Sub Season

Most literary publications close for submissions sometime between the middle of September and the end of October for winter/spring issues. Since I'm in the thick of submission season right now, I'm trying to figure out how to package submissions so that they stand out. Because of guidelines provided by these publications, this mostly comes down to packaging the required number of poems and putting them in the right order.

Publications that are looking for poetry in particular usually have a 3-5 poem limit per submission. This gives you room to provide your different voices and techniques, but I'm beginning to think that it's also a place for a poet's potential downfall. My evidence for this is the last few rejections I've received. These were encouraging rejections, which meant there was something in there that they liked. Many of these submissions had at least one poem in common, so maybe that one is the one that impresses? This leads me to a question that probably only a poetry editor can really answer: if you like only one out of three (or five), do you still reject the submission, or do you offer to publish one and not the others?

The answer to this question could lead me to change my submission tactics. If my worst poem in the submission is keeping my best from getting published, I would definitely stop sending in the maximum amount according to guidelines. However, years ago I was reading something somewhere online (I know--totally trustworthy source, right?) where editors preferred more than one piece to really get the feel of the writer's ability. So, there's that.

This isn't the only area of a submission that could be the issue. It could be that my submissions doesn't have a cohesive theme, or that it does have a theme, and they aren't interested in that. It could be because of length--every type of writing can get canned based solely on length, so that doesn't bother me at all. Though if length is a specific issue, it should be placed in the guidelines not to send work over a certain number of lines.

I'm simply looking to find ways to make each submission count. Everything is on the table at this point as I assemble my next round of submissions. How do you approach your submissions to publications?