What is a Chapbook?

When I first delved into serious poetry reading, exploring book-stores and web-sites I kept seeing the word "chapbook" having no clue what it was.
So if you are unfamiliar with it, now is your chance to find out. A chapbook is a very short collection of poems by a poet. Usually less than 30 pages long. They are very thin, sometimes flimsy books. They can be professionally bound although some are actually stapled together--and yes, they are sold in book-stores that way.
Chapbooks are also a popular way for beginning poets to get their start in publishing. I highly recommend reading chapbooks first when you encounter one, if you like the poems you can buy them and make a beginning writer's heart soar. If you like it a whole lot, see if you can find a way to write a fan letter.
Poets love to know their hard work has paid off. Hundreds of thousands of poets a year compete against each other trying to get published and usually have only small windows of opportunity to submit their volume of work. The slim little volume of poetry you are reading in a chapbook has beat innumerable odds, the poets deserve a ton of credit and I hope you will spend a little more time gazing among the poetry shelves of any book-store with those odds of publication in mind.
P.S. I will be on vacation this Labor Day Week-end and will not be bringing my computer with me. So there will be a two-day lull here at Poet Hound. Thanks for stopping by and we'll meet again soon.

A Poem by Poet Hound

Coffee at the Gas Station

Every morning they gather
like crows on abandoned picnics:
Old men at the gas station
on highway 19, Old Town,
all lined up along a concrete
low-wall “telling lies”
as my grandpa always says.
It seems as if they appear on the cusp
of dawn, delighted to be awake
at an hour that would leave
bushy-tailed squirrels astounded.
They sit together with steaming
hot coffee and fellows older
than Plato describing their lives
in the past and updating them
with taller and taller tales.
Small town Florida presented
in a bright sunny postcard
cannot capture the sunny
and silver-haired men populating
gas stations across the sunshine state.

How to submit poetry, basics

Hello, sorry about the technical difficulties that resulted in "Musings" being published twice!
Today we are talking about very basic poetry submission guidelines. Your best bet is the internet since you are already reading this.

Keep in mind you should search for tabs/key words in the journal or publishing web-sites that say "guidelines" or "submissions" and read their criteria.

Next, see if you can find out the name of the Poetry Editor. If not, by all means when you write a cover sheet you can address it to Poetry Editor so that there is some semblance of trying hard.
Unless they have the capability to accept poems through e-mail, you should always type and print your poetry on clean paper, one poem per page, with your name, address, and phone number on each poem. In e-mails, be sure all your contact information is IN the e-mail.

Postage is important, too. Be sure you have enough postage on the envelope to handle the amount of poems you are sending. Also, when including a Self-Addressed-Stamped-Envelope (SASE) be sure there's enough postage for your poems to RETURN if that is what you'd like.
Biographical notes are sometimes wanted by journals and what that really means is they want to know where else you've been published, what poems they were, and your general information such as town and state you're living in.

*Cover letters are not a necessity unless specified by the journal/publisher, so you can always send your poems without one.

*If you want an incredibly detailed description of how to send out poems you should click on the Comstock Review link on the side of this web-page, they have an EXCELLENT guide for you to read, print, and refer to over and over. I re-read their guide and their submission guidelines frequently. Let's face it, if you had to edit thousands of poems you would want them to be easy to read, clean, and delivered with enough postage that you wouldn't have to pay for the poets who didn't add enough postage. Try to be the most gracious poet you can when submitting your work.

Musings

Strive to find poets who are living, breathing writers. After all, they are able to answer your questions about particular poems and inspiration. Also, poets never get rich writing poetry and seek only to share their vision and artistry through words. Definitely find a way to write to your favorite living poets, after all, they can respond to questions you may have about a poem, their lives, and their inspiration.
The list of living poets could go on for pages, but here are a few of my favorites: Lucille Clifton, Tony Hoagland, Li Young Li, and Lola Haskins.

Musings

Strive to find poets who are living, breathing writers. After all, they are able to answer your questions about particular poems and inspiration. Also, poets never get rich writing poetry and seek only to share their vision and artistry through words. Definitely find a way to write to your favorite living poets, after all, they can respond to questions you may have about a poem, their lives, and their inspiration.
The list of living poets could go on for pages, but here are a few of my favorites: Lucille Clifton, Tony Hoagland, Li Young Li, and Lola Haskins.

Nerve Cowboy, the Web-site and Magazine

If you like things that are "off the beaten path" then this place is for you! Whether you like to read or write poetry, or have a fondness for the state of Texas, it behooves you to check them out.

Nerve Cowboy's website is http://www.onr.com/user/jwhagins/nervecowboy.html

Do check them out, they do not publish "Cowboy Poetry" they publish items that are a little off the wall, and off the beaten path.

And in true cowboy fashion, I would venture to say this place isn't for "sissies", this is a strong kick in the teeth in the best way possible.
Drink some strong, black coffee, read, and enjoy.

Lucille Clifton, Poet Extraordinaire

Hello and welcome to Poet Hound! Today we are talking about Lucille Clifton. She has recently won the Ruth Lily Prize for Lifetime Achievement. She is a living example of all that is excellent in poetry. Her works depict human nature in all its forms. Even her shortest poems cause vibrations, as though a giant were walking the countryside and everyone could feel the tremors. She is well respected and admired by all who come across her poems. PoetryFoundation.org has a collection of her poems for you to look at, but I will also type in one of my own favorites here:

here yet be dragons

so many languages have fallen
off of the edge of the world
into the dragon's mouth. some

where there be monsters whose teeth
are sharp and sparkle with lost
.....who

among us can speak with so fragile
tongue and remain proud?

