Waltz is an online journal of poetry founded in 2026 in Eugene, Oregon.

Given that our journal is named after a style of music and dance, we are interested in work that is assured of its music and rhythm. This does not necessarily mean metrical or rhymed but invested in the sonic potential of poetry. As the waltz is conducted in a ¾ time signature, we look for poems that are slightly askew from the norm of common time: the ugly rendered beautiful, the strange yet familiar, the confident but unsettled.

We believe that poetry which endures enacts music as its meaning. This is not to say that diction or subject have no role in shaping how a poem exists; music and content coexist though they are not inherently unified. But music is poetry’s shapeliness and vehicle of surprise, in contrast to its capaciousness toward content. A leap unthinkable, bridged by the mouth’s orchestra. We are looking for those unthinkable leaps.

Most of the art you see on the site has been gathered and digitally traced by hand from artworks that are within the public domain.