"She thinks just because she folds and staples some pieces of paper together that her words are the words of God."
(And please DO note I never said those poets (the good ones) sucked just because they'd paid to be in the anthologies. Only that they were in woefully poor company and should perhaps reconsider where they send their work or their money...)
(edit) Apparently, now what I do does not involve massive amounts of time. And maybe he’s right, I mean I don’t have a bunch of acolytes willing to give me handouts , so, you know, I have to have a like a real job that eats up about 40 hours a week and while it’s enjoyable work, it sort of cuts into poetry-related stuff.. I’d say each chapbook we make only takes about 30 hours or so from editing, laying out, proofing, printing, assembling, etc. And since we’ve been doing almost two projects a month, that’s spread over about a two week span. Not to mention packing orders, dealing with daily press business, and promoting our titles. Add in about another 2-3 hours per week dealing with wicked alice business and reading submissions. All in addition to the etsy shop that pays the rent on the studio space and for which I have to make a lot of things and spend a lot of time on keeping our inventory up--to which I devote about 2 hours a day. And now that I'm not in grad school anymore, there's probably a few extra hours in my day, alot of which is spent commuting between the far north side and downtown. Of course, I could just play the pity card and ask people to give me money before I publish them or host readings with strings attached...
As for why we publish women, it must be Thursday, since I feel like I have to defend that about once a week. It's gettin kind of old...
I'm finished with all this anyway. So happy he's managed to get some more "donations" from this. PT Barnum must certainly be right...
Hmmm..it took me awhile, but I think I recall the manuscript he was talking about, submitted sometime in 2004. I was probably pretty naive my first few years in Chicago as to people's agendas and motives. They asked for submissions, I sent one. Believe me, if I held a grudge for every book, every chapbook, every poem that ever got rejected (or in this case apparently never responded to if he still has it after all this time), I'd have a helluva lot of people to rail against. In fact, that very manuscript, if it's the one I'm thinking of, no doubt went out to about a dozen places before it was absorbed into the last half of my full-length book. I barely remember which presses let alone hold grudges. It's probably for the best anyway. No doubt he would have asked me to kick in on the production costs if it had been accepted... I suddenly have the rather hilarious image of him rifling frantically through boxes looking for some dirt on me. *sigh* I'd been guessing everything he was going to say as I was writing my responses, but the fact he pulled that accusation out of his ass, very well done. Wrong ,mind you, but I think it proves my point about arguing with crazy. I'm sure he'll come up with some other dreadful accusation shortly. Then he'll like, insult my mother or threaten me. You all should get some popcorn...
