The Mad Poets Blog

I write free verse all the time. When I try to write metrical poetry, I get a headache and an intense craving for a glass of wine. What I don’t get is a successful sonnet, or villanelle, or whatever. But that’s ok, I’m comfortable with my limitations. Having a best friend who is a formalist, though, means I am kept abreast of excitement in the formalist poetry world. Some of the happenings over the past week caught my attention, and I thought I’d toss them out here for public consumption:
Leo Yankevich is currently the editor of The New Formalist, a journal I had always considered to be a well-respected Formalist print journal. They’ve published names I know well, like Nigel Holt, Paul Stevens, TS Kerrigan and Jared Carter, as well as names I only know through quick association. While I freely admit to never having read The New Formalist, I am familiar with the work of the above mentioned poets through various other venues such as the Shit Creek Review, the Barefoot Muse, and a few others. I’ve enjoyed the work of these poets, and I imagine that Yankevich chose to publish their poems in The New Formalist based on artistic merit – as it should be.

It happens, however, that Mr. Yankevich is also a poet and editor with rather unpopular political views. On what is widely reported to be Mr. Yankevich’s own blog, articles regularly appear which seem to be in full alignment with Aryan and Nationalist points of view. Sometimes said articles are drawn directly from Aryan or Nationalist websites or publications. It doesn’t seem that Mr. Yankevich makes a whole lot of effort to keep this a secret, though I did note that nowhere on his blog does he proclaim ownership. Rather, he refers to himself in third person – as if the blog were kept by publicists, perhaps.

All of this came up in conversation over several threads at Eratosphere, with reports of some former and current contributors to TNF requesting that their work be removed from the site. There was also some general discussion about whether Eratosphere should endorse a boycott of the journal, and whether individuals writers should continue to consider TNF when submitting poems for publication. There was also some backlash against other editors who have published the work of Mr. Yankevich – fellow contributors to those journals have demanded the editors remove Yankevich’s work because they don’t want to be published alongside him.

So what say you, Mad Poets and Friends? Should an editor’s politics (however distasteful or controversial they may be) be taken into consideration when submitting to his or her journal? What if you don’t know about them but find out later? Do you feel it’s your right to demand another writer be removed from a publication because you disagree with his or her world views? Let’s hear it!

(general disclaimer: I am in no way supportive of any discriminatory viewpoint, regardless of what side of the fence one may be on. I’m a full supporter of the right to free speech, and I oppose censorship as completely as I can. I’m simply posting the bare details of this situation for stimulation of discussion, not to cause trouble or offend anyone. My sincere apologies if I have done so.)