Wednesday, March 03, 2010

Reading thousands of submissions

Timothy Green of Rattle has some interesting things to say here about a few recent essays on the state of poetry (and literature in general) these days. He's writing from an American perspective; I wonder how his comments play for those involved in the po biz in Britain.
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1 comment:

Donald Brown said...

"Reading through 15,000 submissions might be a pain in the ass, but it’s your job. If you run a magazine, that’s what you owe your subscribers — that’s the service you’re providing."

I think that's a good attitude for an editor, so I give Green credit for stating it, and for his argument about how 'big names' get to be 'big names,'etc. I read the Genoways piece awhile ago, and though I can admit sympathy with someone disgusted by the task of wading through the shit, "yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down," because an editor only has to decide what fits in a given issue, not how to determine the ultimate merits of someone's writing. It's not at all like teaching where you have to try to help a person write better!

I think I might have to post on this topic myself! Thanks for the link; it was good to hear a poetry editor's thoughts.

5:42 PM

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