At Length

27/06/2024

"[W]hat am I to do / about beauty, about / my fear that beauty // has made me arrange / every experience in a word / and image too neatly // for them to bear / much semblance to life," Paisley Rekdal writes in "Whistlejacket," a long poem about the famed 1762 horse painting in the National Gallery in London.

We're very please to publish it in At Length, and we hope you'll give it some of your time soon!

Paisley Rekdal is the author of four books of nonfiction, and seven books of poetry, including Nightingale, Appropriate: A Provocation, and, most recently, West: A Translation, which was longlisted for the National Book Award and won the 2024 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. She is the editor and cre...

25/06/2024

Dear Writers: At Length has updated its submissions guidelines in Fiction. We do not accept genre fiction of young adult fiction and have clarified this on our new website. Thank you.

14/06/2024

Like many of you, I read and taught Terrance Hayes's 2018 collection, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassins--a haunting collection of 70 poems written in the wake of the 2016 election--with great interest. What I didn't know is that Hayes made drawings related to the poems too.

We're happy to feature those drawings, edited by former Art Editor, Sumita Chakraborty, in At Length's new From the Archives section. They're enigmatic, whimsical, and a valuable bit of literary history.

After Terrance Hayes completed American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin (out today, June 19, 2018 from Penguin), comprised of seventy poems—out of hundreds that he wrote—titled, similarly, “American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin,” he found he had some remaining fragments and...

10/06/2024

We were thrilled when Jonathan Farmer, the former EIC of At Length, sent us this essay on Elizabeth Bishop. Erudite and smartly argued--but not beholden to usual strictures of peer review--it's a model of the kind of criticism we'd like to publish.

And then there's the provocative claim: that Bishop's poems "end with something audibly, willfully unsatisfying." If you're a Bishop fan, or just enjoy good writing, give Jonathan's essay a read!

I never knew him. We both knew this place, apparently, this literal small backwater, looked at it long enough to memorize it, our years apart. How strange. And it’s still loved, or its memory is (it must have changed a lot). Our visions coincided—“visions” is too serious a word—our looks, ...

06/06/2024

One of the delights (and challenges) in redesigning At Length was preserving the journal's 20-year archive of exceptional writing. Take Page Hill Starzinger's lovely poem, "Gest," which explores her parents' decline in a mixture of long and short lines.

It took time to reformat "Gest," but we're happy to feature it in our new "From the Archives" section, and we hope you'll read (or reread) this lovely poem.

THISThis is a poem about a house.Scratch that. This is abouta family. It might be yours. Mother and father in matched single beds. Siamese sprawled on the floor, her kidneys giving out giving out.

05/06/2024

As we enter the summer internship season, I'm reminded of how essential Carson Wirtz, At Length's 2023 intern, was to rebooting the journal. Thanks, Wabash College, for supporting Carson, who's now a Managing Editor at a national literary journal!

04/06/2024

“[H]ow do they bear this heat Who / knows who can say what will change,” Joanna Klink writes in "Sarracenia" as she explores our climate crisis and her relationship with her father in language that is colloquial & catastrophic, meditative & urgent.

This is a beautiful new long poem up now at At Length. Please take a moment to give it a read.

And for a while it seemed there were rainfallsthat lasted whole weeks The ghost trees wetthen dried by sunlightswe’d never seenWhat followed a heat as if crestingfrom inside the earth cracking roadsAnd soon we were dreaming of the coldNorthern lakes frost-dust acrossthe length of the fields I saw ...

29/05/2024

Among its other changes, At Length has a new Fiction Editor, Preeta Samarasan! Preeta is a writer based in France, the author of two novels: Evening Is the Whole Day and Tale of the Dreamer's Son. She's also one of our oldest friends.

Please, send her your long short stories, novellas, and novel excerpts! Welcome aboard (from abroad), Preeta!

The official website of Preeta Samarasan. Her debut novel, Evening Is The Whole Day, was published May 2008 from Houghton Mifflin.

28/05/2024

We're very excited to announce the reboot of At Length, a journal for long-form writing (including translation)! This redesign was a year in the making, and it ends with the debut of long poems by Paisley Rekdal and Joanna Klink, and an essay on Elizabeth Bishop by former editor-in-chief, Jonathan Farmer.

You'll hear more about this work in the days to come, but we want to start by thanking Jonathan for trusting us with At Length and Carson Wirtz (Wabash College '26), who rose from summer intern to Managing Editor. Jonathan's vision brought us to this point; Carson's labor made it happen.

For now, though, enjoy this new writing and At Length's 20-year archive, free and searchable at www.atlengthmag.com

-Derek Mong & Anne O. Fisher

In prose that’s erudite and accessible, former Editor-in-Chief of At Length, Jonathan Farmer, explores why “[s]o many of Elizabeth Bishop’s poems end with something audibly, willfully unsatisfying.” Covering Bishop’s career from “The Map” (1946) to her late elegy for Robert Lowell, “...

19/01/2024

We just accepted our first new poem for At Length's reboot, coming to a search engine near you. Stay tuned, readers, and thank you for your patience as we remake this esteemed journal.

09/12/2023

After six months of work, At Length is nearing the end of its reorganization and redesign. Thanks for everyone's patience as we transition to a new editorial team and website! You'll still be able to find us at atlengthmag.com. More soon!

