I wrote poems in my corner of the Brooks Street station. I sent them to two editors who rejected them right off. I read those letters of rejection years later and I agreed with those editors.
quote by Carl Sandburg
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Related quotes
Does advertising corrupt editors? Yes it does, but fewer editors than you may suppose... the vast majority of editors are incorruptible.
quote by David Ogilvy
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The real literary editors have mostly been fired. Those that remain are all ""bottom line"" editors; everything depends on the money.
quote by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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The People's Publisher
Over a million poems shared
By Forward Poetry!
The People's Publisher that cared
Has thus made history!
Just think of poets nationwide
Partaking in that feat,
Perhaps there's one who smiles with pride
Who lives within your street!
Perhaps that neighbour no-one knows
Is busy day-by-day!
Perhaps his prose just overflows
'Cos he's got lots to say!
Perhaps he emails now and then
To share his latest one,
Yet soon he's writing once again,
Till that new poem's done!
Perhaps ten thousand poets wrote
The poems now in books
And hoped they'd be an antidote
For every one who looks!
Well-wishers with their hearts of gold
With verses to express
The greatest stories to be told
God meant for happiness!
The People's Publisher agreed
And Editors took part,
So as a team, we all succeed
To triumph in our art...
It's poetry by the people
And for the people, too...
So please remember to keep all
Our poems penned for you!
Denis Martindale, copyright, September 2012.
Website: www-dot-forwardpoetry-dot-co-dot-uk
poem by Denis Martindale
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Let Me Publish Our Love
Poets wrote love poems,
Which were love letters,
To their lofty queens;
Save queens, all have read.
I wrote love letters
In the form of poems
To my hefty queen;
Save others, she’s read.
Love has no charm when
The queen alone knows,
Also when others
Know but not the queen.
She must know my love;
My friends must know it.
Let me publish those
That I wrote of her.
(02.06.2011)
poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar
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To My Friends and Critics
Come all you friends and critics,
And listen to my song,
A word I will say to you,
It will not take me long,
The people talks about me,
They've nothing else to do
But to criticise their neighbors,
And they have me now in view.
Perhaps they talk for meanness,
And perhaps it is in jest,
If they leave out their freeness
It would suit me now the best,
To keep the good old maxim
I find it hard to do,
That is to do to others
As you wish them do to you.
Perhaps you've read the papers
Containing my interview;
I hope you kind good people
Will not believe it true.
Some Editors of the papers
They thought it would be wise
To write a column about me,
So they filled it up with lies.
The papers have ridiculed me
A year and a half or more.
Such slander as the interview
I never read before.
Some reporters and editors
Are versed in telling lies.
Others it seems are willing
To let industry rise.
The people of good judgment
Will read the papers through,
And not rely on its truth
Without a candid view.
My first attempt at literature
Is the "Sweet Singer" by name,
I wrote that book without a thought
Of the future, or of fame.
Dear Friends, I write for money,
With a kind heart and hand,
I wish to make no Enemies
Throughout my native land.
Kind friends, now I close my rhyme,
And lay my pen aside,
Between me and my critics
I leave you to decide.
poem by Julia A Moore
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An Almost Made Up Poem
I see you drinking at a fountain with tiny
blue hands, no, your hands are not tiny
they are small, and the fountain is in France
where you wrote me that last letter and
I answered and never heard from you again.
you used to write insane poems about
ANGELS AND GOD, all in upper case, and you
knew famous artists and most of them
were your lovers, and I wrote back, it’ all right,
go ahead, enter their lives, I’ not jealous
because we’ never met. we got close once in
New Orleans, one half block, but never met, never
touched. so you went with the famous and wrote
about the famous, and, of course, what you found out
is that the famous are worried about
their fame –– not the beautiful young girl in bed
with them, who gives them that, and then awakens
in the morning to write upper case poems about
ANGELS AND GOD. we know God is dead, they’ told
us, but listening to you I wasn’ sure. maybe
it was the upper case. you were one of the
best female poets and I told the publishers,
editors, “ her, print her, she’ mad but she’
magic. there’ no lie in her fire.” I loved you
like a man loves a woman he never touches, only
writes to, keeps little photographs of. I would have
loved you more if I had sat in a small room rolling a
cigarette and listened to you piss in the bathroom,
but that didn’ happen. your letters got sadder.
your lovers betrayed you. kid, I wrote back, all
lovers betray. it didn’ help. you said
you had a crying bench and it was by a bridge and
the bridge was over a river and you sat on the crying
bench every night and wept for the lovers who had
hurt and forgotten you. I wrote back but never
heard again. a friend wrote me of your suicide
3 or 4 months after it happened. if I had met you
I would probably have been unfair to you or you
to me. it was best like this.
poem by Charles Bukowski
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Do not read my poems…. [for YOU ]
Do not read my poems…
After I am dead
As a lament, a wail
An elegy, a requiem
Do not read my poems…
After I am gone
When no more I can
Hear your velvet voice.
