CPR - Letters to the Editor

Editor's Note
The Contemporary Poetry Review is pleased to publish selected letters to the magazine, some of which have been edited for content and clarity. The editor can be contacted here.

Concerning: Hannah Brooks-Motl on the Atlantic divide

Dear Editor,

Hannah Brooks-Motl, in her excellent article contrasting British and American poets of our time, notes a number of well observed differences, which she ascribes mainly to the different historical perspectives of the two cultures. She suggests that being born in America pretty well locks you into one sort of perspective, while being born British makes inevitably for a longer view of literary history. Maybe so, but most American poets also spent formative years absorbing poems by Gascoigne, Jonson, Donne, Dryden, Rochester, Wordsworth, Keats, and - yes - Hardy along with their Dickinson, Robinson, Eliot, Frost, and Stevens. Many, indeed, might like to describe the world as it actually is (assuming that's knowable), and no doubt many do. But the poems that appear in journals and books are largely controlled by editors, and editors operate with certain ideas about literary virtue, appropriate styles and approaches, and the public taste. How these ideas are formed and perpetuated among what one might call the editorial subculture would be a fascinating but difficult study. But I would wager that an "English" sort of poem, submitted to ten journals in America, would fare far worse than the same poem submitted to ten journals across the pond. And perhaps vice versa. I have personally found ready acceptance in some English journals of poems that went begging for a while in the US, but I can't claim a wide enough sample to generalize with confidence.

Perhaps other readers of CPR can lend their views or share war stories.

Jan Schreiber