The Ledge Poetry & Fiction Magazine
Poetry and Perception: Publishing
The Ledge Poetry & Fiction Magazine
— Tim Monaghan
Quick Note about this issue: This Editor’s Issue of The Café Review is different from our normal published reviews. We have asked 14 editors of poetry journals from across the United States two complex question: Why do some poems stand out from others? And what is he state of poetry in America today? Their answers will surprise you. We hope this issue will give poets a better sense of what editors look for in poems. You will get the inside scoop about why different journals accept different types of poems. For teachers, this issue will answer questions students have about the dos and don’ts in submitting poems as well as the perennial question of why poetry matter.
The Ledge Poetry & Fiction Magazine, www.theledgemagazine.com, is published annually and receives approximately 75 poems each week during our reading period, April to October. I’ve been the editor–in–chief and publisher of The Ledge for over two decades now, and I am always impressed and amazed at the sheer number of submissions we receive from such a diverse group of poets and writers, both here and abroad. Most of the submissions we receive are from more established poets and writers, but we are always open to new work by emerging authors, too.
I take my role as editor very seriously and thoughtfully consider each group of poems or story submitted for publication to the magazine. We have a very small, all–volunteer editorial staff, but much of the initial screening of submissions is done by me. As editor, I can usually gauge the promise of a poem within the first few lines. Weaker poems are often “fatally flawed” from the start, and quickly rejected as a result. These poems usually lack dramatic tension or a sense of craft and purpose and more resemble prose broken into lines and stanzas. And while the shape of a poem on the page has little significance to us, the form of the poem is a crucial aspect in its construction. Line breaks in poems should be meaningful and not just arbitrary. We also dislike intentional ambiguity in poems, and so–called universal truths, clichés, or similar pedantic devices that heavy–handedly convey a certain “message” from the poet.
Instead, we seek passionate poems that that utilize language and imagery in a fresh, original fashion. We favor poems that speak to the human experience; well–crafted verse and captivating poems that will resonate with our readers on a visceral level. We especially enjoy imaginative poems, uncommon poems that don’t just recycle the same old story lines and themes for poetic topics. We feel that the best poems employ a sense of dramatic tension that captivates the reader from beginning to end, and we are seeking work that aspires to that level. While we favor accessible poetry, we dislike facile poems or contrived poems with “punch line” endings. We firmly believe in the craft of writing poetry and consider poetry no different from any other artistic discipline. The power of emotion is only effective if the poet is able to temper his or her expression with an objective detachment that is painfully absent from most undisciplined poems. For sheer emotion to be most effective in a poem, the poet must channel that energy before it consumes him or her.
Understatement is often overlooked as an effective means to illustrate a point or purpose. Too often, subtlety is eschewed for shock value. More challenging for the poet is to affect the reader by insinuation and metaphor. The resulting poems will ultimately resonate with the reader in a far less superficial fashion. We also believe that successful poems engage the reader by challenging his or her perceptions on a given topic or truth. The most powerful poems only slightly (if not significantly) alter or affect that perception in the process. I am always craving the goose–pimpling effect that accompanies the reading of such exceptional poems.
The Ledge is open to all styles and schools of writing. We have no biases or axes to grind, and consider excellence to be the only criterion. We enjoy putting together an issue with a wide and eclectic range of poems and stories, as we intend to offer a forum for poets and writers of all backgrounds and persuasions. We believe that such work appeals to a wider audience than most literary journals endeavor to reach, and consider The Ledge a truly democratic publication in that regard.
I’ve been editing and publishing The Ledge for more than 20 years now, and still derive just as much pleasure and enjoyment out of the publication process as I did the year I founded the magazine on a shoestring budget. Our first issue was Xeroxed at the local copy shop and crudely stapled along the spine. These days, The Ledge is perfect–bound with a glossy cover and features over 200 pages of work by both emerging and established poets and writers. Throughout our growth, we have maintained our independence, and I relish the artistic aspect and the literary freedom that accompanies the role of an editor–in–chief and publisher of a literary magazine. I am also grateful to my co–editors, George Held and Kim Monaghan, and to the thousands of poets and writers who have chosen The Ledge as a venue to submit their work.
The following poem by Melody Lacina of Berkeley, California, My Aunt’s Horse — winner of The Ledge 2006 Poetry Award — effectively captures the qualities that we are looking for in a poem: dramatic tension, meaningful line breaks, vivid and imaginative description, and the employment of an ordinary scene to reveal a higher sensibility of loss and the realization of our own mortality.
When he died, she had him cremated,
his ashes delivered to her apartment.
