Print Journals That Accept Online Submissions

Time to once again update the list of print journals that accept online submissions. The list has grown by two dozen journals. I anticipate a day when all submissions will be made online. I remain happy to save paper, envelopes, and stamps—and even happier about conserving gas. Thank you, Journals!

Journals new to the list (not necessarily new journals) are indicated with a double asterisk.

The number of issues per year appears after the journal's name.

The reading period for each journal appears at the end of each entry.

Unless noted otherwise, the journal accepts simultaneous submissions.

As always, please let me know if you find any errors here. And good luck.

Adanna: a journal about women, for women—1x

Jan 31 - April 30

Agni—2x

Sept 1 - May 31

The American Poetry Journal—1x

February 1 - May 31

**American Poetry Review—6x

all year

**Another Chicago Magazine—2x

 $3 fee

check website to see if open for submissions

Barn Owl Review—1x

June 1 - November 1

**Barrelhouse—2x

check website to see if open for submissions

Bat City Review—1x

June 1 - November 15

Bateau—2x

all year

Bellevue Literary Review—2x

all year

Bellingham Review—1x

Sept 15-Dec 15

Beloit Poetry Journal—4x

all year

no sim

Black Warrior Review—2x

all year

Boston Review—6x

Sept 15 - May 15

Boulevard—3x

November 1-April 30 

Breakwater Review—2x
November 15 for the January issue;
April 15 for the June issue

Caesura—2x

August 5 - Oct. 5

Caketrain—1x

all year

Carbon Copy Magazine—2x
May 1st through September 1st, November 1st through March

**The CarolinaQuarterly—3x       

 all year

The Cincinnati Review—2x
Sept 1 - May 31

Columbia—2x

September 1 - May 1

The Common—2x

Sept. 1-Dec.1 (all year for subscribers)
$1.50 fee

Copper Nickel—2x

August 15-October 15 

January 31-March 31

Crab Creek Review—2x
Sept 15 - March 31

Crazyhorse—2x

all year
$2 fee

Cream City Review—2x

August 1 to November 1

December 1 to April 1

CutBank—1-2x

October 1 thru February 15

**Ecotone—2x

August 15–April 15 

$3 fee

Edison Literary Review—1x 

all year

**Explosion-Proof Magazine—4x

submit@explosion-proof.net 

all year

**Fence—2x

 check website to see if open for submissions 

FIELD—2x

all year

no sim

Fifth Wednesday—2x

no Jan, Feb, June, or July

The Florida Review—2x

August thru May 

$3 fee

Fourteen Hills—2x
September 1 to January 1
March 1 to July 1

Gargoyle—1x

most recent reading period was June 1, 2011-August 1, 2011

**The Greensboro Review—2x   

September 15 deadline for the Spring issue

February 15 deadline for the Fall issue

Grist—1x

August 15 - April 15

**Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review—1x 

All year

Harpur Palate—2x

deadlines: Winter issue: November 15

Summer issue: April 15

Harvard Review—2x

Sept 1 - May 31

Hawk and Handsaw—2x

Aug 1 - Oct 1

Hayden's Ferry—2x

All year

pays

The Hollins Critic—5x

Sept 1 - Dec. 15

Hunger Mountain—1x

all year

The Idaho Review—1x
Sept. 1 to April 15

Iron Horse Literary Review—6x

rolling for 3-4 weeks at a time

check website for dates

Jubilat—2x

September 1 - May 1

Kenyon Review—4x

September 15 - January 15

no sim

Knockout Literary Magazine—1x

check website for submission dates

The Literary Review—4x

Little Patuxent Review—2x
check website for submission periods

The Los Angeles Review—1x

Submit to Poetry Editor: lareview.poetry@gmail.com

Sept 1 - Dec 1

**The Louisville Review—2x

all year

Lumina—1x

August 1 - Nov 15

The MacGuffin—3x

all year

The Massachusetts Review—4x

October 1 - April 30

Measure—2x

no sim

all year

The Mom Egg—1x

July 15 - Sept. 30

Meridian—2x ($2 fee)

all year

Mid-American Review—2x

all year

The Minnesota Review—2x

August 1–November 1 

January 1–April 1

The Missouri Review–4x

all year

**National Poetry Review—1x  

December, January, and February only or all year if a subscriber

**Natural Bridge—2x

August 1-May1

$3 fee

Naugatuck River Review—2x

for the Summer issue January 1 through March 1

for the Winter issue July 1 through September 1 (contest only)

