“Hi, Paris Review here. Remember those poems we accepted from you? Umm…”
Behind the scenes at The Great Paris Review Poetry Purge of 2010: part 1.
Dear XXXX,
Recently I replaced Philip Gourevitch as editor of The Paris Review and appointed a new poetry editor, Robyn Creswell. Over the last month, Robyn and I have been carefully reading the backlog of poetry that we inherited from the previous editors. This amounts to a year’s worth of poems. In order to give Robyn the scope to define his own section, I regret to say, we will not be able to publish everything accepted by Philip, Meghan, and Dan. We have not found a place for your three poems, though we see much to admire in them and gave them the most serious consideration. I am sorry to give you this bad news, and I’m grateful for your patience during the Review’s transition.
Best regards,
Lorin Stein