Sixty pounds. She didn’t have the heart
or the nerve to tell the UPS driver
what he was carrying up the stairs.
Nor did she admit to my father,
her brother, she had done it.
Not because no bone in his body
is sentimental, but because she guessed
he’d draw the line at such an expense.
I bet she’s right. Though who can say for certain
how grief will affect us.
She keeps the horse’s ashes in a closet,
her younger son’s name marked on the box.
If I die before I get them scattered,
he’s promised to take care of them
the way I’d want. Which means at the stable,
along the ridgeline, beside the trails she rode
over and over through the years.
Sixty pounds of memory.
We humans come down to so little,
barely enough to fill a shoebox.
My love and his sister and brother
scattered their father’s ashes at night
after the other mourners had gone.
One by one, dipping their hands in.
Some of the ashes rough, the rest fine.
And when they were done, the dust of him
clung stubbornly: grit under their fingernails,
pale shadows they couldn’t brush clean from their coats.
Hunger Mountain
A Swipe of the Net
— Caroline Mercurio
Quick Note about this issue: This Editor’s Issue of The Café Review is different from our normal published reviews. We have asked 14 editors of poetry journals from across the United States two complex question: Why do some poems stand out from others? And what is he state of poetry in America today? Their answers will surprise you. We hope this issue will give poets a better sense of what editors look for in poems. You will get the inside scoop about why different journals accept different types of poems. For teachers, this issue will answer questions students have about the dos and don’ts in submitting poems as well as the perennial question of why poetry matter.
Hunger Mountain, an arts journal published by the Vermont College of Fine Arts, has guest editors for each issue. This arrangement continually gives readers a fresh perspective and encourages collaboration and diversity among the editors. Although we receive about 2,000 submissions per year, we only accept and publish less than 3 percent of the work we receive. Hence this advice: Don’t take rejections personally. It’s a proven tactic: Send out your best work, and keep at it.
In the poems we accept, I look for skill, heart and soul, and originality. Many poems succeed at the skill level, which is identifiable by, among other things, technique, form, and vocabulary, but they fail at having heart and soul, which is fairly unidentifiable but instantly recognizable. Rather than attempt to define it, it is easier to simply say that when this quality is present, I feel it in my heart and soul.
Over the years, I’ve noticed similar themes that poets must identify as ones that speak to the heart and soul, such as childbirth, loss of a child or parent, infidelity, car wrecks, bird and ocean metaphors, and, of course, poems about writing poetry. Originality is what makes a poem truly stand out, even if it is carrying a frequent theme. If the poem presents its subject with careful attention, passion, and a new perspective — regardless of what it is about — it will likely be passed on for further consideration.
The following poem by Dellana Diovisalvo exemplifies what a poem needs to jump out of the slush pile and into the “yeses.”
The History of Hair
When I was a kid I wanted
hair like Crystal Gayle’s, shining
dark and expansive
as the sea at midnight. My mother
presented the challenges: How
to wash it all? How long
would it take to dry?
In amazement I wondered: Would
hair like that get tangled
around my legs in sleep
like slippery satin sheets? As a
Jersey teen growing up in the 80s,
hair was all about height.
The cool girls had bangs curled
straight up and stiff, like a tsunami
frozen above their foreheads. In my early
twenties I was too busy partying and too broke
for haircuts. My hair grew quick, thick, and
anti–chameleon–like. Black, purple, white,
always something to set me apart from my
surroundings. At twenty–five I became
enchanted with Zen Buddhism and all
of that talk about letting go and detachment
convinced me to shave my head. My friend
and I filled an envelope with orphaned strands
and sent it to Locks for Love. I didn’t cry but
there was no wave of instant relief.
Disappointed, on my way to the train, I pulled
an apple from my backpack. It was
a windy day and I didn’t realize until
the third or fourth bite that I was eating outside,
in the wind, without getting my hair
tangled in my teeth. I smiled and enjoyed
the simple, crisp pleasure.
The opener grabs my attention. The originality of the images and the tight lines keep me reading. I’m left standing in that crisp wind enjoying the mouth–watering taste of an apple, and I’m amused because I can identify with the familiar theme: how hair defines our image despite its uselessness. (I’ve read dozens of balding poems based on this same idea.) Diovisalvo has effectively moved me, heart and soul.
Once, on a listserve, I read a sarcastically written list of 10 ways to impress an editor at a literary journal. A few of the things mentioned were similar to guidelines I provide for my freshman writing students — including necessary reminders about formatting and proofreading — except one of the listserve items read something like, “Use as many fancy fonts and colors as possible, copyright every page, and give the editor design tips for their magazine!”
