Agents & Editors Recommend

When I edit a piece, whether it is an essay, article, or poem, I latch on to a writer’s transitions and section breaks. In these leaps, I often detect the joints in a writer’s logic, hear their voice, and observe them negotiating the said versus the unsaid. I find that a strong transition leaves space for the ideas of the preceding stanza or section to bloom in a reader’s mind. It can be a stretch of quiet before shifting to a different register, time, or phase of an argument.

Poetry anthologies are gratifying to publish. While the focus of our poetry program at Persea Books has always been books by individual poets, we have also published wonderful poetry anthologies including the recent We Call to the Eye & the Night: Love Poems by Writers of Arab Heritage, edited by Hala Alyan and Zeina Hashem Beck.

But poetry anthologies also present some particular editing and design challenges. Here are some things to keep in mind if you plan to propose one to publishers:

One key lesson I’ve learned from working with the Adroit Journal is that the taste of any given editor is never universal. Our team of poetry editors consists of five people, and our discussions of submissions also include the editor in chief and the executive editor. When we review the list of submissions that have made it to the final step before publication, we have active, passionate conversations about each poet’s work. We often disagree, argue, and even attempt to convince one another that our favorite work should be accepted.