[Susan McLean]

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

[Mark Allinson]

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.

[Robert J. Clawson]

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

[peter richards]

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.

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

[Jim Hayes]

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).]

[Susan McLean]

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

[Rose Kelleher]

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).]

[Gail White]

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.

[Marion Shore]

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.

[Michael Cantor]

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).]