Lucille Clifton

Isn't she wonderful? She was born in Depew, New York, the first in her family to finish high school and go to college. Lucille is a powerful writer and I highly recommend any of her books. I will admit that it can be difficult to find her in book-stores in the Poetry section so you may want to try your local library. She is fabulous! That's all for now, thanks for your interest in poetry.

Haiku by Anonymous

Someone left this haiku for me to find this morning:



Sara is fair child

cold and bright in the stillness

rosy cheeks in frost



Thank you! Very good haiku. :-)

How to Haiku

How to haiku, you ask? It's like this:
5 syllables
7 syllables
5 syllables

For example:

what ever you do
write only what you know is
too good to be true

You try one! Post yours in the comments and I'll pick my favorite to post tomorrow :-)

Small town poets vs. big city poets

I often wonder how many advantages big city poets have over small town poets, and vice versa. For example, big city poets may have more chances to perform at poetry readings, find fellow poets and meet, go to poet-related events, and so on... But what about small town poets? Well, some local newspapers will publish local folks' poetry and recipes, and I lived in such a town not too long ago. In fact, I published a poem about my Grandpa and his friends in a local small town newspaper and some of the people went out of their way to tell my Grandpa and his friends that they were now famous. Isn't that cute? Literally tens of people saw that poem and they tell my Grandpa that he's "famous", isn't that great?? So is it like that for big city poets? Do they get a chance at publishing in their city's paper and have people coming up to them or their loved ones saying they're famous? I've yet to find out. I've moved about an hour away and I'm still not in a big city, but at least it's fairly large compared to where I was. Any musings on the advantages/disadvantages for the lives of either small or large city poets?

Business Card Poems

I've seen poems on matchboxes and business cards. I've seen them on book-marks, napkins, etc. Not my poems, other people's, mind you. So if you think you are safe from poetry, you are not. I like to write poetry myself, and I think I may try making business-card sized poetry to distribute at random for people to stumble upon. Isn't that a wonderful and funny idea? Why not make yourself heard in a way other than publishing in Poetry Journals or Poetry Books? Here is the poem I have turned into a business-card sized cry of "Read me!"

Shipwrecked

Short waves between us all,
a kick of fins,
dislodge of a mask,
salt stinging all eyes,
listening to echo-cavern
sucking breath of regulators.
All I know is the throttle
of underwater hurricane-force
winds whipping us like ragdolls
while we grasp steel barnacle-
covered railings with bare
hands, limbs ricocheting
like ropes snapping off
ledges of canyons.
One boy sits in an eddy current,
hands folded in his lap.
He is the calm
Before the throbbing,
pulsating limbs of co-divers-
starfish in the hurricane
waving helplessly at one another.

Poetry Magazines and Poets in your Pocket

What do I love more than poetry books? Poetry magazines! Why? You get up to a half dozen to a hundred poets for a much lower price than buying an entire book of just one poet. Why is that good? Well, if you are starting to get back into reading poetry you might not know what kind you like just yet, which is why the magazines are great. You can discover voices that you enjoy and can then search the author out at the book-store. That, and it will clue you into poetry trends such as popular subjects, the way a poem flows nowadays, whether they all rhyme or not, and each magazine has its own style. The magazine Poetry, simply named, has no limits on the type of poetry it prints, and is one of the most widely recognized magazines. Most poetry journals don't allow foul language or obscene commentary, and Poetry has not allowed it as far as I can tell, nor does The Comstock Review. If you want something edgier or don't want just a poetry magazine, there's Tin House, which is edgy and can be taken as more liberal than others. For example, it takes more risks and allows their writers to use language or themes that might be seen as controversial by some. Tin House features fiction, essays, and interviews as well as poems. Perhaps, if you look through various poetry magazines and books you might discover a hidden "broadside" from the Guerilla Poetics Project. They type up poems by less known authors on card stock (four poems per piece of card-stock), cut them to size, and their operatives hide these broadsides in book-stores for people like you and me to find. If you like the poem you find, you can look up the author. And don't forget to register your Guerilla Projects Broadside on-line to see how far the operatives have travelled. That's all for today, thanks for checking in!

Fun and Easy, Lunch Poems

Today we are talking about Frank O'Hara. It's a shame he has passed away, but he has left behind some very readable poetry. So for those of you who haven't dipped your toe in the Ocean of Poetry, here's a great guy to start with. His book called Lunch Poems focuses on his usual walks to various favorite places to eat lunch in New York, commenting on all the wonders of the city before finally making it to the lunch counter. Some are fun, some are sad, but all are easily digestable in short little scenic vignettes. The book itself is small and bright orange, and can fit easily in your lunch sack, your picnic basket, or even a purse or briefcase. It is much loved by poets and poetry readers everywhere, you will be sure to enjoy it, too. If you want a sample of his poems, go to poetryfoundation.org and type his name in the search box. Several of his poems are there along with a brief bio. The poems "Rhapsody" and "A Step Away From Them" are in the Lunch Poems book.
Thanks for stopping by today.

Poet Hound Begins!

Hello and welcome to my Poetry Blog, Poet Hound! Mainly, I am an avid poetry reader who is trying to win over Poetry Abstainers. You know the ones, the people whose high school education ruined poetry for them by making poetry much too complicated to enjoy. I think a great place for people to start a new interest in poetry is Poetry Daily (poems.com). Oh, and do you miss the days of playing Secret Agent as a kid? Try the Guerrilla Poetics Project (www.guerillapoetics.org)and look up what it takes to be a secret agent for them, the site is awesome, clever, and excellent!
Thanks for checking me out!