Another View

1000 Black Lines mentioned the Poets and Writers article titled That Glittering Possibility in a recent post. This is the same P& W piece I blogged on back on the 20th.

Black Lines was disturbed because almost all the 18 debut poets who had been published were teachers. He lamented that he was not one and that perhaps what his 60+ page manuscript needed was not a cover letter but a resume and a list of name dropping connections.

I thought about the article. It was the same one I read and while I didn't count the number of teachers by profession, I did note that most all of them spent years and countless contests to finally achieve publication. Leslie Bumstead for example - 3 years. Victoria Chang between 30 and 45 contests. K.E. Duffin spent 6 years in pursuit of a publisher... more then half the 11 years he spent writing the book. Sarah Gridley 4 years - two years shorter than it took to write the book. Laura Sims entered 20 contests. Mark Sullivan between 75 and 100 contests.

If teaching and connections played a role in getting the manuscripts of these people into print, it certainly did not save them from years pursuit and enormous numbers of entries.

I just thought since the two of us read the same article and saw two different things, it was worth another perspective.

Poetry Publication