[Maryann Corbett]

Pardon the delay in replying; I've been out of town and only able to log on for short periods. I'm at home now.

Marcia, "guarantee" is far too strong a word, certainly not what I meant to say. I only meant that I make inferences from the kind of poem that was accepted about the kinds of poems that might be successful a second time. If nothing in a magazine's guidelines expresses openness to formal poems, but a formal poem is taken, I'll send one again. The same is true for rhyme and blank verse. There are some magazines that are fairly reliable about accepting poems about family and relationships, others that seem to like the sort of poem I call a "metaphysical stealth poem."

I make those inferences, and sometimes they are correct, so that there are some magazines that have taken my work several times. They aren't many, and they are modest venues. I've also made guesses like that have not panned out. In some of those unsuccessful cases a student selection board has been involved. I make inferences from those failures, too.

Am I wrong to suppose that most poets do this kind of thinking about future submissions?