A conversation with George David Clark, Editor

How did 32 Poems begin? What was the goal when starting the magazine? John Poch and Deborah Ager founded the magazine in 2003 because they knew great poems were being overlooked. It’s awfully easy for a shorter lyric to get lost in a two hundred page quarterly, so they designed their journal as a place where individual poems would be honored as much as possible, a format that would encourage slow reading and the deliberate exploration of new voices. To that end, 32 Poems has always been very short, never more than forty pages total, and we’ve shed as much of the clutter as possible. No ads, no reviews, no notes from the editors. Even our contributors’ notes are brief. The hope has always been that this approach allows us to be extremely selective and to focus as much attention as possible on each poem.

Describe your decision-making process for selecting work to appear in the magazine. Without a doubt, 32 Poems’ greatest resource is the talent, experience, and care of our associate editors. Frankly, I don’t think there is journal out there with a more gifted team of first readers. We stay on top of our submissions, and I usually receive the associate editors’ recommendations within a couple of weeks of the work’s arrival. Sometimes I will know immediately that one of their picks is a poem we must have, but more often I spend anywhere from a few days to a couple months meditating on their “yes” votes and “maybes.” Over that period we may talk through poems together at length via email or on the phone, and when we do, we frequently discuss potential revisions if we decide to accept. Throughout that period I am reading the poems daily, and ultimately I am convinced one way or the other.

If your magazine has an ethos, what is it? We’re looking for shorter poems, usually verse that will fit on a single page. Beyond that preference for concision though, we want work that appeals to the ear, the eye, and the ego—poems driven by interesting sonic effect, poems rich in imagery, poems that risk bold sentiment.

After32 Poems, what’s your favorite writing venue? I’m particularly excited about what Geoff Brock is doing with the new journal out of the University of Arkansas, The Arkansas International, but if you asked me tomorrow I might say Ecotone, or Pleiades, or The Cincinnati Review, or The Gettysburg Review and The Southern Review and The Georgia Review where I first fell in love with literary magazines—still fall in love. I have many favorites.

What is your plan for the future of the magazine? I feel a pretty healthy sense of editorial competitiveness with my favorite journals. There are a limited number of excellent poems written each year and a limited number of excellent poetry readers. I want them all for our pages. With that in mind, our plans tend to focus on how we can attract the best verse to our submissions pool and how we can best champion the poems we love.

Website: http://32poems.com