And this is how a poem by Kirk Nesset made it into the pages of Poetry. Nesset, a 63-year-old former Allegheny College English professor, pleaded guilty in 2015 to possession, receipt, and distribution of child pornography; he was sentenced to 76 months in federal prison and released this fall. He is now on the sex offender registry in Arizona.
From the moment the issue came out, sexual violence survivors, victims’ advocates, and assorted feminists began raining angry tweets, blogs, and public statements on Poetry and its publisher, the Poetry Foundation. A Change.org petition demanding that the magazine remove the poem and apologize to “Nesset’s voiceless victims, their readers and subscribers, and victims of sexual violence everywhere” gained over 1,600 signatures in a week. By then the story had spread as far as New Delhi.