New England Review—4x

no sim

Sept 1-May 31

New Madrid—2x

August 15 - November 1

New Ohio Review—2x

Sept-May (summer okay for subscribers)

New Orleans Review—2x

Aug 15 - May 1

New South—2x

all year

The New Yorker

weekly magazine

all year

Ninth Letter—2x

September 1 - April 30

**The Normal School—2x

September 1-December 1 

January 15-April 15

$3 fee

Parthenon West Review—1x

Jan 1- May 1 (but on hiatus for 2012)

**Pleiades—2x

August 15-May 15

Ploughshares—3x

June 1 - Jan. 15

Poetry—11x

year round

no sim

Poetry Northwest—2x

September 15 - April 15

Post Road Magazine—2x

check website for submission dates

Potomac Review—2x

Sept 1-May 1

Prairie Schooner—4x
Sept 1 - May 1
no sim

Puerto del Sol—2x

September 15 - March 31

The Raintown Review—2x

all year

considers previously published

The Raleigh Review—1x

All year

Rattle—2x

year round

Redactions—1x

year round

Redivider—2x

all year

Red Rock Review—2x

No June, July, August, or December

no sim

Rhino—1x

April 1 - Oct 1

**Rockhurst Review—1x

Sept. 15 through Jan. 15

Rosebud—3x

All year

Sakura Review—2x

year round

Salt Hill—2x

August 1 - April 1

San Pedro River Review—2x

Jan 1 - Feb 1 / July 1-Aug 1

**Saw Palm—1x

July 1- October 1

       

Slice Magazine—2x

Feb. 1 - April 1

Smartish Pace—2x

All year

Sonora Review—2x

All year

**So to Speak—2x

feminist

August 15-October 15 for the Spring issue

January 1-March 15 for the Fall issue

**South Dakota Review—4x

All year

The Southeast Review—2x

All year

  

**Southern Humanities Review—4x

All year

Southwest Review—4x

No June, July, August

$2 fee

Sou’wester—2x

August 15 - May 15

Spinning Jenny—1x

Sept 15 - May 15

No Sim

The Stillwater Review—1x

deadline Nov. 15

poetrycenter@sussex.edu 

**Subtropics—3x

September 1 - April 15
No Sim       

Sugar House Review—2x

All year

Tampa Review—2x

Sept 1 - Dec. 31

no sim

Tar River Poetry—2x

via email

Sept 15 - Nov. 1

no sim

Third Coast Review—2x

Sept 15 - April 30

**32 poems—2x

via email

all year

**The ThreepennyReview—4x       

 Jan 1 - June 30

Tiferet—1x

Sept  - December

Tinhouse Magazine—2x

September 1 - May 31

**Tuesday: An Art Project—2x       

Check website to see if they are taking submissions

Upstreet—1x

Sept 1 - March 1

Versal—1x

Sept 15 - Jan 15

Verse Wisconsin—4x

All year

Washington Square Review—2x

August 1 - Oct 15

Dec 15 – Feb 1

Weave Magazine—2x

April 15 - July 31

West Branch—2x

Aug 15 - April 15

Willow Springs—2x

all year

Women Arts Quarterly Journal—4x

all year  

Yalobusha Review—1x   

check website for submission dates   

**Yemassee—2x        

All year

The Dodge Poetry Festival 2012

The 2012 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival was held this past weekend, October 11-14, in Newark, NJ. This was the second time that Newark hosted the event. For many years the biannual event had been held at Waterloo Village in Stanhope, NJ. Two very different settings—one urban, the other country. This year's festival in Newark was bigger than the one in 2010 and offered a larger number of poets and one additional day.

