Dreaming in Iambic Pentameter

The Raintown Review finally came out. I haven’t yet got my copy/ies–how many copies is an Associate Editor with 2 poems and an essay in the journal entitled to anyway?–but I know because various formal poetry heavyweights have commented either directly or indirectly. Everyone likes it so far, which is a damn good thing, because I worked bloody hard on it (as did Tom Kerrigan and John Oelfke, of course.)

Which brings me to other journals I work bloody hard on–the Barefoot Muse and 14×14, both of which, of course, are online only.

I’m only sporadically attacking my TBM inbox right now, because there are months until the reading period closes. 14×14 is another matter–that comes out bimonthly, which means that I and the other panelists must read and rate 50-100 sonnets every 2 months. This morning I rated Batch 2 for this period, which was coincidentally 14 sonnets.

They were all terrible. No, I lie. One of them wasn’t terrible–it just wasn’t very good. Now, okay, I’m picky about my sonnets. You can read all about my pickiness here, here and here.

It seems to me that one of several factors is responsible for the terribleness of the sonnets I spent several hours reading this morning. There is no doubt in my mind that there are some fine poets writing excellent contemporary sonnets right now–I hope I’m one of them. But do I send my best sonnets to online journals? Well, apart from the fact that I’m too intimately involved with the two best (I’m modest, too) online formal poetry journals to send them work, no, of course I don’t. I save my best sonnets to enter the Howard Nemerov sonnet contest (And yes, Mr. Crawford, I mean to win it one year!) Any sonnets I write which are unsuitable for the Nemerov are destined for the inboxes of print journals–not necessarily Measure, which is so intimately associated with the Nemerov that if a sonnet doesn’t rate the final list there it’s hardly worth sending it to them.

I currently have sonnets sitting out at The Lyric, Rattle, Poetry (Ha! Nothing like a bit of pointless optimism!) Hudson Review, Hopkins Review and the Alabama Literary Review. Of course my current philosophy is geared toward getting into reputable print journals rather than online journals (apart from my favorite Apple Valley Review, and Leah really prefers free verse) so I tend not to submit sonnets to ‘zines at all unless solicited.

But I have noticed, and here I am going to be very careful not to mention any names, that some poets (who should probably know better) occasionally send me at the Barefoot Muse work that I can easily tell is not their best work. I don’t blame them for this–it’s a version of the prioritizing by hierarchy I do myself. But I won’t accept poems just because I’ve seen the poets’ names in the kind of journals I like to appear in myself. I send them polite personal rejections and ask them to send me something else. If they want to be in the Barefoot Muse, sub standard work is not going to cut it. Fortunately tastes differ, and as everyone knows I welcome edgy work which might be too raw for mainstream print, so I get plenty of excellent material to choose from for each issue.

The great thing about 14×14 is that all submissions are read blind, so if well-known poets are sending us their poorer sonnets, there is no way that work is going to squeak through simply because we know their names.

Now of course it is also possible that this month’s sonnets are so bad because all the good poets are on vacation, email submission is just so darn easy, and sonnets so hard to write well.

Either way, I’m imploring you, if you’re reading this and you have good sonnets lying around–perhaps ones that are a little R-rated for the Evansville brigade–send them to 14×14 soon! I’d like to give something more than a 5 in the next batch.

A couple of acceptances to report. “Emily Bronte Begins Wuthering Heights” finally found a home in The Delaware Valley Poets Anthology, which will be good for my local profile.

Also, remember this post? The Richard Wright sonnet came back, so I messed with it and emailed it to Jay Rubin at Alehouse. Well, the good Mr. Rubin got back to me in two hours to tell me that he “loved” the sonnet! We had a little exchange about whether the n word should be printed in full in the epigraph, (It’s a direct quote from Wright himself) and decided yes. It’s not meant to be a comfortable poem.

But it IS the first poem I have written on race relations to be accepted for publication, and that in itself is something worth celebrating.

Today Envision Gymnastics held a yard sale as a fundraiser for the new exercise floor. In my capacity as Parents’ Association President naturally I was there from the first setting out of the tables at 7, to the dismantling at 2. We raised $1200, which is excellent. However, I am now tired past all reason, sunburned and not filled with love toward the primitive and grasping form of life known as the veteran yard saler. This is why:

“No, I’m not selling the clothes rack. I need it for the clothes, and anyway, it isn’t for sale.”

“The girls’ denim skirts are $1 each. Oh, you want to pay 50c? They’re in really good condition. Oh, you’ll give me $2 for 3?”

“You want the entire tray of cookies? That’s 36 packs at 50c per pack. How about $12? Oh, you’ll give me $10?”

“It’s sterling silver. That’s why it’s $4. Oh, you want me to take $1 off because it needs cleaning?”

“No, the jewelry isn’t all 50c. Some prices are marked on. See, right there below the original price tag which says $59? That’s where the $2 price is marked.”

“By all means, come back at 2 and if it’s still here you can have it for 50c.” (She didn’t and it wasn’t…)

“Yes, I really am selling this pair of pants, new with the price tag saying $16 still on, for $3. No, I won’t take $1. Those ones over there, which have been worn and don’t have their tags, are $1.”

