A service that pays for editing had me try out for a contract job using a segment of a real-life manuscript. And do this for free. Ignoring my own advice (NEVER ignore your own advice!) I did it, and mailed it back, but received no acknowledgement, reply or thanks. And they got about 4 hours of my work for free. This refreshed my memory of a lesson I had learned before, and forgotten:

Act out of desperation and you will be treated like a bar rag.

"Desperate" and "despair" have the same root, "without hope." Thus desperation is a state of mind. I'm not saying "trouble is a state of mind." There is such a thing as real trouble: illness, no money, tragedies, threats.

But how many of us have had even 10 weeks of full-time training in how to handle trouble -- the one thing we know we will have? If you're like me and not very good at it, you might, "unencumbered by the thought process," fall straight into desperation, where you are vulnerable to exploitation, like the poor soul who calls a $3.99/minute psychic hotline to ask if he'll win the lottery.

We've all had our hands or minds wrung by desperate people. It is natural to flinch from them. And it is somehow natural, if a desperate person hangs around a lot, to want to injure them further, if only to make them go away. To take what they offer (anything! everything!) and escort them out. To shut the door in their faces. Or not answer the door.

The most overrated virtue in a writer: modesty. Especially when opportunity doesn't just knock -- it clubs you upside the head.

Last time I sent my latest book ms. out was February; the rejection (fourth) came in August. I sighed and let the manuscript rot. This past week I had lunch with a publisher. We weren't there to talk about my books, but the publisher described books the press was looking for, saying, "But who has a book like that?"

"I do," I boldly ventured for the first time in my life, "and it's finished, about 35,000 words; it has this, and this. . ." Mmmm, let me see it, said the publisher. I hate to think I almost said nothing -- out of misplaced modesty. It needed only to be printed out (pat myself on the back). Off it went into the mail today.

Saw an ad for an editor who can do three things, mostly what I do:

• Copyedit a manuscript, meaning: correct the grammar, punctuation and spelling, and establish consistency throughout. "Line editing" means the same.
• Copyedit a manuscript and provide feedback on its contents, readability, publishability, tone, and so on.
• Do the above, plus reorganize and possibly rewrite portions of the text.

Corporations may have outsourced their customer support, but nobody can outsource expertise in the English language, the foundation that supports the creation of American literature. That, the creation of American literature, they can't outsource either. A most cheerful thought!

"Poetry Cover Letter Protocol" (below) is valuable new first-hand information. It's "new" because it supersedes information disseminated for 30 years. Take it serious.

It was once bandied about that editors cared about the work, not the cover letters -- so cover letters for poetry and fiction weren't needed unless your submission had been solicited, or you were sending it for a special issue, or if it was a simultaneous submission.

Listing recent publications in cover letters helps editors score and pigeonhole the poet before the editor sees the work. Such a list is also a clue to the poet's economic and social position, because if I'm systematically pursuing a career as a poet, working my way up through the lit journals year after year, my parents probably left me a trust fund or I married a lawyer. Thus the editor can see himself in the author, and perhaps sympathize -- because the editor is a poet as well.

Prizes prove that the poetry is the kind that currently wins prizes. (See Juvenal's Satires or St. Augustine's Confessions for a more holistic view of prizewinning poems and poets.)

Indicating that the poet is a college teacher, an editor, a curator, or librarian -- and omissions of anything else-- telegraphs the poet's educational level (master's level; probably MFA) and that the poet has leisure enough to read and to track literary trends. It also proves beyond a doubt that the poet is white. Thus the editor can see himself in the poet, and perhaps sympathize.

Enclosing an SASE implies that the poet wants the poems back, but I guess it doesn't hurt to spell it out.

Thanks, poetry editor, for your time. We apologize for impinging upon it by sending you poems. Please accept the coveted Artificial Difficulty Prize for March 2008.