How to Find a Poetry Market

Cover of Walking to Martha's Vineyard

Aspiring poets need to find markets that would publish the fruits of our loving labor. Here's one trick:

Go to the library, your bookshelf, or a bookstore. Pick up a recent-ish volume of poetry where the material isn't too different from your own. Then skim the front and back matter for a list of acknowledgements.

For example, the Pulitzer Prize-winning collection Walking to Martha's Vineyard by Franz Wright was published in 2005 and it contains a single page of acknowledgements. Wright thanks a number of publications for publishing the peoms that ended up in this book:

• Can we have our ball back
• Field
• Gulf Coast
• Long Shot
• nowCulture
• Perihelion
• Salmagundi
• Slope
• The New Yorker

Now, we hit the Web with searches like (perihelion poetry) and ("Gulf Coast" poetry). As it turns out, a couple of these publications have closed down entirely, and others no longer accept new submissions. Bummer. How can you tell? Some journals post a final "goodbye" and others just freeze up. Can we have our ball back was last updated three years ago, so it's a safe bet that the submission window has closed.

But a select handful are open for business and have proper submission guidelines posted on the Web. The links above go directly to those guidelines for your convenience.

So there you have it -- a short list of poetry fora that are actively accepting submissions and may appreciate my voice.

Have any other market-finding tricks to share? Please let me know in the Comments below.

Epic Rock

Have you noticed how many of the finest rock songs ever written are more than just straight-up rock?

I've put together a little playlist with some of the best examples of this phenomenon I could think of, and I'm happy to explain exactly what I mean -- track by track:


Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody

• It's opera. It's folk rock. It's heavy metal. It's so much more. Not only that, but Freddie Mercury and the gang deliver great examples of every style they touch here. Bohemian Rhapsody is the archetype of what I mean by "epic rock."

Derek and the Dominos - Layla

• Eric Clapton's hardcore guitar duel with Duane Allman segues into a sentimental piano ballad, capped with a chirping slide guitar. One of the greatest love songs, and Clapton did get the girl -- at least for a while.

Heart - Crazy On You

• The acoustic guitar intro is a classic on its own, and then the real song begins. The Wilson sisters move with ease through hard and soft, raucous and slow, desperate and passionate rock.

Wings - Band On the Run

• This song starts out slow and traditional, but then goes through two snapping breaks and becomes the kind of anthem you'll scream at the top of your lungs after about six beers.

Metallica - One

• Now we're really rocking. No band has mastered the art of epic rock like Metallica, where nearly every song is a study in contrasts. This anti-war missive is more nuanced than most, though.

Bruce Springsteen - Thunder Road

• Thunder Road doesn't do sharp style breaks, but still manages to somehow transform from a gentle ballad to a heartbreaking stadium rocker. You could build a career on trying to copy this song over and over.

Lynyrd Skynyrd - Free Bird

• Like Band On the Run, Free Bird starts slow but takes a drastic turn into blistering rock. I can't help but whistling along with those legendary guitar riffs -- no matter where I am or what I'm doing.

Fleetwood Mac - The Chain

• Not too many rock standards started with a bass riff, but that's what Fleetwood Mac did here. Take one John McVie bass groove, add one unfinished Stevie Nicks lament over endless love unrequited, and wrap the whole package in the layered backing of an all-star band for the ages. This is what you get.

Pink Floyd - Time

• Parts of this song aren't even music. That's not a bad thing.

The Who - Baba O'Riley

• Lead-heavy guitar rock. Irish folk fiddle. And in the background of this glorious style contrast, there's the incessant melodic tapping of early electronica. What's not to love?

Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells

• Most people recognize the eerie intro from The Exorcist. Beyond that, Oldfield plays everything from Bossa Nova to Russian folk on a variety of guitars, glockenspiel, pipe organ, and the eponymous tubular bells. It's in two pieces because you had to flip the LP over at some point, or else I imagine Oldfield would have simply filled an entire CD with one song. You want epic? You want Tubular Bells.

I probably missed your favorite epic rock anthem. Tell me off in the comments box below.