Note: Due to a death in my family, I’ve had to take a break, but I’m back now and plan to post regularly again. This post is adapted from an essay in my forthcoming book (March, 2025), How to Change History.
Some years ago, I decided to submit a poem to the most democratic and efficient publisher in the world, The National Library of Poetry (which also goes by the names: Poetry.com, International Poetry Hall of Fame, International Society of Poets, International Library of Poetry, Watermark Media Group, and Watermark Press) in Owen Mills, Maryland. This outfit understands that there are many more people in the country who write poetry than who actually read it, and so they accept virtually every poem that comes their way, proclaiming its genius and originality, and then publishing it in a thick volume with hundreds of other brilliant and original poems. Then they sell the volumes to the contributors for $75 a pop. Understandably, most of the contributors buy the volume.
So I decided to channel my incontinent Dachshund Milo and write a poem from his point of view, not hiding the fact that the poem was written by a dog. I wondered if they’d publish it:
A Million Bambis A million Bambis crowd the hillside Not celluloid, but fur and flesh They tremble in the ‘dozers’ shadow The steady hum Of cars below Crushing a thousand Thumpers In the mad dash to the mall. A million Bambis: No voice, only tears No food, they’re just deer. No vote, only a mote In harsh humanity’s eye. No happy ending, just Progress – Relentless, repetitive Like a theme park ride. -- Milo Hemley
This seemed to me to capture Milo’s empathetic, compassionate, and despairing soul. Sure enough, within a week or so, I received word that Milo’s poem deserved a special place in the latest volume of The National Library of Poetry, Etches in Time. If I wanted to purchase a short bio note, I was informed it would cost an additional $25. I happily paid the fee, figuring this was a small price to pay for such exposure. On the form I filled out, I put that Milo was a miniature Dachshund. Under clubs, I put American Kennel Club. Children: Unknown. Philosophy: “The Place where you pee is where you are.” Next, I paid an additional $35 to have Milo’s poem recorded by a professional actor and another $40 to have Milo’s poem immortalized on a plaque. I wondered how many Milo-inspired products The National Library of Poetry could sell me. The options seemed endless, and I only stopped because I could no longer afford to immortalize Milo. I did not purchase the laminated playing-card size copies of Milo’s poem, nor did I purchase the web site for $300, though I was sorely tempted to see Milo’s big schnoz and his drooly tongue on his very own web site.
But my biggest disappointment was that those canny editors at The National Library of Poetry did not publish Milo’s biography as I had written it. Instead, they published the biography belonging to one Thomas H. Johnson, Jr. of Nashville, Tennessee, whose philosophy had nothing to do with pee, but rather was summed up as “I write from the heart with an open mind.” Obviously, publishing Milo’s bio as I had written it might have freaked out his neighbors on the page. “Emily, what’s a dog doing in here? They say this dog wrote this Bambi poem!”
I think the editors’ worries were unwarranted. I doubt anyone in Etches in Time gave a glance at anyone else’s bio but his or her own. I know Milo didn’t.
Despite all this, I’ve long felt more saddened than amused by the such vanity presses preying on hopeful amateur writers, offering to publish their work or promote it for outsized fees. For the record, I don’t think that all submission fees are unethical, as I know some people feel. It all depends what you’re getting for that submission fee and how reasonable they are. When I edited The Bellingham Review, a literary magazine associated with Western Washington University, where I taught for six years, I founded (along with my fellow editors, Susanne Paola and Bruce Beasley) two literary prizes, The Annie Dillard Award for Nonfiction and The Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction. These were in addition to an ongoing poetry prize instituted by former editor and founder of the journal, Knute Skinner, The 49th Parallel Award for Poetry. We had a reasonable reading fee for all these awards, and in return, gave entrants a one-year subscription to the journal. The entry fee and subscription fee were identical. It was our hope that some of these entrants would convert to regular subscriptions after their subscription ran its course, but that didn’t happen often. In my experience, people often have unrealistic expectations for their chances of winning such a contest. Any contest is a crapshoot, and if you don’t win, it’s not exactly a rejection. The judge just picked someone else. But people resent not winning and not being published, often taking it personally. Anyone who has ever worked on a legitimate journal or read for a contest or fellowship or for a spot in a graduate program knows that the odds are always unfavorable. If you want great odds, then the National Library of Poetry is the best bet.
More recently, I received a phone call from an unknown number. They left a message for me:
Hi I’m leaving this message for Robin Hemley. And this about the reprint of Stronsoncollinsfromtweetsaboutliteraturemanagement. Mr. Hemley, we’re just responding to an inquiry about your book project. We just wanted to know how the book’s coming along. You can call us at _______. I’m also going to be sending an email in response to your inquiry.
Of course, I had made no such inquiry and had no book project I wanted to inquire about. Likewise, no matter how many times I played back the message, I couldn’t make out the name of the company. Of course, this was on purpose and the people behind the message were simply counting on my vanity and curiosity to kick in so that I’d give them a call back. I posted this encounter on Facebook and I was surprised by the number of writers, including some well-known, who had received similar messages. I always wonder what goes on in the minds of such scammers, how they rationalize their schemes. To me, pickpockets seem more honorable because pickpockets are only taking money, not someone’s sense of self-worth.
Yep. I got the same voice mail. Same garbled words in between the words that were intended to lure me in. Good essay, Robin! And I love that your dog submitted a poem to that scammy book thing!