Six Questions for Linda Blaskey, Editor, Quartet Journal

With input from Gail Braune Comorat, Jane C. Miller, and Wendy Elizabeth Ingersoll.

Quartet is a poetry journal featuring work by women fifty and over. Read the complete guidelines here.

SQF: Why did you start the magazine?

Linda Blasky: We sensed, as older women, that we weren’t getting published as much as we had been, or chosen for workshops, or retreats as much. After polling several women poets that we know it seemed we weren’t the only ones that felt that way. Quartet provides another outlet for our demographic and has had good success. The journal is read in 20 – 30 countries and receives submissions from many of those countries, though most come from the United States.

SQF: What are the top three things you look for in a submission and why?

LB: The poem has to grab our attention from the beginning. We look for fresh language and interesting subject matter. And an ending that opens the poem even further. We snuck four reasons in, though you asked for only three. That’s because we get a large number of submissions and only select twenty poems per issue.  It’s a very hard process.

SQF: What most often turns you off to a submission?

LB: Work that feels rigid, as if it is marching from point A to point B with no turn, no expansion; there has to be that moment of satisfaction for the reader, that bit of surprise. Also, poems that are steeped in obscurity. 

SQF: What do you look for in the opening stanza(s) of a submission?

LB: Awareness of craft and line. Fresh language that engages the reader. 

SQF: Many editors list erotica, or sex for sex sake, as hard sells. What are hard sells for your publication?

LB: Well, sex is an important part of life and there are some beautiful poems about the subject, but gratuitous sex isn’t going to make it in our journal. Neither is sentimentality.

SQF: What one question on this topic do you wish I'd asked that I didn't? And how would you answer it?

LB: What is it about the creation of Quartet that pleases you the most?

When we started Quartet, we knew nothing about producing an online journal but now we are comfortable moving around in the electronic world and are proud that we’ve been able to publish what we think is an elegant magazine. It’s hard work and time consuming, but when a new issue goes live, we are in love with the magazine all over again.

And Quartet has broadened our world. We’ve read the work of, and become acquainted with, so many excellent women poets. It led us to create an Editor’s Choice prize, and to start a private Facebook page for our contributors. It feels like family.

Thank you, Linda, Gail, Jane, and Wendy. We all appreciate your taking time from your busy schedule to participate in this project.