Saturday, May 27, 2006

Letter to the Editor

I got my May issue of Poetry in today’s mail (why not until May 27?) and just wanted to mention—in case anyone happened to read my letter to the editor—that the reason my letter is so insipid is that the editors took my brilliantly triple-edged, three-paragraph letter and cut it down to one blunt-edged paragraph that I guess makes someone’s point but not quite mine. Granted, my letter needed some editing, but why did they take out all the good parts?

Maybe this is why I write poetry. It's almost impossible to get poetry published and no one reads it when you do, but at least no editor would think of deleting two-thirds of your poem and publishing it like that without even asking you.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Heh. That's what they did to my Letter to the Editor to Poets and Writers magazine. It really sucks.

Leslie said...

Your post could easily be the ars poetica for the new Poetry. Take something brilliant and turn it blunt and truncated.