How to become your own best poetry editor and get ready to edit poems by other poets too

Recently someone asked what kind of training and skill he would need to become a poetry editor. If he had wanted an editorial job with a publishing company, he would most likely need a high degree of English or literature, but no, he wanted to freelance. Since he had a poetry book in print, he thought that gave him enough experience to be an “expert,” even though he had self-published his book with no input from anyone!

He would not be the first poet or writer who thought the same before billing his services as a writing consultant. To be good at what he does, however, might require a little more effort.

As I started to make a list of the job skills or experience needed, I realized that the same suggestions apply to poets who want the best for their own poems. So, whether you want to upgrade your skills as you revise your poetry or have the information and insights needed to edit poems by other poets, these suggestions should help:


Read – all types, forms, and styles of poetry.

Focus – on the beauty of the classics and the freshness in the works of prize-winning contemporary poets.

Write – lots of poetry.

Study – poetic techniques and terminology.

Market – your poems to literary journals and e-zines you like.

Get a grip – on English grammar and punctuation, but also the concerns, worries, and needs that most people have.

Listen – to the individual voice that can be heard in your own poems and someone else’s.

Subscribe – to poetry journals and e-zines you like and also periodicals such as Poets & Writers magazine (ad in the right column.)

Read – your poems and poems by other poets – aloud, noticing the sound echoes and musicality.

Experiment – by playing with different forms, different approaches often possible for each poem, and different ways of breaking lines in free verse.

Play – with words. Play with ideas. Ask “what if?”

Learn – to trust your own judgment, to correct errors with care, to respect the voice and opinions of other poets, and to keep original copies of every poem in case the edits or revisions go too far.

Have fun – reading, writing, and playing with poetry.

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© 2012, Mary Sayler


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The Poetry Editor B U

Text messaging and social networking probably have not helped poets and writers with their grammar or spelling, but an advantage comes in practicing brevity. That trait alone can improve your poems and also short manuscripts such as a children’s story or picture book. Condensing lines and cutting out superfluous words or unnecessary content can be the thing most needed to make your poem or poetic manuscript better than good.

Other aspects of editing and revising your work have been and, Lord willing, will continue to be addressed on this blog and on The Poetry Editor website, so check out prior postings and articles. Also, study the online critiques on The Poetry Editor Blog to help you identify and correct problems in your own poems.

If you Follow this blog, you can copy and paste one poem up to 25 lines in a plain text email entitled “My Free Critique” and send that with your name to mary@thepoetryeditor.com for a free online critique. Those of you who have a different sign-in name need to say so, but be sure to include the name you want to identify with the poem.

Whether you receive a public, online critique or private input, The Poetry Editor website and blog have the same goal: To help poets and writers become The Poetry Editor for their own poems and poetic manuscripts. This can be difficult at first, but as with anything, you will get better with practice. Also, the more poetry – and how-to’s on poetry – that you read, the more objective you will become about your own work.

For example, see “What Poetry Editors Hope To See In Poetry,” on http://marysayler.blogspot.com/2009/12/what-poetry-editors-hope-to-see-in.html. Also, “How To Wear A Poem” might give you some usable ideas and a brief overview of poetry - http://marysayler.blogspot.com/2010/01/how-to-wear-poem.html - which brings us back to the poetic practice of brevity.

To get into practice:

Try your hand at haiku, couplets, or poems for tweets and text-messages.

Brutally cut to the quick a long poem that has not placed with an editor of a journal or e-zine, and see what happens. Did the cuts wound or improve?

Analyze each phrase, each line of each poem.

Omit clichés, favorite expressions, and repeated thoughts.

Put each poem aside until you forget what it says.

Come to each revision with a clear head and fresh eye or ear.

Pretend someone else wrote the poem, then see what needs changing.

If you read each poem and each revision aloud, you can usually hear what needs changing too.

Be honest with yourself.

Be honest with your poems.

Let your poems speak for themselves and speak well for you.

You can do this!

You can be The Poetry Editor for your poetry.

U B UR own best ed.

Mary Sayler

Getting A New Vision For Your Re-Vision

Editing focuses on things like correcting mistakes, improving syntax, cutting unnecessary words, and generally preparing a poem for publication. You might do similar tasks as you revise, but revision mainly seeks to improve the literary or artistic quality of a poem. How do you do that? How do you get new vision for your re-vision?

Most likely, the strongest of your senses helped you to begin a poem in the first place, so another sense can now help you to revise. If, for instance, you have a “poetic ear,” your poems just naturally express that natural sense of musicality or rhythmic beat. If you have an “artistic eye,” your poems may paint visual lines. If you’re a keen observer or have an analytical mind, you might find fresh comparisons in a simile, metaphor or other figure of speech. If your feelings provide your dominant sense, your expressive poems may speak to and for readers, saying what they cannot express well themselves.

