My poetry was rejected but a poetry editor responds with some advice.
July 26, 2010
Dear Mr. Douglas,
Thank you sending us your poems. After much consideration and deliberation, we’ve decided unfortunately to pass on publishing your manuscript. We found a great deal to admire about the work (the poems “Candlelight” and “Unknown Territory” struck us as especially promising), but in the end not enough hit us just right to warrant publication at this time. We wish you the best in finding a home for your collection.
Sincerely,
Richard Applebaum, Senior Editor
My response:
Hello, I was wondering, if you had a free moment to answer this question. What can I do make the manuscript more suitable for a publisher to publish? What can be changed to interest a publisher? What did I do wrong?
Poetry Editor answer:
Orville,
I can’t say you did anything wrong, per se. You submitted the right amount of poems, had a nice cover letter, and pretty much did everything we ask from a submitter. Know that tonight alone we sent out about 30 rejection slips and only asked one person to resubmit a full manuscript, and we still have a lot more not-fun slips to send out; not fun for either party involved. It comes down to the poetry and the editors. If it fits it fits and if it doesn’t it doesn’t. Everyone working here sees the kind of slip you got tonight for their own work on a fairly regular basis. The key is to keep writing poetry, aggressively, challenging yourself with every new poem, and to send the poems out regularly. I trust you’ll get a hit soon enough.
Cheers,
Richard
Gayblackcanada 
Hey Orville, sorry to hear that. I don’t really see how helpful his advice was though. It’s just one of those x-factor things, I guess. You know how talented you are and sometimes people just don’t see that for whatever reason, or they look at it as a ‘product’ (and its sellability) instead of a work of art. All you can do is keep doing it for the love of it and at some point someone will appreciate it and publish it. Have you submitted it to any publishers here in the US?
Hi Justin, thanks for your comment. I think that’s the thing with poetry though it is all about a publisher’s personal taste and bias I guess? I definitely submitted my poetry manuscript to American publishers as well as Canadian publishers.