Poetry Magazine of Chicago, in its write-up in "Poet's Market", states that it "consistently publishes the best poems being written in English." That is a staggering claim. I would like to poll the Eratospherians on the following questions:
How many of us subscribe to Poetry or read it
regularly?
How many think the poems are really that great?

Full disclosure: I am a current subscriber undecided about renewing, have loved the prose articles, but think there is better poetry in the average issue of the Atlanta Review.
What do you-all think?

I subscribe. I think Poetry has mostly very good poems. It has taken a swing toward formalism of late. You see sonnets and rhyming/metrical poetry in it. I think Poetry is a good thing to read to sort of get the pulse of where poetry is the USA.

I've decided to let my subscription lapse because I have a pile of unread back issues. I've found the selection disappointing on the whole and have never submitted to the magazine.

I feel so much better knowing somebody else thinks the same!

Carol

I subscribe to it and I read it. Well, maybe I should say that I crack each issue open. Lots of the poems don't strike my fancy, but that's always the case, even in (sometimes especially in) formal-only mags.

I think David has a point about Poetry's being a good way to take the national pulse. A lot of stuff in the mag comes from schools/movements/poets who really just don't have a chance with me, as I probably don't have a chance with them. But every once in a while there's something in there that's (A) delightful and (B) never, ever, EVER going to be in Measure.

--CS

P.S. I also subscribe to Measure, and I think it's the bee's knees!

I subscribe and read most issues. Only two or three poems per issue move me, but the prose is often interesting, moreso than the poems. The latest issue, PEOTRY, the humor issue, isn't, except for the cover, any more humorous than last year's, which made me retch. Someone over there should read Folly.

------------------
Ralph

I'd go a step further than Clay and say that I generally like Poetry more than many formalist mags, if only for the prose. (It's nice to be able to read William Logan's reviews without all the right-wing New Criterion crapola surrounding them, for example.) But the poetry itself is often interesting, sometimes really goddamn good.

Quincy

Actually, Gail was comparing it to Atlanta Review, which is not a formalist magazine. I subscribe to both, and now that you mention it, Gail, I think I do usually find more to get excited about in AR than in Poetry (prose aside). In both (and pretty much all) cases, most of the poems seem okay but not memorable, there are a handful I dislike, and a handful that stir me in some way. So we're talking about a few versus a slightly bigger few.

Poetry vs. Atlanta Review is an interesting comparison. Reading Parisi's Poetry always seemed (to me) a very 'safe' affair -- the poetry was very polished, and I couldn't find much to complain about, but sometimes I wished for poems that were more risky, and maybe less stately (or sedated). The quality was there, but there were few surprises, and I would end up sort of flatlining.

Wiman's version seems (again, to me) to be more of a mixed bag, with some fresh names now and then, and a greater range not merely of styles, per se, but of depths, or scopes. He seems more of an aesthete to me, probably because of the number of formally accomplished but depth-challenged pieces I've found in there. Yet still, it's nice to be surprised now and again. And yes, I subscribe.

I thought at least Goldbarth's PEOTRY offering was a hoot.

Atlanta Review, on the other hand, has always seemed a mixed bag -- international issues, theme issues, contest winners, and lots of new/newer names. I subscribed for a couple of years, and could always find at least a few poems I truly admired. I could also find, always, one or two very coarse, unsubtle poems wherein the sound devices were employed like jackhammers, with alliteration, internal rhyme and consonance so overbearing that I wondered if the words were the "best words" after all. Seems Veach sometimes has an odd sweettooth for super-conspicuous device that I do not share.

But the upshot is probably that I'm picky, or just nuts, and somebody (probably lots of somebodies) out there can appreciate any given poem appearing in either journal. History and reputations aside, if I could only toss one journal into the time capsule, it'd be Poetry. Not nearly as oddly homogenous as it used to be, but it's still pretty solid, and like Landrum suggested, it can be useful for calibrating your instruments.

