Abacus: The ability to be innovative and not fall back upon prior stylistic successes.

Chelsea: I expect poems that equal or surpass the poet's best published work, but also something fresh, something that takes risks.

Frank: An emotional response whose pain I somehow enjoy returning to.

Green Mountains Review: If I've already published that poet, I expect new poems as surprising and dynamic as the previous submission (though I'm often disappointed). If I've already rejected that poet, I expect poems better than the last batch, poems that might indicate that the poet has read an issue of GMR and has grasped its editorial standards (though I'm often disappointed).

The Massachusetts Review: Liveliness and surprise. No different from what I'd be looking for in any submission, really.

New Letters: The standards are the same for familiar as for unfamiliar poets—the difference being that we are likely to spend more time examining the poem of someone we know to be an accomplished writer, if at first it seems puzzling or odd. Ultimately, though, each poem must be convincing on its own.

Open City: I try not to read any poem with expectations.

Poetry Review: Not to get off-cuts.

Provincetown Arts: Surprise of growth.

Salmagundi: More of the same or something entirely different: again, this is impossible to answer in general. We know, to take one example, that Robert Lowell's poems of the sixties differ radically from his works of the forties. Other poets will surprise us as much as Lowell did; others will not.

Xanadu: I expect to follow the poet in a personal quest of discovery involving language and meaning. Not new for the sake of new, but new because the poet continues to make discoveries.

What makes work from a new poet exciting?

Abacus: If it is a young poet, the willingness to take on big issues of poetry—whether style, form, or the academic status quo—with a new way of using language.

Chelsea: Discovering a new and compelling voice is like finding the Grail after a long quest. Drink deep from that cup. There should be no greater satisfaction for an editor.

Frank: The affirmation that there are individuals out in the world that share this strange passion for language.

Green Mountains Review: Wildly original lines of poetry; perhaps the whole poem is flawed and slightly out of control, but it's full of palpable necessity. Fresh perspectives—aesthetic, philosophical, or political—that awaken readers to the protean nature of poetry.

The Massachusetts Review: Simply finding someone unknown to you who already sounds distinctly like himself or herself and whose work strikes you forcefully.

New Letters: One hopes to find in a new poet an authentic voice, not an imitation of someone else's success. This doesn't mean gimmicky, but a voice that stands up to the content and demands of the poem—a voice with credibility.

Open City: Too hard to pin down—a poem can feel "new" in so many ways—but it's always a thrill to hear new voices.

Poetry Review: A voice that already stands out.

Provincetown Arts: Freshness of voice, often buried by bad things.

Salmagundi: The challenge to ideas we hold about what poetry can and ought to be—or, magnificent confirmation of what we already knew to be poetry's largest possibilities. The prose element in Frank Bidart's work was an exciting challenge to our standard ideas; Amy Clampitt showed us an excitingly elegant version of what we knew poetry could do and be.

Xanadu: Finding a new voice, another take on the world we share. The surprises.

2.)	ON THEIR AESTHETIC

Could you describe your aesthetic?

Abacus: Language-centered; experimental; visually oriented.

Chelsea: As an editor, I try to be a chameleon, to engage with each work on its own aesthetic ground without letting personal biases color my judgment—but, mere human that I am—I tend to favor poems that delve beneath the surface of things: a truth-seeking that finds public expression in elegant language.

Frank: (no response)

Green Mountains Review: I favor poems with embedded narratives and dramatic contexts, but I'm also drawn to apparently "subjectless" poems, if other elements of the poem attract me—fresh language, formal innovation, fierce intelligence. Having witnessed the uncharitable constraints of various "poetic schools," from Pound's imagism to the so-called language poets—I'm eclectic in my tastes. My only requirements are that the poem succeed on whatever terms it establishes, that it clearly articulates the arc of its poetic endeavor, makes me recognize and live its discoveries, performs its functions with notable style, and attempts, in the old grand phrase, to change my life.

The Massachusetts Review: Not really. My co-editors Anne Halley and Martín Espada have overlapping but sometimes different reactions to poems from mine, and among us the range of tolerances and preferences is quite large, we hope. If there's one thing we consciously look for in a poem, it's probably some sign that the poem has taken real notice of a larger world beyond the smaller one of the self.

New Letters: The magazine loves to contradict itself, so we always recommend that writers read it to discover our aesthetic. We publish wonderful narrative poems, but our aesthetic cares much more about language as a method of discovery. Our poems are long and short, but a poem must believe in conciseness and the explosive power of the well-placed word. Of all things, a poem must be working with language, even as it contains other ideas.

Open City: No.

Poetry Review: I like objective art—art with such a pervasive character that it feels like a natural species, something that had to exist.

Provincetown Arts: Art, not for art's sake, but for our sake.

Salmagundi: I like poems which do not seem to come from the land of workshops, which are not merely well-made, which make demands and risk something.

Xanadu: A little bit of Ruskin and a great deal of faith in the human spirit that can be explored and recorded only in a rich and honest language used by poets—actually, all artists.

Are you a writer? Do you think there is a distinctive editorial approach among editors who are also writers?

Abacus: I am a writer. I believe most editors select poems to further their own poetic agenda.

Chelsea: Yes, I am a poet, but no, I don't think writer-editors can claim any distinctive approach to the task of editing. Good editors are primarily good readers, and not all good readers can write. (And how many writers don't read!) Nor do I think writer-editors are more sensitive than other editors to those writers whose egos compel them to send hate mail after receiving a rejection or suffering some perceived slight. The only "distinctive approach" I can think of—and this is a condemnation—is that some writer-editors willingly set aside good editorial judgment in exchange for "you publish me and I'll publish you" entanglements.

Frank: Yes, that's why I became a publisher. Writers need to be reading other writers. Otherwise the commercial pressure to accept what sells wins out.

Green Mountains Review: I write poetry, essays, and book reviews. I have no idea whether there is uniformity of editorial approach among editors who are also writers (I suspect not). I believe that my life as a writer informs my life as an editor: specifically, I offer hand-written notes to many poets; I allow simultaneous submissions (life is short and the re-porting time at many magazines, including GMR, is exasperatingly long); I encourage revision and often ask to see more poems.

The Massachusetts Review: Yes. I don't really know.

New Letters: Yes. I doubt that it would be easy to find an editor for a literary journal who is not, to some degree, a writer.

Open City: Yes—though I write mostly criticism and literary journalism now. No, no distinctive editorial approach among editor/writers—all editors are different with different sensibilities and protocols.

Poetry Review: I am a writer but no longer write poems. I think almost all editors are writers.

Provincetown Arts: One can't be an editor without being a writer.

Salmagundi: I am a critic and a fiction writer; the two other principal editors are poets. We do not have a distinctive editorial approach, unless care and discernment are distinctive.

Xanadu: All of our editors are serious writers. I think the hard choices editors make in their own work can make them more alert to small but vital word choices, etc, especially in poetry.