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Unread 03-18-2004, 01:20 AM
A. E. Stallings A. E. Stallings is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2000
Location: Athens, Greece
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I wouldn't limit yourself to formal journals (though of course, they are an important outlet.) You will have a much wider readership if you are willing to brave the odds with more mainstream journals. Most journals, in my experience, unless specifically anti-form (and there are a number of those, of course), are happy to see some well-turned formal poetry in the mix. The thing is to see if you like other stuff the journal publishes, if you'd be happy to see your poem in that company. One good indication of openness is to flip to contributors' page. Are a fair number published there for the first time? Or does the magazine have a stable of regular poets? (For instance, Poetry by that reckoning is a great deal more open than many lesser journals; they do actually read everything that comes over the transom.)

Also, if a magazine supports you (publishes your poem), it is only fair to support them in turn by getting a subscription.

There are some new form-friendly journals on the block. The National Review is a handsome little mag. They aren't necessarily as interested in form per se as sound--rhyme, rhythm, and experimental uses thereof as well as traditional ones. 32 Poems is friendly to form and free verse and favors the short lyric. It has a bit of a buzz. I've seen good formal poems featured from Smartish Pace. All of these have web sites. And there are e-zines, of course. Blackbird is a particularly nice one.

Regarding web sites, Verse Daily (modelled, it would seem, on Poetry Daily), features mostly--though not entirely--formal--to some degree--verse, and you can get an idea of form-friendly journals from journals they tend to feature.

I would also note--having been a reader for a magazine--that lists of credits in cover letters, especially lists of minor credits, do not necessarily impress. A huge list of minor credits may even discourage. A reader would rather encounter a talented totally unpublished poet than one who had published indiscriminately in every obscure journal under the sun. An intriguing sentence or two about yourself (and perhaps some indication that you have actually read the magazine) will go farther.

I also find with submitting batches of poems that it is very often the odd-man-out, the filler poem, that gets taken. This happens to me pretty consistently--I don't know if that means I am a poor judge of my own work or what! So I always throw in a sort of wild card, something I really don't expect the magazine to take. (Not because it's bad, but because it's odd or doesn't seem to fit their style at all or I think it is a bit silly.) Ya never know.

Good luck!

Alicia

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