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!
Copyright © Jessica Amanda Salmonson | Year Posted 2018
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