Introduction

It had been twenty years since I'd taken a turn in the editorial trenches, so the invitation to return to
Ploughshares for one of its anniversary issues seemed an irresistible symmetry, a chance to observe directly some of the changes in the magazine and perhaps, by extension, in American poetry.

Three differences are clear. First, the increased efficiency at the journal with its system of screeners, overseen by the poetry editor, David Daniel; detailed guidelines (and deadlines) for the guest editors; and attentive staff. Second, the higher quality of work submitted -- I could have easily filled twice the number of allotted pages. Third, the ambition of the poems I read. If there has emerged a common element which characterizes this issue, and differentiates its pages from those I assembled as a guest editor in 1976, it is a greater inclusiveness, a greater amplitude, within the poems.

Notable in this regard is the number of strong and varied poems of substantial length (corresponding, quite accidentally, to the proportion of longer stories and novellas that Robert Boswell found on the fiction side): the "vivid and continuous dreams" of Hall and Orlen, Miller and Perillo; the shrewd cuts and juxtapositions by Andrews, McGrath, and Van Winckel; the interlocking parables of the Dobyns sequence, included here in its entirety; and the provocative mosaics by Orr and Wood, excerpted from longer works. I also recognized some of the same impulse and intent in what I might call circumstantial sequences by Dischell, Emanuel, Frost, and Rosen, whose manuscripts rang with interesting echoes among discrete poems linked by theme and style. In addition, I was gratified to find a similar inclusiveness accomplished in shorter pieces through lyric means: i.e., the "fine excess" in the textures of Finkelstein, Lux, and Spaar, the meditative leisure of Ball and Dennis, Berland's controlled ambiguity,
Jenkins's patterned momentum.

As is usual, however, the issue seems finally marked more by its lively variety than by anything else. Balancing the evocative, straightforward narratives of Short and Sneeden are the shimmering lyrics of Kutchins and Zorgdrager; and while Grummer and Rhodes prove the exhilaration of voice, bird on the branch, Jones compels with muscular restraint, Watson with urgent figurative language. I did not see, in the forwarded submissions, insistent practitioners of particular (and warring) "schools" or camps, although I did read an inordinate number of poems that handle myth -- the deft single pieces by deNiord and Allen survived tough competition. Also: a plethora of sestinas.

As is usual, readers will have both the pleasure of discovery, with distinctive new makers like Kim, Reed, and Shearin, and the pleasure of recognition, with poets who have faithfully sent
Ploughshares their best work over the years. I'm especially pleased to have strong poems by Cramer and Shapiro, whose early publications I sponsored two decades ago, and by Joyce Peseroff, who worked so diligently, alongside DeWitt Henry and Don Lee, to develop the magazine and its deserved reputation for eclectic excellence.

In memory: Larry Levis