Every Poet is an Asshole, but Not Every Asshole is a Poet
Published October 2nd, 2007 | 
Sometimes it’s like what Bukowski once wrote: “It’s the little things that send a man to the madhouse . . .” The other day, I finally published the new issue of The 13th Warrior Review and subsequently, sent word out to my mailing list informing them of the deed so they could surf on over to the website to read it at their leisure. Almost immediately, I noticed a surge in traffic to the site and was pleased. But then, a few hours later, I received a snarky email message from this poet who’d been on my mailing list for years, demanding that I remove him. Now there’s an unsubscribe link at the bottom of every message I send out (and It’s not like I send a lot of messages — 2 or 3 announcement a year on average) so this guy could have quietly taken himself off the list if he was so hellbent on getting off the list. This is a person I’ve have a long-standing professional relationship with. Indeed, if we were not friends, he was at least someone whose work I’d supported over the years. Hell, I even interviewed the guy once. Since I had been supportive of him and hadn’t done or said anything to him to anger him as far as I knew, I couldn’t figure out why he’d so rudely demand I remove him from my list. Like I said, he could have removed himself and I wouldn’t have been the wiser. It wasn’t just that he wanted off the list, it’s that he wanted me to know he wanted off the list and wanted me to scurry on over to the administration page to do the removing. I took it as a slight. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but after I removed him and replied to him simply that I had removed him, I became very angry — and then I became very hurt. And then, after about a day of being angry and hurt, I started to think about it and came to the conclusion that it was behavior I should have expected from this person. After all, wasn’t he always a bit of an asshole and an idiot? Wasn’t he, from the beginning, always a bit of a pain in the ass? Sure. I recall my first time publishing him. After several rejections, he finally checked in with a piece I was interested in. I liked it conceptually but felt it need some minor revision to make it perfect. He balked at doing the revision at first even though it would secure him publication in a literary zine he obviously wanted to appear in. In fact, he wouldn’t agree until I sent him one of my own poems to demonstrate my qualifications for judging his work. Ordinarily, I’d return his poem and tell him to go fuck himself, but for some reason, I just sighed, emailed him a random poem of mine, telling him 1) “One does not need to be a carpenter, to know when a table is badly made” (a gold star to anyone who knows who first said this) and 2) being as it’s my publication and I’m the one who decides what does and does not get published therein, it’s really a moot point whether or not I a qualified to judge his work. He was sufficiently impressed by my poem to agree to the revisions and so I published it and a few more of his poems over the years.
What bothered me most about this poet is that he’s never lived up to his full potential. He doesn’t like to revise and he prefers to write poems for shock value more than for substance. His “shock value” poems are not really all that shocking — most of them are just dull and stupid. He’s capable of writing poems of the quality I’ve published, but he’s written a lot more of the bad poems. The problem is, the bad poems keep getting published. This too is not so suprising because it’s like I always say about the small press — there are more bad poets with publication credits than good poets without them. His talent diminishes year by year and his ego keeps growing. Isn’t that the way it goes. I may be the one person on the planet who cared whether he reached his full potential, who told him the truth instead of merely indulging him. And maybe that’s why he finally decided he was fed-up with me. I mean why listen to little ole me, when you can get away with bad writing and have others kiss your rear-end for it?
I just wonder if he ever asked any of those other editors for their qualifications before allowing them to publish his work. Somehow, I doubt it. Anyway, I guess in hindsight, I’m better off without him darkening my door.
