[Steven Schroeder]

Gosh, this seems like a good question to ask on this board, but I can't for the life of me figure out which folder it should go in.

Those of you poets with more publishing experience, what markets/journals have you found to be particularly receptive to formal verse, and what markets have you found to be more unfriendly (outside the ones that explicitly say "no formal verse" in their writer's guidelines, of course)?

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Steven Schroeder
Darwin's Bulldog

[Richard Wakefield]

Steven:
I've had good luck with Light, Bellowing Ark, the Neovictorian (ably edited by Esther Camerson, an Eratospherian), and Pivot. There are many others that have no particular hostility to formal verse.
It's important to support the publications that support the kind of verse you like -- not only the verse you write, but the verse you LIKE and want to see continue to be published. Subscribe. Those four magazines listed above are a good start, and you can probably subscribe to all four for less than the price of dinner for two at a middling eatery.
And write to the editors when you see something you like or, for that matter, something you don't. They need to know that someone is reading the stuff. Then comes your personal benefit, in addition to what you're doing for the art: after some correspondence, your submitted poems stand a much better chance of being read. I've done some editing and have put in seventeen years as a critic, and the awful truth is that an editor or a critic is faced daily with such a heap of submissions that he or she simply wants to get through it in any way possible. No one can pay careful attention to everything that comes in the daily avalanche of submissions. In any case, most of them are from people who are completely unfamiliar with the publication and are just sending out mass mailings. A familiar name, though, will slow the editor down; if you have invested something in the magazine by subscribing or commenting, you've already earned a bit more of the editor's attention. It may still be that your work isn't accepted, but you're far more likely to get an explanation with the rejection, and that can make a big difference.
I'm not suggesting that you subscribe and correspond for ulterior purposes. Do it for Poetry. And part of Poetry is your poetry.
Richard

[Susan McLean]

Steven, I agree that it is hard to find markets for formal verse. I have mainly stumbled across the ones I know of--The Formalist (obviously), Blue Unicorn, SPSM&H (for sonnets), The Classical Outlook (if the content is connected to the classical world), Light (for humorous verse). Other than those, I just sit down with poetry journals and see which ones contain metrical verse (the greater the percentage, the more promising). It beats sending the poems out at random.

[RCL]

The Lyric is also Erato-friendly.

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Ralph

[Richard Wakefield]

Susan:
Yes, of course, The Formalist -- a good venue for formal poets to get published, and a little education in formal poetry with every issue. They feature classics along with new stuff, and they often have informative interviews or comments by big shots.
Ralph:
I've had terrible luck getting any response from the Lyric. They've had a clutch of my poems for over a year and half, and that's a long time by any standard.
Another good magazine is Edge City Review. They too can be pretty slow in response time, but they're serious about their mission.
Richard

[RCL]

Agreed, The Lyric is slow, partly due to a change of editors over the past year and a half--I actually forgot about one they finally accepted! Edge City's had mine for about six months now--is that par?

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Ralph

[Richard Wakefield]

Ralph:
Six months is none too long with a lot of magazines. At Edge City, try as they will, they tend to me a bit on the long side of six months. If you check their website you'll find that it's wonderful but chronically outdated.
Richard

[Michael Juster]

I won't repeat what others have said, but people here often overlook two fine little formal friendly publications from Arkansas--Nebo and Slant. I published an odd sonnet called "On Remembering Your Funeral Was Today" in Slant a few years back. I was rejected a couple times by Nebo a few years back, but a lot of fine formalists publish there. I have found The South Carolina Review and the Carolina Quarterly to be fairly receptive to formal verse as well, and they have lowered their standards to take my stuff. The Florida Review claims to be formal-friendly, but I have never seen any evidence of that. Orbis in the UK is another sympathetic and often overlooked journal. Gerry Cambridge's The Dark Horse in Scotland runs a lot of formal stuff, but forget it unless you have one of several types of "in" with him.