Submittables or Unsubmittables: Sending out Poems

Like some of you, I’m old enough to remember when submitting poems to magazines for possible publication meant hours of typing, proofreading, correcting (with fluid or ribbon) and retyping manuscripts. Even a few pages might only be good for one shot. After months (often many months), you’d receive your carefully produced pages returned to you in the Self-Addressed Stamp Envelope you’d included with your submission, and with luck the pages were even still in good enough condition to mail out at least once more.

There’d usually be some kind of note, either accepting one or more poems for future inclusion, or a graceful decline, full of form letter regret. Occasionally you’d receive no reply at all and continue to wonder for the rest of your life if your poems weren’t languishing at the bottom of some pile of undelivered mail, or a pile of discarded poems in the abandoned offices of a defunct periodical.

Nowadays, submitting poems to potential publishers has never been easier. There is email, for one. Some of the smaller magazines take email submissions, and often reply very quickly, sometimes in 24 hours! And the are online magazines, too. These have far more flexibility than the strictly ink & mortar variety, and can publish more work, making it available online indefinitely. Between just these two advances, I’ve been able to submit much more work with much more ease. I’ve concentrated this summer on getting my poems out. Much as I adore (more or less) each and every one, they must see the world. And perhaps the world will see them.

Submittables is a portal used by some publications to act as a go-between. It prevents viruses from being transmitted via email, and also allows them to charge contest or submission fees easily via PayPal. Partly as an experiment, my stepped-up efforts to submit more work included two basic elements: no fees, and no Submittables. Perhaps these are unfair limits. I know many zines struggle financially, and I try to purchase when I can, but years of reading such things has convinced me that the standard advice each gives of “take a look at the latest issue to get a feel for the kind of thing we like,” has little meaning. I prefer the bolder message of, “Please support us and subscribe.”

I’ve used Submittables in the past, and it is relatively easy. However, at this point in my life, with a full-time job for the next several millennia still a very real possibility, and the brutal heat that evaporated the Northeast for much of this summer, I wanted to make things as easy on myself as possible. It would take all of fifteen minutes to locate a zine, scope out their guidelines, and send my work. I have a standard bio, if one is required off the bat, and a collection of “poet” photos that make me look serious and professional. And I never try to do more than one in the same day. I’ve been very inspired lately by the likes of Rebecca Schumejda, John Dorsey, Dan Crocker, and perhaps unethically sent work to magazines that had published theirs.

So far, I’ve had six poems accepted, and one being held for a possible future anthology, and have submitted a couple dozen maybe overall. Not a bad return for my time and electric. I’m not so focused on contests at present, because I don’t like the odds and don’t feel a need for that kind of attention. That being said, the DiBiase award of 2017 was a total surprise and I am grateful. That was also a very easy contest to enter. I was proud to be among those poets and honored to be one of their judges this year. But it’s not about contests for me right now.  

In fact, I get tremendous pleasure out of printing up my own chapbooks. That will happen again. Maybe I’ll start my own online zine. It all depends on Lotto. 

Summer Sun & Shadows

I knew my promise of “weekly” updates would fall by the wayside sooner or later, but between you, me & the lamp post, I’m thinking I needed a break. The Universe just took it upon itself to impose that break upon me.

My day gig underwent its usual season changes, but with each service department short-staffed. The time between calls that I’d previously used to pound out a few notes for the blog evaporated, and exhaustion at the end of the day didn’t really allow me much energy to make up for it at home. Then July, whether because of global warning, natural Earth evolution, or other, was oppressively hot. We even broke down and bought a small air conditioner for the bedroom area, so that sleeping could occur.

