Thank you. There was always: Thank you. There was always a lot of bullshit dealing with the poetry gatekeepers back in the small press days but there are still a lot of tyrants in the online poetry communities. Quality can be a purely subjective matter. Also, a lot of poems that may not be good or great in a classical or technical sense were important and cathartic for the author to write and sometimes find an audience that also finds value in it.
During my undergrad years, I: During my undergrad years, I was shocked to learn that two of the 20th century's greatest Poets, T. S. Elior and Wallace Stevens, were both bullied by the editor and founder of Poetry Magazine, Harriet Monroe. Her flat disregard for the integrity of their early work is astounding when one looks at the great accomplishments of the rest of their careers. I began to publish my own poems before there was an internet, and I ran into a couple of editors from small magazines who were so dictatorial that getting them to publish a poem or two was more energy-consuming than writing the poem.
When I finally arrived at the internet, I found an incredible sense of liberation provided by membership on sites like postpoems.com. I joined the Starlite Cafe immediately, before learning that it had as many rules as any print magazine. But when I came to postpoems, I found that Jason is an excellent publisher: he maintains the site for us, but does not interfere with what we post.
I applaud your poem's succinct and accurate summary of the print-media experience.
I like this poem very much. : I like this poem very much. Rimbaud inspired two of my favorite Poets---the French diplomat Paul Claudel (France's ambassador to the USA 1928-1933) and Cordwainer Smith, a science fiction writer. And I love that word "prosetry" in fourth line. May I ask its source?
I am grateful for this return: I am grateful for this return visit and kind regard for it, this poem that assumes naught but to be. Herein lay a gladdened heart.
This poem demonstrates your: This poem demonstrates your usual verbal skill, but that first stanza---especially those words "to get my mind / off my own mind"---deserves to be in the quotation books.
Thank you fine sir! But I: Thank you fine sir! But I only wish I was swimming in a pond. I usually feel like I'm swimming in a circle like a gold fish in a small fishbowl waiting and hoping Junior remembers to feed me.
I am glad to hear that you: I am glad to hear that you are recovering, however slowly that may go. A similar after-illness faigue has taken a swing at me during the last couple of days, and I have slept more this week than is customary for me. I also have a painful minor procedure schedule---the catheter exchange---for this coming Monday.
The second and third paragraphs of your comment contain an understanding of my screen name that few have held, or at least have shared with me. I am screenshotting your words and downloading them to my personal files about my screen name, and I am so very, very, very grateful to you.
Highly significant visuals,: Highly significant visuals, shrewd yet very casual, organic wordplay and sharp freeze-frames at just the right, highly-charged moment . . . So much to unpack in a tight emotional space!
It all conspires to make this an explosive work of art. Poetry that really, really works! Love your style!
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