There Are More Bad Writers With Publication Credits Than Good Writers Without Them
Written by John Erianne on November 13, 2007 – 4:19 pm -Poet Rob Plath raised an interesting point recently on his MySpace blog. He asked why do editors accept mediocre crap instead of a writer’s best work. It’s a point I’ve made myself when a bad writer attempts to defend his work against one of my cold-hearted rejections. I’ve made the point that being “published” is not the same thing as being good. There are literally thousands of publications out there. So many of them are edited by pud-pounding illiterates that it’s pretty much an inevitability that even the worst writers will find a home for their sub-literate dreck:
– the 3rd-rate Bukowski clone who claims to have been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for poetry when any half-wit primate knows he nominated himself.
– the widely published horror writer whose prose is so bad it’s a running joke between me and Yellow Mama editor Cindy Rosmus who routinely piss ourselves laughing whenever something written by this delusional asshole is published.
– the guy who writes those nonsensical “philosophical” essays and elementary school level poems.
– the foul turd who writes dull empty nothing poems and uses a submission service to harass poor dull-witted editors into publishing his tripe just to get rid of him. And just try to get the submission service to stop sending them — Christ, I’ve been getting 2 or 3 submissions a week from this asshole for years. I don’t even respond to them anymore. I just throw them in the trash.
Oh, the list goes on and on.
So, why do editors accept less than spectacular writing to fill their pages? Good question. Don’t know that there’s one simple answer.
The shortest explanation is that many of these so-called editors simply have no taste. They are not well-read. Wouldn’t know free verse from a villanelle or a semi-colon from a question mark. There was this one editor of a fairly well-known small press publication who was himself a bad poet. Since his own poems often accounted for a good 25-percent of an issue, he rarely would accept a poem that was better than what he had written in an effort to make himself look good. I recall he submitted to me one time and I just had to say no way, Jose, because his stuff was dull as shit.
You’ve heard me complain in the past about the mutual asshole-licking society that occurs among bad writers who have their own lit-mags. They get into the habit of publishing each other as kind of barter system, so the publication credits are kind of bogus. That’s another reason bad writing gets published.
You’ve also heard me rant about publications that “edit by committee”. The university literary journals are famous for this. The have a large editorial staff made up of writing program profs and sycophantic grad students (there’s also a lot of favor-trading that goes on here as well) who “vote” on what gets in and what doesn’t get in. Needless to say, what you end-up with is rarely excellent and nearly always a mixed-bag ranging from the mediocre to the merely okay — stuff that doesn’t engage the imagination or break boundaries or tickle the senses but just lays there on the page looking precious.
Certain “name” writers in the small press get lesser work published because of who they are and not for what they write. Lyn Lifshin, for example. Now I don’t really mean to single her out because I could say the same thing about A.D. Winans, T. K. Splake, Barry Niditch, or even myself and I’m nobody really, but we all know it happens don’t we? And don’t get me wrong, I happen to really like Lyn Lifshin’s poetry and even her lesser poems are better than some of the better poems by lesser writers, but I’m certain that many of the editors who publish her work don’t even read it. I suspect that many of them just randomly grab from the reams of material she submits just because she’s Lyn Lifshin. I recall several years ago, John Cantey Knight commented to me that “Lifshin sends you better poems than she sends other people.” No. She sends me the same stuff — I just take the time to read what she sends me before accepting anything. She often sends rough drafts, inferior versions of better poems and stuff she hasn’t proofread, so you really have to read her carefully. I don’t believe I’d be doing her, myself, or my readers a service if I did otherwise. This goes for any writer, name-brand or otherwise.
Theme issues. Yes, sometimes bad writing will slip into print simply because it suits a particular theme. Good God! There are poets out there who’d write about their bowel movements if we editors decided to do a theme on bowel movements. Unfortunately, there are editors who’d publish that shit.
Tight deadlines. It’s harder to fill the pages of a monthly publication than a quarterly. Less time to prepare an issue means that the editor is often desperate to fill the space in a timely fashion. He doesn’t have the luxury of holding out for the best work and must settle for the best he can get. A poet chimes in with a pretty good 2 page poem and a really bad short poem. The short poem fills a space, so the editor accepts, perhaps reluctantly, the bad short poem. Sometimes the need to meet a deadline will dictate the quality or lack thereof.
Personal prejudices, Political correctness, censorship and other Thou shalt nots. It amazes me that editors who claim to be proponents of free speech and creative expression will often have a whole laundry list of subjects, language, etc. that they don’t want to read about or publish. This too will often lead to dull and/or poorly written publications. The need to toe the line supercedes the need to publish a kick-ass literary magazine.
There are probably other reasons editors publish substandard material that I haven’t mentioned, but I’m bored now (and kind of hungry) so I’ll leave it to my ever-faithful peanut gallery sort it out while I go scrounge up a meal and something better to do than sit here in front of this damn computer screen.