Sigh. Ah well, it was in a good cause.

Issue #7, Summer 2008 is Online!

The seventh issue of my e-zine devoted to formal & metrical verse is online as of June 1st. I reviewed over 900 poems for this issue, and chose just 31 poems from 27 poets including our featured poet, the late Ray Pospisil, repeat contributors Quincy Lehr, Rick Mullin, Cathy Chandler, Kathryn Jacobs, Maryann Corbett, Penny Harter, David Landrum and Chris O’Carroll.
Please stop by and Visit the Barefoot Muse

Call For Submissions, Issue #8

Editorial deadline for the Winter 2008 issue will be November 15th. Please send 3-6 poems in the body of an email to submissions@barefootmuse.com. Your email title should be SUB:Barefoot Muse. You may also mail your poems to PO Box 115, Hainesport, NJ 08036. Poems in formal structures most welcome. Fewer than 40 lines preferred. Previously published poems will be considered although unpublished work is preferred. Simultaneous submissions are accepted with notification. I will not open attachments except by prior arrangement. Please note: do NOT send me free verse. The Barefoot Muse will only publish poems which use forms or meter (rhyme is optional).

The Barefoot Muse will also consider photographs submitted as jpeg files, essays on meter and its use in poetics, and reviews of metrical works/poets. Submit as above, or query to editor@barefootmuse.com. No more than 2000 words. Please submit no more than once in each reading period unless invited to do so.

Editor’s Update

These are the latest places you can find my work:
E-ZINES – Currently online at 14 By 14, Literary Mama, Apple Valley Review, Lucid Rhythms and Umbrella. An interview is forthcoming in the June issue of Wordgathering.
PRINT – Mad Poets Review, US1 Worksheets, Measure. Forthcoming in Salamander, the Atlanta Review, Raintown Review and The Harvard Review.

Some poems and my upcoming readings are available on my personal website . I am now also the Associate Editor of the Raintown Review.
I hope everyone has a wonderful Summer!

Editor – Anna Evans

We endeavor to keep our mailings to an absolute minimum, covering only our readings and very exciting news. We’ll try not to spam you, or send you word of our every movement. If you’d like to be removed from this mailing list, please reply to this email with the word “Remove” in the subject line. We apologize for any inconvenience.

I wanted to bring readers’ attention to one of the comments that was made on my earlier post “An Understandable Dearth: Unpublishable & White.” A reader noted that the next issue of Alehouse is focusing on African-American poets.

Now, I’m not one to sell you a pig in a poke, so I did some investigating on your behalf. It is true that Duotrope no longer lists Alehouse as one of its markets, giving as its reason that unsolicited submissions are only welcome via a fee-based contest. However, I contacted Editor Jay Rubin and he responded promptly and politely, explaining that this choice was mainly because the journal was not equipped to handle the volume of unsolicited submissions they would otherwise receive. (As Barefoot Muse editor I can wholeheartedly understand this, and I’m sure print journals receive even more!)

Clearly Mr. Rubin does respond to queries regarding submissions outside of the fee-based contest, and in his response to me he encouraged me to send him 3-5 poems dealing with the theme of African-American poets and their poetry. I have two that might be suitable–a sonnet about Richard Wright, and a poem responding to a Gwendolyn Brooks poem. Both are currently being considered by other journals, but if and when they come home to me I plan to send them to Alehouse, and I would encourage others to follow the same route.

Meanwhile Rattle also has an issue on the horizon which will contain a tribute to African-American poets. Note: this one will presumably NOT be accepting poems by white poets on the subject of African-American poetry. Comfort yourself with the thought that another upcoming issue will be a tribute to formalists!

I also wanted to get in a plug for a wonderful new(ish) second hand book store that I visited on Friday, Second Time Books. For my local readers, you can find it in Rancocas Woods on the corner of the little square plaza by the small parking lot. Unlike many secondhand book stores it is bright, clean, and well organized. They’ve also agreed to save the hide of the QND Poets by hosting our reading on June 13th, when regular venue The Daily Grind turned out to be unavailable.

So, if you live in the area, I’ll see you there. 7 p.m. Come early to browse the shelves!

Today I enjoyed my favorite part of running an online literary journal–the part where I sit down surrounded by copies of all the poems I have either accepted or am holding for second review, and I piece together the actual content of the next issue. I’m often asked what I look for when I’m doing this. In other words, why do poems get rejected at second review stage?

First and foremost, poets should understand that if I am holding their poem for second review it is good enough to be in the journal. I received over 900 poems for this issue, of which I accepted 8 outright and held a further 29 for second review. (I accept poems outright if I simply love them, and feel they would fit in any issue of the journal.) Two of those held were withdrawn, which is, of course, a risk of this strategy.

