Rose and Thorn Journal Shutting Down

Hoping they won’t mind my posting a portion of their logo here…

Ah, I was so bummed to hear this news! In 2007, after a 5-6 year dry spell since my first two publications with Fables (also defunct now), Rose and Thorn published my poem “A Stone Age Man Confronts His Son,” which they later nominated for the Best of the Net (didn’t make it, but it was nice that they liked it enough to suggest it!), then invited me back for a week of guest blogging. I think I did 3-4 entries of the latter, my first experience with blogging (although I did have a geocities website for around 7 years, also gone now). Unfortunately a change of ownership led to a change in blog address, and eventually the previous blogs (including mine, as far as I can tell) were deleted. I don’t seem to have any digital copies of my own, so I’ll see if I can get a hold of them–maybe they have them archived somewhere. I had just found some edits on a poem I’d been planning on sending them (the misplaced edits had been stuck as a bookmark in my copy of The Quantum Thief), when I found out they were closing. One more issue left, but I am certain they have already found their contributors. Ah well.

While I certainly enjoy print journals as well (have occasionally subscribed to Poetry, which does have a decent amount of material online: here is the Richard Rorty article that my first R&T blog was on), I think the wide range of free, high-quality digital journals is really great–sure, poetry can be a bit abstruse these days (meaning the last 100+ years…), but so much of it is worth working through, and if you take the time, you will surely find some gems which speak to you at some level. And you know, it is just good exercise, cognitively speaking! Many of the poetry journals I regularly check out are fantasy or science-fiction poetry, but I find the gap between “normal” poetry and fantasy/sci-fi to be not as great as it is in fiction. Here are some of my favorites:

Every Day Poets (whom I of course have to mention, as most of my poems have been published there… also, remember you can still rate my poems 😉

Ideomancer, a journal of both speculative fiction and poetry (as well as the publishers of one of my favorites of my poems, The Cabin and the Stars)

Stone Telling, a journal of speculative poetry founded by my friend Rose Lemberg

Goblin Fruit, a journal of fantasy poetry

Strange Horizons, a journal of fantasy, science fiction, etc, poetry, fiction, and non-fiction.

Hm, that’s all that’s coming to me at the moment–plus, I really need to get back to work. Sorry for the paucity of posts the last two months. I am racing to finish a chapter for a literary history (on my second extension!!), but am ALMOST done. Will turn it in tonight or tomorrow, after finally having whittled it down from 40+ pages to 25 (OK, a few more than 25). We’ll see what my editors think…