You Can Write Poetry - Jeff Mock [53]
If you choose to submit your poems to magazines, you need to abide by the necessities and courtesies of the writer-editor relationship. Know the magazine you wish to submit poems to. Check your library and bookstores to discover literary magazines, and check such sources as Poet's Market to discover magazines you can't find locally. Subscribe to four or five of these magazines and read them thoroughly and critically. (If you don't care for a magazine, allow your subscription to lapse and subscribe to another.) Understand the editors' tastes and preferences. Some editors are more insightful than others. Make sure your poems are appropriate for a particular magazine. If your poems aren't appropriate for an editor, it's a waste of time, ink and postage to submit your poems to that magazine. Make sure you like the poems printed in that magazine. If you don't appreciate an editor's tastes, don't submit to that magazine. You certainly don't want your poem appearing next to poems you dislike.
Once you discover appropriate magazines, look for their addresses and submission guidelines, printed in their first few pages. Proofread your poems with care. Ensure they're proper and correct, free of errors. Send only clean copies, three or four poems at a time. If a poem is smudged or creased so seriously that it's ready to split in two, make fresh copies. Editors appreciate clean manuscripts; they make for a more pleasurable reading experience. Most editors enjoy a cover letter preceding the poems. A simple hello will do: Hello, please consider these poems, thank you. If you wish, you may briefly introduce yourself. You may compliment a poem or two in a recent issue (but don't overdo it; editors recognize insincerity). Always address the cover letter to a specific editor, by name. This is a social grace, and it shows that you're familiar with the magazine. Editors appreciate that. With every submission, include a self-addressed, stamped envelope (a SASE) for the editor's response to your poems. Magazines work on tight budgets; they can't afford to respond if you don't send a SASE. You won't hear back, and your poems will hang in limbo. Finally, wait patiently for the editor's response. Magazines receive thousands of poems each year, and sometimes editors get behind. Wait patiently because they have plenty of reading and only so many hours in a day. If you don't hear back within three or four months (check the magazine's guidelines for its response time), write a letter asking if your poems arrived, and if they did, whether they are still under consideration. Send a SASE with a letter of inquiry, too.
When you submit, be prepared to receive a rejection slip. It isn't personal. It isn't a comment on your poems. Editors receive more poems than they can possibly publish. The load is staggering. At The Gettysburg Review, we received eight-thousand-plus poems a year. We couldn't even publish all the poems we liked because we had only so many pages to work with. We could accept roughly eighty or so poems a year for publication. We returned many good poems, with our regrets, to their authors. When we had time while reading our eight-thousand-plus poems, we wrote a personal note. Sometimes we offered to read more of a poet's work. When you receive such a note, don't immediately submit just any batch of poems. Many poets make that mistake. Instead, go through your poems, read them with a discerning eye, and send better poems than those just returned to you. If you don't have better poems ready to submit, wait. Write more poems, better poems. Keep the editor's note—and name—so you can send the better poems when they're ready. Take up such an offer only when you can send better poems. Don't deluge an editor with mediocre poems; you want to establish a professional relationship. You want the editor