While this is obviously tongue–in–cheek advice, I’ve gotten some pretty odd submissions over the years, and any editor will have stories to tell about strange mail. But if you’ve sent quality work, avoided purple ink, and followed submission guidelines, why, you may ask yourself, are you still getting rejection letters? As I said in a 2005 Editor’s Note to our readers: “What we wind up with in each issue is intuitive, a swipe of the net. . . . Themes emerge of their own volition. One thing you can always be assured of is a compelling variety of work.”
Afterward, I received a letter from a gentleman who claimed that a “swipe of the net” was not specific enough; he wanted to know what our criteria for publishable work were, a definition of our mission in terms of exactly what we would and would not print. He was trying to fill a mold by writing the poem to fit the “assignment.” My advice here is simple: work hard to write well and then have confidence in your work. Proofread carefully. Let the work own the page for itself, not because it wants to see print.
Although some find this a controversial stance, publishing poetry is as much about numbers, chance, and networking as it is about quality. The state of modern poetry in America is undergoing a technological revolution. Writers no longer have the luxury of working in solitude. Getting involved has become easier than ever: online creative writing and social networking sites are booming, and blogs are the genius solution to the human need for uncensored expression. Yet, people worry that the quality of poetry has been diluted by the quantity of it now readily available.
Some would call this bastardization of the exclusivity of publishing poetry, but “the end result,” as Texas poet Jack Myers says in his introduction to New American Poets of the ’90s, “[is] bringing more new poetry to the attention of more people than ever before and [that] has made it easier to find and gauge the pulse of the art.” The multitude of communication options available to us as writers and readers exemplifies the necessity of collaboration, innovation, and diversity.
But does this mean that poetry in print is dying out? Forgive my optimism: print literary journals will never be obsolete. In an article entitled Lines Online: Poetry Journals on the Web, Lisa Russ Spaar writes, “Most editors and writers seem to share a hope that the answer lies not in the disappearance of print and the ascendancy of digital technologies, but in a mutually illuminating
and valuable counterpoint between the two.” I believe there will always be people interested in publishing, printing, and most importantly, sitting down with a good book, apart from the pressures of life, and reading it with gratitude for knowledge, entertainment, and escape.
Free Lunch: A Poetry Miscellany
Editing Poetry: Time Well Spent
— Ron Offen
Quick Note about this issue: This Editor’s Issue of The Café Review is different from our normal published reviews. We have asked 14 editors of poetry journals from across the United States two complex question: Why do some poems stand out from others? And what is he state of poetry in America today? Their answers will surprise you. We hope this issue will give poets a better sense of what editors look for in poems. You will get the inside scoop about why different journals accept different types of poems. For teachers, this issue will answer questions students have about the dos and don’ts in submitting poems as well as the perennial question of why poetry matter.
Editors are often pressed for time and make snap judgments on the submissions they receive. So, although I can sometimes tell if a poem is going to interest me from the first few lines, I try to hold off judgment until I have read the entire
poem — usually out loud if the poem really seems worthwhile. What does capture my immediate attention in the first few lines is the quality of the language rather than the subject matter.
Poetry for me is more about how than what. Consequently, I almost never accept work that I feel is prose arranged in lines to look like poetry, regardless of whatever attributes it might have.
What I want in a poem is figurative language, which, of course, includes sound. Other negatives for me are excessive modifiers and abstract nouns.
However, I am not convinced that an inferior opening line or lines can doom a poem. After all, if the rest of the poem holds up and is superior (admittedly an infrequent occurrence) the questionable lines can be revised. I often ask for revisions in an attempt to improve such lines. For me, re–writing is an important part of the process. In fact, more than 50 percent of the work that appears in Free Lunch: A Poetry Miscellany has gone through one or more requested revisions.
Of course asking for revisions — and perhaps offering suggestions for the improvement of a poem — consumes a great deal of my time. But, in my opinion, this is not only how an editor should be spending a significant amount of her or his time, it is also time well spent in the interest of poetry. Consequently, I have little respect for those editors who either wait for the “perfect” poem to come to their desks, or accept fairly good poems that contain some questionable qualities because they are too busy to communicate with the poets.
My position regarding revisions ties in with a vow I made when I envisioned publishing Free Lunch. As poet myself, I had long been vexed by form rejection slips that offered no clue as to why my work had been found unworthy of publication. So, I promised myself that I would comment (however briefly) on every poem submitted to me, and that if I ever felt I didn’t have time to do this, I would close down my publication.