All this limited my writing time substantially. However, the ongoing projects are never far from my fingertips. I’ve got a chapbook pending with Post Traumatic Press, a collaboration with my friend Guy Reed. Look for more about that this fall. For a few weeks there, I was chucking three poems a day out to various small zines, only the ones that made the process extremely easy. It had to be by email, and it had to be free. I have nothing against Submittables, but I had no energy for the extra step, and if my output was limited, I could at least send out previous work. I’ve had a few hits, and a few misses, but over all I’ve gotten a few more things out in the aforementioned Universe, and off the hard drive.

On August 20, I had the pleasure of presenting a work-in-progress at my day gig, in the form of an evening reading/lecture. More on that next week… promise. 

Honorable Mentions- Two More ‘Follies’ Poems

After all but completing a second chapter in my ongoing nonfiction project (more on that later, surely), I’ve returned my attention to my Ziegfeld Follies poems. I’ll be doing a presentation of what I have so far at the Omega Institute on the evening of August 20^th. Hopefully, I’ll also have a Power Point presentation, and brief bios for each of the subjects of the poems. I know it’s been a while, so some memories might need a bit of refreshing (ahem).

My focus with this project has been the 1919 edition of the Follies, although for reasons of interest and coherence, the poems have strayed a bit here and there. By 1919, Anna Held, Ziegfeld’s first wife and part of the inspiration for the Follies in the first place, had already passed. Yet, because she is such an integral part of Ziegfeld’s personal and professional life, I’ve included a couple of poems about her and expect to add more. Olive Thomas, by 1919, had long before left Ziegfeld’s show, and side, to become a silent film star, but her enduring presence at the New Amsterdam Theater in the form of a ghost (even to this day) means that a poem or two is required about her as well.

Two Ziegfeld stars were missing from the 1919 edition, otherwise considered the pinnacle of the series. Humorist Will Rogers had also been lured out West to try his luck in films. Silent though they were, Rogers made his presence felt on the big screen, supplementing his appearances eventually with a widely read newspaper column and an easy transition into talkies. If not for his sudden death in 1935, who knows what other razor-sharp insights Rogers might have gifted us with, especially in the War years.

In August of 1919, Fanny Brice gave birth to her first child, a daughter. Obviously this put her out of work for that season, but knowing Brice’s position as a major star in the Ziegfeld universe, this must have been a frustration for both the comedienne and the producer. I knew she and her then-husband Nick Arnstein owned a home on Long Island during those years. I made the leap of assuming that it had been located on the North Shore, where many of the wealthy lived in those days. Thank goodness for Google and my ability to follow a thread! I was even able to obtain a street address, as well as some modern-day photos of the interior and exterior. It is still a private home, well kept and renovated with an eye towards maintains its Victorian charm.

I imagined two scenarios, one of Ziegfeld showing off his new theater to Rogers on a trip back East, and Brice rehearsing on her patio overlooking the Long Island Sound. Both seemed plausible to me, and yet I took a few liberties. I looked up the, and concluded that Rogers certainly could have seen the Ziegfeld Theater close to its opening date. As well, Brice’s home seems to be near enough to the water for her to smell it on a September breeze.

I’ve been a Ziegfeld and vaudeville buff for many years now, but for a while I’d stalled on doing anything creative with the knowledge I’d accumulated. So deep is my awe and respect for these theatrical pioneers that I hesitated, afraid to get the facts wrong, wary of the presumptive tone that dominates so many biographies. Finally, without cracking another book, I leaped in, starting with the stories most repeated. I probably began with Thomas at the New Amsterdam, a hard one to get wrong, but steering clear of the condescending word stuffing that I found in a recent fictionalized account of her life. I’ve got twenty-five pages or so of poems now, and my next step is to comb through the work, making better poetry out of it, and tweaking what facts I can.

I’m not sure how finished any of the poems will be by the time my evening rolls around, but I’ll do my best. My goal is to honor the legend, perpetuate the memories of these remarkable characters, all the while trying to explore their humanity. For many years there was a gap for me. They were old photos, almost always black and white, seemingly from another planet and not just another era. Lately I’ve broken through. This might be where art, the art I can live with, begins.