Week 4 business

I looked over some random magazines from NewPages; these are the ones I found most appealing:

1. Juked. Dedicated to nothing in particular, but a gorgeous design.
2. Weave. Also dedicated to nothing in particular, but leans toward feminism and dark humor.
3. Tiferet. A spiritual journal.
4. Alimentum. "The only literary review all about food."
5. The Dirty Goat. No particular angle here, just "a glimpse into the cutting edge of the international arts scene." But what a cool name, right?
6. Pank. Published at Michigan Tech in upper peninsula, this journal takes its position on the "edge of things" and turns it into a focus for the magazine.
7. PHOEBE. Dedicated to publishing work by new writers.
8. Carve. An online-only, open access magazine. I think we could learn a lot from looking at how they structure each issue--it seems very doable for us, but also very user-friendly and attractive.
9. Gargoyle. "a bit too academic for the underground and way too underground for the academics." Another layout for us to look at; I'm not a fan of the typeface they chose, but the overall look works well, I think.
10. Iron Horse Literary Review. Another university mag; unfortunately, no issues available online, but the submission guidelines are well explained and might give us some ideas.

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Now, the official blog question:

Is it possible for “great poetry” to find a hearing in “great [i.e., mass] audiences” (as Poetry claimed under Harriet Monroe’s editorship)? Making reference to two or more magazines, discuss how such questions about the cultural status of the arts (or of a single art form, e.g., poetry, drama, the novel) are addressed.

I think the notion of "mass audiences" is almost contradictory to most poets' notions of what they are doing. Consider the most widely read contemporary authors: Dan Brown, Stephen King, Tom Clancy, V.C. Andrews, and--dear God--Stephanie Moore. Do most people in literature consider these authors to be doing "great" work? I'd say no, though I might be wrong about that.

Robinson's argument in "Academia and the Little Magazine" suggests that little magazines may not actually think much about public appeal; in fact, his critique of university mags suggests that literary magazines with such appeal are killing the business. Anania, too, mentions that literary mags often have a narrow audience which mostly includes writers.

The magazines I examined for the first part of this post reflect this small-scale vision of readership. Weave's mission, for example, involves getting artists and writers together, not bringing art and writing to a public audience. Other magazines, like Alimentum or Tiferet, seem to target readers with very specific interests (food and spirituality, respectively), though it's unclear whether this is the readership they actually get. Still others pride themselves on having a highly limited audience; see Gargoyle's claim above.

So...what's the status of the arts? Here's my broad, sweeping claim that I can't support very well: If the literary magazines I looked at are any indication, it seems that the arts are somewhat disconnected from the mainstream, but that's where they want to be. The prevailing attitudes suggest that good work can only happen at the fringe, and when it does happen, only others at the fringe will be able to appreciate it.

Wellsir/ma'am, that's it for now. S-s-see ya.