The Measure of Poetry
— Rob Griffith

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.

In the wake of the Modernist Movement, formal poetry (or, more precisely perhaps, we should say poetry interested in meter, traditional forms, and/or prosodic devices such as rhyme) suffered a decline so severe that, by the ‘60s, ‘70s, and early ‘80s, it became a professional liability for one to even admit that he or she liked to write the occasional sonnet.

Practitioners wore a kind of scarlet letter that told all who approached that they were hopelessly mired in the past, that they spent their free hours at Renaissance fairs or Flat Earth Society meetings. After all, the argument went, meter and rhyme are cages which limit the vocabulary and, thus, what one can express in a line of poetry. And some would have even gone so far as to characterize formal verse as merely a vehicle for conservative thought and free verse as the only way to express a liberal or progressive point of view, the only way to remain avant–garde (whatever that means after a century of mainstream free verse).

These ideas are, quite obviously, ridiculous in the extreme, and formal poetry never really went away. Between the end of World War II and today, poets such as Richard Wilbur, Philip Larkin, Elizabeth Bishop, Donald Justice, and Seamus Heaney (among innumerable others) have kept the art alive and vibrant. That said, the teaching of traditional prosodic elements certainly did languish during that period, at least in this country, and it wasn’t until the late ‘80s and early ‘90s that a kind of renaissance occurred wherein new journals such as The Formalist appeared, journals dedicated to giving space to poems written in meter and traditional forms. Measure: A Review of Formal Poetry attempts to fill that niche as well and, happily, we receive hundreds of submissions a week.

However, perhaps as a result of a generation of poets growing up having to re–learn the craft of formal poetry (often from first principles instead of mentors steeped in the nuts and bolts of the tradition), much of what we receive is flat, boring, didactic, and completely forgettable. Our submissions are full of poems that are simply essays in plodding, unvarying iambs; poems that excoriate the practitioners of free verse; poems that mimic the style, content, and diction of their authors’ favorite 17th century poets; and didactic poems that simply gift–wrap a hackneyed sentiment flood our mailbox.

Fortunately for us and our readers, there are also plenty of poets who send in exactly the kind of work we’re looking for: poetry that speaks in a human, contemporary voice; poetry that uses form and meter in innovative ways to move the reader rather than simply set a metronome ticking away; poetry that uses its prosody in an attempt to capture a mind in motion and not to simply deliver a prefabricated “message.”

As an example of what I would consider a successful formal poem, I offer Vermont poet Deborah Warren’s wonderful Orion of the Barnyard:

     The kitchen’s loud with guitars, and the party                          
     throbs from the house and follows me away
     past shed and barn:

    The shrieks and music fade,
     but the light from the windows interferes with the darkness.
     Further then, to the first field and the hay
     heavy with night.

    Nobody sees me wade
     ankles — knees — in the wet alfalfa, eyes                        
     overhead, in the silences above                                    
     where thickets and forests of constellations move,

     copses of stars in the black sky’s open glades.                        

     These are the bright woods where I recognize              
     Orion; dressed in stars, Orion’s clearer,                                  
     hunting his dim and shimmering distant grove,                
     than the farm that drops behind me, out of sight

     and only yards away — Orion’s nearer,                         
     treading the east horizon and the barnyard’s                            
     roofs:  There’s such a thing as too much light.

In this poem, as in all of the best metrical poetry, Warren uses meter to establish a mood, modulate her music, and explore her ideas. And it is far more than mere window–dressing. Think of Robert Frost’s Design or William Butler Yeats’ Leda and the Swan.  In these poems, the meter is tightly bound up with the ideas the poems explore. In both, as the poems approach the idea of chaos and dissolution, the meter itself dissolves, leaving their readers feeling — viscerally feeling — unsettled and discomforted. Warren, too, knows the power that such metrical control can wield, and when her final line swings into a highly regular rhythm after having strayed just slightly enough for the reader to hear it, we feel the certainty of her pronouncement.

As an example of how some contemporary poets use form in novel ways, examine Minnesota poet William Breen’s Cookie Monster Blue. Though this sonnet could be dismissively called “light verse” (and it certainly is funny), I would argue that its final turn is really quite poignant, and Breen uses the form to expertly mimic the voice of its sad protagonist.

     Me sad. Me who love cookie cannot taste
     with tongue of felt to cardboard pasted flat.
     Me cram and stuff, but puppet throat sewn shut.
     Delicious cookie just crumble. Me waste!
     Me not feel cookie, not see. Strange hand
     creep too far up skirt of phony blue fur,
     rattle plastic eyeballs round. Cookie blur.
     Me hate what move inside, not understand.
     So if little children me supposed to love
     (me teach them take away — leave plate of crumbs!),
     why slowest boy so quick to think me dumb?
     Why sweetest girl not what me dreaming of?
     Someday in rocket ship me fly away,

     eat all of moon, wash down with Milky Way.

