The site has always been primarily a one-man operation, but I have always had readers who help sort through submissions - particularly when I wonder if a poem addresses the prompt.
Some of these revolving and occasional readers (all poets themselves) also help format and correct typos and obvious mistakes in the poems they think should be published. Rarely, we send a poem back to the author and ask a question or suggest a change.
I got an email from someone who has submitted and been published on the site several times who said, "I'm trying to figure out how you order the poems on the page. Best ones at the top - or is their [sic] no real order?" Since I assemble the new issue as poems are accepted, the order is often that of acceptance with the first poems accepted at the top. I certainly don't rank them. I will separate them so that several long or short poems aren't together or split apart similar poems sometimes.
A new reader of submissions asked me, with some exasperation, "Don't these people read the actual prompt and submission guidelines?"
I told him that he can expect to see: poems that don't address the prompt at all (not even in their email subject line) or that tangentially address it (as if they added a few words to an existing poem so that it seemed to fit) and poems not formatted in the requested single spacing (which means he has to remove all those extra returns) or that did not make the title in all caps so that it was clearly the title (and wouldn't need to be retyped) or submissions of multiple poems, or misspellings and unintentional grammar errors ("Don't they have spell and grammar checkers on their computer?")
"If I was you, I would just reject those poems outright. That's what a lot of journals do, " he replied.
I don't usually reject poems for most of those reasons - but we all do appreciate submissions that follow the guidelines.
Visit our website at poetsonline.org
Earlier today I visited this year's local COMMUNITY ARTS CHALLENGE Art Show, a collection of painting, photography, music, writing and more, based on a new Prompt every year. It reminds me of an annual en plein air watercolor workshop I used to attend. In both cases, the same scene or theme produces a wide variety of interpretations. The same holds true for Poets Online, which I believe makes all three more interesting.
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