I rarely submit anything for publication, and of those rare submissions, hardly anything gets accepted. Bottom line--I can't count on contributor copies to keep me in touch with contemporary poetry.
I currently subscribe to eight print journals, all of them form-friendly. Some of these also publish the sort of free verse that tends to appeal to me (i.e., the kind that does what the formal verse I like also does--convey an experience, rather than communicate how very, very clever and cool the author is).
I also read, on a regular basis, a handful of online journals that are form-friendly.
I've disliked many poetry venues over the years. Some of these I have found disappointing because they tend to publish a lot of substandard, lackluster, predictable poems (often by the same handful of names...hmmm, friendship? backscratching?). Very occasionally, I'll bail on a venue because I find the prevailing climate there a bit too annoyingly self-righteous, either liberally or conservatively.
I buy books by authors whose work I have already encountered and enjoyed several times, either in a workshop or in a journal, OR whose books are highly recommended by others I trust.
It never ceases to amaze me how many supposedly well-known poets I've never heard of, until I encounter them in an interview in Able Muse Review or Rattle or someplace. Poetry's not a huge universe, yet we all seem confined to certain orbits. Someone who's a big noise in one set of venues or conferences may be a complete unknown in another.
Sadly, a big, national venue like Poetry--which actually has a stated mission to try to give readers an idea of what's going on across the breadth of "contemporary American poetry"--in practice only manages to represent a few types of work, which tend to be fairly close to each other. Lots of other exciting stuff may be going on, unreported, but if it's too far from its usual beat, Poetry doesn't seem to think it matters.
I try re-subscribing to Poetry every few years--i.e., with about the same frequency, and with exactly the same sense of "I really should stop avoiding this because it will be good for me" attitude, as I enroll in exercise classes. And every time, I hate it with a ferocity that scares me, and I remember why I've quit so many times. Poetry, like the exercise classes I've tried, seems designed to appeal to someone who is, as Rose's essay said, [not me]. I wish [not me] well, and will leave [not me] to do [not me]'s thing, without my financial support or allocation of limited bookshelf space.
|