9 All right, friendly readers: I need your help. I’ve finally got myself organized to send out some submissions, but I’m flipping through my bookcase-o-lit-mags and wondering:
What are the best journals for prose poems? I haven’t really dallied with this form before but notice that many journals don’t publish these at all, or at least not often. I’ve already got Sentence on my list.
Tell me your picks! And a big thanks in advance!
Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and SFPA’s Elgin Award, Field Guide to the End of the World. Her latest, Flare, Corona from BOA Editions, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She’s also the author of PR for Poets, a Guidebook to Publicity and Marketing. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and JAMA.
Anonymous
I’ve only got an older copy of the magazine, but I think Seneca Review might be a good place: guidelines and samples.
Mary
http://www.pantoum.org
Oliver de la Paz
Quarterly West has (had) a special section for “short-shorts.” They took a number of my pieces.
I’ve had luck with Third Coast, Cream City Review, Crab Orchard Review and elsewhere.
I’m finding nowadays that most journals run out of MFA programs take prose poems.
jeannine
Thanks Mary and Oliver for your help – these are great journals and a good list for me to start with!
Penultimatina
RHINO likes ’em just fine!
Steven D. Schroeder
Expect Sentence to take for-flipping-ever to respond, though it’s a good journal. I’ve seen a couple very good prose poems in Mid-American Review. Unpleasant Event Schedule took two of my poems and is a place I like a lot.
Eduardo C. Corral
I would second what Oliver said: most journals run out of MFA programs are open to prose poems. The Indiana Review runs an annual prose poem contest.
You might want to check out the acknowledgment page pf a book of prose poems to find some journals.
Felicity
Flipping through my Cranky, it appears to contain prose poeems. And a poeem by you, so they already recognize your undeniable genius. :p
jeannine
Thanks Mary for the Rhino reminder! And Steve for the notes on Sentence, Unpleasant Event Schedule, and MAR (who has some of my prose poems as we speak!)
Thanks to Eduardo for the tips – yes, I love Indiana, I’m just waiting til they start their reading period – they are on my list – and I did go through a couple of books with prose poems for ideas this weekend – including David Lehman’s prose poem anthology.
And Felicity – thanks for the reminder about Cranky – they are open to a lot of genre-bending pieces – short-shorts, flash fictions, prose poems, etc.
shanna
Cue is all prose poems, all the time.