I wrote to one of my old college writing profs, to ask his thoughts on publishing. Here is what he replied:
Onto your question, and it’s a good one, and a natural one for
someone who wants to write. But let’s get one thing straight: I AM,
fact, the “be-all and end-all of all Poetic Wisdom.” O.K, that’s
settled.
But seriously, folks—it’s the question one should ask. I have very
few rules when I teach (have you noticed?), but one absolute
commandment is this: NEVER lie about poetry. If anything is sacred,
well- you get the idea. So- yes, I meant every word I wrote to you.
I do think you have real talent, as your poems have been consistently
at a high level. You’re definitely a ‘natural’ poet, and I do
believe in such a thing.
Here’s the thing, though about publishing a book: you’re right: the
way it’s done is to try to publish your poems in journals first, and
then collect enough of those plus a few others and send your book out
to a publisher. You could do it on a small scale: a chapbook (less
than 48 pages, usually around 24 pages or so), which is quite
respectable and most poets have at least one or two of those. It
shouldn’t cost much money to send poems to journals—I’m not sure
which journals you’re looking at, but you shouldn’t pay a thing for
journal submissions outside of postage. Many poetry presses
(university and small presses) have contests, and require a
submission fee (which is definitely steep- up to 25 bucks or more);
that fee allows them to publish the “winning” book. As you can
see, publishing a book is definitely a long process; for many poets,
it takes years, and sometimes never happens. I published my first
chapbook at 35, and didn’t publish my first book until I was- 40.
And that’s not all that unusual.
So, what all this stuff leads to is this: in order to publish a
‘book’- you need to keep writing as much as you can and- yes, you’re
good, you have talent, etc.,- but you, like everyone, need to get
better, to expand your possibilities, to read your ass off, and to
get good feedback, and then start sending your poems to journals. Of
course, one of the most popular ways of doing all that I just said is
to go to grad school in creative writing, because that’s usually the
best place to do all that stuff, especially the part about getting
feedback from -for lack of a better word -‘professional’ poets. I
know that’s difficult for some people to do- go to grad school -and
it’s obviously not required. You can do all that stuff without being
in the environment of other professional writers. But you’ll have to
work harder and have more self-discipline. I would recommend getting
a writing group together (you may already have that) with other folks
like yourself who can offer feedback. I would highly recommend
reading as much as possible, and especially reading poetry journals
to see what they publish (many are online; but you need to separate
the good from the bad; I’ll send you a link; for starters go to
www.pw.org and explore around- that’s Poets and Writers Magazine
which is a must for all writers). Knowing what kinds of stuff
journals publish will allow you to compare that with your own. See if
you can scrape enough money to go to a summer poetry festival (like
the Chautauqua one that I do)- many writers there are in positions
much like yours- serious about writing, but not attached to a
university, work in other fields, etc. It’s a good way to make
connections, too, with other writers.
You probably already have several poems that you can send out -either
in the forms I’ve seen them in or with some revisions. You should
definitely put together about a half dozen of them and send them off
to a good journal. You’ll probably get rejected- we all do. But who
knows? If you think they’re good enough, definitely send them out.
Which journal? Scroll around that web site I gave you, and I’ll give
you other suggestions.
One more thing: as you probably know: publishing a book, in my mind,
is not as important as the process of writing itself. I’ve known
people who, because they didn’t get their stuff accepted when they
wanted it to be, simply gave up writing. That was a shame, as they
were great writers. The motivation for writing should not be,
ultimately, material (as in book), but inner. Have you read Rainer
Maria Rilke’s book LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET? Do so, immediately.
It’s about the art. If Emily Dickinson would have stopped writing
because she didn’t get published, we wouldn’t have her poems today.
I hope this helps, and I hope you do keep writing and start the
process of sending your work out. It’s a crap shoot. Oftentimes
you’ll find really shitty poems get published and great poems like
yours don’t. We have NO control over what gets published. We can
just do our work as best as we can, send it out there, and get back
to our work again.
Stay in touch, and feel free to ask anything else about this.
