Win at Poetry! Get More Rejections!

Poet shares a liberating approach to submissions

Welcome to our weekly column offering perspectives on lit mag publishing, with contributions from readers, writers and editors around the world.

---

Poetry is a numbers game, kids. You can’t win if you don’t play, and to play you’ve got to get that product out there. That’s why in the last couple years, since I’ve been poetry-ing, I’ve racked up 225 rejections on Submittable, with another 30 still active—and 9 acceptances. That’s a success rate of…

Okay, let’s not calculate that because it would be depressing.