My Poetic Sweet Tooth

I recently learned that on October 9, John Hewitt, at The Writer’s Resource Center, made me Today’s Recommended Poet: "Diane Lockward is a poet, teacher and an active blogger. Her poetry is feminine and feminist. She is smart and funny. Her poetry probes the politics of family, motherhood, and food with affection and a bit of exasperation."

Temptation by Water 2010

What Feeds Us 2006

Eve’s Red Dress 2003

"You might want to read her blog entries about voice vs. tone here and here. She also has a poetry tutorial: The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop"

Thanks, John, for that sweet recommendation!


Then on October 25, I had two poems, "Service for the Murdered Boy" and "A Murmuration of Starlings," featured in the Saturday Poetry Series at As It Ought to Be. These two poems are anything but sweet—they are quite grim, but relevant to current events. Thanks to editor Sivan Butler-Rotholz for choosing my poems.


Several years ago I began to submit poems to online journals as I came to believe that all poets should have at least some online presence. I began to understand the several advantages of an online publication, e.g., the possibility of a wider audience than a print journal has, the possibility of the work reaching readers in other countries, the long-term presence of the work in the online journal's archives.

As social media became more and more in use among authors, it became apparent that it could be used to multiply the online journal's reach as readers hit the Like button and the Share button for Facebook and/or added a link to Twitter. Still, many of us held onto our affection for the printed word, the pleasure of getting into a comfortable chair and spending a few hours reading poetry on the page.

Now we can have our cake and eat it too! A number of online journals have gathered the work first published online and put it into a print edition. Some of these print anthologies gather all of the work of several years; others do a best-of anthology.

The most recent of these anthologies arrived in my mailbox this week. Katherine Riegel, editor of Sweet: A Literary Confection, has just edited the journal's first anthology: All of Us: Sweet: The First Five Years.

Click for Amazon

Here's the back cover's list of contributors.

Some other online journals have also published print anthologies:

Pirene's Fountain—First Water: Best of Pirene's Fountain The best of the first five years, edited by Ami Kaye.

Valparaiso Poetry Review—Poetry from Paradise Valley. Selected work from the first ten years, edited by Edward Byrne. (currently unavailable)

Thrush Poetry Journal—Thrush Poetry Journal: An Anthology of the First Two Years. Includes all the work, edited by Helen Vittoria.


The Barefoot Muse—The Best of The Barefoot Muse. The journal has ceased publication but the best work of its five years of publication is preserved in this print anthology, edited by Anna M. Evans.


I like this trend and hope it continues.