[Ed Shacklee]

I’ve read enough recently about the favor trading that goes on -- or is said to go on -- in the MFA programs that I’ve begun to wonder about how that affects the odds of getting a poem published in certain magazines.

This is a practical question, and not meant to cast aspersions on how selections are made. Assuming one isn’t well known, is it a waste of time to submit to some or all journals that have links to MFA programs?

Ed

[Maryann Corbett]

My sense of it is that it's a little easier to get work into journals that have a single poetry editor in control than it is to get it into journals where selections are made by a board of students that changes from year to academic year. In the first case, you can actually learn something about preferences from previous issues; in the second, it's entirely a crap shoot. And a crap shoot with a long wait, more often than not. So I have more concerns about the changeability than the favor trading. This isn't meant to diss those programs or magazines, just to say what I think of the odds.

For whatever it's worth, I've had positive experiences with Euphony and Water~Stone Review.

[Janice D. Soderling]

I'm not sure one can measure easier vs. harder because there are so many factors involved. A good poem will find a home and so will, in some cases, bad ones.

It is always a longer wait time when many are involved in the review, whether by students learning to analyze or a collaborative editorial board. You can use that wait time to write new poems, Ed.

I got two copies of Coe Review today which had the "grandmother feeding the deer in the backyard" poem which I had up on NonMet after Michael Robbins' interview complaint about poems about "grandmothers feeding deer in the backyard". I wrote it mainly to show that it isn't the subject matter that decides if a poem is good or not. It is (may I say in an immodest and self-aggrandizing way) as good as the poems MR currently has in the most recent issue of Poetry, said poems including many memorable lines such as:

(...)
I have a cow behind the Dollar Bin.

You shouldn't drink diarrhea
unless you bring enough for everybody.

Today I trust the English Department editors at Coe Review more than the staff at Poetry.

[Nicholas F.]

I'm assistant editor at Cornell's lit mag, EPOCH. What this means is that I read all of the poetry slush that hits the inbin, as well as a good amount of fiction (probably more, actually). While recommendations from MFA candidates such as myself will get the submissions onto the poetry editor's desk, they won't do more than that. That is, we cannot simply print the work of friends. (I know you're not suggesting this, but it bears stating!) We have no affiliation with other programs and their lit mags, so it makes no difference whether the writer went to Iowa or to prison (we've printed a few inmates producing vastly better material than folks in certain programs).

Yes, the 8 assistant editors at EPOCH cycle yearly, but the poetry editor and head editor remain the same, so the magazine is strikingly consistent. The same can't be said for publications run exclusively by students.

Hope this is helpful.

Nick

[Janice D. Soderling]

I agree with Nick. There needs to be an experienced captain at the helm. I didn't mean to imply that these college or university venues were assembled by students alone.

[Nicholas F.]

"I didn't mean to imply that these college or university venues were assembled by students alone."

Beware, some are! If memory serves, Black Warrior is newly among the lot run exclusively by grad students.

Nick

[Chris Childers]

I'm pretty sure that when I was an undergrad "reading poems" at the Carolina Quarterly (or, rather, contributing to the long wait times by not reading the poems I was given to read), the editor was a grad student, just taking over for another grad student from the year before. I have no more affiliation with the magazine but I would guess it's one run strictly by grad students.

Chris

[Marcia Karp]

Originally Posted by maryann corbett

my sense of it is that it's a little easier to get work into journals that have a single poetry editor in control than it is to get it into journals where selections are made by a board of students that changes from year to academic year. In the first case, you can actually learn something about preferences from previous issues; in the second, it's entirely a crap shoot.

I wish I could learn how to appeal to editors. Even when a given editor has published my work, even more than once, I've not noticed any guarantee that another poem will be taken. What is it, Maryann, that you learn that you might pass on to the rest of us?

I'm thinking only in terms of submission. What I write is what I write and I trust that is so for you, too.

Best,
Marcia

[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?

[Marcia Karp]

Dear Maryann,
  I always submit to the places I most want a poem to be in and figure only that what they are after is quality work. No strategic thoughts. When rejected, off to the next place sometime or other.

Best,
Marcia