Facts & Figures: Poet Lore

Rilke, Mallarmé, and Verlaine.
Images in Public Domain.

​Washington may be a prosaic town, but it's also home to the "the nation's oldest poetry journal," as it calls itself. One hundred thirty years: that's how long Poet Lore has been in business. The biannual, which has published (among others) Rilke, Mallarmé, and Verlaine, is published by the Writer's Center of Bethesda, which some years ago bought it from Heldref, a now-defunct educational foundation formerly based in Washington. Heldref had itself bought it in 1976—coincidentally, the year the Writer's Center was established—from its Boston owners. (The journal was founded by a pair of Shakespeare scholars in Philadelphia in 1889, but they soon moved themselves and it to Boston, where it lived until 1976.) 
 
NB. Speaking of moving, Yours Truly, prosaic sole proprietor, editor, and contributor, apologizes for the last few weeks' hiatus: I had to move, only across town but somewhat unexpectedly, and it up all my time.