[To see the 2020 Literary Magazine Ranking for Poetry, go here.]
Below is the 2019 Perpetual Folly Literary Magazine Ranking for Poetry. Go here to read about the methodology.
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Clifford Garstang
Writing, Reading, Editing
Notre Dame Review and Paris American? I beg to differ. Both magazines held work of mine for 8-9 months and never returned an email asking for a response to the submission. I finally withdrew both. That’s completely unprofessional as well as being rude to the writing community they depend on.
The link to Hudson Review takes you to a 14 year old article.
Thank you. I’ve corrected the link.
Thank you!
November 3rd Club has been defunct since at least 2010. The last issue on their link it 2008.
thanks! I’ll mark it as such
FIELD states on their site that they are ceasing publication. Sad.
Thanks for letting me know.
The ‘Nebraska Poet’s Calendar’ site indicates no publication or updates since 2013. Appears to be defunct.
Thank you.
I honestly don’t even comprehend the ratings. What, exactly, do they indicate? Is a high number better than a low one or vice versa? I understand the numbers that show where something was on the previous year’s list, but that is all I understand. Is it a percentage of the work that is published?
At the top of the page is a link to an explanation of the methodology I use. The score at the far right–higher is better–is based on a formula that takes into account the number of Pushcart Prizes and Special Mentions received by the magazine over a 10-year period. I hope that helps.
I am the editor of Canary, and we were highly ranked in your listing in 2016 (and have since completely disappeared from your rankings). To our knowledge, no one that we have nominated has ever been either a Pushcart Prize or Special Mention winner, so we were happy but confused in 2016. And now we are equally confused by our downfall in your listings. We have read your criteria and methods carefully. Can you explain our particular phenomenon?
Gail, thank you for reaching out. My guess is that this is a case of mistaken identity (by me). A magazine called The Canary won 2 Pushcart Prizes in the 2008 volume for poems by Greta Wrolstad and Khaled Mattawa and a Special Mention in 2009 for a poem by John Asberry. The index to the 2008 volume gives a Kemah, TX address for the magazine. I guess that was a different magazine? I can find no trace of that magazine now, and when I added url links a few years ago I must have assumed your magazine was the same as The Canary. My apologies for that error. The reason it has disappeared from the list as that the “points” earned in 2008 and 2009 are now more than 10 years old and so drop out of my algorithm. Again, thank you for reaching out.
Ah, well that’s disappointing. But thanks for the info.
Noticed that there are a number of defunct publications while a number of fine “active” journals don’t appear on the 2019 list:
Blue Collar Review, Brilliant Corners, Hubbub, Interim, Laurel Review, Mantis (Stanford), Queen Mob’s Teahouse, Quiddity, Tampa Review,
Witness. Just wondering why?
Surely the Tampa Review rates higher than a Poets Calendar that has been defunct for seven years????
I leave defunct magazines on the list (and if I know they’re defunct I add a symbol to indicate this) so we have a complete record. As for the other magazines you name, the methodology explains that only journals that have won a Pushcart Prize or Special Mention in the last 10 years are ranked.
Thanks for the response. Now I understand. The list is not necessarily, “2019 LITERARY MAGAZINE RANKING — POETRY” based on audience, ranking in the literary world, quality, reputation, etc. . .but based on the number and frequency of the journal’s work only as it related to the Pushcart Prizes (how many poems were nominated. selected, won).
Thanks for the response. Now I understand. The list is not necessarily, “2019 LITERARY MAGAZINE RANKING — POETRY” based on audience, ranking in the literary world, quality, reputation, etc. . .but based on the number and frequency of the journal’s work only as it related to the Pushcart Prizes (how many poems were nominated. selected, won).
Well, yes. Which is what I say on the methodology page. (With one correction–the list has nothing to do with poems nominated, since there are thousands of those; it is based solely on the number of Pushcart Prizes and Special Mentions won over a ten-year period.) Also, I would argue that the list is a measure of quality, with the Pushcart index as a proxy, as objective as I can make it.
Absolutely. Thanks– I meant quality/reputation/venerability/readership, etc. of the journal! Cheers–
Thanks, Clifford, these lists are a tremendous resource.
Apparently, going on 5 years and no new release, Codex appears to be defunct.
But still a wonderful list–thank you!
Thank you. Last year at this time they said they were “on hiatus,” which isn’t quite the same as defunct, but it does start to look that way.