The National Poetry Review™
Magazine of Contemporary Verse

Painting by Bruce Brezel

The National Poetry Review:
Balancing tradition with flair and innovation.

While traditional verse forms should and do remain incredibly important to contemporary poetry, we feel that innovation and joie de vivre are also important. Therefore, balancing tradition with flair and innovation, The National Poetry Review seeks to publish the most exciting and well-crafted poetry it can find. We are open to well-structured, finely crafted free verse as well as form, rich sound, play within form, lyricality, image, extended metaphor and unique diction and syntax. We agree with Frost about delight and wisdom. We look not only for a sense of joy but of play, and of the beautiful even in the difficult—even if the beauty is simply in the sounds of the poem, its music, or in the visuals of the poem, its imagery. Readers of The National Poetry Review will always find something to enchant them, to make them glad that they are reading contemporary poetry.

Furthermore, we make it easy and affordable.
Easy: Even though it is a meticulously designed, very attractive, perfect bound magazine, The National Poetry Review is lightweight and compact — a breeze to take with you anywhere you need to go.
Affordable: A TNPR subscription is only $10 per year — less than the cost of one lunch out (if not in)!

Last but definitely not least, we seek to increase exposure and respect for our poets. Not only is The National Poetry Review distributed nationally by Ingram Periodicals, the most respected and long-standing distributor of literary magazines as well as books, but we nominate to the Pushcart Prize every year, offer a fee-free yearly editor's prize in addition to The Annie Finch Prize for Poetry, and provide copies of the magazine to key indexers, reviewers, editors, critics, and literary promotion organizations. Based on our first issue alone, The American Humanities Index has already begun indexing the contents of The National Poetry Review, and others are soon to follow suit!

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