Between the Lines: A History of Poetry in Letters, 1962-2002

by Joseph Parisi (Editor), Stephen Young

In November 2002 the Chicago Tribune broke the astonishing story that Chicago-based Poetry magazine had received a bequest of more than $100 million from the amateur poet and pharmaceutical heiress Ruth Lilly, making it at once the richest as well as the most famous literary organization in the United States. What happened before and after this remarkable gift is now revealed in Between the Lines, edited by Poetry's longtime editor Joseph Parisi and its former senior editor Stephen Young. It is a concluding episode in the book that follows on the editors' Dear Editor (2002), which chronicled Poetry's first fifty years through its poignant, hilarious, and brutally frank correspondence with its contributing poets. Dear Editor told the story of Poetry's central role in the Modernist movement and its rise to a position as the acknowledged "magazine of verse." Between the Lines carries the narrative through the second revolution in American poetry, set against the backdrop of the restive early sixties, the tumultuous era of the Vietnam War, and the social upheavals of the last four decades. Virtually all of the close to five hundred letters in the book have never been printed before. In them, famous and aspiring authors tell Poetry's editors of their artistic aspirations, rivalries, problems and successes, unvarnished opinions, and reactions to events of the day, unfolding the improbable tale of how perennially impoverished Poetry survived to make literary-and financial-history. The book is abundantly illustrated with candid photographs, drawings, posters, programs, and clippings from newspapers and magazines.

Genres: History

480 pages, Hardcover

First published August 25, 2006

Reviews

[Robert Walkley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn’t expect much from this book, but I came away loving it. I can’t pretend to have read every sentence or even every letter. But what I did read was fascinating. (And I can always go back and read some more!) The book gives the reader a great overview of what the magazine’s mission was and still is, and what it took to keep the magazine afloat through tough financial times. Parisi and Young take you not only between the lines but inside the offices and dare I say even the minds and lives of the editors and poets who roam these many pages. Even subscribers and rejected writers are heard from. The book is not really about the poetry, it’s about the correspondence between the editors of Poetry and the writers whose works they are either accepting or rejecting. The question that haunts the book is whether or not in this day and age of e-mail, letter writing has become a lost art. With email there is immediacy. But letter writing seems to afford more intimacy.

Parisi and Young do an excellent job of providing context for what is happening outside the pages of Poetry, both in the world of letters and in the real world, too.The book is roughly divided into chapters that chronicle each decade, though it begins with a specific event in 2002.

My favorite editor as a letter writer has to be John Frederick Nims. Henry Rago must win an award for being best human being in an editor’s role. Best poet letter writer? There are so many to choose from. But I’ll pick Donald Hall and his correspondence during Jane Kenyon’s terminal illness.

Sometimes the correspondence between an aggrieved writer (who is sometimes a Poetry subscriber) and an editor can get testy. At other times, writers can sound like like they are talking to their therapist or writing Dear Abby (now it would be Dear Prudence). Occasionally, the writer is so nasty that his or her name is not revealed. But writers can be radiantly happy when the editor selects their work or when they win an award. Making art is the foremost concern, of course. But making money (and surviving) is not far behind. After all, the first two chapters are titled “Outrageous Fortune” and “The Lyre and Lucre: Poetry’’s First Fifty Years.”

Pick up this volume. You will be enriched. (In the interest of full disclosure, Poetry has never accepted my work for publication.)