poetic advice

61. if u wrt pms lke ths prepr 2 b rejktd.

poetic advice

6. The lowercase i is passé when used as a personal pronoun.

poetic advice

9. Punctuation is your friend.

poetic advice

17. When submitting poems via email, send work in text-only mode. No one needs to see that cutesy smiley animated GIF signature or your Glamour Shots poses from three years ago. Editors only care about the quality of the work, and everything else is distraction.

poetic advice

59. Obey standard grammatical conventions until you become famous. After that, feel free to make yourself misunderstood.

poetic advice

19. Speling countz, so profreed cairfulie.

poetic advice

23. Words with Anglo-Saxon roots create an earthy feel and give your poems punch. See #s 1 & 2.

poetic advice

2. Nouns and verbs are your friends.

poetic advice

1. Make it concrete. Poetry is in things, not concepts.

poetic advice

42. Only Douglas Adams could get away with meta-metapoetry. And you're not Douglas Adams.

poetic advice

143. In your cover letter or biographical information, refrain from using the word spiritual in each sentence. Ditto for the words experimental and taffeta.

poetic advice

86. Camel toe is not complimentary. It's just vulgar. So use it sparingly.

poetic advice

113. Just because you stare at the sky while trying to think about something to write does not mean you should write about clouds.

poetic advice

72. Moonstones = cliché

poetic advice

34. Don't write about your soul using the word soul. Call it a lungfish or something.

About

Poetry Midwest had a good run for twenty-three issues between 2000 and 2010. During that time, it also published three digital broadsides and one digital chapbook. Then it went on permanent hiatus, and never recovered. You can download these materials here.

Poetry Midwest did not adhere to a specific artistic aesthetic, but aimed to publish work which showed evidence of skillful craftsmanship. I looked for pieces which pushed the boundary of language to capture the essence of experience with vivid imagery while avoiding didacticism. Poetry Midwest was flarf-friendly, but demandingly so.

Poetry Midwest was edited by Matthew W. Schmeer on an Apple Power Macintosh G4 (Gigabit Ethernet) and an iMac Core Duo running MacOS X 10.4.11 using Microsoft Entourage 2004, TextWrangler 2.3, Excalibur 4.0.7, and Pages 3.0.3.

This web site is hosted on Blogger.com, and any HTML & CSS template tweaking was coded using TextWrangler 2.3, Taco HTML Edit and Nvu.

Disclaimer

The views expressed here reflect the views of the editor and not his employer. Do not construe any statement made on this blog as poetic advice; if you require poetic assistance, contact a poet in your area. Do not rely on statements made on this blog, or opinions from/positions taken by this blog, for the purposes of poetic advice.

Submission Guidelines

Poetry Midwest is closed to submissions.

Defunct Past Projects

Poetry Ink (1995-1997)

Electric Broadsheet (1997-1998)

Dead Verses (2006) -- incorporated into Poetry Midwest

7evens (2006-2008) -- incorporated into Poetry Midwest

Copyright Notice

© 2000-2012 by Poetry Midwest & Matthew W. Schmeer

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The individual works appearing in Poetry Midwest are individually copyrighted by their authors and/or owners. However, the selection, compilation, and presentation of these works as published on this web site under the title Poetry Midwest, in whole and in part, is protected under the aforementioned distribution license.

The views expressed on these web pages and in Poetry Midwest are not those of Johnson County Community College. The editor's employment by JCCC is not to be construed as an endorsement by the college of Poetry Midwest's content or artistic merit.

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