Best American Poetry

Last year I co-edited the 18th issue of the Columbia Poetry Review, a literary magazine which publishes the poetry of students at Columbia, alongside the poetry of well-known poets. In many ways edited the issue was incredible: we decided to have a theme issue in which we celebrated the work of women poets (because much to our own dismay, we felt that female poets are not being published as much as male poets.) It was also terrible in the ways that we were disorganized--there were some typos in the issue, and our database was wiped out by a virus. All in all, we published it, and I wiped my hands of it.

Until today. I found out from one of my teachers that one of the poems that we published, written by Denise Duhamel (one of my all-time favorite poets) was chosen for Best American Poetry 2006--not only that, but Billy Collins is the guest editor(!). I've never been the largest fan of Billy Collins--I like poets that are more experimental--so I'm surprised. The poem that made it in, a villanelle, almost didn't make the cut (for many different reasons.) I'll be finding out from my teacher if any other poems from the issue will be published.

This means that CPR, though it does pretty well for itself, will get noticed. I feel good, specifically, that our women's issue will get more attention.