I don't subscribe to POETRY but do browse through issues when I am in the library, looking for poets whose work I know I like and for some of the prose pieces. I find the majority of poems in any issue to be uninteresting--at least to me--and I suspect Wiman of practising tokenism toward formalism. That is better than nothing, of course, but not enough to make me want to subscribe. I was irritated to get the impression from Goldbarth's poem in the latest "humor" issue that Wiman is soliciting humorous poems from certain poets instead of actually trying to judge poems that come in by whether or not they are funny. That might explain why there are so few laughs in the humor issues in general. POETRY seems to be trying to have a foot in every camp of contemporary poetry, which may broaden its readership, but also increases the chance that most people will find most issues uneven.

I prefer to support journals that are more open to formalism, so I subscribe to MEASURE, THE DARK HORSE, IAMBS AND TROCHEES, BLUE UNICORN, LIGHT, etc. I figure that I can always browse some of the others in the library or at a good bookstore.

Susan

My favorites in the humor issue were by Wendy Videlock and XJ Kennedy. But really, I think the magazine is livelier than it has been since JF Nims edited it many years ago. I don't really care if everything in a magazine is to my taste. I read it to find out what's going on. And formally purist magazines can be boring too.

Dave

Not trying to start a fistfight here, but respectfully:

1) Personally, I'd never want to find myself in a situation where I was selecting my reading material based on politics rather than quality, and

2) If my political beliefs (regarding poetic modes) were so strong that I couldn't keep them from influencing my reading choices, I certainly wouldn't expect to aid the cause of de-ghetto-fying formal poetry by investing dollars in what are basically ghetto properties.

$0.02,

jack

I subscribe and usually find something to like in every issue, probably about as much as I find in any of the half-dozen or so other poetry publications I subscribe to. It's very rare that I find anything that knocks my socks off, but that's true even when I'm browsing through some heavy-weight anthology. Anyway, how often do you want your socks knocked off?
RPW

I just subscribed again to Poetry after a very very long absence because the cost was cut in half and I'd heard good things about the new Poetry magazine and wanted to give it a shot. Also, they had a triolet by Alicia Stallings in the envelope and I thought, hell, any magazine that advertises itself with formalist Spherean Alicia deserves a half-priced shot. After I read a few issues, I'lll report back.

Jack,
I think you are misinterpreting what I am saying. I said that I read other journals, too, but that I choose to support journals that are open to formal writing. Two of the journals I mentioned--THE DARK HORSE and BLUE UNICORN--are not primarily formal in their orientation, but do include a reasonable sprinkling of it and have a respectful attitude toward it. I will freely admit that many poems in the journals I subscribe to are dull, too, but there are so few formal-friendly journals that I want to help them survive--partly out of self-interest, so that I will have places to send my own work, and partly because I can learn something about formal technique even from poems whose content I may not find particularly interesting. High quality is rare in any journal, no matter what its orientation. I am constantly on the lookout for poetry journals that publish formal poetry regularly along with the free verse, but they still seem quite rare.

Susan

Susan, I don't think I misinterpreted at all. Choosing to support formal-friendly journals exclusively (or even almost exclusively) -- whether those journals are 100% formal poetry, or 50% -- is a political act, rather than an act of aesthetic judgement. If a small journal like Blue Unicorn filled, say, only 10% or less of each issue with formal poetry, would you even know of them at all? Is their circulation more than a few hundred? Have they had poems featured in Best American Poetry, or the Pushcart anthology?

A few star-bellied sneeches bunking next to the starless doesn't mean the neighborhood isn't a ghetto. And the familiar argument about supporting formal-friendlies, when advocated by others, usually includes The Usual Suspects: strictly formalist publications like I&T, The Formalist (RIP), The Lyric, The NeoVictorian/Cochlea, et al. And they *are* ghettos. Venues where formal work is segregated from (and therefore doesn't have to compete with) free verse. NOT healthy.

