Why you should submit your poems even if you're not 100% sure you're done
Join our submission support group this Sunday
Time to Submit Your Poems
Hi Friends
Earlier this week I asked you to share some of your biggest wins of 2024.
Lots of poets had and individual poems and full books published, some through presses I know and some through presses that are new to me. Reading through everyone’s posts has inspired me to check out these new presses, read more poetry by members of our community, and to gear up for more submissions this year. If you want to submit more poetry, I invite you to
Join our submission support group Sunday.
(Paid subscribers will see the link at the bottom of our welcome page.)
If you’re hemming and hawing about whether or not you’re ready to send work out, I want to share this essay I wrote a few years ago, which Trish Hopkinson just reposted on her blog, A Selfish Poet.
Why You Should Submit Even if You Are Not 100% Sure You’re Done –
I used to be a perfectionist
“No work of art is ever completed, just abandoned” – Paul Valery
We all know this, and yet we all want assurances that our writing is truly solid before we send it out. For example, when I was a young writer, I usually tried very hard to make sure writing was “perfect” before I sent it out. I would take it to my writing group. I would get feedback. I would get my editor to check off on it. Then, I would hide it in a drawer for a month, take it out again, look at it again, make sure there was nothing that could be improved, hide it in a drawer for another month, take it out again when I saw my favorite journal was open for submissions, and if I still felt good about it, I’d send it out. Just once, to one journal at a time. This resulted in some good acceptance letters, a lot of rejection letters, and generally speaking a very slow turn-over rate of completion. I usually got about three poems published a year. In an effort to be perfect, I had also been really slow.
How I learned to be less of a perfectionist
Here’s what broke me of that habit.
A while ago I wrote a poem called “On a wire in Los Angeles.” The original draft was good (in my humble opinion), but too long. One colleague poet encouraged me to remove the second stanza, and then the poem would be “ready” she said. After following her direction, it got rejected several times.
I took it to another editor friend of mine, asking, “Can this be any stronger?” She suggested I pull the last two lines. I cut the last two lines and continued to send it out. The poem rejected until, one winter morning, I received a note from Fourth River Review, saying “We love this poem, and want to publish it. However. . .” they politely pointed out, “we don’t think the third stanza works. Can we remove it before we publish this otherwise very fine piece?” I looked at their suggested cuts, realized they were right, and gave them the poem to publish.
What can we learn from this anecdote? Well, firstly we learn that I write poems that are too long. You can cut out 1/3 of them and still get the point. Harhar. But the other thing we can learn is that all editors and publishers have their own opinions. Even if an editor you admire gives you the thumbs up on a piece, it doesn’t mean another editor will accept it. If an editor doesn’t accept a piece, it doesn’t mean the poem is “wrong,” either. It just means it didn’t fit their particular needs.
Submitting isn’t just about getting published. It’s also about finding your tribe.
Maybe it’s because I have a degree in the Psychology of Creativity, rather than an MFA in poetry, but I tend to think of the publishing process as being more about creating bonds between people than about anything else. I’m interested in strong writing, and I always want to help poets I work with hone their craft, but ultimately what I hope a poem does is touch someone on a deeper level, or stir the imagination, or ignite a conversation. If a poem can do one of those things for an editor, the editor will sometimes overlook flaws in technique, or else they’ll write back to the poet and ask, “could we change a few small things so that we can otherwise accept this poem?”
Over the years I’ve also found that getting published shows me who my poetry “friends” are. When I get a piece in a journal, I always take time to read the other poets who are published alongside me. Then, if I like what I read, I connect with them on social media. Some of the poets I’ve “met” through mutual publication have become life-long friends and some have even come to take workshops with me at The Poetry Salon. Some come and become guests on The Poetry Saloncast. Why? Not because any of us is perfect, but because we are engaging in the same discussion. Our poems are talking with one another and we’re finding that together we are expanding one another’s horizons.
Submitting is a learning process. It will teach you where your writing fits in the market.
Here’s another reason to send out work, even if you’re not sure you’re sending it to the right place. It teaches you what certain journals want and don’t want. Some journals may pass on a particular piece you send, but write an encouraging rejection note asking you to submit again next time. Some might tell you that your writing style is just not for them at all. Others might see a piece you wrote and decide it is worth working with you on it to help get it into shape, according to their needs and aesthetic. However, I want to caution again that all editing advice is still very subjective.
Once a writer friend of mine asked a journal why they had rejected her poem and if she could do anything to make it stronger. This was a piece she had worked on for several months with me in our writing group and I, personally, thought it was beautiful and sad and poignant and “perfect.” This particular journal, however, basically told her to rewrite it from scratch, making the language more metaphorical and adding in greater sense of similes and surprise. “Should I rewrite it?” she asked me.
