When a Poet Isn’t a Poet
Published April 30th, 2010 | 
I hate that, according to my latest statement from my life insurance policy, I’m worth more dead than alive. I hate that an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will probably be an environmental disaster for decades (and that’s even if they can stop the spill sooner rather than later). It kind of reinforces the need for government regulation of energy companies and for a real energy policy. And yes, that energy policy will have to include increased funding for renewable energy sources like ethanol. That being said, don’t you just hate those commercials for the ethanol company, POET? I’m sorry, but those commercials make no sense and why would an ethanol company be named POET? Is that supposed to be clever? Although, I hesitate to call myself a poet, I have on occasion written some stuff that passes for poetry in some circles and I resent the hell out of an energy company co-opting the name of an art form that has nothing whatsoever to do with producing energy. What in the hell were those guys thinking? Maybe I should call myself a corn farmer next time I attend a poetry reading.
It’s a Shame They Don’t Offer a Rejection Slip Service
Published March 11th, 2010 | There’s this dude who keeps submitting poems to me. Every day, he emails one poem to me. Imagine finding a really bad new poem in your inbox every single day by the same bad poet. Imagine this is in addition to dozens of other submissions by other writers that also arrive every single day.
Wouldn’t you get really annoyed if you had to send the same person a fresh rejection notice every day if you were an editor of a literary magazine and you had thousands of submissions flowing to you every day, but part of your day was being wasted by a godsmack awful writer who doesn’t follow submission guidelines — a fellow whose submission practices border on harassment. My guidelines firmly state that I don’t want to see multiple submissions (in other words, I don’t want to see new material from the same writer until I’ve read and responded to old material). And I certainly don’t want to see a person whose written 365 new poems send them to me one at a time day-in, day-out.
They have submission services for writers — companies that will submit to magazines on a writer’s behalf so said writer doesn’t have to deal with the submission guidelines or have any direct contact with editors, etc. I wish there was a service like iDump4U.com that actually rejected writers on an editors behalf.
It’s not that I’m a pussy or anything. It’s just that I’m at a point in my life where dealing with certain kinds of writers . . . um . . . well . . . I’m just past it. It’s not like me and this poet are going to be picking outwedding napkins together anytime soon. No, what this guy is doing is akin to being water-boarded or some shit. It’s a tactic, you know. He thinks if he keeps sending me a poem every day, I’ll get so tired of rejecting him, I’ll just accept one of his shit poems to get rid of him.
No, I’ve already warned him. What does usually happen in cases like this is I’ll just reach a point where I’ll just stop reading his emails and block the fucker altogether. I don’t want to do that, but what has become so tiresome for me over the years is having to explain to dumb-ass, no-talent writers why I’ve rejected them and have them a) respond to me with a dear-in-the-headlights, "huh?" and continue to ignore my attempts to educate them, doing the same thing that annoyed me in the first place or b) respond with vitriolic, self-deluding comments because I dared to reject their work. It would be so much easier if I had a Bradley to contact these kinds of writers on my behalf and have him be the bad guy instead of being pushed into being that bad guy myself.
No More Free Lunch
Published December 10th, 2009 | News arrived earlier this week that yet another print literary journal is packing it in. Free Lunch is calling it quits after two decades and 42 issues. The message which states simply:
The Board of Directors of Free Lunch Arts Alliance regrets to inform you that Number 42 of Free Lunch will be its final issue. Ron Offen, the editor and founder of Free Lunch, has health issues that prevent him from continuing the magazine.
came as a bit of a shock. One gets used to a literary magazine that has been around that long. Apparently the situation is grave as Mr. Offen suffered a stroke due to a brain lesion from what I hear. I wish him well for, even though we had differing opinions on occasion, I always respected his editing chops and the loss of a good literary editor always leaves a hole that can never easily be filled — and there’s so few literary editors nowadays who know fuck-all what they are doing.
Just as the death of poet and literary ezine pioneer, Michael McNeilley, nearly a decade ago prefaced an explosion of new ezines, I predict that Ron Offen’s forced retirement will preface a further decline in print-only literary publishing. Mr. Offen, in addition to his gifts as editor and poet, was also a poster-boy of sorts for the pre-digital publishing era. There’s simply not very many old-school editors of his generation and caliber left to carry the banner for print-only literary publications. Literary editors of my generation and younger abandoned print-only publishing years ago. People like me just saw the writing on the wall, while the generation behind me was born into the digital revolution and don’t know anything else. I think it’s safe to say that you’d have to be a fool to launch a literary magazine in print-only medium nowadays. Still, it doesn’t stop me from feeling a bit sad at the prospect of losing yet another good print journal. It’s a shame we can’t buy cheap term life insurance for small press literary magazines. Anyway . . . Be well, Ron. Free Lunch will be missed.
