submit my poems to journals (monthly)

Dear Ruth,
We are very grateful for your submission to XXXX. We really like your poem, ‘Weight,’ but I’m afraid it was nudged-out ever so slightly this time around.
Please try us again come July 1st, when the new submission window opens for our non-themed Fall issue. We would like to see more of your work!
All the best,
Editor

I will definitely accept this invitation.

Three poems to a US Southwestern journal. I seem to be on a roll with journals in that part of the country lately, so here’s hoping!

Something that bodes well: the editors have posted bios of themselves with complete lists of their publication venues, & they have both published in several of the same journals that have accepted my work in the last couple of years. :-)

It is just gorgeous!

And I have to say, it is such a privilege to have two poems in a journal issue that also includes work by people like Alicia Ostriker & Brenda Cárdenas.

What a buzz!

—but indeed the world of literary publishing has many bizarre twists.

Last spring two of my poems were accepted by a literary journal published by a local university. No further word was forthcoming, so this fall when I read that my first poetry writing teacher had become this journal’s new editor, I wrote her a “how are you doing, I’ve been writing a lot” catch-up note & asked about the issue’s publication. She wrote back & said she was busily sorting through things & would get back to me.

Today I was e-mailed a formal rejection note from her, to which she added the bland “personal” statement “I am happy to know that you are still writing.” She says there was some trouble with the spring 2010 issue & I should contact the publisher (another professor) for more information. No apology offered.

I found the other editor’s acceptance note & e-mailed it back to her. I told her that if she is rescinding her predecessor’s acceptances, that should be stated more directly.

This poet/professor is connected with the group I recently decided to detach from. Another reason to avoid it! And my work has been accepted at plenty of better-quality journals this year; I have no reason to submit again (as her note invites) to this one.

Ick.

to an online journal whose aesthetic I find appealing.

After the flurry of acceptances this fall, I looked at my records & realized that I actually had no poems out looking for homes anymore! Well, there’s one set at a press that seems to have gone defunct; I have sent a follow-up e-mail to see if I get any response. Anyway, it was high time to send out some poems again!

Greetings Ruth from XXXX, assistant managing editor for New Madrid . . . Thank you so much for sending us your work. We’d like to accept “Flood” and “Ride” for publication. . . .
Our editorial process is author-interactive. We pass all suggested edits through you before sending the manuscript to layout. (With poems, editorial suggestions are usually minimal to none anyway). We also provide two sets of proofs, galleys and finals, for your review. We find this an especially important process with poetry, given the need for precision with word and line placement. Our editor is a poet, and she handles that part of the layout herself, so your work will be treated with great care.
We look forward to your reply, and we very much look forward to including your work in the Winter 2011 issue.
Editor

Only one other journal has ever sent proofs for me to check; I so appreciate this level of care! And I’m absolutely thrilled about these Colombia poems’ inclusion in this journal’s upcoming issue, whose theme is “the viability of water as resource & symbol.”

I’m a bit taken aback by this many acceptances in a row. Is it that my revisions have taken these poems to a new, higher level? Or maybe I’m making better choices about where to send them? Or I’m just in a lucky, or blessed, streak . . .

Here’s a different kind of acceptance letter, sent to all of the writers with accepted pieces at once:

Dear Writers,
I would be very pleased to publish your work in the upcoming issue of Pilgrimage (Vol. 35.3, due out in December). Your accepted pieces are listed below next to your initials.
If this work is still available, please email it to me by Thursday (10/7) along with a 3-5 line bio.
[etc.]
Many thanks for sending your work out to me!
All best regards,
Editor/Publisher

The list tells me that two of my Colombia poems have been accepted for this upcoming issue (theme: “Between the Dead & the Living”) of this gorgeous journal (just look at the home page ). I am extremely chuffed!

but I happened to check Wilda Morris’s poetry blog just now, & one of my poems took second place in her September challenge! I had been wondering what to do with my poem “Stung,” but when Wilda posted a call for poems about insects, I knew that was the place. :-)

Dear RuthG,
Congratulations. The following work(s) has been accepted for publication in RHINO 2011:
“Arithmetic”
Thank you for trusting us with your work. We are honored to publish it.
[lots more stuff, including a handwritten request to approve deletion of an unnecessary adjective, which I think is a great idea! :-)]

I love this piece; it’s a prose poem about my most painful childhood memory. So glad it’s going to be published in this very respectable journal.

EDIT to add: At Duotrope.com mine is the first acceptance recorded for RHINO!
(edit again to correct the date—sheesh.)

After I heard from CALYX, I reviewed my list & discovered that I was waiting to hear back on just three other sets of submissions. Definitely time to send out some more poems!

So tonight I pulled together two sets of three poems each & submitted to two intriguing venues that are new to me. Both have upcoming themed issues: one is water, the other “between the dead & the living.”