Tip For Poets from NCLR’s Poetry Editor

In NCLR 2007, we published an interview with Jeffrey Franklin, our poetry editor, who replied in response to what he considers as he reads poetry submissions,

“Does the poem care about line? Is it just prose broken into pieces, or is the author working with the line as a unit of meaning and of sound?”

On the subject of the poetic line, Jeff recommends Dana Gioia’s essay “Thirteen Ways of Thinking about the Poetic Line,” originally published in Measure: A Review of Formal Poetry. NCLR thanks Dana Gioia and the editors of Measure for permission to share this essay with poets interested in submitting to us.

To read more from NCLR’s poetry editor, order a copy of NCLR 16 (2007).