Thoughts on Poetry & Submissions

~ Notes from The Editor’s Desk ~

~ Notes from The Editor’s Desk ~

Let’s be clear that what follows are my personal opinions and please keep in mind that all of our opinions evolve over time. Sharing these thoughts and reflections about my personal aesthetics when it comes to poetry and why poems may end up rejected by ONE ART is meant to be an offering to those looking to improve their poetry toolkit, revise individual poems, and improve submissions.

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It’s important to remember that not all editors have similar standards. The way that I curate ONE ART is a form of gatekeeping that makes sense to me personally. I would like to believe I am relatively consistent in my selections while pushing the boundaries every now and again for the sake of broadening my own preferences, exposing ONE ART readers to work I believe is good, deserved to be platformed, and is genuinely thought-provoking.

It should be noted that my Consulting Editor, Louisa Schnaithmann, plays a role in selections and has an ear for work that is more lyric.

I’m interested in poems that speak to the core issues of what it means to be a living, breathing person in our global communities. I aim to share work that speaks to the now and is, hopefully, lasting. I increasingly gravitate towards poems that meditate on gratitude and kindness and joy. Of course, being a poet, I enjoy plenty of poems that dwell in darkness and address important issues about mortality. All poets have something of a fascination with death and the body. Poets have a proclivity for deep introspection. We may try not to be too navel-gazey—but it happens. Poems that address issues of mental health and addiction are essential as these are two pandemics in our society that still are not receiving the level of attention that is badly needed. There is so much else that matters. So much else we need to unpack. So much else I want to share with the ONE ART community. The editor’s door is always open and I’m listening.  

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~ The following is not shared in any particular order. ~

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Visual aesthetic preferences.

In my case, poems published in ONE ART speak to my aesthetic. Often, poems are right-adjusted and use limited amounts of negative space / white space.

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Titles.

Try to bring something extra / outside of the poem, make it memorable or useful… be different.

On the flipside, you can have a whole collection of poems with the same title. That can work, too.

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The jump from title to first line:

“Usually, I try to create a hospitable tone at the beginning of a poem. Stepping from the title to the first lines is like stepping into a canoe. A lot of things can go wrong.”

– Billy Collins

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References.

Don’t be too obscure, avoid inside jokes that are too inside

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Readers aren’t mind-readers.

What’s on the page vs. what’s left off the page

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“...it's impossible to generate deep verisimilitude without specificity.”

    - Chuck Klosterman (But What If We’re Wrong?)

The Personal makes it Universal.

One question: How personal do you want to get?

Not all lyric is Confessional. Not all narrative is entirely factual (but it should speak to poetic truth). Poetic truth goes hand in hand with verisimilitude.

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There is a lot of negativity about so-called “Mental Health” poetry.

I personally have written quite a bit of this sort of poetry and think it’s perfectly sensible in the framework of “the stuff of poetry.”

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Limitations of The Short Poem

vs.

Limitations of Maximalism in poetics (why should the reader care? It’s a tough sell)

You have to decide much of this for yourself.

Why are you writing in this style, this form, this medium. What is the message of writing long vs. writing short? What are you saying about yourself?

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Common pitfalls:

Reminiscing, nostalgia, how it was, high school crushes, your old friends from back in the day… reflect on how this relates to walking the careful line of sentimentality.

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As Richard Hugo says, “I caution against communication because once language exists only to convey information, it is dying.”  

On the flipside, narrative throughlines aid in readability and assure the reader that your poem is not sound & fury…signifying nothing.

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Cutting the first few lines… “gearing up”

Cutting the last few lines… often explanatory or putting a bow on it… let the reader do some work, let the reader have a takeaway that leaves them thinking and wanting more…

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Why should the reader care about contextless characters in your poem?

Overuse of pronouns (he/she/they) who are never identified in the poem – surprisingly common – why should the reader care about these mystery characters? Tell the reader if you’re talking about your old neighbor, a nurse, a person at the supermarket, a friend you lost touch with, one of your siblings who shall remain unnamed, a stepparent, an in-law, a colleague, a former work colleague, a person from your book club, & so forth. Contextualize the person/character in your poem in some way that makes them meaningful so the poem has stakes.

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In general, high vs. low stakes

Ex.

A poem about your garden with no stakes is a nature poem, sure… but what does it do that 100 million other poets have not done? You make it special. It’s the way you tell it. It’s your relationship with nature. It’s your garden. See: Shakespeare on gardens. There’s a lot here. Nature poetry can easily fall into sound & fury. Maybe instead write a haiku/American pops/American Sentences.

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I’m reminded of a workshop with William Logan. I had been hanging around MFA students a bit too much, maybe. I foolishly asked if a poem had “earned the ending.” Logan (after noting my response was MFA jargon that should be left at the door) responded, “Just be happy that it got there.”

