A little background
DMQ Review is a high-quality online poetry journal that was started in 1998 by
JP Dancing Bear. What guts, to think that the Internet might be a good place to start a poetry publication. For a long time, I avoided submitting poems to online sites, thinking they were no better than the equivalent of self-publishing one's books -- the "vanity press" as it was known then.
Now the publishing world has changed drastically, not just for books and literary journals, but newspapers, magazines, and -- you know -- everything. As part of this sea-change in the publishing world, literary sites now include video. What would Keats think?
DMQ, which stands for "Disquieting Muses Quarterly," has not only hung in there, but has evolved as one of the best online-only poetry journals around. It has published well-known poets such as
Ellen Bass (2008),
Marge Piercy (2015),
Jim Daniels (2018), and many others.
According to
Bookfox's calculations, it ranks among the "
Best Literary Magazines for Poetry," based on a count in The Best American Poetry's anthology, tying for #15 with two selections (a rather informal metric, and some pretty good presses are not on the list, but still...).
The Salon
Now that the COVID pandemic has pretty much shut down literary readings and other gatherings, DMQ Review is again at the forefront of poetry innovation.
Sally Ashton and the other editors have created what they call on online
Salon where they feature poets they've published. The Salon hosts short video readings by three DMQ poets each month, beginning in July, 2020 (where you'll find a
video of my friend,
Annie Kim reading from her beautiful new book,
Eros, Unbroken).
So, some evening this winter when you're tired of the onslaught of the news and the wasteland of addictive streaming TV, head over to the DMQ Salon and enjoy some well-wrought poetry, read to you by the authors from their study, kitchen, or back yard.
My Stuff
I'm honored that DMQ published my poem, "
Work," in the Summer/Fall 2018 issue. This poem appears near the end of my second collection,
Hour of the Green Light.
And hey, I'm up at the Salon in the
February slot (by coincidence, along with
Carolyn Mar, another graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program), reading four poems from
Hour of the Green Light, in various settings. I hope you enjoy.
