dumbfoundry

Deborah Ager had wanted to start a literary magazine for a decade. When she finally decided to turn her ambition into reality, she recruited fellow poet John Poch, a classmate from the University of Florida's M.F.A. program, to share editorial duties, and published their first issue in the summer of 2003. With Ager as Publisher and Poch as Editor, 32 Poems has grown to over three hundred subscribers and has become a non-profit, a move that Ager hopes will facilitate fund raising for the journal.

By design, the journal includes nothing but poetry. Ager sees this as a differentiator. When asked what makes 32 different, she says, "Smaller, thinner. No reviews or interviews. No essays, though we did that at first. Only poetry. There aren't that many journals doing that these days -- poems front to back, poems in the middle, nothing in the way of the poems." Focusing on one thing has worked. When you pick up a copy and flip through the pages, you find nothing but poetry. While that's not unexpected for a poetry magazine, more often than not you'll have to filter book reviews, essays, interviews, and articles. While those things have merit, by leaving them out, the emphasis stays on the poems.

This entry was posted by Ivy on Thursday, June 02, 2005 at 2:44 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.