go hang out in his office and giggle or something.
Paul Muldoon is tough for me. I actually like his prose a great deal, but his poetry can get tiresomely druidic. I assume it's in response to Heaney's more plain-spoken fare.
Does this mean fewer celebrity poetasters like Patti Smith and Joni Mitchell will get their poems in the magazine, or more?
Too raised pinkie for me. Is this the direction the Stranger will be going?
That Joni Mitchell poem was one of the worst poems of all time. For a preview of what the New Yorker's poetry under Paul Muldoon will look like, see the Best American Poetry he edited in 2005, which is full of, well, all the same people who are always in the New Yorker anydamnway. Though no Joni Mitchell.
Yeah, but Paul Muldoon RULES. He's like some kind of freaky scientist. The only way something like the Joni Mitchell, uh, 'poem', would be published under him is as some kind of performance art gesture. Which maybe it was anyway. Hmm. Nah...
"He's the poetry man." That would be kinda dumb and stuff.
Jonathan Safran Foer is one of the most important young Jewish writers in America today. These Seattle idiots are not smart enough to read Safran Foer, and should stick to their goyium comic books.
Kudos to The Stranger for writing about important literature and visual art in this philistine town. I love going to hear Jewish writers speak, and the Stranger events boasting Jewish artists like Safran Foer and Miranda July raised the culture level in this town to a high level.
i get the new yorker for the comics. god forbid i have to read the poetry. and it sucks since tina stopped editing it.
OK, issur, what the fuck, you love Jews, we get it. BTW, it's 'g-o-y-i-m'. You can have my Jewish Quarter if you want, I've been trying to get in on that worldwide conspiracy stuff for years and I'm getting nowhere with it.
How did you know Miranda July was Jewish?
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