Bouquets for Fall

I want to begin this editor’s note with gratitude. It’s the same place my poems often begin: gratitude for guitar riffs, jack-o’-lanterns, and fall days. Gratitude for other, antecedent poems and for the work of other poets. I’m so appreciative of the support you have given our editorial team these past months. Your patience and generosity has gifted us the space to begin implementing the transformations we want to enact at the magazine. We’ve been thinking, too, about the various ways—big and small—we can augment our editorial practices in service of our new aesthetic and cultural commitments.

Right now, I’m sitting next to a bouquet of fall flowers and I’m going to borrow one of these maroon and orange beauties as an easy metaphor: if poetry is the seed, poems are the flowers, and poets are the sun. No. If poets are the seed, poems are the flowers, and poetry is the sun. We have bloom, we have capacity for transformation, but we also require consideration and care to change.

I hope you’re seeing some of the transformation already taking place in the October and November issues. Much of our work remains in process, but our commitment to expanding the magazine’s archive—both past and present—is already in action. We had a beautiful folio of Carolyn Marie Rodgers’s work in the October issue and we’ve followed it with one from the poet/philosopher Will Alexander in the November issue. In December, there will be a folio on Chicago photographer and poet Diana Solís. The folio accompanies an exhibit on Solís’s work installed in the Poetry Foundation gallery through January 14, 2023. All are welcome. 

None of the poets I just mentioned appeared in the magazine previously and we’re excited to spotlight their work now in as robust a way as possible. Just so I’m being transparent: we hope to have folios in almost every issue for the next few years and to draw from the breadth of poetic possibilities. The catalyst for this excavation are absences in Poetry’s archive, but the project isn’t centered exclusively on the magazine. We’ll be relying on the community to help guide us in our archival exploration. We’ll be leaning on the brilliance of our readers, contributors, and partners to find the voices in need of a spotlight. 

One more note I want to mention regarding submissions: our new guidelines are up on Submittable. On Submittable, you’ll find calls for folios, book reviews, video poems, and essays, along with the updated guidelines for poetry submissions. As always, there is no fee to share your work with us. 

I realize now that this has become more of a statement of purpose than an editor’s note; I haven’t even mentioned the brilliant poets in this month’s pages! But it feels important to identify some of the changes we are affecting as they happen. I want everyone who is interested in engaging with the new incarnation of Poetry magazine to understand all the opportunities available. Legibility, transparency, seeds, and blossoms. To come back to my low-budget metaphor, we need your flowers, we need you to know you can trust us to caretake them, and to be the best version of the magazine we can be.