Editor’s Note

An earlier statement, signed “The Editors,” was circulated in response to the publication of the poem “Scholls Ferry Rd.” by Michael Dickman in the print version of Poetry’s July/August 2020 issue. To that group apology I would like to add, as outgoing editor, these emphatic words of my own: I accept sole responsibility for publishing the poem, and apologize unreservedly for doing so. The fact that I published this poem during a difficult and violent time in which the systemic racism of institutions, including this one, has been made clear, is unacceptable. The poet has requested that his poem be withdrawn from further circulation.

The poem was submitted a year ago, and reading it made me realize how rare, if not unheard of, it is for white poets to confront in their work the intimate lineage of racism that exists within their own families. There are countless poems about family members, but to write them without explicitly acknowledging that racism is not only a sin of omission, it is an act of active complicity. That is because a virulent mechanism of racism is its transmission from those who are near, even nearest, to us. Racism requires honest exploration in poetry as it does in every other aspect of human life, and so I had read the poem as one of condemnation. But this wishful thinking does not justify the fact that “Scholls Ferry Rd.” egregiously voices offensive language that is neither specifically identified nor explicitly condemned as racist. It also centers completely on white voices, leaving room for no other presences. Because we read poetry to deepen our understanding of human otherness, I failed in my responsibility to understand that the poem I thought I was reading was not the one that people would actually read. I deeply regret that my misjudgment of the poem has affected Black, Asian, and Pacific Islander people and anyone systematically othered by institutions with a white dominant culture, such as this one.

My poor judgment demonstrates that Poetry has much work to do in considering how poems center certain voices at the expense of others, and the impact this has upon our readers. The magazine is committed to doing this work, and readers will see that great changes in the magazine’s structure and process are immediately forthcoming. The first of many is my departure, and this, along with a restructuring of the editorial masthead and process, will create a better space to empower marginalized voices, and result in a magazine that serves as a far more equitable and inclusive place. I’m sorry that in addition to other burdens they bear, many of our readers have had to do the work of demonstrating what ought to have been obvious: that such changes are urgently necessary, and overdue.

Questions have been raised about the existing editorial process at Poetry, which I hope to clarify.  As the masthead now stands, it is not the role of anyone on the magazine masthead but the editor to make decisions about the selection of poems for publication, and this is a longstanding and now demonstrably inadequate structure I inherited on becoming the editor in 2013. Poems arrive at the editor’s desk through the online submissions system, by email and by regular post; the Consulting Editor helps screen poetry submissions, and comments on some, but by no means all or even most submissions. “Scholls Ferry Rd.” was submitted directly to me by its author, and after a few months of deliberation, accepted by me over a year ago, for the reasons I describe above. Usually, but not always, long poems are published in our larger summer issues, and so because of our production schedule, the poem was gathered for the July/August 2020 issue in April 2020; it was already at the printer before many of the events unfolded that now shape the context in which the poem appeared. A grave mistake to begin with, the timing compounded, but certainly did not create, the negative impact of the poem. It is clear that having a sole decider on the masthead who chose poems for this magazine, which was perpetuated during my editorship, did not provide the benefit of a larger and more diverse editorial committee. This one-person structure will not be the structure used to determine the contents of the next iterations of Poetry. 

As change comes to our masthead and process, I hope readers will have noticed ways in which the magazine had already evolved from what it had been before. In my first issue as editor of Poetry, I acknowledged that editors are obliged to take risks with unpredictable and difficult work. Doing so requires better judgment and instincts than I have now demonstrated. I believed that poems can do many things, among them, reflecting difficult realities, and finding the right language for them; and that in so doing they could, and would be, a force for good. I felt that poems, whether good or bad, successes or failures, teach us how to read other poems, and teach us how to read other people. But more than anything, a poem is a promise; so a poem that fails is a broken promise—as is publishing one. Because in the end poets and editors alike stand and fall by their words and choices, I leave my position with the deepest regret that I brought hurtful language to these pages, words which had a terrible impact. I failed to live up to my own values, but much worse and more significantly, failed readers who came to our pages in the good faith and the hopefulness that poetry promises.

Editors decide many things—but they do not get to decide how poems can, are, or should be read. In closing I would therefore like to direct readers to greatly insightful discussions of the poem, which may be found, for further reading, on social media, and in blog posts. As writers and readers move forward the conversation about this poem in particular, and racism in general, I will be grateful for the insights they afford. I hope that these essential conversations will change not only Poetry magazine, but poetry itself—and perhaps the world.