ON RUNNING THE PUBLICATION GAUNTLET

WITH A POSTSCRIPT ON STEALTH PUBLICATIONS

A while back I had a first—a journal editor called me up and said he loved my poem and was going to publish it. Naturally I was delighted. Once or twice before I’d received phone calls for a book acceptance or a residency but never a call from a magazine editor on a particular poem he or she was accepting.

That got me thinking about the unusual acceptances and rejections I’ve had over the years. The first poem I ever had taken by The New Yorker (one of two), I’d added to my submission as an afterthought. It had previously been rejected by five other magazines, some so obscure I can’t remember their names. On another occasion, I had a poem taken by a top literary journal and when it hadn’t appeared a year later, I wrote and asked them what was up. They said they’d changed poetry editors and weren’t going to publish it. I responded with an angry letter and included a Xerox copy of their original acceptance but never heard back. Perhaps the oddest rejection I ever received came with a hand-written comment in florid pink from an editor who said she “really loved” my poems. Hmm.

It’s often hard to gauge the significance of a rejection. Maybe the editor was hung over and having a bad day, or maybe the next issue was already full and they weren’t taking anything. Rare is the editor, who’s looking for reasons to accept rather than reject a submission.

Once in graduate school I saw a poetry editor in action. I was over at Marvin Bell’s house with some other students and we were sitting around chatting and drinking beer, and while this was going on he was reading through batches of poems submitted to the journal where he was editor. He’d skim a poem, then shuffled it under the batch and when the batch was done he’d slip it back in the envelope along with a printed rejection. Once in a while he’d set a poem aside for further consideration—all this, while snacking and carrying on a cheerful conversation. So when students and friends get depressed over a rejection, I tell them poetry editors are not the final authority; they’re just boozers like us. Don’t take it too seriously.

When I was starting out, there were fewer magazines and no internet, and multiple submissions weren’t acceptable. So it was shocking to learn that another of my teachers, Donald Justice, was sending the same poem out to several journals at once. His position was, “Life is short and editors take too god-damn long to respond!” Another approach, taken by a graduate student friend, was to include a note with his latest submission thanking the editors for their encouraging response to his previous batch of poems. In fact he’d only gotten a standard form rejection the last time but he argued that editors deal with so many submissions, they’d never remember whether they’d sent him an encouraging note or not. And lo, he received his first acceptance from Poetry Magazine using this tactic.

Another friend recently got three rejections on the same day and was understandably depressed. I’ve never had so much bad luck at once, but my approach before reading a response from an editor is to picture in my mind the rejection that I’m likely to be getting. If I can lock my mind around the image of the word “Sorry,” I’m less likely to be upset when I encounter it in the actual rejection. And if it should turn out to be an acceptance, I’ll be doubly surprised and pleased.

The bigger question, of course, is why do poets put themselves through this maddening gauntlet; why do we want to get published in the first place? It’s certainly not for the money. I suppose it’s because we’re looking for an external confirmation of our identity as writers. To see our names in print or on the web means that someone else, somebody outside of our immediate family, approves of our work. And in the magazines that publish us we’ll encounter other people engaged in the same activity who can appreciate the effort we’ve expended to get our poems written and into print. Moreover, among them we may find some kindred spirits, poets whose work we connect with and will want to follow in the future. Besides, by keeping at it, there’s always the possibility that one day out of the blue an editor will call up and say, “We’re taking your poem. We really loved it!”

A POSTSCRIPT ON STEALTH PUBLICATIONS

This is a rare category that I’ve only run into a couple of times: publications that occur without our knowing about them.

It first happened to me around twenty years ago. I was sitting schmoozing with a group of writer friends when the subject of a new anthology of Alaskan writers came up. Everyone seemed to know about it except me. I was a bit chagrined.

“Haven’t you seen it?” someone asked.

“No.”

“That’s strange, because you’re in it.”

“I am?”

The Alaska Reader: Voices from the North was just out from Fulcrum Publishing. I emailed the editors and asked if I could have a contributor’s copy. They duly sent me one, and sure enough a poem of mine, “December: for Spirit,” was included. There had been no invitation to submit, no acceptance letter, no contract, but here it was in a handsome new book, so I couldn’t complain.

      DECEMBER:  for Spirit

Toward the end of the year—perhaps
this is always the case—I'm

looking for a sign.  The mountains, like a
massive wave, rush upon the land.

And striking from below the southwest flange,
sunlight flames the upper sky. Darkness

flows from the east at three in the afternoon.
This month, except for bombs and

hijacked planes, I'd be in Israel.
Is one place better than the next?

Like minor stars three snow-machines
approach downriver with swift, silent speed.

We've trotted to the slough and back.
Overdressed, in double-insulated mittens

and down pants, I watch you chew the snow,
wearing the comfortable hair of a dog.

Hot breath fogs my glasses, while you
nip a thorny branch whose brittle

bract enfolds the rose. In Sixteenth Century
Palestine, young Rabbis paced the graveyards

of the ancient Torah-tellers, smelt the tar-smell
of redemption burning in their templed hearts.

They knew, no less than Christians do,
this world must be remade. Is it

too late?  The other night, at twenty-eight below,
a green aurora branched across the sky.

I watched the sickle moon dip toward
the range. Orion bristled overhead,

jeweled sword, and golden belt of stars:
his state was all the wide and snowy west.

Now that the year is almost dead, have I
done what I set out to do? How have I changed?

At four, the evening star shines through,
the southwest rim is still in flames.

The issue of stealth publications came up again recently when I was Googling for reviews of my book, The Moving Out: Collected Early Poems. I’ve experienced stealth reviews in the past, but this time I didn’t find any that I hadn’t seen before. But I did stumble on the fact that a poem from the book had appeared in Verse Daily two years before. How had I missed it? I’m guessing that they notified my publisher, Salmon Poetry, and that in the rush and chaos of small press publishing, Salmon neglected to send me the word. In any case, it wasn’t too late for me to brag to my friends and post the good news on the web.

One more thing. Earlier in this Substack, I mentioned a poem of mine that had been taken by an important literary magazine but due to a change in poetry editors was never published. That poem turns out to be the one that stealthily appeared in Verse Daily. In case you’re curious, here’s a link to it: http://www.versedaily.org/2020/america.shtml

*

And a further postscript: a friendly review of my latest chapbook, “The Nancy Poems,” along with Peggy Shumaker’s new book, Still Water Carving Light, is just out in today’s issue of the Anchorage Daily News. Here’s the link: https://www.adn.com/arts/books/2025/04/13/book-review-celebrate-poetry-month-with-new-work-by-veteran-fairbanks-poets/