As I did last time, I worked as part of the Dodge staff. However, this year the assignments changed, largely because Dodge was sponsoring the book tent on its own since Borders has gone out of business. So I had one 3-hour book tent assignment. Not my favorite, and between that and a 2-hour assignment on Sunday at the Information table, I got to hear less poetry than in the past. Still, I had a good time and enjoyed running into lots of friends I hadn't seen in a long time.

My favorite assignment of the weekend was hosting the Adrienne Rich tribute reading on Saturday. This was held in Aljira, a really cool art gallery. About 50 people turned up and many of them were very willing to come up onto the stage and read a favorite poem.

On Sunday one of my assignments was Storytelling with Queen Nur and Dwight James backing her up with music. Now, to be honest, I would never ever have chosen to attend that event. After all, I was there for poetry. However, it turned out to be really quite wonderful. Queen Nur sings, tells stories, talks, and adds just a bit of dancing. Dwight plays a wide variety of African instruments, mostly drums. His music is unobtrusive, always enhancing, never overwhelming the stories.

My camera work was not at its best and halfway through Saturday my battery went dead. But I managed to get a handful. I hope they give you a sense of the festival.

 Friday was Students Day—tons of students. They swarmed the book tent and bought lots of books. That was truly a beautiful thing to see. Praise to all the teachers who brought their students to the Festival! For many students this was an experience they will always remember. You, Teachers, gave it to them.

 Students browsing the books. This picture was taken during a performance segment so really does not give a good idea of how many kids were there.

 Oh! Look at this. Whose books could these be? Hm.

 This is the Main Stage in the Performing Arts Center. On Friday this was filled to capacity. The balconies were overflowing. I had to go up three floors to find a seat.

 Kahlil Murrill introducing Joseph Millar

John Murillo in a reading with Rachel McKibbens and Joseph Millar

 Queen Nur doing her thing

 Dwight James with his instruments

Queen Nur feeling the story

The Poet on the Poem: Matthew Thorburn

Matthew Thorburn is the author of two books of poems, Every Possible Blue (CW Books, 2012) and Subject to Change (New Issues, 2004). A third collection, This Time Tomorrow, is scheduled for release from Waywiser Press in 2013. He is the recipient of a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress, the Mississippi Review Prize, and two Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prizes. His poems have appeared in literary journals such as The Paris Review, American Poetry Review, Poetry, and Prairie Schooner. A native of Michigan, Matt has lived in New York City for more than a decade. Today's poem comes from Every Possible Blue.

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Still Life                                         

     —Pierre Bonnard

That he would go back
after hours to retouch
the ones hanging in the gallery—
he must have had an in
with the guards—to get it righter 
if never right, you've heard
before. How he'd revisit
the light—bring it up
or turn it down—just as I have
returned to this morning
all afternoon. They make me
hungry, these two pears
he must have hurried to paint
so she could eat. A few green ideas
about grapes. The apple
shows off its high bald head.
To be fascinated by fruit.
Not fruit, but light. Imperfect mirrors,
imitation mirrors. His broken
pinks and reds, green and
yellow mottle, this dash of white—
no, light—no, canvas
showing through. I almost catch
my face there, looking back.
I know this fruit. I've eaten it
all my life, though this basket's
new to me—a few brown twists
of vine, uncertain transport
but I'm moved. I'll say that.
Made to speak. Such
tenderness, his abiding
affection for anything touched
by light. And he needed
so little. A few pieces of fruit.
A window. The sky
trying on every possible blue.  


DL:  Tell us something about the impetus behind this ekphrastic poem. What compelled you to attempt to enter the painting, to repaint it with words?    

MT:  A few years ago, I took part in a weekend poetry workshop in Manhattan where we were given an assignment to complete during our lunch break: go find a place to eat and write, then come back with a new poem to share with the group. Faced with this deadline, I ducked into a nearby Chinese restaurant and turned—in a panic—to my go-to poetry prompt: write about art.

