Comments on: In Praise of Online Journals

By: Leland Jamieson

Leland Jamieson — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 23:11:00 +0000

If it hasn’t been mentioned already, http://www.duotrope.com/index.aspx maintains a continuously updated directory of online journals and ‘zines you may wish to utilize. It is more convenient than most because it has a screening and sorting utility that makes the search efficient with your time.
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By: Alicia (A.E.)

Alicia (A.E.) — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 07:42:24 +0000

An article from Slate on the death of e-mail…
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By: Simmons Buntin

Simmons Buntin — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 21:12:30 +0000

Another to add to the list: Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments, which publishes two theme-based issues per year and receives somewhere over 100,000 visits per issue.
We’re celebrating 10 years online with a reading in New York City on January 31 at Cornelia Street Cafe. If you’re in town (and I guess half the writing world will be, what with AWP), consider joining us!
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By: Robert Schwab

Robert Schwab — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 17:52:38 +0000

also The Wazee Journal, out of Denver, at http://www.wazeejournal.org
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By: Halvard Johnson

Halvard Johnson — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 02:55:11 +0000

Here are a couple you might want to add: Hamilton Stone Review (I edit the poetry for this one, which is just about to put online its 13th issue; it does three a year). You can find it at http://www.hamiltonstone.org.
Another is Salt River Review, the editor of which is James Cervantes. It’s found at http://www.poetserv.org/,
Thanks for asking.
Halvard Johnson
halvard@earthlink.net
halvard@gmail.com
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By: Mike Young

Mike Young — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 17:28:17 +0000

Here are some more online poetry journals–new, old, small, big, and elsewise–not listed in the PF links page:
Realpoetik
NOÖ Journal
Notnostrums
Juked
elimae
Idiolexicon
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By: Don Share

Don Share — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 12:14:43 +0000

I’d be sorry to see books getting replaced by electrons, because as physical artifacts they tend to stick around against the odds. Most copies of Pound’s Active Anthology were destroyed in wartime bombing – yet you can still find one online in a matter of minutes. Which illustrates how both the internet and books can, and will, continue to coexist. The examples of Stevens’ Harmonium, just about all of Niedecker’s books, and Bunting’s – just to name some poets discussed here in the recent past – were not “needed” until decades after they were printed; if the internet facilitates their being read now, the fact is that those long-unwanted books survived into the electronic age, We need, in other words, to print more than just what is wanted. Use of electricity is arguablly just as ungreen as cutting down trees, too! Seriously, from Gutenberg on, books have survived not just as texts, but as real objects taking their place somehow and miraculously in the world. I hope that continues as long as writing does.
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By: Crafty Green Poet

Crafty Green Poet — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 12:12:58 +0000

I think its great to see lots of online journals, though would be sad to see the total demise of paper journals. I edit an online journal in blog format: http://boltsofsilk.blogspot.com.
I’ll come back later and follow the links you already have to other online journals.
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By: Didi

Didi — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 09:17:32 +0000

Hi – I am just responding to a comment above that mentions that the internet will never replace books. I believe this statement is not true. The internet has already started replacing books. The surge of new writers of poetry is due to the internet. More readers of poetry are learning about these writers because of the internet. And perhaps the internet will not replace books in the lifetime of the person who wrote such nonsense above but I do hope that I see the internet replace many books and trees before I die. I hope to see more and more people take advantage of IPODS and SONY READERS and downloading their poetry and novels to these as they become more accessible and easier to use with a wider range of books to download to. Also we need to take a look at the opposite side of the coin because of the internet more books are being printed. Hence PRINT ON DEMAND. Which facilitates the need to have printed what is wanted and presses do not have to have books sitting on shelves that will never be purchased.
Anyway- I could go on and on but I will not. I have an online magazine that is waiting for me and kids upstairs still sleeping this Sunday morning. Off to make myself some Bustelo.
Didi Menendez
MiPOesias Magazine
http://www.mipoesias.com
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By: bill knott

