[Sonador101]

I am almost done with a book of poetry I am compiling, and does any one have any information and/or tips on how to get published.

[Sonador101]

Um anyone?

[vingogly]

There are four routes you can go: try to sell the volume as a book to a publisher, publish 2-3 poems at a time in "little" magazines and build a reputation, self-publish a book, self-publish on the internet. These are in order from hardest to easiest to accomplish.

Without a name as a published poet, you're not going to publish a book of poetry so the first option is out. Seriously, you'd be wasting your time.

Most literary poets publish in so-called "little" magazines (the second option), then move up to the big time publications like New Yorker, Poetry, the major reviews. You need to be very talented to make it via this route; and talented means being able to recognize what's bad in what you've done as well as what's good. A writer who doesn't dump 80% of what he/she writes into the circular file isn't a writer In my opinion. A sizable portion of T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland (one of the 20th century's greatest poems) was red-lined by Ezra Pound, and Eliot followed the Master's advice and retained the editing. This is a long road, and you'll have to be patient... and realize that many very good poets never make the big time.

That leaves self-publishing. A good way to do this if you want to publish a book is via either Lulu or CreateSpace. You can print copies on demand, and they provide ways of marketing your book. If you'd like to publish them in small groups, there are quite a few online literary magazines out there. Check out any collection of poetry by a contemporary like W.S. Merwin, Galway Kinnell, Jorie Graham or Mary Jo Salter; you'll see a number of publishing credits for the poems in the volume. Most poems in published volumes first appear elsewhere. Even well-known poets publish by the little/literary magazine route.

EDIT: I wanted to leave you with some encouragement - the following is advice given one of my favorite contemporary poets, W. S. Merwin, by one of his mentors, John Berryman:

... as for publishing he advised me
To paper my wall with rejection slips
His lips and the bones of his long fingers trembled
With the vehemence of his views about poetry

He said the great presence
That permitted everything and transmuted it
In poetry was passion
Passion was genius and he praised movement and invention

I had hardly begun to read
I asked how can you ever be sure
That what you write is really
Any good at all and he said you can't

You can't you can never be sure
You die without knowing
Whether anything you wrote was any good
If you have to be sure don't write

--- from "Berryman", by W. S. Merwin

[linnealand]

vingogly, I can't thank you enough for your tremendous contribution in response to sonador's post. I found your answers to be both thoughtful and informative. I have spent years wondering what to do about the books upon books of poems I have scattered about, and I have found my meager investigations on the internet to be sorrowfully fruitless.

Last year I finished reading sylvia plath's mother's haunting collection of her daughter's correspondence to her by mail, entitled letters from home. It includes a great deal of detailed descriptions regarding plath's own experiences in trying to get published in magazines and, eventually, in book form. I have been more than a little curious to know if time and technology have changed the way the system works.

I am american, but I have been living in florence, italy for the last seven years. My circles of friends barely include native english speakers, let alone poets of a certain caliber. I take full responsibility in not being properly proactive in this search, but at this time it is what it is. I like to think I hold myself to very high standards. How would someone like me find an editor worth his weight in words to help in the selection process? Should I even have an editor at this point?

I have been writing poetry since my mid-teens. I am now 28. I had a rather awful experience a handful of years ago in trying to edit and select from a mountain of my own work to prepare just ten poems for applications to master's programs. I believe I became so over-wrought with the stress and confusion I created while trying to set them into workable order that I temporarily lost the ability read anything I wrote without running the risk of destroying the "natural magic" in the majority of those poems. I have since resigned myself to adjusting all poems written since that time at a very slow pace. Surely the work is better off for it.

Do you know of a reputable site that explains how to contribute poems to high-end magazines? Should they still be sent in hard-copy, or are e-mailed versions considered standard? Would I need to get published in lower-end magazines first? I did get several poems printed in my college's poetry and literature magazines, but that was a long time ago.

Many thanks in advance for anything you can share with me on the subject. Many extra thanks, too, for the w. s. merwin contribution. It was wonderful.

[vingogly]

At least some of the major publications allow electronic submission - Poetry Magazine does, for example. I've been out of the submission game for quite a while so I don't know how common this is. My guess is it's pretty common. As for reputable sites, Writers Market has been around forever and offers subscription-based online information. They still put out the hardcopy edition, which is available at Amazon.com. You might also check out Poet's Market, also available at Amazon; good advice and resources for the poet. I have an older copy floating around somewhere.

I did my BA in English Lit & Creative Writing at University of Iowa in the early '70s. It was an unbelievably exciting place to be, but the workshop/MFA route isn't for everyone. Writers who were a big deal in their home towns find they're just another little fish in a very big pond, and the brutal approach at the Writer's Workshop very nearly destroyed some of my more sensitive classmates. I was accepted for an MA there, but took a pass.

If you're very good, you might try the high-end first but be prepared to "paper your wall with rejection slips". You probably know by this point whether you've got the chops to go for the high-end markets. I would say this in the way of advice: if it's your passion and you're ready to give your life to it, you will regret not following the Muse. I chose a more pedestrian career over the written word 37 years ago, and I still see myself in one sense as a failed poet. The years and decades will fly by swifter than you can imagine. I still write, but am not what you would call a prolific poet.

Regarding an editor, I'd connect with some of the better writers' communities out there. Look for authenticity and high (literary) standards. One forum I'm aware of is Literature and Latte (I think the folks there are more fiction types, though). There may be a forum at the Writers Market site, but I don't have a membership so I can't say. You may be able to connect with someone there who might be an editor for you... and I know there are a few professional writers in *this* forum.