Jessica Amanda Salmonson Poet Rhyme

First and Last Reader

an editor's lament

I'm sick of shitty verses, mine and yours
Keep them far outside my office doors
	In the postal drawer
	I see eighty-four
Surely I will die if I read more.

I'm tired of lyric cruddiness submitted
By these would-be poets so limited
	In talent and in vision
	I cannot quite envision
What they thought they did when they did it.

Maybe it's high time we suspended
Publication of Top-upended
	So many silly, horrid
	Long epic poems, florid
Each time I get another I'm offended.

I go deathly pale from things like these
Send them to anybody else please
	Blank verse or concrete
	Crayoned or typed neat
Mail them to magazines overseas. 

c.1978





This crappy old poem is from days when poets had to submit their rotten verse through the postal system. I edited a small journal and received 20 or 30 manuscripts per day. And I submitted my works here and there as another face in the crowd. The reality described in the poem is a condition that is even worse nowadays, when lousy poets don't even have to buy an envelope or a stamp to wreck an editor's day!

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Arturo Michael January 2, 2018 at 2:17 PM Hi Jessica... now everything is online, with millions of people swinging on the same vine... Did you really experience your poem... All the best my friend Arturo Michael January 2, 2018 at 4:37 PM Never thought of good and bad poems...You are really selling and having your poems in magazines...That's what I meant by experiencing your poems ...I should have been clearer...That's great...All the best Jessica...and your idea for PS is fantastic Jessica Amanda Salmonson January 2, 2018 at 4:19 PM If Poetry Soup let everyone really set up and title their own page, my title would be "My Bad Poems!" And I'm too old to fret people might think all my poems are jokes. I just wanna have fun here. On my facepage I link them as "Bad Poem of the Day" though I'm not QUITE posting a full one-per-day. Jessica Amanda Salmonson January 2, 2018 at 4:18 PM I don't know what you mean by "experience your poem." Like everyone, I love my bad poems. I think they're funny! I like my good poems better but I don't post those here. They mostly get published in print magazines. The electronic world might or might not be a bigger audience but I still love to see my best work in magazines, frequently magazines that pay $$, but I'll certainly give 'em away if the company I'm in and the production values are great.