Poetry Publishers Willing to Receive Submissions Electronically

Louie Crew, Emeritus Professor at Rutgers University, maintains a great list of Poetry Publishers Willing to Receive Submissions Electronically. Poets Online has been on the list for a number of years.

He lists poetry editors who are willing to receive submissions electronically with some preferring manuscripts in the body of an email message and others as attachments. Most of his entries have brief submission tips and direct you to a website.

Louie wisely suggests that you study a copy of the magazine or site archive to determine whether your material would have a fit with the other material published.

His page has been online since 1996 and visits each website at least once a month, and write to editors at least twice a year to confirm publications are still viable. he is also no fan of entry or reading fees or requiring an author to buy a copy of the publication to see her or his work. On the other hand, he says that he hopes "that all poets will be poetry consumers and subscribe voluntarily to a wide variety of literary magazines. It is vain to expect others to read our poetry if we have no abiding interest in poetry by other living writers."

His page at Rutgers is http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/pbonline.html

Poetry Only

Not that poets don't like prose, but...

Diane Lockward has a nice post that lists poetry-only journals that she reads so that she doesn't find herself "skipping over the prose pieces to get to the poems."

As Diane says, these are "poetry with perhaps some reviews of poetry books, interviews with poets, and/or a poetics essay. A bit of art would be nice, too.

She includes: Poet Lore (Poetry and Reviews, occasional essay. Two issues per year.), Rattle (Poetry and interviews. Each issue has a section of poems solicited from a particular group, e.g., nurses, attorneys. Reviews are online. Two issues per year.), Southern Poetry Review (Pure poetry. Two issues per year.) and others.

Read on...  "Blogalicious: Poetry Only, Please:

Celebrate National Poetry Month with Free Poetry Magazine

Poetry magazine, published by the Poetry Foundation, is pleased to announce a giveaway of Poetry in celebration of National Poetry Month (April) and the magazine’s centennial. An unlimited number of free copies of the April 2012 issue of Poetry magazine will be available to book clubs and reading groups that request them by March 23.

As it turns 100, Poetry holds fast to the principles that guided it from the beginning: to discover new voices, present new work by internationally recognized poets, and enliven discussion about and readership for contemporary poetry. The April 2012 issue of Poetry will feature new poems by well-known poets Yusef Komunyakaa and David Lehman; prose by Sven Birkerts; first appearances by Patricia Kirkpatrick, Sean Hill, and Kathy Nilsson; and the return of an occasional feature in which poets remember other poets: Patricia Smith celebrates Gwendolyn Brooks, Maxine Kumin recalls Howard Nemerov, and Gerald Stern reflects on Muriel Rukeyser, among others.

The April issue will ship in late March so that reading groups will receive their copies for consideration during National Poetry Month. Reading communities may discuss thought-provoking Poetry content—both commentary and poems—or simply read the issue aloud.

Requests, including only one mailing address per reading group, will be accepted online through www.poetryfoundation.org/npm or by calling 312-799-8015.

Valentines and Poets

Perhaps today, there is a bit more poetry in the air...

From writersalmanac.publicradio.org

Chaucer gets credit for establishing St. Valentine's Day as a romantic occasion, when in the 14th-century he wrote in "The Parlement of Foules" of a spring landscape "on seynt Valentynes day" where the goddess Nature watched as every kind of bird came before her to choose and seduce their mates.

In the early 15th century, the Duke of Orleans wrote a Valentine's poem to his faraway wife while held captive in the Tower of London.

Shakespeare mentioned the sending of Valentines in Ophelia's lament in Hamlet. And hundreds of years later, with the advent of cheaper postal services and mass-produced cards, the tradition of sending lacy love notes on the holiday was enormously popular with the Victorians. In 2010, more than 1 billion cards were sent worldwide.

"Parlement of Foules" (1382) by Geoffrey Chaucer - “For this was on seynt Volantynys day / Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make” ["For this was Saint Valentine's Day, when every bird cometh there to choose his mate"] (Wikipedia: Valentine’s Day)

As I wrote on an earlier Valentine's Day, I like the book of valentines by Ted Kooser. In 1986, Kooser (U.S. Poet Laureate 2004–2006) sent a Valentine's Day poem on a postcard to 50 women. Over the next three decades, he sent an annual poem to an increasing number of women (in 2007 there were 2,600 recipients). Valentines collects those poems - and they are not all typical "love poems" or things you would find in a Valentine card.


A New Potato

This is just one of the leathery eggs
the scuffed-up, dirty turtle of the moon
buried early in spring, her eyes like stars
fixed on the future, and, inside its red skin,
whiteness, like all of the moons to come,
and marvelous, buttered with light.

by Ted Kooser