From the Editors (2006)

Page 2 Sharp-eyed readers of ABR will notice a change in this issue's masthead. For the first time since the January- February! 984 issue, Rochelle Ratner is not listed as an executive editor. After twenty-two years of indispensable leadership, Rochelle has asked for what we hope will be a brief sabbatical. In the meantime, she will continue to serve this magazine—and the literary field—as a contributing editor. In looking back over the history ofABR, it's interesting to watch Rochelle's name wend its way up the masthead. Though not yet an editor, Rochelle was a regular reviewer from the onset, contributing reviews to two ofABR's first four issues. Beginning with the fifth issue, December/January 1978, for which Rochelle also wrote a review, she is listed as assistant editor, a position she held for two years In 1980, she was elevated first to editor, and then to managing editor. With the January/February 1984 issue, Rochelle assumed, along with John Tytell, her current duties as executive editor, which she's continued to perform with distinction until her recent decision to step aside for a while. Rochelle's first ABR review appeared in our inaugural issue, December 1977. A spirited defense of chapbooks, her review already displayed the persuasive iconoclasm that was to become Rochelle's hallmark. "If it's going to have any real purpose in being read," Rochelle contends, the chapbook is going to be complete in itself, something in which the poet and the poems make a definite statement. If anything, I would venture to say that it's harder to make a chapbook succeed, since it must be condensed into a smaller area than usual. Twenty-eight years later, in a focus on chapbooks in our March/April 2005 issue, Rochelle reprised her earlier view. Despite her awareness of the recent proliferation of "chapbook contests," whose entry fees "subsidize the publication of other books" and which often result in "cheap" publications , Rochelle resists an easy cynicism. Citing Ginsberg's Howl and other volumes in City Lights' pocket poet series as evidence, Rochelle insists that readers should "pay attention to chapbooks," which "continue to produce some of the most fascinating poetry out there." Such affable, informed pugnacity, which has delighted our readers for almost three decades, remains evident in Rochelle's introduction to this issue's focus, which she also edited. Turning her attention to prizewinning poetry books, Rochelle acknowledges that the sheer profusion of poetry contests, their onerous "reading fees," and the recent exposé of apparent cronyism among some contest judges have made the books themselves suspect. Despite this, Rochelle urges us to suspend our judgment of prizewinning books until after we have actually read them. Because she is a writer herself, Rochelle understands the pressures and frustrations of trying to be a serious writer in a frivolous culture. Maybe that's why she always sides with writers, while constantly holding them accountable to the highest standards of their craft. More than most, she has preserved ABR's original ambition to be ajournai produced and edited by writers for writers. In its early years, ABR was sent free to all writers listed in the Poets and Writers Directory. This experiment in controlled circulation gave the publication impact and expanded writers' awareness of their national literary community. When the list became too large and too expensive, ABR was forced to discontinue the practice, encouraging P&W members to convert to paid subscriptions instead. Writers still constitute the single largest group of ABR subscribers, followed by academics, then librarians. We will miss Rochelle's steady guidance and her fruitful collaboration with reviewers and editors . Yet we are happy to note that, in her new capacity as contributing editor, Rochelle will continue to write her own reviews for these pages. We feel confident that we speak for our readers as well as all of our editors in encouraging Rochelle to enjoy her well-earned respite—and to hurry back. Like Rochelle, ABR's other executive editors are prolific writers. In February, Ivan R. Dee reprinted John Tytell's classic study of the beat generation, Naked Angels. First published in 1976, John's book, which has...