Meet George David Clark, New Editor
Dear Readers,
My relationship with 32 Poems Magazine began some time ago when a poet friend slipped an issue into my hand and demanded I stop what I was doing to read the lyric he had just come across. The poems I found those pages stood out for their sonic complexity and the freshness of their idiom. Unlike the other journals I read, 32 Poems, in its unique focus on the short lyric, maintained a consistent and compelling identity. The poems one found there seemed strategically chosen, its poets part of a community, not linked by school or aesthetic but by special attention to the language. Eventually I sent work to the journal myself. My poems were promptly rejected, but through those rejections I met John Poch whose thoughtful comments made it clear that he not only read submissions sympathetically, but possessed a unique talent for identifying how they fell short of their own aspirations. A balance of eclecticism and rigorous standards of craft is one of the things that make 32 Poems so special. Working more closely with the journal these last two years, I have come to appreciate how John's fundamental generosity of attention has supported the work of his poets, and, issue after issue, gathered some of the most exciting poetry being written today. The loyal readership and enviable reputation 32 Poems enjoys is, above all, a testament to the power of a passionate editor.
I do not take lightly the benchmarks that John Poch and Deborah Ager have set at 32 Poems, but I am also excited about the magazine's future. 32 Poems will continue to host a wide variety of styles and schools with excellence and compression as common denominators. To the magazine's many longtime readers, I pledge my commitment to finding and encouraging poets who reinvent the language rather than just giving us more of the same, poets previously unpublished and those whose work we have admired for many years. 32 Poems has always had that attitude, and that is precisely why readers like myself have long looked forward to its arrival each semester in our mailboxes.
George David Clark
