NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines

Beloit Poetry Journal

Publisher’s Description: For 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, Adrienne Rich, Eleanor Wilner, 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 2010 issue of the BPJ, now in its 60th year of continuous publication, includes poems by Jennifer Atkinson, Michele Battiste, Temple Cone, Christopher GoGwilt, Sandra Kohler, Jacquelyn Malone, and Charles Wyatt, Nan Watkins’s translations of Yvan Goll, and a conversation with Coleman Barks about Rumi and music.

The Winter 2009/2010 issue of the BPJ features four stylistically disparate long poems, by Mary Molinary, Kerry James Evans, Philip Pardi, and Don Schofield, plus some verbal mischief by Karl Elder and John Rosenwald’s review of The Best American Poetry 2009.

The Fall 2009 issue of the BPJ honors Marion Stocking, long-term editor of the journal, who died this spring. Among the poets with work in the issue are Nick Courtright, Jeff Crandall, Sandro Penna, Onna Solomon, and A.E. Stallings. Robert Shetterly contributes three poems plus the allegorical etching on the cover.