World Class Poetry Blog

When Is A Manuscript
Ready For Publication?
2 June 2008, the poet @ 9:11 pm

Every time I think I’m finished with Rumsfeld’s Sandbox I find something else I don’t like. Many of the poems in the book are finished. I’m happy with them. But there are a few that I can’t stand to look at. I’m torn between removing them from the book entirely or spending more time revising them. But I’ve been working on this set of poems for two-and-a-half years now. At what point can I drop it and move on?

Emotionally, I’m ready to move on to something else. But I don’t like turning out work that is incomplete. Some of the poems, I am confident, are worthy of publication in today’s leading literary journals. But some of them are poems that even I wince at and would turn down were they sent to me for publication. That’s the biggest testimony to me that I should keep working on them. But should I publish what I have that is finished while working on those that are not or hold on to the entire collection until they are all finished? That is my dilemma.

I’m a big fan of workshops. I believe you can get some good feedback from them. I have received incredible assistance from other poets in workshops for individual poems, but I’ve never workshopped an entire manuscript. How would you do that? To get the best criticism on a collection of poems you need to have someone look at the poems as a whole and judge them as a package - do they work together or against each other?; do you have them in the most effective order?; are there poems that do not fit in with the rest and might make sense as a part of another collection? These are all questions that are important to answer and once you’ve lived with something for two or three years it becomes more and more difficult to make those judgments yourself. That’s why it would be helpful to have other poets with a keen eye to look over a manuscript before it is sent out to publishers. Other eyes can often catch what you can’t. My problem is, I don’t know anyone that I think could give me the kind of constructive criticism I need and has the time to do it.

I think it might be helpful to have an electronic workshop, an online critique group for people in my situation who are not at a university or working toward a graduate degree and who want to work toward publication but whose financial situation won’t allow for a paid editor to go over every line with a scythe. And I’ve never been a big fan of paying someone to critique poetry anyway. I’m not sure a paid critic would do a serious manuscript that much justice.

I wonder how many others might be in a similar situation and would be interested in an online critique group or workshop.

3 Comments a “When Is A Manuscript
Ready For Publication?”

1. Pam — June 3, 2008 @ 6:52 am
   

   This is an interesting proposal. I tend to use family members to look at individual poems (I have two that have a wonderful gift for editing). I don’t know what would happen if I asked them to look at an entire collection; since they are unpaid it might be years before they finish.

   Keep me informed about the on-line group if anything comes of this idea.

2. Jim Murdoch — June 3, 2008 @ 4:57 pm
   

   Why not simply join a site like Zoetrope where you can post your poems? You might not get the in depth review you’d like but it’s always interesting to see what others do and don’t get. You can actually learn quite a lot even from a bad review.

   http://www.zoetrope.com/

3. the poet — June 3, 2008 @ 9:56 pm
   

   Thanks for the tip Jim. I had looked at Zoetrope a while back and they didn’t have anything for poets. I joined and can hardly wait to see what it’s like.

   Pam, if you have literary-minded family members, that’s great. I stay away from family members and usually recommend others do the same because family members usually say they like it no matter what. They don’t want to hurt your feelings. Mine just look at me cross-eyed coz I don’t always use monosyllabic words.

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