The rumen is our favorite portion of the cow’s stomach. It is here that gut microbes facilitate fermentation of ingested foodstuffs. It is here that all those difficult cereals and grasses, those hard-to-process things, start to break down. We like to think of literature as a sort of rumen, that narrow tunnel where things accrue, sit, on their way to something elemental.
We publish works that move in the conceptual, that draw the tangential lines between condition and potential. We seek work that blends neoclassical ideas with urban grunge, the high concepts of reality mixed with the low reductions of fantasy. Like the aforementioned digesta, we want things that find new meaning when thrust through the reticulum of the written word. We want humor, horror, strange fixations, canvases upended, bodies broken down cell by cell. We know, we know, there are plenty of submission guidelines with similarly vague poetasting out there. The fact is we don’t always know what we want until we see it, until we sit with it a while—ruminate on it, if you will.
We are interested in poetry that emphasize craft. We want poems with interesting forms, strong sonics, and striking images flawlessly rendered. Traditional forms are welcome but we lean more toward works that take risks and challenge notions of traditional poetics. We especially appreciate conceptual poems that do a few things really well rather than many things with mediocrity.
We love a good rhyme, but you should be confident in your use of meter/prosody. An off rhyme is far worse than no rhyme at all.
We at The Rumen publish strange, high concept stories with expert framing. We want tales that project themselves beyond the confines of their word limits, with extra believable or unbelievable characters, and balanced prose that demonstrates equal mastery of action and imagery. Our favorite stories leave us with as many questions as answers, so don’t be afraid to weave in your best literary ambiguity. That being said, the purely aesthetic can be a hard sell, so consider closely before sending us your experimental dystopian cyber-thrillers.
We especially love works dealing with the arts, history, philosophy, sciences, and anything that combines these fields. Thoughtful analyses of film, literature, music, or the like are also welcome. Memoir or personal essays can teach us a lot about ourselves, and we ask that submissions in these genres have a strong central theme or moral. Works of a semi-academic or political nature will require citations, preferably in MLA format.
We aren’t opposed to political diatribes but it should be noted that works advocating for capitalist, exploitative, imperialistic, and alt-right ideologies are not our cup of cud.