So here's my frustration with online literary journals, including my own (and by the way, mine is looking for new work for its winter issue): all the poets published therein, unless the journal manages to achieve a fairly wide acclaim/readership (see Shampoo), are poets from a closed group.

I want to publish poets from outside the Mills gates, and I have, but it can be a difficult thing to do. I think part of the problem is that poets are reluctant to submit to unfamiliar, two-bit journals (like There). Or maybe we just don't know about them.

So here's the plan, and I hope you guys will join in. I will post links to some of these small potatoes, just starting out sites, and we will bombard them with our work, which is just the sort of innovative, new work they're already publishing, but it will give the journals the opportunity to publish poets outside their limited circle. And we'll get the chance to be read by a (slightly) larger group than our creative writing workshop, our Mom or our cat (who can be quite the critic).

So who's with me? Our first target is Absent, published by Simon DeDeo. (He also does the blog Rhubarb Is Susan, which reviews poetry.) His comments about how he selected work for the first issue are very revealing.