[Bill Julian]

I subscribe to a few select magazines, but it comes to my attention that, apparently, some magazines either sell their lists of subscribers to other magazines, or something else happens (a rogue employee sells the lists) and so I get solicitations in the mail for other literary entities of which I have never heard.

Does this happen to any of you?

Today I received a mailing from “Crazyhorse.” This mailing is as slick as any of the other numerous garbage direct mailings received everyday from everywhere else. I am surprised this mailing does not have an actual application for a VISA or MASTERCARD along with it.

Subscribe and enter my credit card, upload manuscript at http://crazyhorse.cofc.edu and enter by Dec. 15, 2007, $2,000 EACH Publication in Crazyhorse, etc, etc, with all the available options for payments taking up at least 10% of the tri-page fold-out mailing.
On the cover is Cover Art by “Hiroe Sacki”—flowers and a butterfly. [How neutral.]
And a quote:
“I’ll never understand the sublime / the possibility that it’s all someone’s / lying-face-down-in-the-dream …” – Dean Young

What the hill does that mean? Lying face-down in the dream? What dream? Look, guy, go lie down in the dream, and you will surely know! Bleh.

So do others here get these weird solicitations? I know all about the obvious frauds such as send in your poem and we accept it and now buy the publications scam ….

Do literary pubs sell their lists?

Just how slick can genuine pubs go?

I have no idea what I am talking about, but you get the idea. SUPER-SLICK MAILINGS?

[MEHope]

Do literary pubs sell their lists?

Yes.

[Marybeth Rua-Larsen]

Bill...you are shocked? feeling abused by your mail? poetry enticements for subscriptions and contests should be dowdy? too many trees have been murdered in the name of poetry? you are a junk-mail virgin? I received the same ad today. Crazyhorse is a pretty good lit mag, the times I've seen it. I didn't take personal offense. My kids cut out the cool graphics and made pictures to hang on the fridge. Sorry to yank your chain, Bill...but I've had a very long day and couldn't help myself. I owe you an extra-thoughtful crit. on your next posted poem.

[Gail White]

I got one of those crazyhorse mailings too, but rather bizarrely it was addressed to someone else...Katherine something...at my address. I also get occasional offers to subscribe to the Tin Drum. Also occasional mailings from poetry presses. I would just as soon get this mail as the endless supply of catalogs that clutter the mailbox at this time of year. Happy Holidays, or Bah Humbug.

[Bill Julian]

Gail,

I am with you, I don't really mind getting these mailings for poetry.

What I do mind is what I consider bad taste, the monitization of poetry in the mailings; there is more about money on the mailing than there is about poetry. In other words, the mailing is a kind of direct mail sevice--the net is cast as wide as possible--in order to get as many orders as possible, as many subscriptions, or as many $25.00 as possible.

I would much rather hear about the editors, the kind of vision the magazine has, the kind of quality of poetry they in which they have interest.

I don't know anything about crazyhorse, but where is the end of solicitation? Not everything need be dowdy, but are we to expect the symphony to stop five times a concert to announce new opportunities to by discount classical CD's?

All this is in absolute antithesis to the old statements by the editors (taken with a grain of salt) of The Paris Review, when they said that all this commercialization is junk, and when did (they continued) the real poetry stop being a sort of secret and sacred agreement and understanding among true believers of the "art" [not of the "craft" as the ignorant pronounce] and "stuff" stuck on NYC subway cars? (Along with the advertising for rental cars.)

I am not objecting to crazyhorse, they may well be great people, but the mistakes in the direct mail junk mail hype is, I find, offensive.

I can't tell the difference between this offer and Bose stereo offers. (and yes, I do have the Bose $300.00 headphones, but I researched the product for a year.)

The mailing promotes itself but only fluffs poetry, and that, once the money equation is removed, leaves phony thinking.

Marybeth, you go ahead and yank my chain. I don't mind. The enticements should at least be specific as the poetry world is so factured to the point of chaos.

If you go out to a movie, don't you really want to know if the movie is full of car chases and shooting? You can bet those editors have prejudices--but they are not going to say what they are bacause they want as many $25.00 checks as they can get.

Bill

[Carol Taylor]

I get one addressed to Jo Mella at my address. Wonder if John gets mine?