Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Let the road unwind
                          Anders Koppel — Travellin'

The Kerouac Rag #3,
43 Chatto Road, Torquay, Devon, TW1 4HT £10 for 2 issues. A5 bound 123pp

Tears in the Fence #36,37,38,39 38
Hod View, Stourpaine, Blandford Forum, Dorset, DT11 8TN £15 for 3 issues, A5 bound, 128pp to 140pp

The Kerouac Rag is an interesting magazine filled with stimulating articles. These cover not only Kerouac and his associates but also various ways of emulating the lifestyle portrayed in Kerouac's most famous novel, On The Road. This stream-of-consciousness novel is an account of two characters setting off in a car to change not only themselves but also the established order of their times. This road trip leitmotiv has been successfully used many times since in works as diverse as Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M Pirsig and the trucker songs of Lowell George.

   Apart from a few song lyrics there is no poetry in this issue of The Kerouac Rag. Kerouac did write some poetry but is better known as a novelist. He was a leading light in the Beat Generation writers, a loose collection that included William Burroughs, Neal Cassidy, and the poets Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Allen Ginsberg. Some commentators maintain that the influence of these writers extends through Thom Gunn, Bob Dylan, and Tom Waits. Others contend that the Beat Generation were the beginnings of the counter-culture movement that later produced hippies and punk rock.

   Any review must look not only at the magazine under review but also at its relevance in respect of the readership of the magazine where the review will appear. As The Journal is a poetry magazine the question arises, has The Kerouac Rag any relevance for poets or poetry readers. The answer, perhaps surprisingly, is yes. This is due not only to Kerouac's association with the Beat Generation but also, partly, due to the whole ethos behind On The Road. It is the idea of questioning everything, not being satisfied with the status quo, that should engage poets. As the novel's characters set out to change their lives and the systems prevalent in their times so poets should be attempting to effect a change in their readers. What use is a poem if we feel the same after reading it as before?

   To an extent David Caddy takes up this thread in issue 36 of Tears in the Fence, where he calls for poets to show more otherness, more difficulty. This call is linked to a rejection of tepid sequential narrative. One of the wonderful things about Tears in the Fence is that it raises as many points to argue over as it does to agree on. It has to be agreed that tepid poetry is not acceptable anywhere but sequential narrative has been one of the cornerstones of English poetry for centuries. If handled correctly sequential narrative can offer as much otherness and difficulty as the most obtuse, didactic, or inaccessible poem.

   Tears in the Fence has an air of sophistication about it. The articles and reviews are well written and their discussion points are cogently argued. The poetry has its share of difficulty but much of it is accessible and straightforward. John Kinsella provides a touch of otherness and intangibility with lines such as

     I cross regularly risking infection
     Of barbs, being acclimatized
     I can't know the irony of the line?

Whereas Estill Pollock, a poet with a steadily growing reputation, is more transparent,

     Bring desire, they said, its urgency
     And steel precision, bring memory and the promise of all
     things.

   Several poems in these issues display elements of spatial separation. This can work well. Ric Hoole's well crafted piece What Goes Down, Comes Up has the individual letters of words run up and down the page in the manner of the bubbles they are describing. This device is, of course, not new; the Norwegian poet Jan Eric Vold once dramatically spread the letters of the word potetene (the potatoes) over eight lines of a twelve line poem. Other poems have spatial relationships that appear to be inordinately exaggerated, Jennifer K. Dick's I Hold Your Check In Us Or To Connect and Stephanie Cleveland's A Massanat Ballet suffer because many of the spaces are unnecessary and the necessary ones are too large.

   Tears in the Fence contains several short fiction pieces which, personally, were not of much interest, but others may enjoy them. Overall this is a valuable magazine filled with, in general, high quality poetry, an extensive review section, and plenty of points that can be agreed or not. Where Tears in the Fence and The Kerouac Rag come together is in the idea that there is something more than just the urbane and banal out there. We need to go and find it and write about it.