When I get home, the band has finally left—hooray, hooray. I google “most prestigious places to publish poetry” on the computer in my room. A long list comes up, showing that I am hardly the first person in the history of the world to ask this question. In fact, one site lists fifty places. Fifty! Number one on the list, and the only one I’ve heard of, is this magazine called The New Yorker, which my parents get even though we live in Colorado and not in New York. It comes to our house every week, and my mother reads it. I don’t know if she reads the poems; the magazine publishes stories, articles, and cartoons, too, all kinds of stuff. When she’s done with it, Dad takes the old copies to his office waiting room so parents have something to read while their kids are getting their braces tightened.
The Internet list of prestigious poetry places says that The New Yorker has a million readers. A million! So that’s what I’m going to start with, on the theory that you might as well aim high. I read this saying once, “If you aim at the stars, at least you won’t shoot your foot off.”
I’m not exactly sure how that applies here, but I do know that it would be lovely to walk into journalism with The New Yorker tucked under my arm. I’d shyly show it to Ms. Archer, who would say, Class! Class! I have some wonderful news to share! Autumn—yes, our Autumn—has a poem published in The New Yorker! I’d still feel a teensy bit embarrassed when she’d start to read “Ode to Cameron”—maybe I should change his name before I send it in?—but a person who gets her poems published in the most prestigious place there is doesn’t have much reason to be embarrassed about anything ever again.
I go back downstairs, completely ignoring Hunter, who is zoned out in front of a Simpsons rerun on TV, and retrieve the latest New Yorker from my mother’s always overflowing pile of books and magazines. Back in my room, I flip through the issue to see what the poems are like.
I have to admit I don’t understand any of them.
Even worse: not a single one rhymes.
What do modern poets have against rhyme? Rhyme is wonderful! It gives a poem structure. It delights the ear. Robert Frost, who wrote that famous poem about stopping by woods on a snowy evening, said writing poems without rhyme is like playing tennis without a net.
Maybe there’s a connection between the fact that poets nowadays write poems that don’t rhyme and that poets nowadays write poems nobody wants to read. People in my classes at school moan and groan whenever we begin a poetry unit. I think they’re afraid they won’t understand the poems and somebody—say, a teacher—will put them on the spot in front of everybody and ask them to explain what the poem means.
But my Cameron poems aren’t like that. What they mean is perfectly clear. They mean I love Cameron.
If I send my Cameron poems to The New Yorker, will they reject them because my poems rhyme and are easy to understand? Or will the editors say: Someone finally sent us poems that rhyme! And, look, we can even figure out what they mean!
I won’t know unless I try.
On the computer I search for “New Yorker” and “submissions.” It turns out that sending my poems off to The New Yorker will be as easy as pie. You can submit poems online, up to six poems at one time. Does this mean they’d publish all six, or just pick the one they like best? Well, either way, it just so happens I have six Cameron poems written already.
I continue reading and find some more disturbing information: the website says that they review submissions “on a rolling basis” (which is good, since it means you can submit poems anytime) but that it can take “two to six months” to get a response.
Two to six months! It’s October 1 now. Am I supposed to have to wait all the way until December or even March?
Well, if I have to wait that long to show Hunter that at least one of my poems has been published in the fanciest magazine in America, then that’s what I have to do. If I have to wait that long to trot into journalism class with my glorious published poem to share with Cameron, I’d better type up my six poems and send them off to The New Yorker today.
And I do.
I don’t change Cameron’s name either. If I become a famous love poet, I might as well be famous for writing “the Cameron poems,” not “poems for some boy with a made-up name.”
Plus, I love Cameron’s name, and not just because I love everything about him. He has a poetic name, unlike poor Henry Dubin. I can’t imagine publishing “the Henry Dubin poems.”
But “the Cameron poems”—that’s an entirely different story.
I close my eyes and see one of them printed right there in The New Yorker already.