From Ryder to Fallen (No, It’s Probably Not What You’re Thinking)

So it’d been the one of the small patch of poems I’d sent that THE RYDER had accepted for its 2024 Special Poetry Issue (cf. May 9, February 20). But due to the untimely death of RYDER editor/publisher Peter LoPilato, the issue has since been put in limbo: maybe to still be published as a revival issue, maybe not.

But poems, as life, go on.

Enter Jimmy Broccoli, earlier this month: Beginning today, I will be accepting poetry submissions for my 4th (and final) poetry anthology, FALLEN. Guidelines and all details are below. And the details were many, and complicated, including that the book might be divided in two parts in a sort of strange way. Also that there would be no pay (but then THE RYDER wasn’t going to pay poets either), but the book’s profits would go to charity, notably for the care of the animals and upkeep of the facility at Full Circle Farm Sanctuary. So why not send three poems (the limit allowed for a submission, though generally only one would be chosen) and, on the theory that a publication in hand is worth two in the bush, include as one of them the poem that had been accepted for THE RYDER?

The poem: “Scientific Method,” an elaboration on a class of poems from late Victorian times (cf., again, February 20) about a naughty boy named Little Willie and disasters that he suffers, to the utter indifference (or citation of a clichéd moral principle) of the poem’s narrator. And, as some may be guessing by now, it is both the poem that had been to be in THE RYDER, and that was chosen yesterday evening to be published in FALLEN instead: Your poem SCIENTIFIC METHOD has been accepted into the “Fallen Angel” version of “Fallen.”

Originally, the two versions were going to be identical (contain the same poems) — but I’ve decided they will contain different poems (completely).

The anthology is scheduled to be released in late August 2024.