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The poem that everyone writes.

You have to do it your own way. I’m speaking primarily for neurotypicalish cis straightish white people. If you are what people in The Western Canon have historically published by default—well, you’re going to have to work a little harder. Your story may have been told 200 years ago. Now, there are people who never had the chance to speak who are gaining time in the limelight because their voices have been pushed into the shadows until very recent times.

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Epigraphs.

Don’t outdo yourself from the get-go. Is your poem going to live up to Yeats or Keats or Dickinson or Whitman or Einstein and so on and so forth. It’s hard to follow “the greats”. The epigraph may have been an inspiration but you may no longer need it as an intro to the poem. It could be kept in your notes for banter during readings or when you place the poem in a collection in a notes section.

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Why are you interested in what you’re interested in?

Consider how this special interest might not be a special interest of others. Given this, how do you present your interest in a way that gives a window into your world so others can enjoy your thoughts and experiences. This requires a little bit of handholding.

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Prompts.

If you started with a prompt. You may want to move a little bit away from it by the time you start sending out work for publication. Maybe the prompt was about a recipe you remember your mother making during your childhood. Spin off in another direction. Find a throughline that pulls you in different directions. As Frost writes, “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.” In the same essay, The Shape a Poem Makes, Frost also notes that you should be able to enjoy reading and rereading your poem many times. Is this the case? Readability is one indication of a poem’s quality.

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Common types of poems.

Like occasional poems, poems that are elegies, aubade, epistolary, historical, persona, new takes on an old fable, play on myth, religious dogma, prayers, self-reflection, epiphanic moments, changes of heart, tales of your personal travels, nods to historical figures or poets or writers or authors or musicians, anything in the zeitgeist, poem du jour,  … these need to stand out to receive careful attention from the editor. Why? Because they are common submissions. Anything that is a common submission, like a poem about a winter storm during a winter storm, or a poem about a presidential election during election season, or a poem about cicadas during a major hatching season, appear in editor’s inboxes by the dozens.  

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Forms.

ONE ART, in spite of the name nodding to the most famous villanelle, primarily publishes free verse poetry. Yes, free verse is a form. When submitting formal work, the odds are often not in your favor unless you’re particularly adept at having modernized the form. Sonnets still tend to be successful, I believe, because they still operate well in conjunction with common cadences in everyday English speech. Other forms often seem less effective, in my humble opinion, or are very hard to pull off. Modern forms are tricky, too. I receive quite a lot of golden shovel poems, for example.

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Negative space.

Look at the poems ONE ART publishes. Few involve a great amount of negative space (aka. white space). ONE ART rarely publishes poems with a lot of white space. There are several reasons. One is a personal preference for using language and other methods to get at the same qualities as visual movement on the page. Another issue relates to formatting (not a surprise). Another reason is that those who use screen readers have called attention to the fact that ONE ART is reader-friendly and the aim is to keep it that way. This means avoid using an image of a poem to “maintain” the visual look. Yes, we could then add the text below or add an audio component. Down the road, there will be further considerations about how to make ONE ART even more accessible.

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Light poetry.

Very challenging to make it good.

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Use of language by Romantic Poets or those or another era.

Not exactly making it new.

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Don’t be boring.

The spark in a poem matters. Try reading your poems aloud. How do they sound? Poetry, after all, has a long history of oratory that continues today best known in the world of slam poetry. The poems need to live on the page.

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Common problems in a poem that are reasons your poem might be getting rejected:

The draft in unfinished

Not sonorous

Too narrative

More attention is need to the individual lines (lineation)

The poet can clearly do better

Obvious areas for improvement but too many to request a rewrite

Not democratic as in too high-flown language

Addresses a serious subject in as easy that comes across as flip

Poem is ultra-violent without merit

Poem is hypersexual without merit

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You still need to keep honing your abilities:

Beyond “Craft” (a ubiquitous MFA term), there is much to learn about how you want to navigate your own poems. “Craft” in fact, in certain cases, might even be antithetical to your goals.

Your 10,000 hours / The effort it takes to learn how to sound like yourself on the page.

Knowing your 'Personal Universe' (Richard Hugo, The Triggering Town)

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A difficult yet important question: Are you the best person to be telling this story?

If that’s too much of a gray area, maybe instead question if it’s appropriate for you to be telling this story.

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Are you achieving the aim(s) you set out to achieve in your poem?

If so, you can count this as a success.

If not, you might want to question if this poem has accomplished something entirely different that is also good.

You might also wish to question if writing another variation on the same premise might be a good idea. It doesn’t mean you should be throwing out drafts. Beginning again and “circling” the idea is often what poets do in poem after poem as we attempt to grapple with some of the most complicated aspects of what it means to be human.
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