When I left academe and teaching behind in 1985, one of the things I brought along with me was a commitment to continue working on a little poetry magazine published by one of my former creative writing students, Peggy Cooper. The first issue had appeared in the fall of 1984 and was called simply The Poet. One thing that set this little magazine apart was that it was no little magazine. From the beginning it was conceived as a full size glossy, rather than a smaller (and cheaper to produce) quarto. The covers were in color (usually just one color and black ink on white paper), and always had photography or art work of some kind. These magazines were beautifully produced by Peggy and her husband, Robert, a talented painter and designer, both of whom had experience in magazine publishing. Poet was a family affair, Peggy was the publisher and managing editor, Bob the designer and art director, I was the poetry editor and my wife Joy was the editor.
Despite the fact than none of us really knew what we were getting into, The Poet, later Poet Magazine, was fairly successful. Although we started small, Peggy was a creative and energetic promoter who got the word out to aspiring poets through advertising, word of mouth, and sharing information with other poetry magazines, colleges, schools, and arts organizations. Our stated goal was to provide a quality outlet for new and relatively unknown poets, and soon we were inundated with submissions from aspiring authors. Every week or so a new shipment of manuscripts would arrive from Peggy. Joy and I were reading submissions and editing the magazine in Alexandria, and Peggy and Bob were assembling and publishing it in Shreveport, and later in Oklahoma City. Soon Joy and I had to get a Post Office box, since our apartment mailbox could hardly handle the influx.
The magazine was published quarterly and priced at $4.00 an issue, going up eventually to $5.50, with subscriptions at $15 per year, and later $20. And we did sell quite a few copies and subscriptions. Our expenses were mostly production and distribution. We did not pay our authors, but we did have several popular contests with cash prizes. The contests were Peggy's idea of a way to subsidize publication of the magazine, since unlike our regular submissions, the contest entries required a fee, from which we also paid judges and prize winners. I think we must have had three or four contests going at all times. We had contests for inspirational poetry, for student poetry, for a series of chapbooks, and one that was just an annual poetry contest.
When we started, I was reading all the poetry, for the magazine and for all of the contests, and making most of the selections, with help from Joy and Peggy. Bob was strictly art work. But as we continued and grew, we began asking some of our contributors and contest winners to help with the judging. Soon I found myself occupying nearly all of my free time reading submissions, judging contests, and recruiting outside judges. Joy was doing all the editorial work with articles and reviews, while also writing some reviews herself. We both occasionally contributed reviews and little articles to the magazine, but the idea was to find as much good material as we could without necessarily writing it ourselves.
Editing a magazine is very hard work, and in fact a full time job. Looking back I really don't know how Joy and I managed it while we were both working full time. Obviously, we spend a lot of evenings and weekends, reading and editing. Peggy and Bob also spent a good deal of money on postage and phone calls. This was before we were all online, so much of the work was done the old fashioned way, although by then we did have personal computers. Peggy did all the typesetting and layout, and Joy did nearly all of the editing and proofing. I spent most of my effort reading manuscripts from aspiring poets.
Many will tell you that poetry is dead, and I suspect there may be some truth to that when referring to the reading of poetry, else we would have sold more copies of Poet. But of the writing of poetry, apparently there is no end. There must be many thousands of dedicated writers of poetry out there, and it soon seemed to me that every one of them had heard about Poet Magazine. Each week brought another enormous box of submissions, either regular submissions to the magazine, or to one of the contests. Of course, it was relatively easy to spot the chaff among the wheat. Sometimes all it took was a quick glance, after a line or two many would be poets were winnowed out. Still, we had to correspond with them, inform them of our decision, encourage them to keep writing, and hopefully to subscribe to Poet.
Something I learned very quickly was that few of those submitting their poems knew anything about either the magazine or writing poetry. I often wondered if some of them had ever actually read any poetry, other than their own, of course. But the real surprise was how many very good and even excellent poets were finding us. Some were already known to me: Herb Coursen, Lewis Turco, Michael Bugeja, Lyn Lifshin, and many others. But in every issue we were able to publish good poetry by poets who were just beginning to find an audience.
My only regret is that the magazine was not better known and more widely distributed. But it did turn up sometimes in places that surprised me. I would often watch for it at a local newsstand, or the Brentano's in a nearby mall. And it became a habit with me when I was travelling to check area bookstores to see if they might have a copy. I remember my pleasant surprise in finding Poet in an independent bookstore in Bellingham, Washington. But the human and financial capital required to keep publishing a high quality little magazine were beyond the resources of our little band. We kept Poet Magazine going until 1996, when it died with the publication of the spring-summer issue. Still, we had a pretty good run for a bunch of publishing innocents who had quite obviously jumped in way over our heads.
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