In Orion and Cookie Monster, as in all of the poems we accept, every formal element of the poem is in service to (or in league with) the content. No mere envelope or garnish, form enhances the meaning and effect of every good metrical poem, and the best contemporary poets use this fact to their advantage. In the end, like every editor, we want poems that speak with a recognizably human voice, that sear themselves into our memories, and that move our hearts and challenge our intellects.

And it is, honestly, that final point that gives me hope about the state of American poetry when people ask, “Does poetry matter?  Can it change the world?” W.H. Auden said, perhaps facetiously, “Poetry makes nothing happen.” In the sense that poetry rarely speaks directly and effectively to the world in such a way as to change public affairs, he’s probably right. However, if the best poetry is personal, and if the best poetry nudges its readers’ hearts just slightly out of their normal orbits, how can it fail to change the world, one person at a time?

Resonance & Revelation
— Don Wentworth

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.

Poetry, in its creation as well as its appreciation, is first and foremost visceral. It is almost precognitive: the moment of seeing, close–up and in the wild, a peregrine falcon; or a pair of mating garter snakes; or a painting before intellectualization begins.

It is revelation.

Even though this is the single most important part of the process, involving something beyond words, what follows is almost as important: taking in the falcon, the snakes, the Klimt; processing the images, the intent, and the resonance. For these reasons, rarely do I accept or reject any poem on first reading. Every poem is carefully considered two, three, four times, and ones that spark a lyrical quandary are often read many, many more.

Above my desk there is a note I had written: Clarity and resonance, not necessarily in that order, and when I am queried about what I look for in a poem, I pass that statement on. (It has been part of Lilliput Review’s entry in the Poet’s Market for most of “Lillie’s” 20–year run). If you equate my note to the process described above, I’d have to admit that it would be missing that single most important element: revelation.

In my mind, without revelation there is no poetry. Clarity is specific to execution but it also applies to vision, and so we are back to the visceral and how it might best be described. And really it is beyond description. Perhaps there can be an approximation. There is, however, no definitive answer or this selection of essays solicited by The Café Review would be unnecessary. One would have sufficed.

All great poetry mirrors life, in its entirety or in some aspect. There is no definitive answer concerning life because, if there were, all the different religions, like these essays, would be unnecessary. Good poetry rarely posits an answer: it is a restating of the question. Good poems are a constant rephrasing of the one unanswerable question. Ah, theory, theory! But how is it done, how are poems selected, what makes a poem worth including in Lilliput Review?

Emily Dickinson’s definition of poetry provides a glimmer of an answer. “If I read a book of poetry and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?”

This certainly is what I have in mind when I speak of revelation and, frankly, this is no theory.

Lillie is a magazine of the short poem. It is diminutive in size by design, for a number reasons, but suffice it to say that form reflects content. Guidelines ask for three poems, with a maximum of 10 lines each. These are the only rules. If somebody has a 10–line sonnet, I’m ready. I receive nearly a thousand batches of poems and publish, on average, eight issues a year, generally 16 pages in length. On average, there are two poems per page, occasionally one or three. I use artwork so that reduces the page number to 13.  That’s 26 poems per issue, approximately 200 poems per year out of a pot of 3,000.

Now comes the tricky part; Lillie is a one–person operation and has been for 20 years. So, really, how are the poems chosen? Well, aside from what is noted above (and if my colleagues are honest, they know the following to be true), work is chosen that I personally like. In fact, I can look back over the full run and see something of a mirror, reflecting a body of selected work. It isn’t a poet’s complete poems, but it is something like that. It is something like a personal journal, a written artifact of a life’s journey. In all its honesty, foolishness, pettiness, courage — the full gambit of humanness. Folks often comment on how issues seem themed but nothing is preplanned, though sometimes an issue taps into something like a collective unconsciousness. Putting together an issue is actually a creative act; this is where it all comes together and this almost singly makes the endless hours of detail work worth every single second.

So, er, what do you like, Don?

Well, I have a dedication to the short poem. In tone and flavor, I’d say I have an Eastern predilection. I like clarity, plain speaking; I also like something that resonates, something that suggests the many realms of possibility. I love Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg, Sharon Olds, Kobayashi Issa, Mary Oliver, William Shakespeare, Yosano Akiko, Franz Wright and James Wright, Anne Sexton — I could go on, but you get the idea. An example of the perfect Lilliput poem might be The Jewel  by James Wright. It does everything I’ve described above and much more. Here’s a poem by California poet William Hart from a very early issue of Lillie that is emblematic of the kind of work I look for:

     in a fold of
     Balzac’s coat
     spider eggs

This poem, comprised of eight, simple words in three truncated lines, says it all. What really is going on? Is it a Balzac statue or an imagined episode in his life? It seems to contain all the stories Balzac ever wrote and writer’s block wasn’t an issue. There is something ominous, possibly. Or it’s simply a naturalistic expression of an imagined or seen event. And it resonates like hell.

And that is precisely the point. It is all those things, drawing the reader in and forcing him or her to participate in the creation. It is the perfect melding of Eastern sensibility and Western mind.

And, oh, did I mention — it’s under 10 lines?

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.

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.