Unacceptance at the Paris Review

The Paris Review recently changed poetry editors - from Dan Chiasson and Meghan O'Rourke to Robyn Creswell - and it appears that some poets accepted by the former have been found to be unacceptable by the latter.  Is this an unheard of slight, or a run-of-the-mill literary magazine episode?  Daniel Nester over at We Who Are About to Die gives it the ol' second-person jaundiced eye:

You have this acceptance.  Months, even years pass after this acceptance.  You wait for the issue with your poems to appear.

Then you get an email from Lorin Stein, the new editor of The Paris Review.  With perhaps the memory that there had been an announcement, written about in New York Observer, about a change at the Poetry Editor desk.

Dear XXXX,

Recently I replaced Philip Gourevitch as editor of The Paris Review and appointed a new poetry editor, Robyn Creswell. Over the last month, Robyn and I have been carefully reading the backlog of poetry that we inherited from the previous editors. This amounts to a year’s worth of poems. In order to give Robyn the scope to define his own section, I regret to say, we will not be able to publish everything accepted by Philip, Meghan, and Dan. We have not found a place for your three poems, though we see much to admire in them and gave them the most serious consideration. I am sorry to give you this bad news, and I’m grateful for your patience during the Review’s transition.

Best regards,
Lorin Stein

So, huh. There was that time Harriet was disinvited to Ezra's birthday party. That did sting a bit. Maybe it is worth a second post and some commentating and refudiating.  We will continue to follow this story throughout the hour and bring you any updates as warranted from the White House or Capitol Hill or some blog.

(UPDATE: Nester added part 3, in which he interviews the rejected Joshua Corey, and Brian Spears at the Rumpus has added his two cents.)