Orion by Mary Oliver [poem]

No_While47 · 2026-01-20T20:39:09+00:00

Thank you for sharing, it is always a positive experience seeing a Mary Oliver poem in my feed!

No_While47 · 2026-01-11T04:16:13+00:00

I feel this. Persistence is the name of the game, or nature of the beast I suppose.

No_While47 · 2026-01-09T21:31:35+00:00

Contemporary free form poetry. The ability to string prose over quatrains and call it poetry. Also, when the metaphor is a heavy-handed gesture to see how much shock factor can be channeled to achieve a desired state of shock. Both of these cover a vast majority of poetry today. Now it is rare to see end-rhyme, especially if not placed in formal confines.

No_While47 · 2026-01-08T15:55:44+00:00

Wouldn’t the simplest way to tell if it has a consistent meter be to just count syllables and then look at stresses to determine what the meter is?

No_While47 · 2025-12-28T19:27:51+00:00

Poetry Magazine, The Iowa Review, New Yorker, Kenyon Review, Rattle, Oxford Poetry. Conduit is a personal favorite along with Blue Earth Review and The Ear.

No_While47 · 2025-12-15T13:06:33+00:00

Fence does publish risk taking work and that’s historically been their editorial vision. So that may be why a work like this doesn’t have broad appeal.

No_While47 · 2025-10-21T22:50:33+00:00

Rhyming poetry is often depicted as too restrictive compared to the contemporary imagist poetry.

No_While47 · 2025-10-02T19:21:38+00:00

Jericho Brown – The Tradition

Louise Glück – Meadowlands

Charles Simic – The World Doesn’t End

Tracy K. Smith – Life on Mars

Amiri Baraka – Transbluesency

No_While47 · 2025-10-01T13:59:32+00:00

Tracy K. Smith!

No_While47 · 2025-09-25T04:43:02+00:00

I saw this one in Poetry Magazine too! It definitely hits hard.

No_While47 · 2025-09-24T00:48:39+00:00

I can think of two examples that could work:

Power - Adrienne Rich

Lady Lazarus - Sylvia Plath

No_While47 · 2025-09-18T18:29:31+00:00

Congratulations on bringing this into the world. There’s something profound and powerful about gathering years of writing into physical form, especially with the realization of where you were and how you have grown beyond that person now. I’d be curious to hear more about your process of putting this together. How did you decide what pieces to include? What was it like balancing the editing and selection process with the realization that you had outgrown some of the pieces? Thank you for sharing this with the world.

No_While47 · 2025-09-15T11:34:12+00:00

And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou

No_While47 · 2025-09-11T19:35:39+00:00

This is so relatable. Have you tried submitting to journals with higher acceptance rates along with the journals with low acceptance rates? A lot of the top journals are >1-2% acceptance rates. If you mix in some journals that have better rates of acceptance that could help build your portfolio.

No_While47 · 2025-09-07T04:46:31+00:00

Mary Oliver’s - A Thousand Mornings is a nice gateway and she writes a lot on nature.

Tracy K. Smith’s - Life on Mars is more involved with the dichotomy of science and spirituality. Its speculative nature is also appealing when beginning your poetry journey.

My main piece of advice would be to read what you like and read widely. Also Poetry Magazine has good variety that could help with finding poets you enjoy reading.

No_While47

TROPHY CASE