Poetry – A Year After The $100 Million

It’s been a year since Poetry magazine was told it had received $100 million in a bequest. “Staffers have a lot of general ideas on how to use the grant, including reaching out to the business community, but nothing specific has been decided. The foundation expects soon to hire a president who can organize and implement what board president Deborah Cummins calls a strategic plan. “We can’t do anything until we have a strategic plan,” she says. “We’ve never been in this position before — the ones giving out the money. We’ve always been on the other side of the desk, writing grant applications.”