Title: CHEATING THE ODDS?
Product review: From Poets & Writers..."Don Judson (Letters, January/February 2002) is disturbed by the teacher/student relationship in the Paris Review Prize contest ("How Priscilla Becker Beat the Odds" by Joanna Smith Rakoff, November/December 2001). He wonders whether or not Richard Howard may have recognized Priscilla Becker's poetry. If not, Howard has a short memory. A year before the contest deadline, he published three of Priscilla Becker's poems in the Paris Review. A few months later Howard published more of her work in the Western Humanities Review. Then, just a few months before the contest deadline, he published Becker a third time (again in the Paris Review). Prior to the Paris Review Prize contest, Richard Howard was, in fact, the only editor to have published Priscilla Becker's poetry.
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