If you’ve been checking Twitter in the past 24 hours, you’ll have noticed some exciting news about a holy union between The Cincinnati Review and Poets.org. What does this mean for you, dear submitter? Well, if you submit—and have work accepted—to The Cincinnati Review, Kenyon Review, Southern Review, or Tin House, there’s a chance that it’ll also be published digitally on Poets.org (i.e. many, many more eyes on your wonderful work); they’ll pick ten poems from each issue to feature on their site. We’re ecstatic about giving our poets even more exposure, particularity in a digital format.
Since its beginnings in 1934, The Academy of American Poets has been relatively clear in its ambitions: to not only create a stronghold for poetry in this country, but—in focusing on the work of new and up-and-coming poets—to create a perpetual-motion poetry platform, one that rolls with the epochs rather than crumbling beneath them.
Its catalog of recorded and print work is simply astonishing. If you’re already deeply involved with poetry, Poets.org is an incredible resource for finding prizes, fellowships, and residencies that might suit your current situation. If you’re an emerging poet, the website provides access to some of the most powerful poems written in the English language, as well as videos about prosody and poetics. And if you’re a lover of contemporary poetry, the Poem-A-Day series appears in your inbox every morning. It’s rare—and wonderful—when a resource is as useful to instructor and student alike.
The Academy of American Poets (and Poets.org) also puts its money where its mouth is. For practitioners of the craft, The Academy offers fellowships and prizes, with a diverse interest in poets from various walks of life and in different stages of their careers. Here are (just a few) examples: the Academy of American Poets Fellowship (seasoned poets); the James Laughlin Award (poets with promise trying to dig their heels in); and the Walt Whitman Award (for poets who haven’t yet published a book).
The Academy of American Poets Awards, which are awarded at more than two hundred universities across the US, show the Academy’s dedication to young writers. The organization’s goal, then, is to make poetry accessible to as large a group as possible.
All in all, these are exciting days for The Cincinnati Review. It’s a real honor to work with The Academy of American Poetsy. It’s worth remembering, though, that it’s your very best work that makes a journal, any journal, what it is, not the other way around. Keep sending us your very best, and we’ll keep finding ways—like this partnership—to get more eyes on it! In the meanwhile, though, a little celebration couldn’t hurt.
