Poetry Magazine, published by the Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org, is one of the oldest, most respected U.S. poetry journals. Founded in 1912 by Harriet Monroe, the journal has published works by famous poets such as T.S. Eliott, Anne Sexton, Joyce Kilmer, Robert Frost and William Carlos Williams before they were established.
The journal takes great pride it’s “open door” publication policy. Poetry encourages submissions from all poetry genres and schools, and chooses not to set themes for each issue like many journals. I think this is terrific, because it leaves poets unconstrained in what they choose to write and submit. Since Poetry was established, the publication’s mission statement expresses their desire “to print the best English verse which is being written today, regardless of where, by whom, or under Poetry is well known and is easy to locate -- it consistently lands in the top fifteen entries when you search Google for “poetry.”
Each issue of Poetry contains numerous poets’ works, reviews of poetry and letters to the editors, mostly comments on poetry and our society. While there are exceptions, the majority of published poems appear to be no longer than an 8 ½ by 11 page, for example the following two poems:
I knew something was wrong
by Dorothea Grossman
I knew something was wrong
the day I tried to pick up a
small piece of sunlight
and it slithered through my fingers,
not wanting to take shape.
Everything else stayed the same—
the chairs and the carpet
and all the corners
where the waiting continued.
Source: Poetry (March 2010).
In the loop
by Bob Hicok
I heard from people after the shootings. People
I knew well or barely or not at all. Largely
the same message: how horrible it was, how little
there was to say about how horrible it was.
People wrote, called, mostly e-mailed
because they know I teach at Virginia Tech,
to say, there’s nothing to say. Eventually
I answered these messages: there’s nothing
to say back except of course there’s nothing
to say, thank you for your willingness
to say it. Because this was about nothing.
A boy who felt that he was nothing,
who erased and entered that erasure, and guns
that are good for nothing, and talk of guns
that is good for nothing, and spring
that is good for flowers, and Jesus for some,
and scotch for others, and “and” for me
in this poem, “and” that is good
for sewing the minutes together, which otherwise
go about going away, bereft of us and us
of them. Like a scarf left on a train and nothing
like a scarf left on a train. As if the train,
empty of everything but a scarf, still opens
its doors at every stop, because this
is what a train does, this is what a man does
with his hand on a lever, because otherwise,
why the lever, why the hand, and then it was over,
and then it had just begun.
The publication prints eleven times a year and digital editions are available online for 1987 and the years 1999 to the most recent March 2010 publication: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/index.html
Also helpful for poets considering submission, online are monthly podcasts from the editors speaking about the most recent publication. These podcast give insight in to the nature of the publication.
Individual copies of the journal are $4.25 each, and a year’s subscription costs $35. They do offer a student subscription – 11 issues for $17.50. Poetry does solicit advertising -- to those who prefer an ad-free literary journal.
To submit your work to Poetry, set up an online account at submissions.poetrymagazine.org. They only accept unpublished work, and submission response time is 6-8 weeks. If your work is accepted, Poetry is a paying publication ($10 per line, $300 minimum and two copies of the publication) and you will be eligible for the magazine’s prestigious annual prizes. Only poems accepted for publication in Poetry are considered eligible for their contest.
I leave you with my one of my favorite poems from the March 2010 issue:
I have to tell you
by Dorothea Grossman
I have to tell you,
there are times when
the sun strikes me
like a gong,
and I remember everything,
even your ears.
por Julio Cesar Perez Mendez
