if it
is in us, to produce something worth while.

APPENDIX

APPENDIX

I

MARKET FOR VERSE

There is no market nowadays for the long poem except from writers of
established reputation. As a rule the shorter the verse the better its
chance of acceptance. Verse humorous is easier to dispose of than verse
serious because there is a wider field. _Puck_, _Judge_, _Life_, _Smart
Set_, _Ainslee's_, _Harper's_, _Century_, and an army of others are
always willing to buy really amusing verse.

Serious verse is sold in lesser quantities, but the price is
better--when the production is bought by a high-class publication. The
_Atlantic Monthly_ is always on the lookout for new writers and other
magazines are prompt to recognize what pleases them even in the work of
a newcomer. Perhaps the most standard popular forms of serious verse are
the sonnet and the short love lyric.

Many editors are glad to buy quatrains and even couplets to fill out a
page when a longer form would be rejected. The well-written triolet is
also sure of a hearing for this same reason.

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 Ho