The new Chicago Review—click here to buy the issue—includes a suite of arti­cles that dis­cuss gender rep­re­sen­ta­tion in poetry pub­lish­ing. The arti­cles include “Numbers Trouble” by Juliana Spahr and Stephanie Young and a response by Jen­nifer Ashton, as well as a short note on gender rep­re­sen­ta­tion in lit­er­ary mag­a­zines that I wrote with Joshua Kotin. (UPDATE: The arti­cles are now avail­able as PDFs at the CR web­site.) “Numbers Trouble” is a response to an ear­lier arti­cle by Ashton pub­lished in Amer­i­can Lit­er­ary His­tory and enti­tled “Our Bodies, Our Poems.” Ashton’s arti­cle was itself a response, at least in part, to Spahr and Young’s “Foulipo,” which was per­formed at the 2005 noulipo con­fer­ence in Los Angeles.

The Poetry Foundation’s Har­riet blog pub­lished a spate of posts yes­ter­day dis­cussing the arti­cles. Har­riet editor Emily Warn intro­duces the posts and offers her own take on the ques­tions raised. Har­riet blog­gers Ange Mlinko and A.E. Stallings also com­ment. (Update, 12/3/07: Stephen Burt has con­tributed a response at Har­riet as well. Update, 12/5/07: Click here for Burt’s second response.)

Update [2/29/08]: “Bachelorettes, Even,” a ver­sion of Jen­nifer Scappettone’s response to Jen­nifer Ashton’s “Our Bodies, Our Poems” (both of which were first pre­sented as talks at 2006’s “How To Read. What To Do” con­fer­ence at the Uni­ver­sity of Chicago) has now appeared in Modern Philol­ogy 105. Scappettone’s response was the first to make the con­nec­tion between Ashton’s argu­ment and Spahr and Young’s “Foulipo.” The arti­cle is also notable for immor­tal­iz­ing this blog in a foot­note in an aca­d­e­mic journal.

The Spahr/Young and Ashton arti­cles have been dis­cussed on sev­eral other blogs as well. I’ll try to keep an updated list of sub­stan­tive com­ments here. The list so far:

+ Stephanie Young at The Well-​Nourished Moon
+ Simon DeDeo at rhubarb is susan
+ K. Lor­raine Graham at Spooks by Me
+ Dale Smith at Possum Ego
+ Elisa Gab­bert at the Ploughshares blog
+ Shanna Comp­ton at shannacompton.com
+ Jean­nine Hall Gailey at webbish6.com
+ Tony Tost at Unquiet Grave.
+ Esther Belin at Deli­cious Hem
+ Susan Bri­ante at Deliri­ous Hem
+ David Buuck at Deli­cious Hem
+ CACon­rad at Deliri­ous Hem
+ Michelle Deto­rie at Deliri­ous Hem
+ Tonya Foster & Evie Shock­ley [to come]
+ Rachel Lev­it­sky at Deliri­ous Hem
+ Joyelle McSweeney at Deliri­ous Hem
+ Sina Queyras at Deliri­ous Hem
+ Linda Russo at Deli­cious Hem
+ Sandra Simonds at Deliri­ous Hem
+ Carmen Giménez Smith at Deli­cious Hem
+ Eliz­a­beth Tread­well at Deliri­ous Hem
+ Cather­ine Wagner at Deliri­ous Hem
+ “V” at Seri­ously? Seriously.

UPDATE [5/15/08]: Erika Staiti at saidwhatwesaid.com has put together a for­bid­dingly impres­sive record–236 pages at last count–of all of the online con­ver­sa­tions that have taken place in the wake of the “Numbers Trouble” debate. Follow this link for the whole mas­sive PDF, or click here for Staiti’s Editor’s State­ment and Appendices.