And the most heinous thing I have yet to see in my poetic career is right here. So wrong on so many levels, not only the duping of poets and stealing their money in this case, but the apparent shenanigans around the Dorset Prize …..makes me nauseous….sort of makes Jorie Graham and David Lehman look like saints…
I think it's not so much that it was a form letter. I mean, poets are used to getting those. But that the letters gave the illusion of being an individualized response, and what had been apparently promised in exchange for 35 bucks a pop (high even for a contest fee, let alone open reading). It's just fraud plain and simple. And then to attempt to collect more money, all the while making seductive promises so very much at odds with Tupelo's contest guidelines...which if they're true, constitute one kind of badness, and if not true, yet another..
As the folks at Foetry were saying in the forums, how is this not different from the National Library of Poetry scam? No matter how "respected" Tupelo has been in the past, this is fucking ridiculous...
