Anne Boyer drew widespread mockery on social media following her announcement that she was resigning as poetry editor of The New York Times Magazine.
“If this resignation leaves a hole in the news the size of poetry, then that is the true shape of the present,” Boyer, a Pulitzer Prize winner, wrote on Substack.
In her resignation post, Boyer wrote that the “Israeli state’s U.S-backed war against the people of Gaza is not a war for anyone.”
“There is no safety in it or from it, not for Israel, not for the United States or Europe, and especially not for the many Jewish people slandered by those who claim falsely to fight in their names,” she claimed. “Its only profit is the deadly profit of oil interests and weapon manufacturers.”
“It is an ongoing war against the people of Palestine, people who have resisted through decades of occupation, forced dislocation, deprivation, surveillance, siege, imprisonment and torture,” she added. “I can’t write about poetry amidst the ‘reasonable’ tones of those who aim to acclimatize us to this unreasonable suffering. No more ghoulish euphemisms. No more verbally sanitized hellscapes. No more warmongering lies.”
Many of the poems that appear in the magazine on the newspaper’s website state “selected by Anne Boyer.” It wasn’t clear from the site if she edited the poems at all or if her role involved selecting poetry submissions.
“The stunning level of hubris in Anne Boyer’s letter of resignation is a thing of beauty and only made more beautiful by the fact that no one knows who she is or cares what she does with her life or career,” wrote Adele Scalia, a stay-at-home mom and prominent voice on social media who is married to the late Supreme Court justice’s son.
“A hole the size of poetry could not accommodate Anne Boyer’s ego, but it will serve to convey her oozing pomposity,” added John-Paul Pagano, a writer for Jewish and other news publications.
