We are happy to announce that with this issue, Peter Gizzi becomes our new poetry editor. Peter is the author of The Outernationale (2007), Some Values of Landscape and Weather (2003), Artificial Heart (1998) and Periplum (1992). His poetry has been widely anthologized and translated; his honors include the Lavan Younger Poet Award from the Academy of American Poets and fellowships from the Howard Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Peter’s work as an editor includes o•blēk: a journal of language arts (1987-1993), the Exact Change Yearbook (1995) and The House That Jack Built: The Collected Lectures of Jack Spicer (1998).
As a poet and an editor, Peter practices the art of the mix, gathering voices that overlap, intersect, blend, diverge, disperse and rhyme. In o•blēk and the Exact Change Yearbook he brought together poems by the dead and the living, elders and upstarts, the overlooked and misunderstood, the classic and the ephemeral. Given his commitment to the art, his deep understanding of poetic tradition and its capacity to shape the consciousness of the present, his total work could be described as a form of literary activism. As Robert Creeley said of Peter, “Few people I’ve known have managed such an intensity so usefully directed.” We couldn’t agree more. Welcome, Peter.
We’d like to note that we are reviving the Nation tradition of the poetry editorship being a rotating position. As always, poets should follow the submission guidelines on our website.
