Bidding Goodbye to John Poch; Hello to George David Clark

Dear Poetry Readers,

After almost ten years of editing 32 Poems Magazine with Deborah Ager, I am stepping down. It is no small step for me, yet I do believe it is, as well, a step in the right direction. First, I want to thank all the poets who submitted work to the magazine during my tenure. I owe gratitude to not only the poets whose poems were accepted but also those poets who sent in work that just somehow wasn’t a fit. What a blessing to realize the great diversity of American poetry in our midst. I have been acting as some kind of magazine editor for more than 15 years now (Chattahoochee Review and American Literary Review, as well), and it is time for me to pay more attention to my own writing and, more importantly, to devote closer attention to Auden, Bishop, Larkin, Eliot, Shakespeare, Dante, and my other favorites.

I wish the best to George David Clark, who is taking over my duties. He is a discriminating reader who I believe will make the magazine better than I have made it. I will stay on in an advising/contributing editor capacity, but after this December, I won’t be choosing the poems any more. It has been an honor and a pleasure. Even if so many of our poets and poems hadn’t won Best New Poets and Best American Poets and NEAs and Guggenheims and MacArthurs and published books with 32 POEMS on the acknowledgments page, I would still believe that we were publishing the best poems in America.

And finally, I thank Deborah Ager who has made 32 Poems Magazine a constant pleasure for all of us.

I know it’s old fashioned and probably a small sacrifice, but please subscribe. And tell your friends they ought to. It’s poetry.

John Poch

Tagged as: 32 poems magazine, george david clark, john poch