The Yellow Buick Review

There are presently no open calls for submissions.

The Yellow Buick Review is a fake literary magazine that discusses and solves real formatting problems.

If you've bought a few poetry anthologies or lit mags as E-books, chances are, you've seen some bad, baaaad formatting. Huge spaces among lines, funky indents, lines that vanish off the screen, etc. I've seen presses large and small get it wrong.

The thing is, even when a press gets it right, not much changes. The publishers often can't show you their source code without also giving away the poetry content. Let's change that! The Yellow Buick Review's "poems" are pure lorem ipsum nonsense. The poems mean nothing; the formatting means everything. If you'd like to help me help poetry, please submit a poem  for the second issue. (Click here if you'd prefer to submit by US Mail.)

I'm interested in two types of submissions: Poetry Without Accompanying Code and Poetry With Accompanying Code.

1. Poetry Without Accompanying Code:

Submit one poem up to 40 lines in length, any style. Please give it an original title. The text of the poem must not be original; you must use lorem ipsum text (also known as "greek text"). I'd prefer if you copied the text from this page. Please include your name. I'm particularly interested in poems that have
  • Interesting formatting. Break your poem into stanzas. Right justify the final couplet. That kind of thing.
  • Plausible formatting. Don't be weird just to be weird. E-books still have limitations. Concrete poetry or poems with twelve different typefaces are unlikely to be accepted.
  • Clever titles. The title of your poem can be in English! Feel free to make it memorable. Short epigraphs are also fine if clearly identified as such.
Bicycle Comics Productions acquires first North American serial rights for print and E-book. We cannot accept previously published work or simultaneous submissions. (Frankly, we'd be baffled!)
We pay $3 per accepted "Poem Without." There is no submission fee.

2. Poetry With Accompanying Code:

If you've read the blog and have some ideas for how to make a poem really look good in The Yellow Buick Review, submit your poem WITH any original HTML/CSS inside a .zip file. As above, submit one poem up to 40 lines in length, any style. The text of the poem must not be original; you must use lorem ipsum text (also known as "greek text"). I'd prefer if you copied the text from this page. I'm particularly interested in CSS/HTML that has
  • Code comments. Tell everyone what you did, and why!
  • Broad compatibility. Poems that require lots of media queries, JavaScript, or proprietary typefaces are less helpful than poems that work well (and degrade elegantly) on many different devices and platforms.
  • No intellectual property restrictions. Everything that goes into The Yellow Buick Review must be open source and will be shared openly on our blog for others to see, discuss, and adapt.
Bicycle Comics Productions acquires first North American serial rights for print and E-book. Any HTML/CSS you submit will be governed under our Creative Commons license. We cannot accept previously published work or simultaneous submissions. (Frankly, we'd be baffled!)
We pay $5 per accepted "Poem With." There is no submission fee.

The Yellow Buick Review will be open for submissions during the first two weeks of August. Thank you for helping me help lit mags get it right!
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The Yellow Buick Review