Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but surely we’re going to get back to casual international travel again some day soon? The 10th chapbook in the Potcake series is now being mailed out from London, and I trust it augurs well for the happily peripatetic. As usual, the chapbook contains an assortment of the bright (D.A. Prince), the dark (Tom Vaughan) and the flippant (Max Gutmann), with everything in between, and all in rhythm and rhyme–and illustrated of course by Alban Low!
Now the Barbaras have begun to die, trailing their older sisters to the grave, the Helens, Margies, Nans—who said goodbye just days ago, it seems, taking their leave a step or two behind the hooded girls who bloomed and withered with the century— the Dorotheas, Eleanors and Pearls now swaying on the edge of memory. Soon, soon, the scythe will sweep for Jeanne and Angela, Patricia and Diane— pause, and return for Karen and Christine while Nancy spends a sleepless night again. Ah, Debra, how can you be growing old? Jennifer, Michelle, your hands are cold.
Marilyn Taylor writes: “The older I get, the more my poems seem to turn to thoughts of mortality, especially when I find myself reading the obituary pages in the Sunday paper. After having indulged this habit for several years (it’s something old people do, kids), I discovered that a reader-of-obits can often tell approximately how old the deceased was—especially in the case of a woman—at the end of her life, simply by noting her name. Women’s names have a strong tendency to go in and out of fashion over the course of several decades, albeit with a few exceptions—think “Catherine,” and the ever-popular “Elizabeth” and its many offshoots (although, oddly, “Betty,” now seems dated). I mulled over it for a few months and came up with the sonnet below. Sorry if your name is included; I have no dark motives.”
Marilyn Taylor, former Poet Laureate of the state of Wisconsin and the city of Milwaukee, is the author of six poetry collections. Her work has appeared in many anthologies and journals, including Poetry, Light, American Scholar, and Measure. She was recently awarded the Margaret Reid Prize for verse in forms. http://www.mltpoet.com/
When so many poetry magazines are one-or two-person operations, it is hard to know of all of them, harder still to sort through and find the ones that you would enjoy reading and, as a poet, would like to submit work to. How wonderful, then, when someone like Trish Hopkinson comes long to inform us of magazine openings and closings, of different editorial requests and requirements, and of calls for submission!
As a formal poet living in our current wasteland of unstructured material, I am especially grateful that she has put together a list of Where to Submit Formal Verse. Her list of 53 magazines is extremely useful, but it does have some drawbacks:
First, it (understandably) focuses on the Anglo-Canadian-American market. In today’s online world, such restrictions should not necessarily apply. I have had English-language verse published in Australia, India, Netherlands, Nigeria and Turkey. English is very much a global language, and not just in the areas of business and Hollywood.
Second, some of the more difficult prospects, but the most desirable, are not mentioned–for example Poetry Magazine and the New Yorker. Yet they publish just as large a proportion of formal verse as some of the others in her list. (For example, Marilyn Taylor is sometimes the only formal one of over 50 poets published in an issue of Verse-Virtual.)
And lastly, the list is unfortunately four years old. In the world of poetry magazines, this means many will have disappeared, many others will have arisen. The Rotary Dial, Sliptongue, Unsplendid… each unique, excellent in its way, but disappeared along with several others in her list.
But as, obviously, you start by looking at a magazine and its website and its samples and requirements before you submit, little time is lost in identifying the defunct. The list remains invaluable for finding well-established magazines that will publish formal verse.
Murder needs no formality of gats,
violin cases or fedora hats
or any other long-outdated memes.
Murder is merely social discord that’s
taken to interpersonal extremes.
Murder. Here we present victims ranging from the unidentifiably unknown to the rich and powerful, and from the time of the Emperor Constantine to the present day. It appears to be something with which we humans are permanently infected.
The poems–all formal, of course!–are as usual in a variety of forms. This chapbook contains sonnets, a double dactyl, quatrains, rubaiyat, parody and nonce forms. They were authored by Potcake newcomers A.M. Juster, Marilyn L. Taylor,LindaAnn LoSchiavo andFrank Hubeny, and old-timers Chris O’Carroll, Marcus Bales, Vera Ignatowitsch, Noam D. Plum,Michael R. Burch and myself. And powerfully illustrated, as always, by Alban Low.
For the price of a fancy greeting card you can, through the wonders of PayPal, get this 16-page chapbook online for £2.60 + £1.20 P&P to a UK or European address, or £2.60 + £2.20 P&P to a Worldwide address.
Or you might prefer to browse themes and poets here, and photos and bios here, and choose between poems on travel, or love affairs, or the working life… or relatives, or modern life, or poems to amuse and amaze. Life, after all, is more than just Murder!
Form in Formless Times 