The American poetry magazine scene

Most UK poets don't realise how many more US magazines there are than in the UK. First, in the US most English departments have their own literary magazine, a practice that's rare in the UK. Second, the proliferation of creative writing programs has been accompanied by a proliferation of magazines and small presses founded by their graduates. Third, partly because of the greater influence of experimental and ethnic poetics on the mainstream, the range of poetries--the range simply within what's considered mainstream--is much, much broader. Consequently there's no "one" magazine that's It; there are a lot of Its, depending on your taste. In the UK I find that people feel they've made it once they've appeared in TLS, Poetry Review, or The Rialto (in descending order). Here's a starting list for comparably admired and desired magazines in the US, starting with the most esteemed:

Agni
American Poetry Review
The Atlantic Monthly
Boston Review
The Chicago Review
Fence
The Iowa Review
The Georgia Review
Hudson Review
New American Writing
The New Republic
The New Yorker
The Paris Review
Ploughshares
Poetry
The Southern Review
The Virginia Quarterly Review

These magazines publish comparably high quality poetry, are considered excellent places to publish, and are held in high esteem (still comparable in the quality of the work they publish to TLS and Poetry Review):

American Letters and Commentary
The Antioch Review
Barrow Street
Bombay Gin
Boulevard
Callaloo (black writers only)
Colorado Review
Conjunctions
Denver Quarterly
Drunken Boat (online only)
Epoch
Fulcrum
The Gettysburg Review
Gulf Coast
Field
Five Fingers Review
Five Points
Harvard Review
Hotel Amerika
Indiana Review
Jubilat
The Kenyon Review
Manoa
Michigan Quarterly Review
The New England Review
Ninth Letter
Parnassus
Pleiades
Pool
Prairie Schooner
A Public Space
Salmagundi
Seneca Review
Sewanee Review
Shenandoah
Southwest Review
Tarpaulin Sky
The Threepenny Review
TriQuarterly
Verse
Western Humanities Review
Witness
The Yale Review
Zyzzyva (open only to US West Coast writers)

Also impressive, but less widely esteemed and/or of not quite the quality of the above:

Alaska Quarterly Review
Arts & Letters
Blackbird (online only)
Black Warrior Review
The Bloomsbury Review
Columbia
Court Green
Crazyhorse
Free Verse (online only)
Green Mountains Review
HOW2 (online and women only)
LIT
The Massachusetts Review
Meridian
Missouri Review
New Orleans Review
Northwest Review
Notre Dame Review
Quarterly West
Parthenon West Review
Salamander
Slope (online only)
Sonora Review
Third Coast
Willow Springs


There are many more well produced, quality literary magazines besides: Calyx, Chattahoochee Review, Cimarron Review, Crab Orchard Review, Faultline, The Greensboro Review, Hanging Loose, Hayden's Ferry Review, The Literary Review, Many Mountains Moving, Mississippi Review, New Letters, The Seattle Review, Tampa Review, West Branch--and more.

These categories are blurred, to be sure; many of them seem to me to be on the fence between two. I'd be glad to hear from other American poets about their views on the most esteemed and highest quality journals; I haven't seen Canary, for one, so I'm unsure where to put it. I'll probably post a longer, revised list once I've been to the AWP.