Another thing that prejudices me against a submitted poem is when it is presented in the computer–generated form where the lines are centered on the page. Generally, I find no justification for lineation that relies on what seems to me an arbitrary and artificial template. Another negative for me is a weak title. In general, I find most poets to be lazy in choosing their titles; too often they settle for the obvious. A good poem can overcome this problem, but one titled “Grandma’s Garden,” for example, will rarely raise even a frisson of interest in me to read the poem that follows.
As I noted above, the language of a poem is more important for me than its subject. But some poems have subjects that I tend to reject almost out of hand. These subjects are: about writing poems, other poems, poets, poetry readings, etc.; works of literature or art; myths; pets; and religion, when cast in the context of a particular creed. (But if you were to scan the pages of Free Lunch, I must admit you would find poems with such subjects in its pages.)
As for types of poetry to which I am not sympathetic, these include prose–poems and language poetry. I usually find the former to be more prose than poetry, and they tend to be too long, too diffuse, and too detailed. The ideal prose–poem for me would be one of Robert Bly’s very short pieces in this genre. As for language poetry, I find it willfully and annoyingly obscure, as well as somewhat arrogant and elitist.
So, does poetry matters in the world today? I would say that it matters today, and it mattered yesterday, and will matter tomorrow. Rather than provide a lengthy argument to support this opinion, let me merely pose two questions and offer two answers. First, why is it that poets are among the first victims that tyrants and repressive regimes exile, imprison, or execute? Second, why are poems presented by poets or readers at such important events as presidential inaugurations, weddings, funerals, convocations, and various initiation rites?
The answer to the first is that poets, through the ages, have for the most part been outsiders and/or critics of the status quo. As such, their words can be deemed dangerous. Today, however, American poets for the most part — except in response to their country waging its most recent, unjustified wars — appear uninterested in assuming this role. Instead, they seem mostly concerned with themselves (their random thoughts, quotidian experiences, and childhood memories) and the subject of poetry itself.
The answer to the second question is that at such important times (but also in general), poetry satisfies a deep and perhaps innate need in people to hear (or read) their own thoughts and emotions expressed succinctly and artfully by others. Today there is a paucity of such moving or insightful poetry; but, then, this was also true of the past.
Finally, as an example of a poem that typifies some of the qualities I look for, I offer the following by California poet David Hernandez:
Happiness Epidemic
Without any warning, the disease
sweeps across the country
like a traveling circus.
People who were once blue,
who slouched from carrying
a bag of misery over one shoulder
are now clinically cheerful.
Symptoms include kind gestures,
a bouncy stride, a smile
bigger than a slice of cantaloupe.
You pray that you will be infected,
hope a happy germ invades your body
and multiplies, spreading merriment
to all your major organs
like door–to–door Christmas carolers
until the virus finally reaches your heart:
that red house at the end of the block
where your deepest wishes reside,
where a dog howls behind a gate
every time that sorrow
pulls his hearse up the driveway.
Calyx: A Journal of Art and Literature by Women
Women Make Their Voices Heard through Calyx
— Beverly McFarland, with AliceAnn Eberman
Quick Note about this issue: This Editor’s Issue of The Café Review is different from our normal published reviews. We have asked 14 editors of poetry journals from across the United States two complex question: Why do some poems stand out from others? And what is he state of poetry in America today? Their answers will surprise you. We hope this issue will give poets a better sense of what editors look for in poems. You will get the inside scoop about why different journals accept different types of poems. For teachers, this issue will answer questions students have about the dos and don’ts in submitting poems as well as the perennial question of why poetry matter.
For 33 years, the Calyx Journal editorial collective has been reading thousands of poems submitted by women from all across the country — indeed, now the world — and making decisions about what to publish in Calyx: A Journal of Art and Literature by Women. I am the journal’s senior editor; however, I am also a member of the volunteer collective and my vote there has no more weight than anyone else’s.
When I first read the poem The Civil War by Stephanie Farrow (after our first two readers had said “yes”), I was enthralled. But other members of the collective were not as enthusiastic initially, and it was held for a second reading and more discussion. Eventually, we all agreed that we should publish it and we did — first in
Calyx in 2002, then in the anthology A Fierce Brightness: Twenty–five Years of Women’s Poetry, 2004.