I believe your characterization of Wiman's formal selections as "token" concessions is dubious. If you've read the issues from this past year alone, you'll notice that formal content isn't merely there -- formal poetry may actually be over-represented, based on how much of what is actually being written and submitted.

I suspect that the Bad Old Days are almost if not completely over, and that editors of larger, more renowned and prestigious journals would love to receive more high-quality formal work. Writers like Stallings and Dove and Hacker made those inroads over the last decade or so, and it seems a shame not to take advantage of those gaps in the fortifications.

I think Good Editors know that the Good Poem belongs, regardless of whether or not it's metrical, or of a traditional form. If you put all your dollars in the ghetto, don't be surprised when the rift is perpetuated, and the formalist gene pool grows weaker over time. Formalists' willingness to compete, rather than to run and hide in Iambs & Trochees or Blue Unicorn, will make or break them.


[This message has been edited by jack edwards (edited July 20, 2006).]

Gail, I subscribe. Sometimes the poems are excellent, sometimes weak, sometimes wretched, but the letters and reviews are always full of color these days.

Jack, that sounds good in theory, except that the overwhelming majority of the lit mags out there are still towing the free verse party line, and making no bones about it. The ghetto-izing is pretty entrenched, eh. I write from both sides, tend to straddle the fence on poem politics, and I only subscribe to journals that publish from both schools, but it seems sort've silly to pretend that Free Verse hasn't been a gated establishment for a good many years. Which is pretty funny if you think about it, as it's put formalism in the Long Haired Freaky People Need Not Apply camp. Like you, I notice formalism becoming more visible. You sound bitter about it ? Unless you're talking about quality, that's politics !

Incidentally, I enjoy sending my formal stuff to those who say they want none of it. I've even snuck in under the radar a couple of times. Even better, I occasionally send poems to magazines that never even publish poems. Now THAT would be a cool hurdle to clear.


wendy
ps, Dave, thanks for the plug.



[This message has been edited by wendy v (edited July 20, 2006).]

[edit] Mmmm, nevermind. I've been far too gabby in this thread today. Sorry for the mess.

[This message has been edited by jack edwards (edited July 20, 2006).]

Jack, I buy the magazines I want to read. I don't subscribe out of a sense of duty; it's a matter of self-interest. If I like a magazine and want to see it continue enough to part with a little of my hard-earned income, that's a choice, like deciding what movie to attend or where to go on vacation or which grocery store gives me the most value for my money. It isn't political; it's personal.

And I don't give a hang about the future of poetry. Poetry--past, present, and future--is entertainment for me; it is not a cause.

Carol

Jack wrote:
As usual I agree and disagree. Aren't most metrical poets submitting work to a whole bunch of places, some of which are metrical-only, and some of which are open to whatever? In that case, what we're doing is no different from what a poet does who writes non-met exclusively, occasionally submitting to magazines that print only non-met (or print the occasional metrical poem if it's by someone famous).

So, yes, metrical-only magazines give a "leg up" to metrical poets, and a mediocre metrical poet could land some undeserved publications in one or two of them. But lots of other magazines provide that same "leg up" to non-met poets. Or you could use other categories: sentimental, edgy, heavy on the sonics, any kind of themed issue, etc. What magazine prints only gems?

Also, it's not just about publishing. Sometimes as a reader I'm simply in the mood to sit down and read something like Measure, knowing I can expect to find lots of sonnets and so forth. People who write in form/meter tend to like reading it.

p.s. It's okay to be gabby. If not, a lot of us are in big trouble!


[This message has been edited by Rose Kelleher (edited July 20, 2006).]

Aaaw, I hate the nevermind.

Jack, I thought your now-erased clarification well written, and your anti-meter making argument unapologetic
in its biases -- except for the ol' some of my best friends are bean counters part.

