{"id":38,"date":"2016-09-02T00:31:34","date_gmt":"2016-09-02T04:31:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/guiseppegetto.com\/poetry\/?p=38"},"modified":"2022-08-18T15:04:10","modified_gmt":"2022-08-18T19:04:10","slug":"how-to-get-poetry-published-part-1-read-and-write-well","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.guiseppegetto.com\/poetry\/how-to-get-poetry-published-part-1-read-and-write-well\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Get Poetry Published, Part 1: Read and Write Well"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am not a well-recognized poet. But like most very minorly-recognized poets, I’ve worked my butt off over the years to publish the handful of stuff<\/a>\u00a0I have out there. While poetry is certainly an avocation for me at this point, over the years I’ve been approached by my\u00a0fair share of aspiring poets who want to know how\u00a0to get started publishing their own work.<\/p>\n

My response is typically the same, so\u00a0I’ve decided to write a series of posts called “How To Get Poetry Published.” This is part 1. Here is part 2<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Read Good Poets Who Are Alive Today<\/h3>\n

I’m continually surprised by how many people consider themselves poets who haven’t read a single poem written\u00a0by someone who is still alive. When I ask them who their favorite poet is, most unpublished poets cite someone like Walt Whitman or William Carlos Williams. And while these are great poets, if you aren’t reading your contemporaries, you’re simply not part of the current conversation.<\/p>\n

Think about it this way: would you write a newspaper article like they did 50, or 100, or 150 years ago? Why not? Because the language has changed. The conventions have changed. Everything\u00a0has changed.<\/p>\n

Poetry is no different. It is a living, breathing genre just like all forms of writing. There are more poems being published today in the hundreds of contemporary literary magazines<\/a> than were published in entire centuries past. New collections of poetry come out every year by contemporary poets. A simple search for “poetry” in Amazon currently returns<\/a> 60,000 results, many of which are collections published in the past 10-20 years.<\/p>\n

If you want to learn to be a poet worthy of publication by your peers, then you need to read the work of those peers<\/em>. You need to sample all the different poetical styles available today and to hone your own work to respond to those styles.<\/p>\n

The other thing to keep in mind is that the only reason<\/em> poetry is still alive today\u00a0is because poets are keeping it alive. If you aren’t supporting your contemporaries, why should they support you?<\/p>\n

Hone Your Craft: No One Is Automatically Good<\/h3>\n

There’s also a misperception amongst many poets who have never done a poetry workshop (see below)\u00a0or read widely that you can get good at poetry simply by wanting to. Like anything else, poetry writing is a skill. If you want to learn to be a world-class runner, working by yourself based on what you think you should do is probably not going to get you anywhere. You need a running coach. Proper equipment. Maybe even a team. You probably need to start with short jogs and then work your way up to longer runs as you get in better shape.<\/p>\n

Poetry has basic mechanics just like any other activity. These include:<\/p>\n