Beloit Poetry Journal :: NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines

Beloit Poetry Journal

Publisher’s Description: For over sixty years of continuous publication, the Beloit Poetry Journal has published poetry that matters. We have been distinguished for the extraordinary range of our poetry and our discovery of strong new poets. Among those whose first or very early publication was in the BPJ are Galway Kinnell, W.S. Merwin, Anne Sexton, Sharon Olds, Philip Levine, Charles Bukowski, Susan Stewart, Susan Tichy, and Sherman Alexie. More recently, work by Bei Dao, Lucille Clifton, Albert Goldbarth, and Sonya Sanchez has graced our pages alongside that of younger poets such as Kerry James Evans, Jessica Goodfellow, Garth Greenwell, Ben Lerner, and Mary Molinary. We make the final selections for each issue by reading poems aloud without identifying the author. A poem must speak for itself to make it into the BPJ.

Jeannine Hall Galey, writing for NewPages.com, says of us: “The Beloit Poetry Journal is one of the journals that poetry junkies in the know call a must-read because of the consistent quality of the poetry they publish . . . and the terrific reviews. There can be no ‘ho-hum’ response to this journal.... I thrill to the emotional zing and wit of every single poem."

Recent issues:

The Spring 2012 issue of the BPJ is a chapbook of new poems of provocation and witness by featured readers at the 2012 Split This Rock Festival, including Homero Aridjis, Sherwin Bitsui, Carlos Andrés Gómez, Douglas Kearney, Khalid Mattawa, Marilyn Nelson, Naomi Shihab Nye, José Padua, and Minnie Bruce Pratt.

The Winter 2011/2012 issue of the BPJ includes new poetry by Bruce Bond, Brittany Cavallaro, Elizabeth T. Gray Jr., Justine el-Khazen, Diana Lueptow, Stephen Malin, Eric Pankey, Emily Rosko, Pattabi Seshadri, and Joe Wilkins, plus John Rosenwald's review of "Bad News and Good" in The Best American Poetry 2011.

The BPJ’s Fall 2011 issue is devoted to a single extraordinary poem, Michael Broek’s “The Logic of Yoo,” which probes the moral logic of George W. Bush's legal counsel during the Iraq War from the perspective of a graduate student who supplements his income by writing academic papers for hire.