Diary of a Mad Editor

Yesterday morning, I was at the post office picking up some submissions. I opened a few of them while I was there as per my normal custom and began to read them. The first submission was just good enough to get assigned to my “maybe” pile. The others were definitely going into my “no-way-in-Hell-never-ever” pile. In fact, the third submission I read was so bad, that I loudly exclaimed, “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me with this shit!” My friend Tony was on duty and he started chuckling.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

So I told him. And told him. And told him. Several minutes later, he nods his head and says, “You know what?”

“No. What?”

“Maybe you oughta start a magazine that just publishes bad poetry. Call it Your Poetry Sucks Review.”

“Huh? Yeah . . . I don’t know about that. Interesting concept though.”

Truth is, I was seriously considering it. But then, I thought:

A) Who’d want to read it?

I do recall some years ago, there was a magazine (can’t for the life of me remember the name of it) which published only material that had been previously rejected. I don’t know for a fact that all of the material was necessarily bad as “rejected” doesn’t automatically mean that a piece of writing is unpublishable. Nonetheless, as far as I know that magazine didn’t last too long, so I can’t imagine there’d be this great demand to read a similar magazine.

B) Why should I create a publication opportunity for poetry that shouldn’t see the light of day?

I’ve always been of the opinion that bad writers have the right to write as much as they want to, but the public has the equal right not to have that crap foisted onto them and it’s an editor’s job to police the situation. I’d be dishonoring and disrespecting my readers if I made it easier for these deluded individuals to get their work out there.

C) Who in their right mind would agree to have their suck-ass poetry in a literary magazine dedicated to poking fun at what terrible writers they are?

Actually, I do know of a few godsmack awful writers who’d love to be in such a publication. They are so deluded about their talents that they are oblivious to any criticism of their work. I could make fun of them to the trump of doomsday and they simply wouldn’t care as long as I spelled their names correctly in the byline. Most writers, however, would be offended and wouldn’t give me permission to publish their work in such a way. So, I doubt I’d be able to fill many issues over the long haul.

Besides, poking fun at the odd writer here in this blog is one thing — those writers more or less ask for it. Devoting a whole publication to the practice is another fish altogether. Even I’m not that heartless.