Postcards from the Imagination

My response was lengthy enough that I thought I'd make this a separate post.

Patry, I'd say always read submission guidelines carefully, and always be up-front about a poem's publication history so that an editor knows exactly what he or she is considering. At TNHR we have a fairly strict policy of only accepting previously unpublished work.

As to the experience you mentioned above, I think there's a relevant difference between the availability of print vs. online journals. If a poem was published in a print journal with a very small circulation, some editors may decide they want to present it to a larger audience by re-publishing it. If a poem has been published online, however, it is already accessible to a very large audience--i.e. anyone with internet access. Ultimately, this is the editor's decision, and if you are uncertain about a particular journal's policy, it's probably best to query.

Blogs are a kind of gray area, I think, because the audience for individual blogs varies greatly. But if all the poets in this month's issue of Poetry had blogs at which they posted their own work, what would be the point of buying or subscribing to Poetry? The magazine would simply become an index of the best (or the editor's favorite) poems available elsewhere.

As an editor, I imagine readers will like our poets' work so much that they will want to seek out more of it, and I'd prefer that a Google search not bring up multiple examples of the poem(s) we published.

Finally, whether they articulate it or not, I think most readers still believe that the work editors do is important--both in separating the hits from the misses (because even great poets have both), and in ensuring a regular and healthy influx of new writers into the public consciousness. After all, an abundance of poetic talent does not necessarily go hand-in-hand with a knack for self-promotion, and most readers are not going to wade through vanity publications looking for interesting new writers.