Back in June

Poetry Journal Editors Panel

I realize now that before it actually happened, I should have blogged about The Riverwood Poetry Festival in Hartford (June 21^st-24^th, yes, sorry, you’ve missed it this year).  It looked really great: among the events, four Poets Laureate read one night (Dick Allen (CT); Walter Butts (NH); Lisa Starr (RI) and Sydney Lea (VT)), and Nick Flynn all by himself on another. 

And I was on a panel of poetry journal editors, trying to characterize our journals and what we looked for.  We each read two poems we had accepted and explained some of what we liked about those poems, and the audience asked questions—two in particular seemed to strike a nerve.

The first was, why does it seem you have to have an MFA to get published?

The second was, doesn’t anyone accept poems that rhyme anymore?   

We all had our answers.  Of course you don’t have to have an MFA to get published, and we (all the editors on that panel, but also we editors at Common Ground) don’t actually look at your credentials: we look at your writing.

However, people who’ve worked to get an MFA may have these advantages: they’ve had a period of intense concentration focused on making their writing shine; they’ve had experienced teachers giving them advice; they’ve run their poems through the gauntlet of their peers’ criticism, and then they’ve revised their poems some more.  (All praise to those who have gone through and survived!)

The MFA writers may have these disadvantages, though: their poems may sound “workshopped” and/or more like their mentors than like themselves; the work may have lost energy and innovation as it gained polish; the writer may have chosen to shy away from risky moves, for example, deciding to err on the side of intellectualism rather than passion, fearing that passion might be overly sentimental or naïve.

Or it might rhyme.  (That’s a joke!)

Personally, I don’t think rhyme should hijack the poem.  The poem is not about rhyming.  If rhyme has a point, if it adds rhythm and meaning to the poem’s content, then I’m fine with it.  But even then, I want the rhyme to be created from the best-chosen words; I want the rhyme to please and surprise just the way I want the rest of the poem to do.

If you want to look up the other journals whose editors were on the panel, here they are:

Caduceus: http://tfuscomedia.com (Tony Fusco)

Connecticut River Review: http://ct-poetry-society.org/publications.htm (Pat Mottola)

CT Review: www.easternct.edu/connecticutreview (Lisa Siedlarz)

Dogwood: www.dogwoodliterary.com (Sonya Huber)

Drunken Boat: http://www.drunkenboat.com (Ravi Shankar)

What You Are Doing Right

We are reading submissions now, trying to select not just good poems, but poems that really take us forward, that would work together in an issue that will, we already know, be very eclectic.  It’s not as if we’ve asked for poems on a theme.  That’s a possibility to explore for later.

We publish two issues a year, but we get submissions year-round.  What’s great is when the exact right poems arrive just about when we are putting together the issue.  Then we can accept them instantly: we know how they’ll fit, and the poets get letters from us very quickly. 

But when good poems arrive just after we’ve published an issue and we aren’t sure what the next issue is going to look like, we tend to hold those poems until the next issue gels.  This means that when we find some of the poems will not work, and we have to reject them, the rejection has been so delayed that the person who submitted them must be wondering what on earth has happened—or else has forgotten about them completely.  We have not forgotten, though we may be looking frantically for those poems when an editor has taken them home to go through one final time, or when our office has been packed up and moved to another building, both of which just happened between December and January.  

What you are doing right, when you are doing it right, is just amazing to think about. 

First, you are sending your work out.  That takes organization (especially with the constant changes in postage) and courage, or possibly enthusiasm.  When I send work out, I am at that moment so pleased with what I have written that I cannot imagine anyone would reject it.  The next day, however, or even the second after it goes out, I am certain it is all horrible and will be returned as soon as someone has read it (after it has been sitting around for months waiting to be read).  I am impressed by your sheer bravery in putting poems (or fiction or non-fiction) in the mail.

Second, you are writing.  I don’t know where you find the time to write or the ideas—life is busy!—, but I am happy you have managed to do so.

When you send your work out, I recommend a few practical considerations: 1) use the Forever stamps; 2) make sure your SASE is fully addressed and included;  3) make sure your bio is included, with some means of contacting you if by any chance you are to move before the issue comes out.      

Finally, you keep writing.  You keep sending work out regardless of rejections and delays and rejections.  Because as you keep writing, and as you keep thinking about writing, you are getting better at doing it.  Eventually everything will all come together: the poem sent to the right place at the right time, the acceptance that lifts you until you are walking on air instead of ground.