[Rose Kelleher]

How often do you submit poems for publication, and (heh) what's your ratio of poems accepted to poems rejected? (Be honest.)

If you send poems to a journal and they're rejected, how long should you wait before trying that journal again?

What are some good journals that publish metrical poetry? Specify print or online. I know about the Formalist and the Dark Horse. (Michael Juster posted a list on another board once, but I can't find it.) Are there any that are, um, less impossible to get into, but still worth getting into? (Some journals, like Anon and the Atlanta Review, publish mostly free verse but occasionally include metrical poetry - helpful if you can specify stuff like this in your reply.)

Is Iambs and Trochees still alive? Their website looks dead. (Suffered, too, from the looks of it.)

"Can Publishing Matter"? Is publishing, for a non-academic amateur poet, even worth pursuing, in your opinion? I can see how it could become an obsession, and sap the fun out of writing. But ahhh, validation (pant pant).

Lots of questions for one post, I know, but I've been saving them up.


[This message has been edited by Rose Kelleher (edited March 18, 2004).]

[RCL]

A few print journals that are formal friendly: The Lyric, Pivot (recently switched to CD format), Hudson Review, Light Quarterly, Italian Americana, Edge City Review, First Things. Dunno about I&T: I submitted last August, queried in January, and never heard from them. As far as I'm concerned, they're dead. See Poet's Market where a number of journals specify how long to wait between submissions (e.g. Poetry, once a year) and you'll find answers to some of your other questions. Also check the classifieds in Poets & Writers, online.

Good Luck,

------------------
Ralph

[Fred Longworth]

I regularly submit poems, though not in such quantities as, say, back in 1999.

Based on an examination of my submissions since last August, I have been running 15% acceptance rate. My most recent significant acceptance was a poem for The Melic Review. I just won a meritorious mention in a poetry contest, but I consider that award trivial.

* * * * *

If I am rejected by a journal, I note very carefully HOW they responded to my work: (1) the character of the rejection letter, whether boiler plate or personalized (and to what degree); (2) how long they took in deciding.

I fold my poems very tightly, with edges lined up perfectly, and use 24-pound white-as-white-can-be paper. It is nearly impossible to refold a sheaf of my poems and get them as perfect as when I send them in. This said, I've run into several instances recently where it was clear that the editors did not read the poems at all -- just stuck them in the SASE and sent them back.

I find this extremely disturbing. Frankly, when this happens, I will not submit to that journal again unless they have a change in editorial staff.

* * * * *

Regarding: Can publishing matter?

This is a serious question. I will try to give the short answer. If you are attempting to pursue a formal career in poetry -- and hope ultimately to teach poetry at a community college or university, or to be paid to give readings -- then your publishing resume can make a big difference, as will the letters MFA or Ph.D after your name.

If you are attempting, though the power of the written word, to make an impact on the culture in the sense that the culture is conversing with itself through your poetry, and in the sense that you as poet are merely a talented intermediary in this dialog, then there is a problem with playing the publication game.

That problem is that most published poems are only read by other poets, because they wind up getting published in all those "little magazines."

If you want your poetry -- or poetry written by other folks you like and admire -- to reach the broader culture, then the challenge is to find other channels of expression. Writing a poetry column for a local small newspaper is one alternate channel. Another is posting your poems on fences or printing them on your clothing.

* * * * *

As far as where to publish metrical stuff, I will defer to those who know far more about this than I.

Regards,

Fred

[DianeDT]

If you want your poetry -- or poetry written by other folks you like and admire -- to reach the broader culture, then the challenge is to find other channels of expression.

Such channels do exist. It is now possible to have poetry on a coffee can, in an art exhibit, in a gumball machine, and read on the radio. Short fiction is being distributed on at least one subway system, so perhaps poetry will be added. There are also posters and broadsides, which can be distributed in a variety of venues.

[Chris Childers]

I'll try to be the first to bump the Discerning Eye thread with the list of formal magazines back up to the top, since it's not too often I'm able to pretend to be useful.

As far as personal publications, I'm 1/1 baby!, and reluctant to send out other things because I'd rather not befoul that pristine figure. Also, because I hate snail mail, and can never summon up the motivation to get an envelope, write an address on it, etc., etc..

Chris

[Fred Longworth]

Rose,

I want to run with this a little more, because something just occurred to me which is a systemic problem with workshopping either face-to-face or on the net. (And Eratosphere is a TERRIFIC on-line workshop, by the way.)

The problem is revision.

If you ask famous poets, like Mary Oliver, how many times they revise a poem before it is "done" or sufficiently polished so that they are willing to send it to, say, Poetry or Kenyon Review or one of those other top-flight journals, you will often hear that they revised the piece dozens of times over a period of many months, or often years.

