THIS ISSUE of Jacket is a co-production with Verse magazine, and is published in print form as Verse, Volume 19, Number 3 (2002).
      Founded in 1984 in Oxford, England, Verse was edited until 1994 by Robert Crawford, David Kinloch, and Henry Hart from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and the College of William and Mary in Virginia. The founding editors’ final issue, Talking Verse, a collection of interviews that originally appeared in the magazine, was published in 1994, and Verse was temporarily defunct until resurrected in 1995 by Brian Henry with the help of Nancy Schoenberger and Andrew Zawacki. Since 1998, Henry and Zawacki have co-edited the magazine, with various poets around the world acting as UK editors, contributing editors, assistant editors, and managing editors.
      Brian Henry is the author of three books — Astronaut (Arc, 2000/Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2002), Graft (Arc, 2002/New Issues, 2003), and American Incident (Salt, 2002). He reviews poetry for the New York Times Book Review, Boston Review, The Kenyon Review, and other publications, and he was in Australia in 1997-98 on a Fulbright Scholarship and was poetry editor of Meanjin that year. He lives in Athens, Georgia, and teaches in the English Department at the University of Georgia, where he also is Director of the Creative Writing Program.
      Andrew Zawacki is the author of By Reason of Breakings (University of Georgia Press, 2002) and the chapbook Masquerade (Vagabond Press, 2001), which won the Alice Fay diCastagnola Prize from the Poetry Society of America. His criticism appears regularly in Boston Review, the Times Literary Supplement, and other publications. A former Rhodes Scholar, he is a doctoral student in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, and he recently returned from a year in Australia on a Fulbright Scholarship.
      Verse focuses on contemporary English-language poetry and poetry in translation, and each issue includes interviews with poets and a range of poetry criticism — book reviews, essay/reviews, and essays. Although it publishes an array of work and ascribes to no single style, the magazine has become known for promoting the work of younger American poets working within or against the lyric tradition.
      Recent contributors to Verse have included John Ashbery, Charles Bernstein, Lee Ann Brown, Ales Debeljak, Mark Ford, Lisa Jarnot, John Kinsella, Kenneth Koch, Timothy Liu, Javier Marías, Medbh McGuckian, Heather McHugh, Marjorie Perloff, Tessa Rumsey, Tomaz Salamun, Reginald Shepherd, Charles Simic, Gustaf Sobin, James Tate, John Tranter, Joe Wenderoth, Dara Wier, and Charles Wright, among others.
      Special issues of Verse include a feature on Australian poetry, a women Irish poets issue, a triple issue with features on Mexican poetry and Indian poetry, a prose issue, and a younger American poets feature. Future issues will include a sequel to the prose issue, a contemporary Russian poetry feature, and an interview issue. Poems from Verse have appeared in the 1997, 1999, 2001, and 2002 editions of the Best American Poetry and have been awarded the Pushcart Prize.
      Verse is indexed in the American Humanities Index and is distributed in the U.S. by DeBoer’s. Subscriptions for individuals cost $18/year. Please inquire by email to verse@versemag.org for the cost of non-U.S. or institutional subscriptions.