Saturday, April 16, 2005

I once believe there were writers and then there were editors and never the two shall meet. Or if they did it was very rare and not necessarily a good thing. But I think I am growing up in my ideas. I see how reading other people’s poetry has changed me, developed my eye and now I believe that one of the best things you can do as a writer is serve as an editor for a bit.

I mean at least then you will realize when reading 300 submissions 250 of them are going to be about someone mother/father/lover. I kid you not. But it also shows you how universal poetry is, and how a good poet seeks to write not only the common but the uncommon.

Anyway, I am happy I took the job at The Cortland Review. I still want to write any spare moment I get but I can read a little poetry in between.

3 comments:

Charles said...

When I was with HFR I found the same thing, but also I found editing made me feel so much more secure about my own writing, because there was so much bad writing in the world, and those people were out there, working hard to get published too.

And after reading a four-inch slush pile of italicized sonnetry from Boca Raton, Florida, when you find that genius, genius poem from out of the blue, you love it just a little bit more. Editing taught me to really champion and support the writers whose work matters to me.

C. Dale said...

I, too, once believed what you believe. Now, after so many years, editing/reading seems as much a part of writing for me as actually writing. And like Charles, editing taught me to champion the work I love. I literally beam when I find poems I want for NER. It usually makes my week!

Glenn Ingersoll said...

Early on I knew poetry wouldn't pay the bills. And if I were writing novels there'd be all that writing time to get to the first one and a person has to pay the bills before the novel takes off. Right?

I didn't want to teach. And I didn't want to be a librarian. I thought, I could be an editor! I thought I'd get a job in a NY publishing house.

So I worked on campus literary magazines. And learned that I loved reading the slush pile. But I was never going to be a NY editor. It's really gratifying to find a poem you love. Wherever you find it. But it's especially gratifying when you feel kinda responsible for it; you whisper to yourself, I found that!