Mags, Rags, and Blags

No links in today's post. Sunburns make me lazy.

Hey all,

Hope that the post-Ike gas price increase isn't hitting you too hard. I know you want some more mpgs in your browser. I recommend hydrogen.

So I need to get back up on the submissions ball. I hope that you've all got some nice narrative poems to work with. I know I do.

But where to submit? I've talked a bit about LochRav, OxfAm, and some houses -- but what other mags are ready to step out on a limb and publish poetry that doesn't suck?

Or, rather, poetry that people who aren't poets might actually want to read. I know that, in addition to OxfAm, the New Yorker, the Nation, the National Review, and the Christian Science Monitor all have poetry sections (i.e. poems for people who don't buy lit journals) but they generally only publish fairly short poems (I've never seen one run two pages). Anyone know of any others?

I mean, poetry journals are great and all -- but we know that no one reads them. A circulation of 1,000 -- when half of those are libraries and the other half are people who have already been (or want to be) published in the rag, what good is that? I suppose we can move toward web publishing, but (as far as I know) Strong Verse is the only online mag that actually is a paying market (and, though I could abuse my power as editor to throw up a bunch of work on Strong Verse, I think it might sully the rep a bit).

So we could try self-publishing.

I think the way to go may be what the online comics do (stop me if you've heard this):

publish regular/serial work
merch it up (woo hoo, t-sharts)
publish a book at the end

Just like the webcomix.

Think it would work?

Lemme know. That and good rags I don't know about.

Peax,
M