In a story from last September, Alice Quinn, who had just stepped down as editor of The New Yorker, mentions that the magazine “regularly received more than 600 poems a week.”

First thought: If they can’t crack 1,000, Lyn Lifshin must not submit there. I kid, I kid.

Second thought: 20 submissions/day x 4.5 poems/submission x 7 days/week = 630 poems…we read more poems every week than The New Yorker!? No way. If I had to guess, I’d have said they’re missing a zero in that quote. I’d assume ten times the volume — which would match their circulation and prestige. They only allow three poems per submission, so their 90 poems a day is coming from 1/3 more people, but that doesn’t explain a factor of ten.

Try as I might, I can’t rationalize that number. Is there a glass ceiling of poets out there? The law of diminishing returns? There’s a finite number of poets actively submitting at one time, but I’ve never seen an estimate on what that number might be.

In his legendary essay, Can Poetry Matter?, Dana Gioia estimates that MFA programs are turning out a stunning 2,000 certified poets each year. That essay was written 17 years ago. If you fit his estimate onto a crude curve dating back to the handful of writing programs in the 1940s, you can see there are easily 60,000-100,000 MFA graduates. Most of them are probably no longer writing and submitting work, having moved on to whatever field poets move on to. But most poets don’t have MFAs.

If I had to guess, I’d say you could fit every active poet in the U.S. into The Big House–but there wouldn’t be a lot of empty seats.

(To cross-check this figure against something, we know that about 4,000 poets attend the AWP every year. One in 25 poets showing up sounds about right.)

So maybe with 100,000 active poets, 600 poems per week is all the production you can expect? Either that, or we’re almost as popular as The New Yorker. On second thought, let’s just say it’s that.

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Anyway, we’re interviewing Alice Quinn next week for an upcoming issue. Not only was she poetry editor of The New Yorker for 20 years, she’s also president of the Poetry Society of America, and probably the primary biographer of Elizabeth Bishop.

Is there anything you’d like us to ask her?