Regardless which of your senses prevails, go with it. Let each poem flow to you with a new thought, musical phrase, sudden insight, fresh comparison, or whatever catches your poetic attention. Without censoring yourself, get your poem onto paper, then let it sit while something else occupies your mind.

When you return to the poem for your re-vision, use another sensory connection -- preferably one that’s opposite the original. For instance, if you have fluently expressed your feelings, let your mind now do most of the work as you analyze the connotations, sounds, and subtle nuances of each word in your poem. If your ear has been doing most of the poetic work, train your eyes to see what visual aids you might include.

By using one poetically attuned sense as you write a poem and another as you revise, your poetry can reach a new level of professionalism. More importantly, you may discover you connect with your readers in ways you had not imagined, for instance with humor, wordplays, sounds, insights or images that your readers will be glad to see and feel and hear.

Try these solutions too:

Read each poem or poetic text aloud.

Listen for anything that hinders the flow of sound or sense.

As you identify a problem, you will usually be able to identify a solution too, so be alert to that.

Correct any flaws, even if that means finding a new rhyme scheme for a traditional poem or recasting the lines in free verse.

Read aloud each revision.

If you’re not satisfied with the results, ask another poet with a similar level of experience to do a manuscript exchange, so you can provide each other with free feedback.

Mary Sayler, poet-writer

Going Postal with Poetry

Most poets like to email a batch of poems to an editor because, duh, it’s fast and free. Although email guarantees you an instantaneous submission, that does not guarantee your poems will be read any sooner. Nor will your poems be taken more seriously than, say, that of someone who cares enough to send their very best work first class with an adequately stamped SASE (self-addressed stamped envelope) for its return.

Other problems with emailing often arise too. For instance:

Email from an unknown source (meaning you) may be treated by the editorial department as Junk Mail or, worse, Spam.

Competition increases because, yeah, it’s fast and free to submit poems by email, so everyone does it – even non-poets!

Some editors rarely check their email.

Most editors do not want to print out the very poems that poets used to print for them.

Some poets have word processing software that is not compatible with whatever the editor has, so file attachments may not open correctly.

Some editors do not want to open any attachment from anyone.

Copying and pasting poems into the body of your plain text email will resolve the last couple of issues, but then your layout might be lost or skewed.

Conversely, when you carefully type your eye-pleasing format for each page of the poems you send through the p.o., you can be assured that what you see is what I get.

When I critique a manuscript, provide a poetry consultation, or edit someone’s poems, I like a hands-on approach that allows me to carry your sheaf of poems around with me and up-put with a “good read” instead of sitting all day at this computer.

I also find I quickly catch mistakes on paper but may be blinded by glare or pixels in editing on-screen. Penciled notes in paper margins can be erased, clichés circled, and arrows added to point to this or that, so critiques usually receive more detailed comments than I can figure out how to give, say, with the editorial features in Word.

As I leave the editorial side of my desk today to go back to my poet’s corner, I will still email some of my own submissions, especially when I send a batch of 3 to 5 poems to an e-zine or online journal. Presumably they have set up their offices to receive poetry this way, so will probably handle my work and yours with maximum efficiency.

I wonder, though, if the poems will be read as quickly as they were sent. Since poetry needs to be read aloud and savored, a snail-pace might be just fine. Besides, I would really like to help keep our local post office in business for as long as I can.


Mary Sayler, poet-writer

Interrogate Your Poems

To edit and evaluate your own poetry more objectively, interrogate your poems, not as you write, but as you revise. Ask:

• Do I have a new perspective or unusual treatment of a theme or topic?

• Did I explore something that will interest most people?

• Did I do my research and double-check all facts?

• Did I accurately present information, observations, and comparisons?

• Does the poem say what it wants to say in words, images, symbols, or ideas that most readers can relate to and envision?

• Is the poem honest?

• Do the lines have credible conflict, counterpoint, juxtaposition, or anything else that shows a push-pull tension?
• Does the poem have distinctive language and an interesting voice?

• Do my word choices bring to mind interesting connotations and sounds?

• Did I emphasize certain syllables or rhymes for a special effect?

• Does the poem have musicality that can be heard by reading aloud?

• Is the overall tone in keeping with the theme and subject?

• Does the poem hint of humor rather than mere wit or cleverness?

• Does anything in the poem need correcting?

• Does the form fit the idea or story?

• Do the line-breaks work well in my free verse?

• What would happen if I break the lines differently?

• Does my traditional poem nicely fit a traditional form?

• If not, does each variation in the pattern have a purpose?

• Does it work?

• Did I take any risks to keep the poem from clicking shut at the end?

• Does the length and style suit the needs of most poetry journals?

• Will readers want to read this poem again and again?

• Would I love this poem if someone else had written it?



Mary Sayler, poet-writer ...