I like poems that emphasize visual details and enable you to really see things—colors, shapes, light and shadow—so writing about paintings comes naturally to me. Sitting in that restaurant and staring at my blank page, I thought of Pierre Bonnard, one of my old favorites, and his light-filled interior scenes. I remembered, too, this sort of famous story about him: he had a habit of going back to his paintings to add a little more color, make something lighter or darker, or change some detail he wasn’t happy with—even after they were hanging in galleries or shows. I remembered Jane Hirshfield has a poem that describes this painterly form of revising as “Bonnarding.” Since I was working from memory, my poem doesn’t match up exactly with a specific painting of Bonnard’s, but I tried to convey the feel of his work and some of my feelings about it. As I say in the poem, after looking at and thinking about his paintings, I was “made to speak.”   

DL:  I'm intrigued by the introduction of "she" in line 14. Why did you hold her back and then give her no further mention in the poem?  

MT:  There’s that place where all the wonderful ambitions of trying to express yourself creatively run up against the practical business of everyday life, and that’s a place that always interests me. Whatever musical phrase or clever line break I’m just about to get right as I revise a poem, dinner still needs to be cooked, the dishwasher emptied. I still have to go to work every day. Being aware of this friction is partly a way of staying grounded, and it makes the act of writing a poem that much more meaningful. (Tess Gallagher’s wonderful poem “I Stop Writing the Poem” is about this, and about much more than this.) I guess I was imagining the same was true for Bonnard too: as a painter he may have seen these pieces of fruit as colors and shapes to be explored in paint, but to Marthe, his wife—she’s the “she” I had in mind—they were apples and pears, there to be eaten. I hope a little note of thoughtful tenderness comes through, too, in the way he hurries his work along so she can have her lunch. 

That’s all a very roundabout way of answering your question. Marthe appears in many of Bonnard’s paintings. These paintings aren’t portraits exactly, but they wouldn’t be the same without her. I suppose I thought she could nonchalantly appear in my poem too, fleetingly but in a way that felt important to me for the ballast it provides. Otherwise for me the poem is mostly concerned with what a strange thing it is to be so focused on one activity—in this case painting, being fascinated by light—and to feel that obsessive urge to get it right on the canvas.

DL:  While you make only one brief reference to the "she," you make ample use of repetition. Light and fruit both appear four times. Then you repeat sounds as in the rhyme of right, white, and light. The same sound is echoed in the assonance of I, ideas, high, life, vine, abiding, sky, trying. Tell us how you crafted these musical effects.    

MT:  I appreciate you noticing the music of the poem, because that’s something I strive for as a writer and admire as a reader. I love rhymes and off-rhymes that fall within lines, as well as assonance, repetitions and echoes, and all the rhythmic effects you can produce with patterns of long and short lines, or by using phrases and fragments of sentences. I usually write and revise out loud when I’m working at home, so I can hear how lines sound. Of course I couldn’t do that in the restaurant, but surely did later on when typing up the poem and revising it. 

DL:  As I read this poem, I feel as if I'm witnessing a mind at work, reaching and stretching for what it wants to say. I think your use of syntax is responsible for this effect. There's the reversed order in the first sentence which covers seven lines, several fragments, several sentences broken by the use of dashes, and a few declarative statements followed by their negation, e.g., "To be fascinated by fruit. / Not fruit, but light." Was all of this intuitive or crafted?  

MT:  I love the way certain poems convey the sense of a mind at work, the poet working out her or his thoughts—saying something, hesitating, backtracking and correcting—as the poem moves forward word by word. That’s something I admire in my friend Stuart Greenhouse’s poems, for instance “Poppy-red.” And it’s something Elizabeth Bishop probably invented in her “Poem,” when she interrupts her own methodical, detail-by-detail description of a faraway landscape—it’s a poem about a painting—to exclaim, “Heavens, I recognize the place, I know it!” So I was definitely conscious of striving for a similar effect in different ways throughout the poem.

