Poetry magazines
 

What poetry magazines do yinz subscribe to? Which do you like to read? Where do you submit?

Basically, this thread is a general purpose forum for discussing various journals around today. Hopefully it will generate both good discussion and serve as a valuable repository of information. I know about a lot of the usual suspects, but I'm sure I'm ignorant of most of the places that might interest me (and be interested in me).

With Measure on its deathbed and the Raintown Review seemingly moribund as well, I currently subscribe only to Think (Light and Mezzo Cammin being on-line and free).

Thanks, Gail. I just submitted to Think today, as it happens. My second attempt to get in there. Hope I show up on your doorstep sometime soon.

I admit that I'm a bit uneasy about its objectivist origins, but as best as I can tell that's behind it now that it's associated with Western State Colorado U. Is that fair, based on your experience with it? Just a high quality outlet for formal poetry?

Able Muse, Light, Mezzo Cammin, Snakeskin, and Lighten Up Online are well worth reading, and I subscribe or have subscribed to The Lyric, Blue Unicorn, The Raintown Review, and The Dark Horse. I used to subscribe to The Formalist, Light Quarterly, Measure, Iambs and Trochees, but those are dead, dying, or now online. If you like translations, check out Transference, Arion, and The Classical Outlook.

Susan

My job gets Poetry and American Poetry Review, so I read those regularly there. I subscribe to Rattle, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, Boulevard, Able Muse, Tar River Poetry, Smartish Pace. I think that's all.

I've subscribed to Threepenny Review. I liked the poetry in it often, but there wasn't enough poetry in it.

I also subscribed to 32 Poems, and it's often filled with good stuff, I just fell off.

I want to subscribe to PN Review. It's expensive, though, since it's in the UK, but that's probably next for me.

Thanks Susan, Andrew.

Right now my only active subscription is to The Hudson Review, which I like a lot. Though often as much for the non-poetry as for the poetry. (I consistently like the stories they publish.)

Andrew, would you mind saying a bit more about the vibe of the various places you subscribe(d) to? Or at least those you like best?

Acumen in the U.K. is a good one, or used to be anyway, as I haven't seen it in a while.

The Oxleys are the real deal.

Here's the website: https://www.acumen-poetry.co.uk/

I'm not a committed formalist, as you know. The most interesting things in poetry are happening in free, online journals. I get Rattle and Poetry and have subscribed to others when I was wealthier than I am now and enjoyed them. The older print zines aren't necessarily where I want to go to read interesting poets and prose artists.

Which ones?

Perhaps this is going about it backwards, but as I go forward, I'm most likely to submit to a place where I've recently seen work I like a lot. More often than not, that's formal in some sense, but not always. I submit to places I still want to get into even if they've rejected me before.

So, for what it's worth, I've submitted poems in the past year to "name" places like Beloit PJ, 32 Poems, Rattle, Yale Review, Commonweal, America, Crab Orchard Review, Notre Dame Review, Hopkins Review, Able Muse, PN Review, and Barrow Street.

Less well known places were Raintown, Pangyrus, Lighten Up Online, and Snakeskin.

Hope this is some help!

For journals that publish formal and free verse, I have subscriptions to Able Muse, The Hudson Review, and The Paris Review.

For Japanese forms, I subscribe to Modern Haiku (probably the best of its kind, though it's starting to get away from traditional haiku) and Presence (the best haiku magazine in Britain, more traditional than MH). I also read The Heron’s Nest (again, more traditional haiku) and Contemporary Haibun Online regularly.

In the past, I subscribed to Queen’s Quarterly (only a couple poems per issue, but many thought-provoking articles) and Arc (more free verse / experimental) to stay in touch with Canadian poetry, though I’ve let both lapse.

I'm moving to Canada in mid-September—maybe I'll check those out. Thanks Edward.

I'm working on an issue of Raintown and it should be out this fall. It's a good one, too, with lots of familiar faces, and even a classic Quincy Lehr essay.

I confess I've struggled to keep up since it's been just me, especially with my political/resistance activities since 2016.

Anna

Aaron, Queen's Quarterly claims to have a national focus, but it's really representative of central Canada (i.e. Ontario). Arc does a good job of drawing from poets from across the country. If you're interested in the literary scene in Atlantic Canada, then The Dalhousie Review and The Fiddlehead are two journals that have a national reputation but maintain a local focus.

Anna, I'm glad to hear that Raintown has an issue coming out in the near future.

If I didn't have a school subscription I would get Poetry and APR. They're all a poetry with some essays. Obviously, as they are pretty generalist, you're going to get a lot of poetry you don't like, but I always find some poems in each I do enjoy, and them--plus Kenyon Review and Ploughshares--do a nice job of giving you the lay of the contemporary poetry land: those journals highlight the favored people in PoBiz, and I think that's valuable. I often like the prose in KR and Ploughshares a great deal, sometimes more than the poetry. But still, I've found good poems in all of them.

Smartish Pace strikes me a bit like Rattle: open to all sorts of voices, and open to poetry in form. I tend to like Smartish Pace better, and not just because I was published in it. But both strike me as very good, very diverse poetry-only journals. 32 poems is similar to both of these; I'd say it's roughly equivalent to each, though less open to straight formalist work.

Threepenny had surrealist stuff (I think Dean Young appeared twice in it in the two years I subscribed...and they only published 4-5 poems per issue, quarterly). But they also had minimalist, one dramatic monologue from St. Jerome in half-rhymed couplets, and work in translation. If they published more poetry, I'd keep it. The prose is very good, though, probably better than KR and Ploughshares, so if you really do love reading the prose, there were cool things in it.

Tar River I've enjoyed: all poetry, journal that has published formalists and non-formalists. Less experimental, though; you're going to get well-crafty, relatively traditional poems. Boulevard adds in some prose, and maybe a little more open to experiments with form, but nothing really like concrete poetry flies there. Both these journals tend to like more personal based, "I"-focused poems, off the top of my head.

Able Muse: my first hasn't come yet, but I hardly think you need me to tell you what's in it. :)

<cough> Antiphon http://antiphon.org.uk/wordpress/ <cough>

Yes, Rosemary! I heard your cough.

I was in the last one, Andrew! Got my free copy, but I really must subscribe.

And I've kept your robo rejector busy.

Aaron,
The Alabama Literary Review is free online.
Bill

http://spectrum.troy.edu/alr/index.htm