Every aspiring poet, many perspiring poets, and perhaps a few expiring ones as well, should know how not to get one's poems published. As we all know, achieving publication is pretty easy: there is an abundance of eager editors ready to accept and publish almost any verse that comes in in postal or electronic mail. Here is how to get that coveted rejection notice, or, even better, a totally silent non-response to your submitted poems.
- Send any poems to any publication you have contact information for. If you have a postal or electronic address, fire off some poems. Don't bother to look at the journal to find out the kind of poems it has published. After all, you wouldn't want to appear to cater to the editor.
- Absolutely do not search out editorial guidelines for submission. Editors like to list the number of poems to be sent, the type of poem they're interested in, the schedule by which the editor wants to receive submissions. Only an amateur, lacking in self-confidence, would conform to such editorial whims.
- Send a lot of poems each time you submit. Let an editor say, "Send no more than six poems." Send thirty, forty, one hundred. How presumptuous of the editor to think that he or she can judge your poems on such slight samples.
- Do not include any request to the editor that he or she read your poems. Don't give the editor the satisfaction of your saying why you are sending these poems. If you show any courtesy in your correspondence, the editor will quickly realize that you are an inexperienced novice to be completely ignored.
- In contrast to the point above, send a long letter with your submission. Explain why you wrote each poem, what it means, what its specific beauties are, and demand that the editor respond by telling you how great your poetry is (and by extension, how great you are).
Follow these simple points, and surely you will not be embarrassed by having any of your poems actually published. After all, aren't the truest geniuses those whom no one has heard of?
