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.

Thank you so much!

No prob!

Hell, I just always assumed the New Yorker - which is pretty damned upfront with its "you mean there are people who don't choose to live here?" toffee-nosery - wouldn't be in any rush to accept anything outside their area code.

I didn't know that about Atlantic, though, Victor, and it's definitely something to remember.

Since we're talking about sending out stuff, I have a question.

I have a piece I wrote last summer and finished up recently. Just got some editorial comments back from two friends, and I'll be revising it this weekend. It's fictional, mostly, but it's odd and I don't know what to do with it.

It's the story of a multi-pitch rock climb in central New York. Second person, present tense, not much narrative line other than the experience itself.

I wrote it basically just to get across the physical/mental/emotional response of what it is like to be 200 feet in the air in a hanging belay while the ladybugs crawl across the cliff face and the turkey vultures spiral above you, wondering how long it'll take your partner to make the next gear placement.

Thing is, it's fictional in that I haven't climbed in this place for 7 years and that I made up the route, the pitches, the partner, the day. It's not fictional in that all the moves, the emotions, what I think and feel about climbing -- all that is real. In some ways it's intensely personal even though the reader never even learns the narrator's name.

So the question is, what do I do with this thing? It's about 7000 words, still needs some work, but... t shrugs helplessly

who reads poets without an MBA

I'm just popping in briefly to say that this typo (it is a typo-- you weren't being tongue-in-cheek, right?) is rather charming, in a scary way. If business degrees were the next thing necessary to publish poetry....

Uh, anyway, though, I'd say that from what I've always heard people say, MFA degrees don't really do anything to advance your career, per se. They're more about getting better as a writer through that practice, and networking. And one from the University of Smalltown is much different from one from, la, Columbia. ITO reputation-boosting. I really wouldn't weight them very much.

Ooops. Yup, it's a thinko.

I was actually shorthanding MFA for networking. If an editor only publishes poets s/he knows through the poetry network (including people who overlap in workshops and MFA programs and such), then there's not much point in submitting to that editor. Same as if an editor doesn't like limericks, don't bother sending them there. (Can you publish a limerick? Do you want to?)