But there’s also the fact that I was on the spot there, with a short window in which to get my poem down on paper, so what shows through in the poem is also my effort to get to the heart of the thing.  

DL:  What made you choose the single stanza form?

MT:  I wrote the first draft of this poem quickly—for me, anyway—and so it felt like one long thought or breath. As I work on a poem I usually try different line breaks or stanza breaks until I find the form that feels right for that particular poem. Certain poems need some air and light to shine in between stanzas, to give the reader those pauses for breath or that little extra emphasis of a stanza break, as opposed to a line break. But here I wanted to hold the focus in this lingering moment, so it’s one long breath and then it’s done. Readers, please enjoy this recording of Matt reading "Still Life," along with some of Bonnard's paintings.

 

Poetry: An Introduction

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When I was a high school English teacher teaching poetry, it was a fantasy of mine that one day some other high school teacher would be teaching my poems. That's a fantasy that has happily come true several times. But I'm moving on and up to college now. My poem, Linguini, has been included in Poetry: An Introduction, a new college-level textbook from Bedford / St. Martin's.

At 864 pages, Poetry: An Introduction is a big book. Edited by Michael Meyer, this is the 7th edition of this book. It includes three different tables of contents: Brief Contents; Contents, which is much more extensive and includes poem titles and authors; and Thematic Contents for those who want to study poetry in thematic units. There is a wide range of poems, classic and contemporary.

The elements of poetry and forms and free verse are covered in the first eleven chapters. These are followed by close studies of four poets; a study of T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"; a case study of the Harlem Renaissance; and five thematic case study chapters.

The book covers how to critically read and write about poetry and includes a detailed section on how to write a poetry research paper and document it using MLA guidelines.

Poems are included throughout the book, along with follow-up questions, assignments, and prompts. There is also An Anthology of Poems.

New to this edition is an expanded number of online resources for both students and teachers, including access to video interviews with writers. Scattered throughout the book are brief pieces of advice from the poets whose poems are included. This new feature should be especially appealing to students.

Everything a teacher needs to teach poetry is contained in Poetry: An Introduction. In fact, there's enough to last several semesters.

Poetry and Gerbils

Poet and publisher Paul Zimmer has a terrific article in the Sept / Oct issue of Poets & Writers. He covers his work as a publisher of poetry books going back to 1967. During those years he worked for three different presses: University of Pittsburgh Press, University of Georgia Press, and University of Iowa Press. He talks about the arduous process of reading manuscripts, selecting winners, and notifying poets with either good or bad news. He also mentions that during his years as a publisher he never once charged a fee. He talks about the methods he used to make such work possible, a job that must be getting increasingly difficult with the "current overpopulation of American poets"—a condition he compares to a "gerbil farm gone bananas."

What Zimmer regrets about this proliferation of poets and poetry books is the loss of selectivity. There is simply too much. Ironically, in spite of a plethora of poetry books to choose from, way too few readers and writers of poetry invest in poetry books. Here's an excerpt from the article:

And yet Zimmer is not ready to give into despair. He adds, "I still feel poetry is the highest course for words, and that the spirit and impulse toward making poems is one of humankind's best chances toward possibly saving its hell-bent cantankerous butt." And he acknowledges that if he had it to do all over again, to work as a publisher and an editor, he would do it.

This all hit a chord with me. I have several times been asked by aspiring poets if I do mentoring (yes, I do). I ask the inquiring poet this question: "I assume that you're familiar with my work?" That question is a polite euphemism for "Have you bought any of my books and carefully read it or them?"

Too often the response to my question is some variation of this: "I've seen your work on the internet." When I ask what the person hopes to get out of being mentored, often the response is something like this: "I want to publish a book of my poems."

How can anyone possibly aspire to publish a book of poetry without first and for a long time avidly and regularly reading books of poetry? A poetry book is more than a bunch of poems. It's a collection of poems artistically arranged into some sensible order. An aspiring poet can learn about poem arrangement in a book only by reading books by other poets and studying carefully how it's done.