bill knott — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 19:32:32 +0000

a couple years ago i discovered there were 3 or 4 plagiarist sites each with about 50 of my poems posted, without my permission or input . . . this was so irritating and irremediable that i started my own blog in order to plagiarize myself . . . my copyright’s defunct if any online venue can reprint my work without my sayso . . . if writers have no control over the reproduction of their work, what then . . .
there’s also the question of worth, the paradox of value: if my books can be downloaded free from my
blog (and they can), if all the poems I’ve written over the past four and a half decades can be read on the screen at my blog (and they can), if i present my work there for open perusal and propagation, doesn’t that diminish it? nothing is got for nothing, to quote Stevens . . . if one wants to read Jennifer Moxley’s poems, one has to pay money for her printbooks. . . . ergo? as for online poetry and the flood of blogbards doesn’t Gresham’s Law promise my bad will drive out your good . . .
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By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 15:43:03 +0000

Well, there is an argument to be made against RSS if you’re concerned about copyright violation: in a nutshell, RSS “scrapers” make it easy for spam blogs to find and reproduce snippets of text containing certain keywords, all to try and game Google and other search engines and get eyeballs on their ads. A lot of bloggers get pretty exercised about this, though I personally don’t see it as a problem – it’s not like someone else is claiming your work as their own. But I imagine it was considerations like this that led Poetry Daily to introduce an RSS feed for their news column, but not for the main content.
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By: Simon DeDeo

Simon DeDeo — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 15:14:38 +0000

Dave –
Your enthusiasm for this sort of thing is matched by our architect Irwin; I actually have been conservative in the past and semi-vetoed RSS for absent. But I’ve come right around and our bells and whistles should be pretty X-treme in issue three.
As for multimedia, an excellent place is Nicholas Manning’s Continental Review. You can also “subscribe” to their channel to get updates over e-mail or RSS.
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By: Vivek Narayanan

Vivek Narayanan — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 05:49:34 +0000

Don: HOOORAY!!!
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By: Jilly Dybka

Jilly Dybka — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 04:15:38 +0000

no tell motel http://www.notellmotel.org publishes 52 poets per year x 5 poems by each poet
tiny words http://tinywords.com/ publishes 1 haiku daily
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By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 01:31:18 +0000

I’m managing editor of a newish online literary magazine, qarrtsiluni. I want to second Alicia’s point:

I think on-line journals have occasionally suffered, too, from trying to reproduce print journals and not taking advantage of the different conditions afforded by the internet. Why still come out once a quarter, for instance, instead of putting up new poems as they are accepted? In that sense Poetry Daily and Verse Daily are using the internet more creatively and effectively.

It does baffle me that most online magazines still release their material in massive dumps, and don’t have RSS and subscribe-by-email options (even Poetry Daily fails in this last regard). Also, I think more literary magazines should consider taking advantage of the increased opportunities for interactions among contributors and between contributors and readers. Finally, I think The Cortland Review sets a great example for the rest of us by emphasizing one thing that print media can’t do at all: audio recordings. If we really want to increase the online audience for poetry, I think text will have to be supplemented with more audio, and maybe even video (though personally I’d rather listen than watch). In this way, poetry online has a real opportunity to return to its roots as an oral artform.
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By: Don Share

Don Share — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 00:13:49 +0000

Actually, Vivek, and everyone assembled, we are indeed planning to make the whole of Poetry magazine online. Right now, we’re addressing the logistics – nobody here needs convincing, I assure you!
It’s good to know, meanwhile, that there’s enthusiasm for seeing more of the magazine online – and you’ll see some very big changes in our webspace by about the first of the coming year, so stay tuned!
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By: bill knott

bill knott — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 20:44:44 +0000

speaking of mediocre verse flooding the web, all my poems are posted on my blog for free access and download . . .
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By: Simon DeDeo

Simon DeDeo — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 19:46:05 +0000

Robert — given the current poetry structure, it’s nearly impossible for even the most prolific to make a significant part of their income from publication of actual poems (book reviews are different.) I don’t know of any magazine (other than Poetry — well done!) that pays enough for a poem to compensate for the author’s time at anything approaching minimum, let alone livable, wage.
These days it would probably make more sense for poets to pay for publication as we do in the sciences, given that most use the system to support their academic careers — I know I have to pay (out of grants, natch) $500 after acceptance to get my work printed in Physical Review Letters. Although that’s waived in case of hardship.
If you think paying for publication is crazy, it’s the case that most “younger” poets trying to break in with a first book spend close to $1k of their own money submitting work to “contests” that demand an entry fee. I have my little rant about this, but the guy with the shepherd’s crook is about to pull me off stage…
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By: Charles Jensen

