Emerge, God Damn It, Emerge

Obviously I haven't been paying too much attention because it appears that Ploughshares "Emerging Writer" issue has been out for some time now. I won't lie. I, along with a number of other hopefuls, contacted a former teacher (oh you know him, everybody knows him) for the required recommendation. You see, to be considered for inclusion in this issue your work has to be recommended and submitted by a writer who has at least one book published. Each "established" writer can recommend up to three "emerging" writers. After a month of silence, he responded to all of us (blind carbon copy) "thanking" us for bringing the upcomming issue to his attention and turning us all down. There was still time for me to contact another former teacher or ask a better published friend, but I decided to let the whole matter drop. I felt like a fool. It put me in the position of having to hassle people and the payout didn't seem worth it. If Ploughshares was really interested in finding the best emerging writers, they wouldn't have used the recommendation requirement. Surely this was done to control the outrageous number of submissions. They would have received thousands, no doubt. But still, they decided to let their editoral decisions be guided by others -- which if you think about it, is what Ploughshares is all about -- every issue, new guest editor.

I haven't seen the Ploughshares issue yet. I let my subscription expire because half the time they were sending me issues of all fiction. But there are at least two poets' work included whom I know and believe are good choices. I know Robert Bly has been a big fan of Jay Leeming's work for quite a while because years ago at Bennington he mentioned Jay in one of his lectures. The only student I can recall Bly ever mentioning to us. Clearly Jaime Clarke is a big Mark Conway fan -- he's the poetry editor for Post Road. So belated congratulations to them both and everyone else appearing in the issue.