Dog Down the Well: A Poem's Fate

by Mike Finley

One of my deep dark conflicts is the fact that besides writing about technology and the future, I'm a poet.

I have been writing poems pretty seriously since I was about 15, when I had lots of spare time in Mr. Lyle's detention room after school, and began writing poems -- about Mr. Lyle, mainly.

Poemwriting was a very low-tech process involving pencil and unlined paper. I'd write down a few phrases, try to figure out where I wanted to go, and write a lot more, scratching out, drawing arrows showing what connected to what. Then I would go home - my debt to high school society paid in full, at least for that day - and type up a first draft.

Which would still be awful. But around the fifth or sixth typing, it would start to be something. Sometimes a poem would take five years before it began to take shape.

My heyday came in the 1970s. An offset revolution made publication on paper printing plates (Insty Prints) cheap and easy. Like a million other writers I started my own press, The Kraken, and put out several titles and magazines. I was crummy at distribution and promotion, and never sold anything, but I had wonderful fun.

Since acquiring my first computer, in 1983, however, I have written less and less poetry. I maybe write six a year now, in a good year. The technology's been great for every other kind of writing. But the poem still seems to cry out for something simple, portable, and transparent -- pencil and unlined paper.

I still write, and I use the computer to show people the work. But I cannot start a poem on a blank buzzing screen. Go figure.

Not everyone is so constrained. Few days pass that I don't get a poetry submission in e-mail. This troubles me because it's been twenty years since I published anyone else's poems on my Kraken imprint. What troubles me even more is that the people who send me their poems also send them, simultaneously, to many other "presses" whose e-mail addresses they stumbled onto.

Securing the right publisher is like finding the right marriage partner. You don't use spam to start an important relationship. Multiple simultaneous submission is closer to sex than marriage. And most of these poems are so bad, you wouldn't want to even have sex with them.

There are too many poets to reply individually. So I created the following "signature" file, which I append to a personal one-line note of regret/encouragement:

Dear poet,

Thanks for writing. I'm sorry I can't critique your work. But I'm grateful to you for looking at my site. If it got you thinking about writing yourself, that's great. Writing poems is a wonderful way to learn to think and feel on paper.

But I don't know what to do with the work people send me. It is an easy thing to send a letter to 50 'zines in hopes some publisher out there is experiencing a verse shortage.

There is never a verse shortage. There are 20 writers of poetry for every reader of it. The reason is that there are quality standards for readers, and none for writers. May this not mean you.

Poets ask me, "How can I get published?" If I knew that, I wouldn't be self-publishing on my website. But here are some ideas.

Do these things and you'll enjoy 49% of the joy poetry can provide. Another 49% is in the writing. The remaining 2% os ineffable mystery.

A poetry press can give you nothing you can't give yourself. During a different, more economical era, I published in hundreds of places, and let me tell you, it's like throwing the family dog down a well. A yowl and a splash and it's over. The thing you loved is gone and you hardly ever hear about it again."

My best advice, my friend, is to attend to the inner voice, and treat people willing to listen to you really, really well. The rest is mostly crap.

Best wishes, Mike Finley