The Best Thing You’ve Never Read
Light Quarterly has been publishing smart, funny, satirical, and unserious poetry from some of the best American writers around for the past 18 years. We’ve counted John Updike, Tom Disch and Richard Moore among our contributors. We’re based in Forest Park, just west of the city, and we became a nonprofit organization called the Foundation for Light Verse in late 2008. Since gaining 501 (c) (3) status, we’ve expanded our mission and vision to include outreach activities such as free poetry readings in our community and workshops to engage school-age children in the fun of playing with language.
So why haven’t you heard of us?
Though we network with Chicago literary associations, publications, and just plain people of influence, we suffer from two conditions that are well-known to anyone who has ever worked at a nonprofit or a literary journal: we are a) understaffed and b) overextended. Lisa Markwart, Managing Editor of Light Quarterly, has hypothesized that a public relations professional could spend at least 40 hours per week trying to get our name out to Chicago folks alone; I have to agree with her. But since we don’t have money for such a staff member in our budget, our marketing efforts are relegated to more “grassroots” techniques.
Another reason you’ve probably never heard of us is because, sadly, light verse is nowhere near as popular as it used to be. In recent years, the poetry pendulum has swung in the direction of free verse. Though not all of the poems we publish have formal meter and/or rhyme schemes, many of them do, and reading them – especially aloud, I’d say – makes for a delightful experience.
Additionally, most of the poetry that has been popular in the last few decades has dealt with heavier subject matter, eschewing less serious topics like the one featured here:
How do you make chocolate milk
Sweet as sugar, smooth as silk?
When a cow yawns wide like this, Toss in a little Hershey’s kiss!
-J. Patrick Lewis, published in issue number 44-45 of Light Quarterly
Something many people don’t know is that light verse was not only extraordinarily popular as recently as the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s (Dorothy Parker and Ogden Nash, anyone?), but that light verse was also very lucrative for its authors. If you wanted to publish a poem in those times, your light, unserious poetry would bring in top dollar at most publications. The New Yorker championed light verse for years before moving in its current direction (wherein cartoons and more serious free verse are the norm).
So what do we want? We would love nothing more than to have our fingers on the pulse of Chicago’s literary communities in their various forms. Perhaps most importantly, we would love to see a light verse renaissance come about not only in Chicago, but all over the country and around the world. We would like to see Light Quarterly and the Foundation for Light Verse explode with popularity. People would line up for each new issue of Light Quarterly like they would to see Jacob and Edward from Twilight have a shirtless fight in the parking lot.
Whether or not we ever become that popular, we’d like to continue showcasing the poets who make our magazine great. We’d also like to continue bringing light verse to the masses (or at least some portion of the masses). Our outreach programs, which have thus far included reading events at developmental services agencies and assisted living facilities, will continue to enrich our community and, put simply, make people laugh. Because aside from our loftier goals, that’s what we really want: to make you laugh.
If you’re interested in laughing with us, or at us, please contact Sarah at sarah.landolfi@lightquarterly.org. Aside from shamelessly promoting the Foundation for Light Verse, she can give you information about upcoming events, how to submit work to Light Quarterly, volunteer with the Foundation, or even donate to our cause.
–Sarah Landolfi, Editorial Assistant, Light Quarterly
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In celebration of this year’s Printers’ Ball theme, Print <3 Digital, Chicago Underground Library will release blog posts for every day of July leading up to the Ball. CUL editors, volunteers, and guest bloggers from around Chicago are working around the clock to bring you a preview of what you’ll find and who you’ll meet at the Ball. We’ll also delve into our archives of small press and independent local media for a look back at how we got here. CUL’s model borrows community-building principles from digital culture to strengthen and draw attention to local networks in print, proving that Digital <3 Print, too.
Light Quarterly will be at The Printers’ Ball. Be sure to check out what they’ve got and say hi.
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Tags: Foundation for Light Verse, Light Quarterly, Lisa Markwart, print media, Printers' Ball 2010 Blog-Down, Sarah Landolfi