Charles Jensen — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 18:25:57 +0000

I started an online poetry journal last year. I choose an editor in a specific city or region and then have them select five poems by seven poets who live there; the editor also writes an essay on that place’s community and submits a list of poetry- and community-related links as a resource guide.
It’s called LOCUSPOINT and it’s at http://www.locuspoint.org.
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By: Robert Schwab

Robert Schwab — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 18:20:00 +0000

This is an important discussion, but one important point has been left out of it.
Are poets published in online journals being paid for their work?
And are they being paid more than in copies of the journal? Which, because it’s online, is even less valuable than a printed copy of a journal where work is published.
My biggest beef with poetry right now, and I think it goes to the quality issue (gatekeepered or not), is that poets essentially must turn their work out for free.
I think poetry is a wonder, just like all the rest of us, but it is also writers’ work, and poets ought to be compensated for their work, and for the pleasure, beauty and inspiration they bring to their readers.
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By: Don Share

Don Share — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 14:52:31 +0000

Text… book and/or electrons… is the medium the message anymore or not??
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By: Vivek Narayanan

Vivek Narayanan — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 02:32:19 +0000

Rigoberto: Right on! And THANK YOU for the links to your work and the pointers to online magazines. Reading poetry online (while I really don’t like doing it– my eyes still don’t “grab” a poem so well off the screen) is the only way that I, sitting here on a foggy Delhi morning, earning a salary that eventually comes from the Indian ministry of education, can keep up with contemporary world poetry. I can’t afford to import books on a regular basis, nor can I afford to subscribe to magazines overseas.
In India, even the smallest town has cybercafes where one can surf for as little as 20 rupees (less than half a dollar) an hour. This means that using the internet is feasible even for lower middle class (and some working class) Indians who don’t own a computer. Of course, this is only in Asia, and we mustn’t make the mistake of assuming global connectivity. In Africa, it is still very expensive and difficult to get internet access. But that will change, hopefully, with the rise of cellphone technologies.
Which brings me to the only question that your post and all these comments lead to: why, for god’s sake, doesn’t the Poetry Foundation put up the whole of Poetry Magazine up online? It’s the only thing that makes sense. It’s NOT a question of print vs. online, as the print magazine can CONTINUE as it is. Those people who can afford to subscribe to it or who can access it in libraries will continue to do so; a whole new group of readers will discover it online and then go on to subscribe to the print version after having read and enjoyed a few issues; a third group of people will only read it online, but will tell more people about it. The global (as you say) readership for this already well-known magazine would increase EXPONENTIALLY if all of it were to go online. I’m willing to bet that Harriet already has more readers than Poetry Magazine will ever have if it’s going to be stuck in print.
There really is no excuse, I’m predicting that if all of Poetry goes online then subscriptions to the print magazine will, in the long run, increase (see below). If, by some unlikely chance, the subscriptions were to fall, then one would begin to save on printing costs! What exactly is PF afraid of? That the prestige of Poetry Magazine would be compromised if all of it were to go online? Please.
It’s the third option that’s playing out, people. Print AND online versions. The place where I work in Delhi puts out a publication called the Sarai Reader (see http://www.sarai.net/publications/readers ) which is available both as free pdfs online (click on “more” for any reader) and a stylish print volume, distributed in the US by Autonomedia. What we find is that, in parts of the erstwhile “third world” people tend to read and download the book online, but especially in parts of Europe and the Americas, people check out the book online and then order the print version– because they prefer to read it that way and can afford to do so. So, on a global level, putting everything up online has meant increase sales of the Sarai Reader, not otherwise.
Im slightly embarassed to do so, but at this point I must plug for an online magazine of international literature (though based in India), just in its first issue, Almost Island, that I help to edit: http://almostisland.com/ . The first issue is all prose (although this includes prose poetry) but from the second issue onwards, we will be carrying verse, including translations of Indian poets. To join the newsletter and hear about updates and new issues, write to editor@almostisland.com .
Well… I’m afraid I wont be able to enjoy the brand new issue of Poetry magazine. But, even better, I can have my daily dose of Harriet!
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By: Simon DeDeo

