Ode to the Toothpick

[Ruth]

I just received my contributor’s copies of the Sept/Oct issue of North American Review containing my poem, Ode to the Toothpick.

FOUNDED IN Boston in 1815, the North American Review is the oldest literary magazine in the US. Published at the University of Northern Iowa (Cedar Falls) since 1968, on six occasions during that period, it has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award (the magazine equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize), and it has twice won the top award in the Fiction category—in head-to-head competition with The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly, and so on. No other university-sponsored periodical has an equivalent record of achievement.

This is a print only publication, but they do have a website at http://www.webdelsol.com/NorthAmRevie...

My poem was inspired by the series of odes to ordinary things written by Pablo Neruda, the most famous of which is Ode to My Socks, which you can read here: http://www.stephenmitchellbooks.com/t...

My poem is much, much shorter.

[Ken, Moderator]

I read aloud a bunch of Neruda poems when I taught the form last year. Surely the toothpick is worthy of a poem! Congratulations, Ruth! Maybe they'll submit it for some national competition (Pullman, whatever) and the beat will go on...

[Ruth]

Thanks, NE.

[Ken, Moderator]

I see they pay you by the line (small sum, but...). Do they send you a print copy of the issue it's published in, or do you have to buy one?

[Ruth]

Pay? Where did you see that? I didn't see anything about pay, but they give 2 copies of the magazine.

I've never had to pay to buy a publication I was in. Only if I wanted extra copies.

[Sarah]

Congrats, Ruth. Nice publication!

[Ruth]

Thanks, S.

[Ken, Moderator]

Ruth, I followed your link, clicked "submissions guidelines" and read that they pay so many cents per line for poetry. Unless I'm hallucinating again.

[Ruth]

I think you've been into that funny tobacco again, NE.

[Ruth]

Aha! I just had an inspiration and went to the page using MS Explorer. Lo and behold, there is the bit about payment.

I generally use Firefox. And using it, those words are hidden behind the red bar ("NAR is pub by...) which has somehow migrated up from the bottom of the page, neatly covering anything about payment.

So where's the $? I have a feeling it might have been included in the large envelope in which my copies came. If so, it's long gone. :(

[Ken, Moderator]

Why not politely inquire? There's nothing to lose there.

And thanks, Anna, for saving me from that funny tobacco I so loathe.

[Ruth]

Dunno. Don't want to look like a the idiot I am.

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

Don't then Ruth.....is it worth exposing yourself for a dollar a line?!! :-) Just the satisfaction of knowing you earned with the pen?

[Ken, Moderator]

Well, I would play dumb (which would require no acting in my case) and simply ask if payment comes before or after publication -- all in a letter thanking them for accepting my stuff, of course.

And yeah, you can just drop it because it's only a dollar a line, but me, I'd keep the check uncashed in a frame on the wall (well, it'd be a first check for a poem in my case... I've only been paid for yeller journalism so far in my life).

[Ruth]

It'd only be my second. Poetry New Zealand paid $25 for a poem once. I didn't frame it, I cashed it.