Of course the real arguments about these things take place in the bodies of poems, and only Time can decide those. It goes without saying that both schools can and do produce plenty of wreckage. Still, as you note, (ironically just before neverminding), it's healthy for artists to enter the shadowy worlds outside the safety and pitch of their own choirs. Whether those worlds be ghettoes or
gated communities.

The rub is that it always goes both ways.

Sorry to hijack your poll, Gail.


wendy

Gail:
I remember reading in a Poets Market that Poetry boasted that no major poet in the 20th century has not at some time been in Poetry magazine. I first laughed at their cockiness, but then I couldn't think of an exception. I recently started browsing
through to see my friends' poems, and was impressed by the amount and quality of formal verse. I'd also love to be in Poetry someday, and I see no way of writing something of sufficient quality unless I read their journal. Much of it still goes over my head. They tend to lean heavily toward cleverness and originality.

I was on the verge of subscribing until I saw the humor edition. They should never try to be funny. I like submitting, because they always reject me within six weeks.

Stephen


[This message has been edited by Stephen Scaer (edited July 20, 2006).]

Gail, it's one of my favorite journals -- mostly for its generosity of range and voice. I like the diversity. I'd choose it for abandonment on a deserted island, along with the complete formal pieces of Antonin Dvorak (from that nefarious Ghetto of Classical Music), and a CD Rom of the entire, varied works of Vincent Van Gogh (from the evil Post-Impressionist Empire).

Stephen, you lucky dog! I generally have to wait MONTHS for their rejections...

Jen

While I enjoy reading these discussions, the subject might as well be "possible life-forms in the caves of Io".

Not only have I never held a copy of "Poetry", I only know something about the stuff they publish from this board and their online selections.

And that goes for ALL the mags discussed on this board. I can't afford subscriptions, and the local rural bookshops and libraries just laugh.

The thing is, I can't decide whether this is a disadvantage for my writing, or an advantage. It means I am not writing to "fit in" anywhere.

I suppose it's a moot point, since that's just the way it is.

Mark,
Me too. I also wonder that if I subscribed to it, which allowing for currency differences and postage, would cost a lot, would I start trying to please it. Would that matter? Would I be insincere or merely flexible. All this and more from a small place in Queensland whose local poetry society fills me with fear. Nay, horror!
Janet

I subscribe and will continue to do so, though I occasionally throw an issue across the room.

It's a good value, especially if you can get a half-price subscription. I enjoy most of the prose and some of the poetry. For quite a while, I maintained that I liked the poetry better under Parisi, but perhaps my taste is changing. I agree with Jennifer about the diversity, with David (both Davids!) about it being a way to keep up with what's going on.

Toni

Excellent from beginning to end. Favorite issue: June-July 2004 Contemporary British Poetry Edition

I confess: I am too cheap to subscribe to Poetry.

My preferred way to find out what's happening is to read versedaily.org and poems.com (Poetry Daily) every day and buy Best American Poetry every year. It seems to me that I learn a good deal about various journals by those two methods. "The Writer's Almanac" from NPR will also occasionally show me a great new pub.

The terrific essays that appear in Poetry often show up in the "news and features" area of Poetry Daily, as do many other great articles.

Maryann (aka Scrooge)

Mark and Janet, alas, if you’re participating in online workshops and discussions, you’re already sullied by notions of audience.

It’s sometimes hard to reconcile one’s art with the selling of it. They are two entirely different activities. Here’s something by Kay Ryan that might be of interest in regards poetry and readership (from Poetry magazine, actually):

