Oh wow. My designer and I are going to make blackout poetry<\/a> of this article<\/a> during lunch, and I can already tell it will be AMAZING. But first, to engage with the text itself:<\/p>\n #5. No search results<\/strong><\/span> Yeah, those upstart WordPress lit mags are so backwater: ZYZZYVA<\/em>, The Masters Review<\/em>, North American Review<\/em>, Ploughshares<\/em>, Bellingham Review<\/em>. Rank amateurs all, amirite? Some of these journals even have Twitter accounts and Facebook pages. The insouciance.<\/p>\n Also, when did prospective readers cold-calling literary magazines in Google become the preferred\/respectable channel for discoverability?<\/p>\n #6. Distasteful work<\/strong><\/span> I can select from many<\/em> adjectives when I find that I don’t enjoy any of the pieces in a literary journal. “Distasteful” doesn’t make my top 20. Why on Earth is “distasteful” the go-to adjective for literature one doesn’t like?<\/p>\n #7. Silly author bios<\/strong><\/span> Silly staff and contributor bios, including cat pictures, could well be the salvation of small lit mags. Is there any practicing writer who puts down a sample copy and says “Well, I was going to submit some stories to that magazine, but I just can’t get behind a journal that limits staff\/contributor bios to a mere two or three self-aggrandizing statements”? When a journal plays down the importance (or self-importance) of the masthead, that’s actually a good sign. It indicates that the staffers enjoy their jobs and aren’t trying to out-snob anyone.<\/p>\n Anyone still tempted to confuse editorial solemnity and literary rigor ought to check out the delightful April Fool’s “beef” between Kenyon Review<\/em> and Ohio State University’s The Journal<\/em>:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n @OSUtheJOURNAL<\/a> Great name, by the way. Were “The Magazine” and “The Publication” and “The Pieces of Paper Glued Together” already taken?<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Kenyon Review (@kenyonreview) April 1, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n Internet search engines cannot find the magazine by name. The magazine exists only in the cyberworld of WordPress or Weebly, or on a site that hosts blogs\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6You are perusing an issue and you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t find a single short story, poem or essay that you enjoy reading to the end\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nThe staff biographies, found under a site tab called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153About\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Masthead,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d are jokey and fake.\u00c2\u00a0The staff photos are not face shots, but instead show cats or inanimate objects\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n