Parnassus: Poetry in Review is an American literary magazine founded in 1973.

The magazine states on its website that its aim has been "to provide a forum where poets, novelists, and critics of all persuasions could gather to review new books of poetry, including translations [. . .] with an amplitude and reflectiveness that Sunday book supplements and even the literary quarterlies could not afford. Reviews and essays, to be effective, would have to shun academic thinking and prose, and above all, embrace the diverse voices of democratic pluralism. Our literary profile has been defined by a passion for disinterested, wide-ranging, incisive commentary — and lilting prose; a poet’s reputation has never guaranteed a favorable or negative review. We never impose a point of view on any of our writers."

Parnassus was founded by Herbert Leibowitz as editor and Stanley Lewis, the original publisher, in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. In 1976, Leibowitz set up the nonprofit Poetry in Review Foundation to sustain publication of the magazine, and he became publisher as well as editor.

Contributors of essays to the magazine include David Barber

David Barber

David Barber is a British television actor, known for his numerous roles in ChuckleVision.- Filmography :*ChuckleVision*Steel River Blues*Merseybeat*The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc *Harry Enfield and Chums...

, Sven Birkerts

Sven Birkerts

Sven Birkerts is an American essayist and literary critic of Latvian ancestry. He is best known for his book The Gutenberg Elegies, which posits a decline in reading due to the overwhelming advances of the Internet and other technologies of the "electronic culture."Birkerts was born in Pontiac,...

, Hayden Carruth

Hayden Carruth

Hayden Carruth was an American poet and literary critic. He taught at Syracuse University.-Life:Hayden Carruth grew up in Woodbury, Connecticut, and was educated at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at the University of Chicago. He lived in Johnson, Vermont for many years...

, Guy Davenport

Guy Davenport

Guy Mattison Davenport was an American writer, translator, illustrator, painter, intellectual, and teacher.-Life:...

, Mary Karr

Mary Karr

Mary Karr is an American poet, essayist and memoirist. She rose to fame in 1995 with the publication of her bestselling memoir The Liars' Club...

, Wayne Koestenbaum

Wayne Koestenbaum

Wayne Koestenbaum is an American poet and cultural critic. He received a B.A. from Harvard University, an M.A. from Johns Hopkins University, and a Ph.D. from Princeton University...

, Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer. He lives in Dublin. Heaney has received the Nobel Prize in Literature , the Golden Wreath of Poetry , T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread prizes...

, Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Cecile Rich is an American poet, essayist and feminist. She has been called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century."-Early life:...

, Helen Vendler

Helen Vendler

Helen Hennessy Vendler is a leading American critic of poetry.-Life and career:Vendler has written books on Emily Dickinson, W. B. Yeats, Wallace Stevens, John Keats, and Seamus Heaney. She has been a professor of English at Harvard University since 1984; between 1981 and 1984 she taught...

, Eric Ormsby

Eric Ormsby

Eric Linn Ormsby, born in Atlanta in 1941, is a poet, a scholar, and a man of letters. He was a longtime resident of Montreal, where he was the Director of University Libraries and subsequently a professor of Islamic thought at the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University...

, and Marjorie Perloff

Marjorie Perloff

Marjorie Perloff is an Austrian-born U.S. poetry critic.Perloff was born Gabriele Mintz into a secularized Jewish family in Vienna. Faced with Nazi terror, her family emigrated in 1938 when she was six-and-a-half, going first to Zürich and then to the United States, settling in Riverdale, New York...

.

The magazine has published special theme issues on subjects including women and poetry, the long poem, words and music, autobiography, multiculturalism, and poetry and movies. In 2001 the journal's 624-page 25th anniversary issue contained a survey of international poetries.

Parnassus prints original art in every issue and has commissioned portraits of poets from well-known artists such as Philip Pearlstein

Philip Pearlstein

Philip Pearlstein is an American painter, and part of the contemporary Realist school.-Biography:Pearlstein was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He studied at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and received his Masters in art history at New York University. He was a friend of Andy Warhol from...

, Alice Neel

Alice Neel

Alice Neel was an American artist known for her oil on canvas portraits of friends, family, lovers, poets, artists and strangers...

, Red Grooms

Red Grooms

Red Grooms is an American multimedia artist best known for his colorful pop-art constructions depicting frenetic scenes of modern urban life...

, Romare Bearden

Romare Bearden

Romare Bearden was an African American artist and writer. He worked in several media including cartoons, oils, and collage.-Education:...

, as well as from young artists.

In 2007 the journal announced that it had lost its private funding, and that Volume 30 would be its last. In a piece in the Wall Street Journal (July, 2007), Willard Spiegelman compared the fates of Parnassus and Poetry

Poetry (magazine)

Poetry , published in Chicago, Illinois since 1912, is one of the leading monthly poetry journals in the English-speaking world. Published by the Poetry Foundation and currently edited by Christian Wiman, the magazine has a circulation of 30,000 and prints 300 poems per year out of approximately...

magazine, which had been heavily endowed by a bequest from Ruth Lilly

Ruth Lilly

Ruth Lilly was an American philanthropist. She was the daughter of Josiah K. Lilly, Jr., and Ruth Lilly, and the sole living heiress to the Eli Lilly and Company pharmaceutical fortune built by her great grandfather, Colonel Eli Lilly.Lilly made headlines in November 2002 when she pledged stock...

. Because of this essay, another donor came to the rescue, anonymously, and gave Leibowitz enough money to keep the journal afloat for two more big issues, through Volume 32 (2010).