I should say I’ve snipped some sections. I can only type so much.

``````````````

If I were one person I could answer the question of how I perceive the audience for poetry in a single way. But I am of two people, so I must answer in two ways—first,
as the godlike writer of poems, serenely independent of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and, second, as her cousin.

So to begin, let us draw close to the empyrean springs and ask the poet, even now
dipping her alabaster hand into the poetical waters, how she feels about audience:

“Do you think, as you write, about who will read your poems and how they will like
them ? Be honest.”

No, I do not. My attention is entirely taken up by the voice in my head – a perfect tyrant,
utterly without charity, and a pig for pleasure. Ordinary conditions do not obtain. Take the condition of time, for example. While I’m trying to satisfy this inside voice, time takes on that bulgy condition it has during the most critical stage of a skid, where astonishing maneuvers become possible simply because they must (or you’ll crash). It is extremely occupying. (snip) On the other hand, this lofty condition enjoyed by the poet takes up only two hours (of ) a week. A good week. I must spend the rest of the week as my cousin.
This cousin has a higher, and I’m sorry to say, a lower nature. Her higher nature
sees itself as the steward of the poet’s work and responsible for helping that work secure a place in the world. This means that she must take an active, practical interest in living readers, not just by tidying poems themselves so they’re fit to be seen, but also by moving the poems along… the best that she can. In this spirit, she seeks good journals for the poems and good presses for the books, accepts reading dates and interviews, so that the poems might reach an audience and rise or fall fairly, based upon their merit instead of simply resting upon the bottom because nobody ever saw them.

I often see her as a betrayer of the poet, but she isn’t. Secretly they are best friends.

```


[This message has been edited by wendy v (edited July 20, 2006).]

Mark - As one poor country mouse to another, I'm delighted to hear you confess the way things are for you. I thought I was alone. Likewise, I can't decide if not having subscriptions and libraries and money is an advantage or disadvantage. But TG for the WWW.
Wendy - thanks for those snippets from Kay Ryan. I can relate to that.
Mary

I have been published in Poetry, by Christian. I dropped my subscription because the poetry and the prose sent me to the exit.

For those of you who have never seen a copy of the magazine but would like to get an idea of what is in it, the web site below provides a few sample poems and essays each month. It will give you some idea of what the journal publishes.
http://www.poetrymagazine.org/index.html

Susan

Thanks for that, Susan.

I noticed this passage in the "Featured Prose" from "Want Ads" by Wendy Macleod:

"I want a lover who ignores my e-mails and sporadically returns my phone calls, who says he loves me and then sleeps with younger, skinnier women. He should randomly give me romantic gifts—an antique cameo, a Corsican mandolin—that I later discover were charged to my credit card. A manic-depressive poet would be perfect ..."


I need to get in touch with this woman.

I've subscribed for years. I like it under its new editor. He takes more risks.

I agree that the humor issue was as flat as a tapeworm. Wendy's was the only piece that made me laugh. I normally enjoy Goldbarth and Billy Collins, but didn't in this issue.

Kay Ryan shows up often and makes it worth it. I especially liked her essay that employed Edward Lear to make a case that poetry is nonsense.

The essays and letters are worth the price. It really doesn't cost much and you get more issues per year than most journals.

I like also, Southern Review and Beloit Poetry Journal, each of which has, as Poetry, been open to diverse types of poetry. Field is also good. What a shame that The New Yorker can't give us good poetry weekly.

Bob

There you go - making sense again - will you never learn?

Poetry.

I subscribe, and generally find it hard to disagree with the contention that it consistently publishes the best poetry in English, the longevity of the journal alone would allow them to make the claim with a degree of impunity.

I looked forward to the Humor issue, I wanted to be entertained, amused, provoked and, above all, encouraged by humorous poems of a standard I should strive to emulate.

I am willing to accept some cultural differences that would militate against my particular (peculiar) predilections in this art, but not to have my sensibilities assaulted by what is, with the honourable exception of those items by our esteemed colleagues here, humor of a very unimaginative and poor standard indeed.

The Kennedy, Collins items, were simply there by weight of their authors’ reputations alone.
There were two plus pages of onanistic rubbish by a Norbert Hirshhorn.
Another essential qualification appeared to be the ability to spell ‘fuck’ and its many derivatives.