Simon DeDeo — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 22:36:30 +0000

And as for the discussions about poets being afraid of publishing work that’s permanently accessible, I would also hope these same poets are sending only their poems out for consideration, not their crappy writing exercises. There’s a difference. And a poem is a poem.
I mean, this is true, but then again there’s a reason we read edited journals — because poets are poor judges of the significance of their own work. And editors make mistakes; indeed, I’d say that editors make mistakes more often than they succeed. Some kind of expiry date on poems sounds quite nice actually — if they hit the mark, someone will have preserved them elsewhere. At least, that’s how Western culture has handled this question up until the age of mechanical reproduction.
That said, I don’t see the difference between online and off in terms of quality — just snobbery. Probably the best journal of them all is Jacket. It’s the place to beat, IMO, if you are trying to publish something in the avant gardy tradition.
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By: scott malby

scott malby — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 19:33:07 +0000

Today, electronic manipulation imitates text but what is text? I would attribute to it as having a quality of containment inside itself that is able to cross different platforms. The problem is that we are partially blinded by what we know as we describe new realities in old terms. The merging of technologies across platforms is described in terms of what went before…what we are used to. The book can’t deal well with sound and smell and taste but we are quickly approaching a time when cross-technologies can and will. The poem will change as we know it. One way will be in terms of passive mentation or reading incorporating a new physicality and participatory element on the part of the one undergoing the experience who interacts in a way with the specific text of poems that somehow changes the poem as well as the experience. We will be less focused on “book” and more on text. We will be less focused on “poet” and more on “artist”. Books will always be around but not so much surrounding us. The library on the other hand will radically change in terms of its historic function as will our current concept of the poetic journal. Neither the library, the literary journal or the poem will become extinct- just accessed, approached, experienced, and understood differently.
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By: Rigoberto

Rigoberto — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 11:41:35 +0000

On quality control: I hear what folks are saying, and it’s absolutely true–more mediocre poetry is finding its way to “publication” online, whether it’s a journal or through the countless blogs out there. But as a book reviewer, I will argue that mediocre poetry also finds its way into print, so let’s try not to make a blanket statement since, last time I checked some of the online journals listed above, many of them have editors. So it’s not like poets can simply post their material without someone evaluating the poem first.
But folks are forgetting one important benefit of online journals: it can be read globally. Last I checked, even some of the big gun publishers don’t distribute their poetry books outside of the U.S. But online journals do. And the English-reading audience lives all over the world. Perhaps people can get off their U.S.-centric chairs for a second and recognize how valuable this is in terms of access to contemporary poetry. And are American poets finding online journals in other countries? How else would many of us connect with writers writing in English otherwise, or even with writers getting translated and published online?
And as for the discussions about poets being afraid of publishing work that’s permanently accessible, I would also hope these same poets are sending only their poems out for consideration, not their crappy writing exercises. There’s a difference. And a poem is a poem.
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By: Phillip Harvey

Phillip Harvey — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 21:18:20 +0000

Who should we fear?
Online journals, or online poets?
I prefer holding a book to viewing a laptop every time. But I travel a lot and have happily embraced the internet as a source of literature. It’s sensible and convenient. It’s so easy, in fact, to read and publish things online that it seems mediocre writers have flooded the market with their cud; half-digested, pungent and of very little nutritional value.
This is, of course, a double-edged sword. The ease of online publication opens the door to good writers too. But, is that really an advantage? Or, do even the good writers get lazy? I find myself increasingly sympathetic with Donald Hall’s assertion in his (online!) essay “Poetry and Ambition” that the aspiration to greatness, and consequently the practice of revision, is the worst victim in this climate of easy publication, both online and in print.
The climate’s greatest beneficiary, however, seems to be literacy. You see, I’m something of an optimist. And I continue to believe, no matter how many people boast in their stupidity, that intelligent people are still reading. There is, after all, myself.
If you are a reader who values valuing the valuable, you might check these out:
http://www.poemhunter.com (legal and free e-books of too many classics to count)
http://webdelsol.com/CPR/ (Contemporary Poetry Review)
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/ (an audio archive of poets reading their work)
You can read Hall’s essay here:
http://poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16915
And lest we forget podcasts, this very website has the best one going.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/audio.html
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By: Amos Johannes Hunt