And one more thing: How can a poet expect other lovers of poetry to buy his or her book (should there ever be one) if he or she doesn't buy them? Does that make sense? Not to me, it doesn't.

The best teacher of poetry is a good poem. The best way to learn how to put a collection together is to study other collections. Aspiring poets are advised to invest in their education. Buy books of poetry. Support other poets. Otherwise, you might as well be raising gerbils.

Two Poetry Readings

Much as I hate to see summer approaching its end, it's exciting to have poetry season back again. Readings and festivals along with fall leaves.

I have two readings coming up and I hope that you can join me for one or both. The first will take me to the Jersey shore. The second will take me to Easton, Pennsylvania. Here they are.

Saturday, September 22

River Reads Series

reading with Rick Mullin

Red Bank Public Library

84 West Front St.

Red Bank, NJ

2:30 PM

Free and followed by an open mic

The above reading will be the first for this series in its new venue. This is a lovely library right in front of the ocean. Rick, by the way, lives in my same town. I wonder if there are more of our kind?


The next reading, at a festival, came about as a result of a cancellation. Gerald Stern was scheduled to read but cancelled, so I was invited to take over. Happy to do so. And to be joined by Ann E. Michael. Oddly, this reading is also along water.

Sunday, September 23

Riverside Festival of the Arts

reading with Ann E. Michael
Scott Park
Dell Amphitheater

Larry Holmes Drive

Easton, PA

12:00-1:30 PM

Reading, Q&A, Book Signing

This festival will also include a juried art show and music events.

Time, Creativity, and Productivity

The Devil's Plaything

Lately I've been hearing a number of poets complaining about their unproductive summer. There they were, many of them off from school jobs, with all that gorgeous time on their hands. They'd had exciting plans for lots of writing and lots of submitting. But now the summer's over and back to work they go—with big frowns on their faces because they somehow frittered away all that time and now find themselves with little or nothing to show. The folder is empty and the desk holds nothing. What went wrong?

I suspect that many of us are more productive when we have less time. I know that doesn't make sense, but it seems that a lot of time often means too much time. Then we get lazy. Because we have a bunch of time, it's just way too easy to put off that writing until tomorrow. Now all the tomorrows have been used up.

There's something about the crunch of time that forces us to be productive. When we have precious little time, what we have becomes more precious. We become better organized. It becomes easier to impose self-discipline. We find ourselves making use of snippets of time. We also become stressed and tense. Oddly, there's something about tension that's creative. Forces working in opposition to each other clash and sparks fly. Some of those sparks turn into flames.

There's something I've been noticing at Facebook that might also play a role in a poet's lack of productivity. The Games! I never got into Farmville or Mafia Wars, but I used to love all the word games. I also adored Bejeweled Blitz with its flashing lights. A year ago I found myself playing the games on a daily basis. I was playing rounds of games with other people. Some of those people challenged me to face-offs. I began to dislike several people who routinely beat me. I suspected several of those people of cheating.

But the worst part was frittering away huge chunks of my day. I became sort of obsessed. I'd sit down at the computer to check my email in the morning. Then I'd allow myself a few games. Then a few more. And a few more. When I was losing, I'd feel like I had to redeem myself. When I was winning, I wanted to top my best score. This morning time was my best writing time. I've known for years that my best head, my most creative head, is my morning head. But there I was using it up on those stupid games! After an hour or more at the games, I found myself feeling drained, numbed, cranky. I began to have days when my bad mood, a kind of depressed feeling, lasted all day.

One day I had a chat with myself and acknowledged that I suspected I was becoming addicted to the games. I didn't like that admission. I gave up the games, right then and there. Cold turkey. I've never played any of them again. Invitations to play get ignored. It wasn't hard. It really wasn't. My morning head came back and I began to write again. To return to productivity I had to figure out what was draining it. I had plenty of time. I just wasn't using it well.

What's your distraction?