Quote:
Originally Posted by Aaron Novick
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?
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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.