A narrative poem, The Civil War fulfilled our major criteria: It has both significant, universal meaning transcending the personal, and the poetry is carefully crafted. This layered poem improves with each reading. The tangibles can be dissected. To begin, the word “civil” works on several levels — as a word in the title, in how the soldiers at the protagonist’s house treat each other, and in contrast with the divisiveness of war personified early in the poem: She supposed The War Between the States / would draw shortly to a close, having fought itself to death. The protagonist can see the pain and loss of humanity in the gravestone eyes of the young men. She hears their hesitation, hears their quiet knuckles / at her door, not wanting to disturb but / desperate and she reaches out and takes them in.
Farrow’s descriptions do not apply to just Civil War soldiers. Again and again, we see these young men on our TV screens as uncivil “civil” wars are brought into our homes. This poem is not just about that war in the United States, it is about a world ever at war. The four compass points of the world are delineated: The east side of her wooden house / she kept for soldiers of the North, the west for Southern / boys.
The Southern protagonist is present in the middle of her world at war, as are we all. Her first response is fear: The first time a Yankee called by her door, she’d kept / the pistol by her side. Ultimately, it is her sense of humanity that prevails. She gave to the soldiers and they gave her what they had themselves. The poet suggests that is the only true response to human need in any time, but surely in a time of war.
Maybe it’s obvious, but it’s particularly symbolic that the protagonist, a woman, makes her home neutral territory and nurtures soldiers on both sides of the battle. The poem clearly shows how women/civilians play important roles in wartime, even if seldom acknowledged. The protagonist reminds me of Mother Courage, the central figure in Bertolt Brecht’s play, as the soldiers become like her family.
The piano cover, a gift from the protagonist’s husband, is equally symbolic. She unstitches the cover and carefully saves the thread for re–sewing. The country has been ripped apart carelessly, and now the nation must do as she has done, used / their ragged shirts to measure new.
The poem ends with a lovely, subtle foreshadowing of World War I in the poppies reminiscent of those in John McCrae’s famous rondeau In Flanders Fields, and the reader is left with a clear, moving vision of the men, blue and gray, / walking down the red clay road, the soldiers and their war / disappearing in a field of orange poppies.
The Civil War
Though she couldn’t know it at the time,
it was the last winter and a bitter one.
She supposed The War Between the States
would draw shortly to a close, having fought itself to death.
She could see it in the ones who came: the young
men with gravestone eyes, the old ones with their gap–
toothed gums. The soldiers rapped with quiet knuckles
at her door, not wanting to disturb but
desperate. The east side of her wooden house
she kept for soldiers of the North, the west for Southern
boys. The first time a Yankee called by her door, she’d kept
the pistol by her side. Her skirts were loose — she’d thinned
by then — so the gun tucked easy in the rippled folds. But
the Yankee’d only said “I’d be grateful
for a night’s rest, ma’am. I have an egg.”
She fried it and he snatched it bare–handed from the skillet,
cramming it, blistering and whole, into his mouth, A single bead
of yolk drizzled down his jaw. He scooped it with a fingertip
and placed it on his tongue with such delicacy — curious, him
so rough and hairy — that she’d fried him some cornmeal and
with the quilt her mama’d pieced, fashioned him
a pallet on the porch. The Yankee’d melted into mist
at dawn, but that afternoon she found an earthy turnip propped
against her door.
After that the soldiers came more
often, like birds migrating in their first year, never having
made the journey but knowing her house to be a slim oasis
on the long route home. She cooked for every one, digging
In forgotten places for dried persimmons, shrunken onions,
preserves. They gave her what they had themselves — greens,
squirrel, if they were lucky, coon or possum; some trolled
the creek for cat. They slept there on her porches too.
In the dark inside, alone, she listened to their murmurs, soft
as the batting of summer moths. Some cried out
like children in their sleep.
They needed
food, they needed rest, they needed clothes.
She stripped the cover from the square piano, exposing
the cherrywood case, the ivory keys, to the mold
and mice. The cover was broad and the cloth elegant — poppies
on a green background. Her husband’d bought it
in New Orleans before he left. She unstitched the cover’s
seams, careful to wrap the thread around the stub
of an old cob for re–sewing, then used
their ragged shirts to measure new.
Sometimes
in her dreams she saw them, blue and gray,
walking down the red clay road, the soldiers and their war
disappearing in a field of orange poppies.
Since Calyx exists to nurture women’s creativity and provide a forum for diverse viewpoints, we look for poems that ask readers to transcend traditional boundaries. Our pages reflect themes important to women and, indeed, all people: life and death and love; nurturing the sick and the dying; equality regarding race, gender and jobs; artistic expression; war and peace. Our collective decision–making is an inherent part of our mission, reflecting diversity of perspective in helping all women’s voices to be heard.