The main reason poems get rejected at second review is (and I know I’m repeating myself) that I get too many sonnets. Of those remaining 27 poems for review, 12 were sonnets. Of the 9 poems I rejected, 6 were sonnets. I love sonnets! But I don’t want TBM turning into a sonnet journal. There’s 14 By 14 for that. The next issue of TBM has several nonce and blank verse pieces, a rondeau, a sestina, a triolet, a pantoum, a villanelle, a ghazal, and several of the popular light verse forms.

Also, if I’ve held two poems from one poet, I rarely publish both of them, unless they are short light verse pieces. (There are exceptions to this, naturally.) 2 of the 9 rejected poems would have been the second poem by an accepted author.

The final rejected poem was simply a case where I had two very similar pieces on very similar subjects. Then it does come down to my own subjective opinion on which is better (which is not to say that the other one wasn’t good.) Nepotists take note: I ended up rejecting the poem by the contributor I know personally. Them’s the breaks.

I do not, as I have been accused of in the past, take any account of gender in making these decisions. I actually count up my probable gender ratio AFTER I have made my decisions and sent off my emails, once I have placed the poems onto the main contents page of the journal. In the upcoming issue, however, I’m pleased to say I’ve got a better balance than before. Out of the 26 poets, 14 are male and 11 female.

But the most vitally important thing is to feel that I have created the best issue I could from the poems I received, so that readers can either dip in and read poems individually on the basis of title or author, or sit down and read the whole thing from virtual cover to cover.

That’s what an Editor does.

You can find several very different poems of mine newly online this week. Over at Lucid Rhythms there’s a lewd sonnet called “Clandestinia” alongside a piece of light verse, “Bachelorette Desdemona Discusses Her Final Choice.” Then, my friends at Literary Mama have published the free verse piece “To My Daughter After a Fight.”
I’m being interviewed for the June issue of Wordgathering, which should be interesting. Oh, and I am now officially the Associate Editor of the Raintown Review. So, in addition to making the final decisions on the second review poems for The Barefoot Muse, I also have a bunch of submissions to filter for that journal.
Busy, busy, busy.

You can read a previously unpublished sonnet of mine, The Turn up at 14 By 14, along with a short prose piece regarding my sonnet preferences. It should go without saying that the rest of the issue is also excellent, with pieces by previous Barefoot Muse contributors Carol Taylor, Maryann Corbett, Chris O’Carroll, Catherine Chandler, David Landrum, R. Nemo Hill and Kathryn Jacobs.

Oh, and I discovered that Salamander actually pay for published poems! $30! It’s good to feel valued, even if it won’t do more than cover my next splurge at Amazon!

I’ve always loved science fiction, and one sub-division of that genre has consistently appealed to me. It doesn’t have a name so I’ll christen it the Transit type, after the first novel of the kind that I read when still a child, by one Edmund Cooper. Better known examples of Transit sci-fi would be the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, by Stephen Donaldson, and Restoree by Anne McCaffery. Basically, in Transit sci-fi, the hero (or heroine) is whisked away, often by undisclosed means, to a different planet/ an alternative universe/ another time.

One of the last writers included in the NAofAAL is Octavia Butler, who writes speculative fiction. The anthology includes a short story by her–I think it was called “Bloodchild”–which impressed me hugely, so when I returned the Norton to the library yesterday, i decided to check out one of her novels, Kindred. Wow!

In Kindred a late twentieth century black woman called Dana is whisked away by undisclosed means to ante-bellum Maryland, where her purpose appears to be to protect her white ancestor, accident prone plantation owner’s son, Rufus Weylin, until he manages to begin her family line. This is not only a rocking good story, but the issues and history raised are provocative and fresh. Dana’s white husband Kevin gets trapped for five years in the time period, for example, which causes him all sorts of issues. I was glad of the background from the anthology, as I wouldn’t have got all the references before reading it, but you wouldn’t need to know any of that to enjoy the book.

This is the kind of book that people should be ashamed to pigeon-hole as genre fiction. The good news is, she’s written at least nine other books! Happy day!

I just finished the Norton Anthology of African American Literature. It’s been a journey (4 weeks!) and I feel both saddened and enriched. I am saddened because there are still no easy answers to the impossible question of what white people should do, and how should we behave, in the presence of the enormity of our past. I still believe that reading across a broad cultural basis can only help, all the time dreading, nevertheless, that people of both ethnicities view me as unnatural, smug and self-righteous for following this path. (Stand up: the two white women who, upon seeing the NAofAAL on my kitchen table asked me WHY I was reading it.)

I have always personally sought understanding through literature in a way that may not necessarily work for everyone. There are other ways to engage, but engage we (white people) must. Nothing has been solved. Loudly proclaiming you “don’t see color” is only an option if you are white, and anyway, it probably isn’t true–you would just like it to be. It’s easier than dealing with the swirling tides of contradictory feelings that actually arise when, for example, a young black man dressed in the youth fashion–long white tee shirt, baggy jeans at the hips, baseball cap–approaches you on a dark street in Philadelphia late at night.

Enough of this. Onward and upward. Next stop: Southern Road by Sterling Brown.

Also some good news: Salamander have taken my poem “Worker” for a future issue.