Newspapers pay little or nothing for verse except when a special writer is put on the staff to supply a column of verse a day. Occasionally some topical stanza which agrees with the editorial policy will be accepted from an outsider. It may be pointed out here that very often the humor or appropriateness of a production will overbalance faults in the rhyme and meter. In serious verse an exception of this sort will rarely be found and a thing must stand or fall on its real merits.
There is no sure way to determine the market except by personal investigation. Read the magazines till you find out where the editor’s preference lies and then try him with something of your own, written not in imitation but on the same general lines. Do not send out your verse in a hit-or-miss fashion. Separate the limericks and the love songs and send them each to their appointed editor.
In spite of the protestations of interested publishers the reading public does not interest itself in the volume of “collected poems.” A book of this sort is rarely looked at unless it runs very much out of the ordinary or comes as the product of some well-known author.
II
SUGGESTIONS FOR READING
This is not intended in any way to be an exhaustive list. It merely suggests the field which each student is bound to explore for himself.
Technique of Verse.
The Rhymester—Tom Hood. Concise; with rhyming dictionary appendix.
Science of Verse—Sidney Lanier. Worth while for the advanced student.