Mr Parisi admits that when he first heard of the bequest and the

Mr Parisi admits that when he first heard of the bequest and the numbers involved, he went into shock “I was speechless,” he recalls. “It’s very difficult to get your head round numbers that are so big.” It didn’t help that the bequest comes in a very complicated package ensuring that it will be paid in instalments from different sources over a period of 30 years. He joined names such as Sylvia Plath, Ezra Pound, D H Lawrence, Ted Hughes, Robert Graves, Dylan Thomas, e e cummings and countless other legends of verse whose words have graced the magazine.Campbell McGrath, the American poet and recipient of the MacArthur and Guggenheim poetry prizes, also applauds the choice “It’s wonderful Most poets live from paycheck to paycheck. But the paycheck is from another job; it’s not from writing poetry. I hope that, as much as possible, Poetry will find a way to call up individual poets and say, ‘You’re not going to believe this, but we’re going to give you money’.”But with so much money comes a mighty responsibility for a magazine that until now has consisted of just four warm – if admirably cerebral – bodies and a microwave.

Seamus Heaney, the Irish poet and winner of the Nobel prize for literature, has compared appearing on its pages to “being admitted to some surer order of the art”. “Her goal has been to try and build up the amount of public support and public notice of poetry,” says Mr Ewbank.The consensus of poets, at least, is that she chose her beneficiary wisely. Above all, we assume, she has given so generously to Poetry magazine, because she loves it and loves poems. We also know that she asks her nurses to read longer poems to her still today – in her frailty, she cannot manage to read more than a few lines herself. Nor, probably, will Mr Parisi – he has never spoken directly to Ms Lilly and never really expects to. As another of the Poetry staff members noted, there is an almost “Dickensian element” to the whole affair – a mysterious, very wealthy, benefactor bestowing her largesse on the magazine from afar, allowing her lawyer to represent her in all respects.This lawyer, Mr Ewbank, who, with buttoned-down discretion, has represented her and her family for many years, does confirm that she “did not take personally” those letters of rejection so many years ago. Maybe it was those handwritten notes that did it, or maybe not We will never really know.

Yet, Mr Parisi always made a habit of writing a small note to the author of any poem he received – even it was just a short sentence scribbled on the bottom of a standard rejection form – to offer them thanks, give them encouragement and, hopefully, temper their disappointment.The moral of this tale, therefore, may be that small acts of courtesy, performed when they are not strictly necessary, will bring their reward, perhaps even in this life. He didn’t much care for her verses and he sent them back to her. She would send her poems though the post, signed Mrs Guernsey Van Riper Jr, which was her married name at that time Mr Parisi distinctly remembers receiving some of her work. His financial background may even have impeded him, Mr Parisi argues, but he was able to overcome that. The best example would be James Merrill – Merrill as in Merrill Lynch, the brokerage – who started writing poems in the Forties. It can happen, of course, that a very rich person can also be a very fine poet.