It’s summer again in Seattle, which has me thinking about forecasting. I’ve been earnestly submitting my poems to journals for a decade now, and I am still continually surprised by which poems are taken and which are rejected. Some poems go to a dozen journals before they find a home, some never do, some go to only one or two before being taken. Are those less-rejected poems actually better than their more tattered (and revised) brethren? Over the years I’ve learned how to write a cover letter, where to submit my poems, and when–but which poems I submit still feels like a crapshoot. And sure, a poem’s worth is not measured by where, if anywhere, it appears, but how else can jaded writers measure it?
I have some ways of telling if a poem of mine is bad, or still needs revising: if when I read it out loud there are lines I’m embarrassed by. If every time I sit down to revise it it becomes an entirely different poem. If when I set it aside for a few months and return to it I’m bored before I finish, or if when I return to it it’s exactly as I remember it, no more.
But beyond the double negative, how to judge which of your own poems are stronger than others? I would love to be able to know when to give up on a poem, when to channel my writing hours into other poems instead. Imagine the efficiency, the saved postage! Though I know that the hours of work I spend on poems no one but I will ever read still shapes who I am and what I can do as a writer–it’s all good practice.
I know poems aren’t built to be battle-tested on kittenwars.com. But what if they were.