Excluding: Rhyming
 

I took a look at some of the new journals posted at Duotrope's Digest, and saw a familiar refrain in one of the listings, under General Styles & Themes - Poetry Forms: 'Open to all/most Forms, including: Cinquain, Experimental poetry, Haiku (or related), Lyric poetry, Short poetry. Excluding: Long poetry, Rhyming.'

I have a dog in or near the fight whether I want to or not, and may be too sensitive about it; but sometimes 'Excluding Rhyming' seems as common in Duotrope as 'No Irish Need Apply' was in America, back in the day. Ah, well -- times change, and change again, and everyone makes their own choice both in writing and publishing. Still, I was bemused, then curious: does anyone know how common it is among journals to explicitly exclude rhyming from consideration? I'm guessing there have been studies about this because of the poetry wars of not long ago, but I haven't seen any of them.

Best,

Ed

What about: Excluding bloody fools who can't rhyme properly.

I love how their examples of "forms" are said to "include" such forms as "Experimental Poetry" and "Short poetry." And it's nice that they're "open" to short poetry, since they exclude "long poetry," and I wouldn't want to be limited to medium poetry.

I do feel solidarity with my long poetry brothers and sisters, who have it worse off than I do, I think. If I could rhyme for extended periods, I'd feel like a narwhale -- extremely rare, endangered, and possibly related to unicorns.

How many journals explicitly exclude long poems -- and how they define 'long' -- is another thing I've wondered about. Among the many axes they are grinding in academia, are there articles or studies about this?

Ed

I don't think long poems are an ax they grind, per se, but a practical reality they face in terms of having finite pages. You'd think, though, that online venues would be totally receptive to long poems.

A few years ago when I was doing a lot of submitting (i.e.: going through Poet's Market 2008 and circling venues to send to), I crossed out all the entries that said, "no rhyming poetry" and similar sentiments (some of them, by the way, were quite militant against rhyming poems), and considered everything else fair game. As a result, I got a lot of formal, rhyming poems in venues that were mostly known for free verse, but never explicitly stated that they wouldn't look at the formal stuff.

I sometimes worry that a lot of formalists don't make the effort (and it is an effort) to send work to non-formal venues. It can be pretty rewarding.

In a way, I'm glad that there are poetry venues that explicitly state that they don't want the formal stuff. It makes it a little easier to pick and choose venues.

By the way, Ed, I personally think there's a lot to be said for a perfect, concise poem, rather like many I've seen from you. There are always exceptions, but many long poems tend to ramble. I can get through "Eve of St. Agnes" or "Lines Written In A Country Churchyard" and most lengthy Auden, but for every one of those, there's a dozen that I can't muster up the stamina to plow through.

I have seen zines that said no rhyming poetry but in fact included some.
How do they define "rhyming"? Do they mean "greeting card verse"? Or the more familiar forms? How would Emily Dickinson or Wilfred Owen fare? Would they know a slant rhyme if they saw one? Or internal rhyme?

Esther

I think Philip Larkin thought of long poems as any that required you to turn the page. I think of long poems as all those too long to put into competitions - in practice anything longer than 40 lines.

My favourite long poem is The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (the Fitzgerald I mean) and my second favourite is Tam o' Shanter by Robert Burns. Or vice versa.

I think editors stick to what they know they can judge in an adequate way. If they aren't savvy about received forms, they are wise to stay away from it and do the craft a favor by not sullying formal verse's reputation.

If I were an editor (god forbid) with my own little playing field, I would say no areas where I knew I wasn't competent to judge.

And if they just plain don't like sonnets and sestinas, why should they publish them? There is always the awesome Able Muse and her sister publications. More than most of us will wear out in a lifetime.

(My usual two cents on this issue.)

I generally feel that editors should feel free to publish what they want to publish. It is easy enough to alert a would-be submitter not to submit rhyming poems, and I actually appreciate that clarity. When they say things like "no obvious rhymes," or "no greeting card verse," "or no tired rhymes," they simply aren't being clear enough about what they mean to exclude.

Once, several years ago, I saw an entry in the Poet's Market, that said, "no 'moon, June, spoon' rhyme." I thought, "Really? They are happy to have any other rhyme but that?" Of course not, so why not just be clear. "Besides," I thought, "what if I am writing a poem on a June night when the moon is up and the Big Dipper is hanging like a giant spoon?" So I wrote a poem called "Moon, June, Spoon" with an -oon monorhyme throughout.

I considered sending it to the journal in question, but that would just have been a waste of postage, and they do have a right to exclude and include whatever they want. Besides, they aren't saying one shouldn't write such rhymes, just that they won't be publishing them. My poem ended up in The Lyric, a fitting venue.

David R.