Amos Johannes Hunt — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 14:15:06 +0000

Precisely when the written word is most desperately in need of deeper cultivation and less proliferation, it flees into a field in which the most natural course is exactly the reverse of what is wanted. That print journals a) require resources to produce and b)take up valuable space are advantages, not problems, because they press for qualitative improvement where quantity has little room to expand. Now that we have an avenue of escape from these advantageous limitations, where we can even hope never to encounter them again, quality will no longer be a necessity.
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By: Ange

Ange — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:27:05 +0000

Alicia has mentioned published poems that vanish without a trace when a magazine goes offline; what of the poems that — horrors! — live on forever, but which you wish you had not published? The ephemerality of the print mag has served a valuable purpose for younger writers: it helps them see their work with new eyes, and that sometimes entails further revision; sometimes sheer abandonment. Live and learn. But with the internet, live and learn and cringe forevermore!
If you can bear to ask the editors to take down your poems years later, you’ll encounter their own proprietary feeling toward the works they’ve selected. So you’re stuck.
There are other reasons (besides youthful experimentation) to keep one’s profile low at certain points. So I’m with Nick on the possibilities of useful, positive marginality. And also paying for it. I’ll be sending my subscription to you, Nick! Sorry for the lapse!
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By: Nick T.

Nick T. — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:36:18 +0000

Enjoying this discussion, and wanted to note first, Alicia, that a young poet named Noah Eli Gordon has already provided the world with a collection of his e-mails, appropriately titled Inbox. Make of it what you will (it’s a print text, oddly), but I think what’s interesting about e-mail is that it allows the obsessive collector to collect text on perhaps an unprecedented level. If print is still around when a Collected E-mails arrives, I wonder just how many volumes it will require. A work colleague and I figured out that we send and receive over 5,000 e-mails in a given year, and that’s just work! As well, should note, regarding Rigoberto’s comment about those over 30 possibly not being invited to the party, that a recent study noted that young people today don’t have much use for e-mail, that e-mails are seen as the preferred mode of communication for people in positions of authority—teachers, parents, bosses. They prefer txting, IM, etc.
I do want to respond to one more thing, again from Alicia. To quote: “Increasingly, I think, print journals without an on-line presence will be marginilized or vanish altogether.” I co-edit a poetry-only magazine, The Canary, and we’ve had little to no online presence since we published our first issue nearly six years ago. I mention this because we’ve never wanted to be a presence online, and we operate under the assumption that we, by our very definition as a poetry magazine, reside in the margins. We manage to scrape together enough money to get the next issue out, but I don’t agree that magazines will need to have an online presence in order not to be relegated to the margins. Any magazine that publishes poems, or at least that dedicates a good chunk of its pages to poetry, will naturally be open to operating at a loss, in many senses of that word. That’s what makes the enterprise of publishing a magazine of poetry so exciting: we can do whatever we want, and publish the work we love, or at least don’t understand well enough to reject.
And a side note: it’s utterly true that nobody subscribes to literary magazines, especially poets. A handful of our previous contributors (numbering over 100) have become subscribers (and we thank them for that). The print model for publication depends on support, from grants to donations to institutions to subscribers. I suppose it’s old hat to talk about this, but I am still amazed at how few people actually pony up. And yet, they are always in your ear about proofs, getting their contributor’s copies right away, etc. Understandable, but I think this kind of entitled and willful forgetfulness will help contribute to the disappearance of the print journal.
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By: Erika D.

Erika D. — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 09:57:30 +0000

Great post. For a big picture view, you’ll find many, many online journals listed at NewPages.com and a searchable database (you can limit the search to online journals that publish poetry) at Duotrope.com.
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