Harvard may be home to Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney -- and at one point, to T.S. Eliot, Robert Lowell, and Elizabeth Bishop -- but that apparently doesn’t hold much sway with Harvard Magazine.
The magazine, Harvard’s alumni publication, has sent letters to its contributors saying that poetry is no longer “central to the Harvard experience,” and that its regular poetry page would be discontinued. It may occasionally publish a poem about Harvard.
John S. Rosenberg, Harvard’s editor, says the elimination of the poetry page was one of many “substantial changes” at the magazine. He said he would explain the decision in the March- April issue and declined to comment further on the matter. (Also reportedly getting the ax are the crossword puzzle and the financial column.)
Poets are up in arms over the decision.
Liam Rector, who until now was the magazine’s poetry editor, says he is outraged by the decision. He is resigning the position, he says, because he doesn’t want to edit poems about the university. “This decision is bad for Harvard -- and for poetry. It trivializes poetry.”
Over the years, the page has been an important venue. It has featured the work of Thom Gunn, Donald Hall, Jane Kenyon, Philip Larkin, Mary Oliver, Charles Simic, Louis Simpson, and W.D. Snodgrass, among others.
Mr. Rector, who directs the writing program at Bennington College, says a recent survey indicated that 8 per cent of the magazine’s 220,000 readers report that they read the poetry page. Not enough for the editors, perhaps, but Mr. Rector points out that this amounts to nearly 18,000 readers, substantially more than many poetry publications, and possibly as many as read the poetry in The New Yorker or The Atlantic.
He adds that Mr. Heaney’s classes in poetry are regularly oversubscribed, with hundreds of students applying for a dozen or so seats. “This whole notion of what’s ‘central to the Harvard experience’ -- that’s what got me so teed off,” he says. “John Rosenberg wouldn’t know the Harvard experience if it bit him in the ass.”
Mr. Hall, who was poetry editor before Mr. Rector, called the decision “god-awful.” “From a poet’s point of view, you publish a poem in Harvard Magazine and you got letters,” he says. “You were lucky to get the same number of letters if you published in The New Yorker.
“There were all sorts of poets who wanted to publish there. It was an active readership.”