04/08/2023

Happy Friday! Today we highlight Tayler Heuston's short fiction piece, "Ghost in the Graveyard." We enjoy this story's captivating premise, and its ability to keep the reader guessing as to what will happen next. Be sure to read at the following link:

In-depth writing, music, photography, and art

02/08/2023

Today we would like to highlight David M. De León's poem, "The Cats of Old San Juan." An equally enlightening and powerful piece, it is just as quick and intelligent. Check it out at the following link:

In-depth writing, music, photography, and art

27/07/2023

Dear Readers: At Length is excited to announce a series of transitions! After two decades of stewardship, literary service, and good taste, Jonathan Farmer is stepping down as Editor-in-Chief. In his place, you'll find Derek Mong & Anne Fisher, who’re currently hard at work redesigning At Length’s website.

In the meantime, swing on over to www.atlengthmag.com to read 20 years of long poems, essays, novel excerpts, & visual art. We’ll be posting some of writing here in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for updates, submission windows, and more.

In-depth writing, music, photography, and art

11/04/2023

New poetry! “All / my life sacrificed to the arrogance of cities, / their empires of skin.” A child, a city, a scar, wealth, music, memory, and identity consort in a swift series of lyrics from J. Mae Barizo.
http://atlengthmag.com/poetry/small-essays-on-disappearance/

01/01/2023

New poetry! “I am going to try to write / A little. // I have nothing at stake but my life.” In Dawn Potter‘s sequence, a 19th century woman alternates between diary entries and poems, trying to make sense of her life, her obligations, her hunger for holiness, and a feeling of disaster or deliverance just out of view.

http://atlengthmag.com/poetry/three-weeks/

16/08/2022

New poetry! “I have to invent him as a little boy / because loving him was grief-stained. // Because living with him was like— / and here I give you a house full of bees.” From Mariah Whelan, a story of violence, legacies, grief, and survival.

http://atlengthmag.com/poetry/tarotdeath/

27/06/2022

New poetry!

“When I say ‘te amo,’ I bend a border to you.” Shifting from word to image, language to language, scene to scene, Paul Hlava Ceballos assembles a portrait of his mother from contested memories, amid ongoing erasure, and in honor of her lifelong work of making a life for them.

http://atlengthmag.com/poetry/irma/

02/05/2022

Nonnus of Panopolis’s Dionysiaca: Book 7

From a new translation of the longest surviving poem from Ancient Greece, the story of how Eternity pleaded with Zeus to create wine to ease human suffering, as well as the courtship of Zeus and the human Semele, which led to Dionysus’ conception. Translated by Christian Teresi.

http://atlengthmag.com/poetry/nonnus-of-panopoliss-dionysiaca-book-7/

18/04/2022

New poetry! “It’s not just you who has it wrong./It’s not just people. It’s every song.” Out of empire, war, destruction, and some smaller mistakes, Thomas Mixon feverishly tries to fantasize a better vision of America and, maybe, but probably not, himself.

http://atlengthmag.com/poetry/wrong/

08/03/2022

New poetry!

“Sometimes Dad naps on the sofa. / Pray is like play is like sleep. / I want to play, but I am on the outside. / This is how I learn to pray.” H.E. Fisher tells the story of a childhood in primers.

http://atlengthmag.com/poetry/four-poems-on-sally-dick-and-jane/

05/01/2022

New poetry! “From your flesh I’d grow a garden, / I’d make a forest of your bones.” A new poem from Carolyn Oliver overlays the long echoes of Hamlet, whale-fall, the death of a beloved, and the future of a son.

http://atlengthmag.com/poetry/abyssal/

27/09/2021

New poetry! “The cats are here because of the rats. / The rats are here because of the Americans. / The Americans were here because of the Spanish. / The Spanish were here because f**k the Spanish.” Combining the force of logic with bitter irony and sharp humor, a new poem from David M. de León tracks the confusions of Puerto Rico’s colonial past and present.

http://atlengthmag.com/poetry/the-cats-of-old-san-juan/

09/08/2021

New poetry! Three new poems from Matthew Buckley Smith present a medieval mother reckoning with forebodings of a new plague; Achilles, in an alternate history, looking back on a life in which he never went to war; and a contemporary woman refashioning her public humiliation.

http://atlengthmag.com/poetry/three-dramatic-monologues/

20/07/2021

New poetry! “the most isolated / simply settled anywhere, everywhere / else, making grass blades into cat tails, / sifting into the henhouse / like aliens hatched out of the blond / nesting boxes, / and infesting the feed, live mines. / They passed through our farm cats / almost whole.” A new poem from Chad Parmenter reckons with a legacy of fear and violence and alienation and faith that makes the past “less / a place than a crumpled map / where the coordinates wander.”

http://atlengthmag.com/poetry/cicada-meditation/

18/06/2021

Today's the final day!

http://atlengthmag.com/submissions/

In-depth writing, music, photography, and art

14/06/2021

Friday is the last day to send us your long poem or sequence.

31/05/2021

Our open reading period for poems starts tomorrow!

http://atlengthmag.com/submissions/

In-depth writing, music, photography, and art

25/05/2021

Our open reading for (long) poems starts in one week!

15/05/2021

For information on our open reading period and links to poems and essays by Shane McCrae, Daisy Fried, Spencer Reece, Alan Shapiro, Camille Guthrie, Jason Koo, Tess Taylor, David M. de León, Thorpe Mockel, and Christopher Kempf, check out our latest email:

https://mailchi.mp/7477c88ac0c4/an-open-reading-period-and-a-lot-to-read?e=2cfba49577

At Length will be accepting poetry submissions from June 1-18 of this year. Poems and sequences should be at least 7 single-spaced pages long. Please send a Word document or PDF to [email protected].