since I've never submitted any poetry for publication.
To pick your targets, you absolutely must know your potential market. You need to know what kind of a story you've written and find out who publishes such stories. I happen to write science fiction, and there are a reasonable number of places to submit those stories.
Magazines will have their submission guidelines posted on their websites.
You automatically own the copyright on anything you write. Do NOT put the copyright symbol or any other such notice on your manuscript. It will brand you as a total amateur, which is the last thing you want an editor to think of you.
Here's a link to manuscript formatting guidelines: http://www.shunn.net/format/story.html
If it is possible for you to attend some kind of writer's conference, especially one that also covers submitting for publication, that could be very helpful. There's a ton of stuff on-line for you to look at.
Good Luck! It can be a hard slog, with many, many submissions before something is accepted. No rejection of your poetry or fiction is a rejection of you as a person; it just means that the editor didn't think your work was what they wanted to publish.
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