Now, workshops don't fit in that paradigm. Usually, you bring a poem by (or post it) and everybody takes their best shot, and then you go home and, over the next few weeks, you try to incorporate the suggestions you got from the more capable and sensitive readers among those who critiqued.

Say that those suggestions pushed you four drafts further down the road to a "finished" poem. That would still leave a lot of remaining work before the poem was satisfyingly completed.

My experience is that, when you want to post a poem over and over, to keep improving it to higher and higher levels of artistic development, your critiquers have difficulty staying with you. You may find that, after a time, you post the poem and nobody responds. Or you may need to try the poem in another workshop.

This can be frustrating.

It's almost like a study group where people are willing to study with you while you raise your grade from a C to a B, but bug out when you voice an intent to go for an A.

The "help to a degree, but no more" ceiling is not confined to this board, or any particular board. Best as I can tell, all the boards I've worked on, whether open or by invitation, have difficulty staying with a poet through, say, five or ten major drafts of a poem.

It would be nice to have an intensive workshop, a separate board, say, here on Eratosphere, where poems were only posted that their authors intended to shepherd through a series of revisions, and where critiquers were willing to help in a longitudinal way.

Best,

Fred

[eaf]

Originally posted by Rose Kelleher:
"Can Publishing Matter"? Is publishing, for a non-academic amateur poet, even worth pursuing, in your opinion? I can see how it could become an obsession, and sap the fun out of writing. But ahhh, validation (pant pant).

Some people can't accept validation from friends and peers, or even workshops. If you're truly an amateur but can't live without the validation, I would offer this advice: get published so you can get it out of your system, then forget about all that hooey. Don't ever stop reading and writing. Who gives a shit if the Iowa Review doesn't like your stuff? I'd rather work a lifetime to produce one great book than have a hundred poems in lesser mags.

In my experience, chapbooks make great gifts to family members and can be very useful when used to wedge the wobble out of table legs and chairs.

-eaf

[Roger Slater]

You mention Anon, which publishes mostly free verse. But Mike Stocks, the editor of Anon, specifically told me that this is because they don't get many metrical submissions, and that he would very much like to receive more. He's an admirer of Dark Horse and the kind of poetry they publish. He asked me to encourage metrical poets to submit, as he'd love to publish quality metrical poems. Go for it.

[A. E. Stallings]

I wouldn't limit yourself to formal journals (though of course, they are an important outlet.) You will have a much wider readership if you are willing to brave the odds with more mainstream journals. Most journals, in my experience, unless specifically anti-form (and there are a number of those, of course), are happy to see some well-turned formal poetry in the mix. The thing is to see if you like other stuff the journal publishes, if you'd be happy to see your poem in that company. One good indication of openness is to flip to contributors' page. Are a fair number published there for the first time? Or does the magazine have a stable of regular poets? (For instance, Poetry by that reckoning is a great deal more open than many lesser journals; they do actually read everything that comes over the transom.)

Also, if a magazine supports you (publishes your poem), it is only fair to support them in turn by getting a subscription.

There are some new form-friendly journals on the block. The National Review is a handsome little mag. They aren't necessarily as interested in form per se as sound--rhyme, rhythm, and experimental uses thereof as well as traditional ones. 32 Poems is friendly to form and free verse and favors the short lyric. It has a bit of a buzz. I've seen good formal poems featured from Smartish Pace. All of these have web sites. And there are e-zines, of course. Blackbird is a particularly nice one.

Regarding web sites, Verse Daily (modelled, it would seem, on Poetry Daily), features mostly--though not entirely--formal--to some degree--verse, and you can get an idea of form-friendly journals from journals they tend to feature.

I would also note--having been a reader for a magazine--that lists of credits in cover letters, especially lists of minor credits, do not necessarily impress. A huge list of minor credits may even discourage. A reader would rather encounter a talented totally unpublished poet than one who had published indiscriminately in every obscure journal under the sun. An intriguing sentence or two about yourself (and perhaps some indication that you have actually read the magazine) will go farther.

I also find with submitting batches of poems that it is very often the odd-man-out, the filler poem, that gets taken. This happens to me pretty consistently--I don't know if that means I am a poor judge of my own work or what! So I always throw in a sort of wild card, something I really don't expect the magazine to take. (Not because it's bad, but because it's odd or doesn't seem to fit their style at all or I think it is a bit silly.) Ya never know.

Good luck!

Alicia

[MEHope]

I'd also not limit myself to poetry/lit journals/magazines/ezines. There are a number of trade and/or specialized pubs that take poetry, if you're looking for audience.

I don't submit much, my 'success' ratio is about 50 percent.