Poetry Ireland Review Issue 28 Editorial

Editorial

The Director of Poetry Ireland informed me in April that due to an unfortunate chain of circumstances the special interposed FrancoIrish issue had fallen by the wayside, and that an alternative issue would be offered to 1989 subscribers during this year.

When I resumed my stewardship after the three-month break, vast numbers of contributions arrived. Even though this issue was longer than normal, inevitably I had to return even more manuscripts than usual. And I'm haunted by that short poem of Anne Stevenson's called The Poetry Review:

The Editor regrets that he is
unable to make use of your
MSS. He is grateful for the
opportunity of considering
your work, and is sorry that
pressure of time makes it
impossible for him to write
a personal letter.

I suppose there are at least two sides to every story. There are Galway Kinnell's lines:

I swear to you, it was just my way
of cheering myself up, as I licked
the stamped self-addressed envelopes
the game I had
of trying to guess which one of you, this time,
had poisoned his glue. I did care.
I did read each poem entire.
I did say what I thought was the truth
in the mildest words I knew. And now ...

Apart from a generous choice of new poems, we are glad to include an interview with Donald Hall. Maire Mhac an tSaoi continues the Poet at Work with a piece entitled Poet as Housewife. Chris Agee has contributed a major essay on George Steiner's Real Presences and former editor Dennis O'Driscoll offers words on work and inspiration in his essay Thinking About Writing, as well as contributing a review of biographies of Sylvia Plath and Allen Ginsberg. Sean Dunne pays tribute to Raymond Carver in his article Hitting The Right Notes. There are also reviews by Conor Kelly, Tom Halpin, and Padraig J. Daly of collections which were received after my return to the editorship.