wearin' my poetry editor hat!
So in case I haven't mentioned, I somehow ended up as Poetry editor for this year's Welter (UB's literary magazine). I'm not really editing poems, I'm more of an acquisitions editor. Want to know what that's like?
First, you will need to do some basic training. Every morning, load anywhere from 6 to 10 bricks into a bag. Carry that bag with you wherever you go. Once in a while you might even take a brick out and look at it. Do this for about a week so you will have the muscle development necessary for the task ahead.
Send out the call for submissions. Post it on Craigslist, print it in your local paper, send the call out to all the mailing lists and message boards you've ever been on, put up a card on your supermarket's corkboard. Give complete strangers your e-mail address, and ask them to send you poetry. Then get ready.
On the first day, go pick up your battered copy of Douglas Adams. and turn to the Vogon poetry. As you read the Vogon poetry, say to yourself, "This is the best poetry I will read all day." Because it will be true.
Open your e-mail. Print out all the poems you get. Try to keep everything in order, because it will be important later. As you go to the office supply store for your third pack of printer paper, be grateful for the brick-training you did earlier.
Now start reading. Nothing I say now can prepare you for what you are about to experience. You will read poetry so awful that you will wish for an army of poo-flinging monkeys that you could send to visit these aspiring authors. You will read poem after poem after poem after poem of excruciating mediocrity. You will read poems that make you flinch because you will remember, uncomfortably, that poem you wrote last year that was almost exactly like this one, and oh god was it really as bad as this? You will read. You will pray for the sweet release of death.
And then... then, after what seems like thousands of bad poems, and worse poems, and poems that are almost halfway okay, you will find it.
That poem. That author. "This...," you will say, in awe, fear, wonderment, "this is... not bad." You will read it again. "This is... good. No, this is amazing! This is everything I ever wanted in a poem! This is GOLD!" You turn the page, and before you know it, you have read all of their poems, and you are transformed by the shock of their words! You have become a god-touched lunatic. You are scribbling, "I love you, Author X!" in red ink on every page. You want to dance waltzes with this poetry, you want to devour it whole, you want to shout stanzas to passers-by in the middle of the lumber aisle.
And you start to think... yes, it's worth it... even as you pick up the next bundle of papers.
Anyway, at least that's what it's been like for me.
First, you will need to do some basic training. Every morning, load anywhere from 6 to 10 bricks into a bag. Carry that bag with you wherever you go. Once in a while you might even take a brick out and look at it. Do this for about a week so you will have the muscle development necessary for the task ahead.
Send out the call for submissions. Post it on Craigslist, print it in your local paper, send the call out to all the mailing lists and message boards you've ever been on, put up a card on your supermarket's corkboard. Give complete strangers your e-mail address, and ask them to send you poetry. Then get ready.
On the first day, go pick up your battered copy of Douglas Adams. and turn to the Vogon poetry. As you read the Vogon poetry, say to yourself, "This is the best poetry I will read all day." Because it will be true.
Open your e-mail. Print out all the poems you get. Try to keep everything in order, because it will be important later. As you go to the office supply store for your third pack of printer paper, be grateful for the brick-training you did earlier.
Now start reading. Nothing I say now can prepare you for what you are about to experience. You will read poetry so awful that you will wish for an army of poo-flinging monkeys that you could send to visit these aspiring authors. You will read poem after poem after poem after poem of excruciating mediocrity. You will read poems that make you flinch because you will remember, uncomfortably, that poem you wrote last year that was almost exactly like this one, and oh god was it really as bad as this? You will read. You will pray for the sweet release of death.
And then... then, after what seems like thousands of bad poems, and worse poems, and poems that are almost halfway okay, you will find it.
That poem. That author. "This...," you will say, in awe, fear, wonderment, "this is... not bad." You will read it again. "This is... good. No, this is amazing! This is everything I ever wanted in a poem! This is GOLD!" You turn the page, and before you know it, you have read all of their poems, and you are transformed by the shock of their words! You have become a god-touched lunatic. You are scribbling, "I love you, Author X!" in red ink on every page. You want to dance waltzes with this poetry, you want to devour it whole, you want to shout stanzas to passers-by in the middle of the lumber aisle.
And you start to think... yes, it's worth it... even as you pick up the next bundle of papers.
Anyway, at least that's what it's been like for me.