And as for this; this is supposed to be parody of a sublime standard, a standard fitting to the Humor issue of Poetry;

We Old Dudes

We old dudes. we
White shoes. We

Golf ball. We
Eat mall.We

Soak teeth.We
palm Beach; We

Vote red. We
Soon dead.

-Joan Murray

It is only surpassed, if surpassed is the right term, by this from X.J.Kennedy;

Whose woods these are I think I know.
Shall I just shack out in the snow
And freeze? Naaaa, guess I’d better go.

It’s bullshit poetry, and horseshit humor, if one of us posted anything here on any of the forums even faintly resembling these in mediocrity, we’d be told so in short order.

Will I renew?

Naaa, guess I’ll let it go.


Oh yes, just edited in to say that I was also seduced by the half price offer to subscribe but, in fairness, more so by the Stallings item accompanying.



[This message has been edited by Jim Hayes (edited July 21, 2006).]

Bob,
Yes, that piece by Wendy Macleod was very funny. She is a talented playwright too. I saw her play Sin in Chicago at the Goodman Theatre years ago. It was a clever modern version of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Susan

Yeah, I didn't find the issue side-splittingly funny (though some of it, I'm pretty sure, was just over my head), but I loved Mark Halliday's "All Me," the cartoon by Peter Blegvad, and David Orr's reviews of "Luminous Crescendos" and "Hensonia." Also liked Wendy's poem and a few other things in a not-funny-ha-ha-but-enjoyable kind of way.


[This message has been edited by Rose Kelleher (edited July 21, 2006).]

Wow, this got more response than I expected.

I too was disappointed in the Humor issue, although I did laugh at Kennedy's "More Foolish Things Remind Me of You."

My friend Barbara Loots tells me that some of the poems were supposed to be parodies of current schools of poetry. I guess I was not au courant enough to pick up on that.

I'll tell you a secret: They solicit for the humor issue by notifying former contributors that it's coming up.
So, assuming it becomes an annual affair, the thing to do is send in your funny stuff between January 1 and March 15 - and indicate on the envelope that it's for the humor issue. Maybe an influx of Eratospherians can improve things.

I think it's a case of "The Emperor's New Clothes". They've been around since time immemorial, and proclaim that they are publishing "the best poetry in English", and people buy into it. In fact most of what they publish is identical to the babble published in a thousand lesser-known literary magazines, and much of it appears to be written by the same person.

I've tried a number of times submitting, and always got a rejection, for pieces that I believe were far superior to most of what they print (I'm not bragging, because that's not saying much!), many of which I subsequently had no trouble publishing in other journals.

The humor issue was so unfunny you had to laugh!

I agree that there are some good pieces now and then, but they are so few and far between that it's not worth the price. And I agree with Susan, that their publishing formal pieces is tokenism, and most of the formal pieces are far inferior to what you read in Measure or I&T.

When my issue arrives, I barely glance at it. Then, straight into the recyling bin. When my subscription expires, it's history.

Yes, it's poetry, Jim, but not as we know it.

I find it the most stimulating poetry journal around. Yes, there's a lot of crap in there - and a few issues have been almost total disasters - but there is also a good deal of very good writing, including formal verse; an enormous diversity, an absence of fixation on one creative or poetic ideology or other, a dedication to poetry rather than a specific poetic agenda, good articles and reviews, and - above all - a great sense of intelligence and humor pervading the magazine. It seems to take the craft and art of poetry a good deal more seriously than it takes itself, and i like that.

I also compliment them on responding rapidly (four to six weeks), if tastelessly (no acceptances, ever.)

I liked their humor issue. Thought it was about three levels beyond the dated doggerel that clogs Light and, once again, I'll use the word "intelligence" to characterize the journal. And it was a particular delight to see a magazine use the word "humor" without trotting out the 1940's comic book cartoon drawings.



[This message has been edited by Michael Cantor (edited July 24, 2006).]