What I told her is that it was her choice, ultimately. If she felt she could make the entire piece stronger by writing it again from scratch, then I wasn’t going to stop her. “But” I said, “It might just be that this journal is looking for something different. Try sending this piece out to thirty other journals first. Chances are somebody else is looking for what you already have.”
“But,” I told her “next time you write a poem that has lots of metaphor, you’ll know to send it to this journal.”
When do you give up on a piece and when do you go back to work on it?
That begs the question of when a writer needs to listen to the chorus of “no’s” and go back to the proverbial drawing board. I read that writers get, an average of 30 rejections for every one acceptance, so I will send the same poem out 30 times without blinking. BUT, on the 30th rejection, I will pull it out of circulation and look at it again with fresher eyes. Usually, by this time, I have moved on from the poem. I am a totally different person. I may no longer be artistically interested in my last boyfriend leaving me or being sprayed by a waterfall on my last trip to Yosemite. Even though, years ago, I invested my time and talent in perfecting that poem, I’ve grown as a writer and may just dump the piece and move on. Submitting your work, waiting for it to get accepted, listening to the “yes’s” and “no’s” also gives you, as an artist, the opportunity you need to gain distance, let go of old work, and grow.
On the other hand, should I see something still worth pursuing after that 30th rebuff, some beautiful piece of language or an idea that continues to intrigue me, I can re-enter the poem and attempt to nurse my fragile, beleaguered bird back to health, and send it out again.
Tresha Faye Haefner’s poetry appears, or is forthcoming in several journals and magazines, most notably Blood Lotus, Blue Mesa Review, The Cincinnati Review, Five South, Hunger Mountain, Mid-America Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, Radar, Rattle, TinderBox and Up the Staircase Quarterly. Her work has garnered several accolades, including the 2011 Robert and Adele Schiff Poetry Prize, and a 2012, 2020, and 2021 nomination for a Pushcart. Her first manuscript, Pleasures of the Bear was a finalist for prizes from both Moon City Press and Glass Lyre Press. It was published by Pine Row Press under the title When the Moon Had Antlers in 2023. She facilitates poetry workshops at The Poetry Salon. Find out more at ThePoetrySalonStack.substack.com.
Come share your poems with us at our reading and recorded open-mic in January.
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Submitting Poetry Can be Fun!
Believe it or not, you can get work published and have fun doing it. The trick is to do it with a group of friends. Together we will offer practical and moral support, suggestions for where to submit, and tips for how to get your work out there.
Do you have a book out but no idea how to market it?
In this event, Jeannine Hall Gailey, author at BOA, will offer insights and useful tips on how to promote your book even if you are an introvert, have no experience with marketing, or are short on time.
We will follow up with a Q&A session where Jeannine will answer individual questions, and help you discover the marketing strategies that are right for you.
Don’t just make fans, make real friends.
Learn to promote your poetry online and offline. Find your ideal readers, get reviews of your work, learn how to organize a book tour, get support from those who have been there before. Have fun doing it!
Breaking The Rules — Being Bad Doesn't Mean Bad Poetry: Poet and journalist Victor D. Infante jumps between styles regularly, from poetry to fiction to news reporting to music criticism. Does that have an effect on his writing? It certainly does, and in this generative workshop, Victor will talk about his eclectic career, his new hybrid poetry/fiction novella "Suffer For This," from Moon Tide Press, and how he does ... or doesn't ... keep it all straight in his head. Then it's your turn to break some literary rules and, hopefully, get away with it!
Nikki Giovani wrote, “i lay at the foot / of my bed and smell / the sweat of your feet.” Sandra Cisneros wrote, “I want you inside / the mouth of my heart.” Sonia Sanchez wrote, “you are tattooed on the round/soft/parts of me.” In this one-hour writing lab, we will explore love poems from the 20 th and 21 st century and use them as jumping off points for our own poems of romantic and sensual love. With a focus on the “you,” we will get down to what Eileen Myles calls the “messy & brite” parts of worship, obsession, and the body.
Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo is the daughter of Mexican immigrants and the author of Incantation: Love Poems for Battle Sites (Mouthfeel Press) and Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge (Sundress Publications). A former Steinbeck Fellow and Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange winner, she’s received residencies from Hedgebrook, Ragdale, Yefe Nof, Jentel, and National Parks Arts Foundation in partnership with Gettysburg National Military Park and Poetry Foundation. Her poem “Battlegrounds” was featured at Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, On Being’s Poetry Unbound, and the anthology, Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World (W.W. Norton). Her poetry and essays can be found at Acentos Review, Huizache, LA Review of Books, The Offing, [Pank], Santa Fe Writers Project, and other journals. She is the director of Women Who Submit. Inspired by her Chicana identity, she works to cultivate love and comfort in chaotic times.