January 2005 Archives

Mr. Christian Wiman
Editor
Poetry
Post Office Box 575
Mt. Morris. IL 61054-9982

Dear Mr. Wiman,

I recently received my renewal notice to POETRY and because you are a fine publication, I want to take a moment to tell why I will not be renewing. Take this feedback and do with it what you will, I realize it is impossible to please all the people all the time.

I subscribe to about twenty small press poetry magazine or zines as we like to call them. Some are so tiny they are nothing more the stapled zerox pages with a subscriber base of one hundred and others are perfect bound and with a circulation of over two thousand.

A few years ago I felt it was my duty to subscribe to POETRY. I was curious. I wanted to see the top of the mountain. I wanted to see what the best writers wrote. And for two years I read most or all of the issues you sent me. I looked into their pages and asked, "What makes this poem great?" "What makes this writer unique--exquisite?"

That said; I struggle to feel engaged with most of the work you publish. It does not blow my mind, frighten me, shock me or confound me. Yes, you have published writers who have touched me. But I find them so seldom in POETRY, that I wonder, why are they in POETRY?

I don't begrudge you the audience you have decided to serve. I'll call them purists for lack of a better word. After all academics need their journals too, but why have you chosen to serve such a tiny sliver of poetry? With an endowment in excess of one hundred million dollars, you can now fly where ever you like. You can safely spend five millions a year and never touch principle. You can champion and magnify this gift of poetry. Instead I see you doing so much for so few. What a shame!

But with the $35 I will not be sending to you, I will subscribe to Free Verse, Lummox, Bathtub Gin, Iconoclast, FUCK, Zen Baby and Poesy and maybe two or three other magazines because in them I find voices that shock me, move me, surprise me and make me proud to be a poet and reader of poetry. In them I find a collision of voices and views that I don't not find in POETRY. Will you please take time to formally talk to the editors of these small magazines? Listen to them.

If you like I will send you the names of twenty such editors. Editors who, like you, love poetry but who have been called to a vastly different river of words. They may not change how you orient POETRY or its content, but you will learn something you don't know now if you listen to them. At least you must listen.

Sincerely,

Charles P. Ries
charlesr@execpc.com
http://www.literati.net/Ries/

Just got word about a new zine, Backstreet Poets Quarterly, which is seeking poems and short fiction. BSPQ wants to read work that's alive amd human, work that rocks the boat, rather than classroom work or boring confessionals. Read the guidelines if you think BSPQ's purpose has merit. Submission deadlines are the 15th of December, March, June, and September.

The last two races I've run were 20Ks--the Snowball last Sunday and the Frostbite yesterday. You can look at the time chart below and see that I was almost eight minutes faster last Sunday. I'm somewhat surprised because yesterday was much colder (about 15 degrees at the start of the race) and I usually run much better in cold weather. But the course yesterday in Forest Park is hilly, whereas the course last Sunday was completely flat. Still, I don't think the difference in terrain would make that much of a difference. I think instead I've hit a runner's slump. Or it could be that I worked too much on speed last week, and my leg's were just worn out. What else would explain dropping from 10:30/mile to 11:19/mile? You'll even notice that the better time from the Frostbite 20K last week was slower than my half marathon time on December 18, which I ran at 10:13 mile. Next week's 25K should be telling. Hopefully, I'll do better, but maybe I shouldn't train so hard throughout the coming week.

Keep checking for the times!

So far the new year has been a soggy one. Over four inches of rain since the 1st. Enough rain for rivers to flood and lap over roads and bridges. Across the river in Illinois, a bus tried to drive through a flooded road, got stuck, and had to wait for rescue. Just now on the news was a story about a car that also tried to get through a flood. The car got stuck, the people in it crawled on the roof, one of them was swept away and presumably drowned, and the others spent the night huddled on the top of the car. A passerby saw them at dawn and called 911.

It just now started snowing. Much of the rain we had here in St. Louis was ice and snow to the west and north. But here it just now started snowing. Imagine all the snow there would have been if the temperature had been colder for the last four days. Four feet of snow. But the snow now is just a dusting. Nothing like a Buffalo lake effect. Nonetheless, I've moved the snow shovel from the garage to the back porch.