The fact that they didn't publish Betsy puts them off my list. Because I read one of the things they didn't publish, and it was superb.

But I expect they honestly didn't get it out of the pile until the subject matter really had altered in realtime.

Damn, the Atlantic, though! Keep aiming high, Betsy.

Wrod, that was what I wanted to say, but Consuela said it better.

(don't know Atlantic... Canadian ignorance?) I once submitted to this local snobby literarary type journal (I may have told this story before) and on the rejection letter they spelled my last name (a German name) completey wrong. My friend, however got it worse - his piece was called ''A Scar in the Attic'' (a dark piece about death) and they wrote ''A Star in the Attic'' for his rejection letter. We still joke about it making various broadway-style hand motions and mock tapdances.

Victor, I need your insight into the poetry market. I wrote a rhyme-and-meter poem about the late war. The Atlantic bounced it. One of my writers' group members suggested The Threepenny Review, but I don't think they print formal verse, do they?

Where should I go to find a market list for places that read (non-Hallmark) traditional poetry?

BHP, Threepenny has been known to take formal verse, on occasion.

The listing on writersmarket.com is actually quite good, although you have to pay $2.95 a month to use it, (best investment I ever made, though) it gives you access to their whole Poetry Market database.

I'd also suggest some of the places my friend Jerry Hicks recommends in his regular publishing column on poetix.net.

Oddly enough, I'm mostly out of the loop on the subject. I'm not writing much new poetry, and a lot of the older stuff is ending up in anthologies without much effort on my part. Which kind of freaks me a bit. Did just have a poem in the recent issue of Spillway, but I submitted it about two years ago.

a lot of the older stuff is ending up in anthologies without much effort on my part.

Praise indeed.

Praise indeed.

That, or just being bloody around too long, one or the other. (:

Seriously, though, I don't recommend wasting your time with the Atlantic and the like. They'd never admit it, but they're closed markets that rarely take work from anyone outside their tight clique. And they and the New Yorker pick poems based on length rather than quality, which they also never admit.

I have low opinions. Can you tell? Do like ThreePenny a lot, though.

Longer is better? Or the right column length to fit the page makes them happy?

That's really what I need to know right now -- who reads poets without an MBA, who prefers to buy other editors' successes, why the @#$@#$@#$@#$ formal verse is referred to as 'rime', which is either the stuff on your car window or the first half of 'rime royal', not that I have strong opinions or anything.

Longer is better? Or the right column length to fit the page makes them happy?

The latter, although shorter is generally better for those guys.

That's really what I need to know right now -- who reads poets without an MBA, who prefers to buy other editors' successes, why the @#$@#$@#$@#$ formal verse is referred to as 'rime', which is either the stuff on your car window or the first half of 'rime royal', not that I have strong opinions or anything.

Well, the best rule of thumb is to find a good bookstore (City Lights, for example) and to spend a couple hours browsing through journals. Don't immediately dissmiss the staple-bound ones, because a few of those are real gems. (Like Free Lunch, publishe by Ron Offen, who sneaks at least one real heavy hitter into every little staple-bound chapbook.)

Actually, Jerry's column probably is a good place to start. It's California-centric, but he lists a goodly number of journals, all of whom are pretty accessible.