Introduction

I was very casual about the way I chose poems for this issue of
Ploughshares. I asked a few friends -- those I happened to be in touch with -- for recent unpublished work. I picked what I wanted. Then I went through poems that had come directly to
Ploughshares and which the editors thought would interest me. I recall that most of the poems which I chose came to me this way.

I have no method for picking poems. I simply pick what pleases me. I am not concerned with truth, nor with conventional notions of what is beautiful. I tend to like poems that engage me -- that is to say, which do not bore me. I like elaboration, but I am often taken by simplicity. Cadences move me, but flatness can also seduce. Sense, so long as it's not too familiar, is a pleasure, but so is nonsense when shrewdly exploited. Clearly, I have no set notion about what a poem ought to be.

Editing a single issue of
Ploughshares has not allowed me to reach any conclusions about the state of American poetry. American poetry still seems to be "out there," practiced by others in many different places and under many different conditions. The number of people writing poems is vast, and their reasons for doing so are many, that much can be surmised from the stacks of submissions. Whether or not this is a healthy state of affairs I cannot say. I simply don't know. And yet, in a culture like ours, which is given to material comforts, and addicted to forms of entertainment that offer immediate gratification, it is surprising that so much poetry is written. A great many people seem to think writing poetry is worthwhile, even though it pays next to nothing and is not as widely read as it should be. This is probably because it speaks for a level of experience unaccounted for by other literary genres or by popular forms of entertainment. So, perhaps, the fact that so many are writing poetry is a sign of health.

Whatever the case, I hope that the poems I have chosen for this issue of
Ploughshares find appreciative readers.