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New Yorker gets new poetry editor

According to The Guardian, the venerable but somewhat fusty New Yorker magazine has appointed a new poetry editor, for the first time in 20 years. The new guy is Irish-born Pulitzer-winner Paul Muldoon, who takes over from Alice Quinn starting this November.

The editor of the New Yorker, David Remnick, explained that it was not only Muldoon’s skill as a prize-winning poet which had made him ideal for the post, but also his wider appreciation of contemporary poetry.

“It’s not just a matter of picking the best poet you can think of,” he told The New York Times. “It’s also somebody who would know how to be in touch with an enormous range of poets, and that narrows it down a little bit more. And also somebody who’s not in Alaska.”

Though new blood is surely a good thing, we have to ask: wouldn’t it have behooved Remnick to appoint a new cartoons editor first? Those things are godawful.

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