Do not read my poems…
Alone without me
To comment along
And read with you
But, do read my poems
When I beside you lie
With my head resting
On your supporting arm
Listening to you read
In whisper, in kisses
In silence, in love
In sleep, in dream
Watching you feel
Every word I wrote
I’ll close my eyes - Love
Brush aside my hair
With your breathe
Which half veils my face
Sleepless fevered I wrote
Read me my poems
Now sing me a lullaby
Rock me to sleep
On your broad chest
Diving into your eyes
A thousand times
I am refreshed
By your smile
I’ll write on you a poem
Traced by my fingertips
To be etched in your heart
And burnt into your soul!
So, do not read my poems…
poem by Angelina Pandian
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I Confessed To You
As I read the old love letters,
you sent back to me.
The ones in which I confessed to you
how I wanted our love to be.
I told you in them
how I was sensitive to your touch,
and how I loved you so much.
It was obvious that you
did not feel for me the same way.
You never answered the letters,
but sent them unopened back to me.
Years have now passed
and I kept each and every one.
I dig them out occasionally
and have a good read through,
and then I sit down
and read them to you.
When I wrote them,
there was one thing I did not know.
You could not have read
the letters even if you wanted to.
You were blind and I did not know,
but that never stopped our love.
Now as we grow older together
with each passing day.
Our love grows a little stronger
in lots of different ways.
Those faded old love letters
we keep, as our reminder
love has no bounds.
4 June 2008
poem by David Harris
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I've had editors over the years who couldn't find a clue if it was stapled to their butt.
I don't know how the editors are going to take it or how it may be received. But to some extent I'm hoping that with the next book, when people pick it up and read it, it will scare the pants off of them.
quote by Christopher Darden
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Machines aren't replacing proofreaders at all. Copy editors, who proofread and much, much more, use spellcheck as a tool but read every word that appears in the paper.
quote by Bill Walsh
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Editors of open anthologies actively seek submissions from all comers, established and unknown. They are willing to read whatever the tide washes up at their feet.
quote by Lynn Abbey
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As for collaboration - I have done a lot, 26 books, and found publishers increasingly resistive to them. It's not that the books are bad; editors won't even read them.
quote by Piers Anthony
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When I first started to write, I was aware of being queer, but I didn't write about it. Queer poems would probably not have been accepted by the editors I sent them to.
The Professional Poet
and of course it was wrong
to label him as that – in just that tone of voice;
a touch of envy there, no doubt
implying a comfortable life,
a smart careerist, older poets youthfully
cultivated, poems in the right magazines,
editors gently kept in touch with;
keeping on the right side of his peers,
'interesting' reviews of their poetry skilfully woven,
professional favours quietly exchanged;
academic posts gracefully filled, and
moved on from; leaving grateful ex-students
recommended for the vacancy;
and an acquired ability
to write just enough, but not less;
so it should be rather, a lifelong devotee of poetry,
and when he started to read to us I felt mean
for assuming him to be some artificial thing
a professional poet;
I wanted to inhabit his poetry, the
house of his poetry; but some doors
to rooms were open, some were shut;
would I give the time to find and love the key?
He read his own poems
as if they were step-children –
proud to show them off, and yet, not really his;
the audience, taken aback by this,
hesitated to applaud.
But when he read the poems of others,
he read them as though they were miracles
to stun and to admire, yet he was, we were, barely worthy of;
dropping as fine mercy, as the gentle dew of heaven; he read like
an amateur would read the great, in awe; as -
a lifelong devotee of poetry. He shone.
In each of us, a poet was born and lived.
poem by Michael Shepherd
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My Computer
"what?" they say, "you got a
computer?"
it's like I have sold out to
the enemy.
I had no idea so many
people were prejudiced
against
computers.
even two editors have
written me letters about
the computer.
one disparaged the
computer in a mild and
superior way.
the other seemed
genuinely
pissed.
I am aware that a
computer can't create
a poem.
but neither can a
typewriter.
yet, still, once or
twice a week
I hear:
"what?
you have a
computer?
you?"
yes, I do
and I sit up here
almost every
night,
sometimes with
beer or
wine,
sometimes
without
and I work the
computer.
the damn thing
even corrects
my spelling.
and the poems
come flying
out,
better than
ever.
I have no
idea what causes
all this
computer
prejudice.
me?
I want to go
the next step
beyond the
computer.
I'm sure it's
there.
and when I get
it,
they'll say,
"hey, you hear,
Chinaski got a
space-biter!"
"what? "
"yes, it's true!"
"I can't believe
it!"
and I'll also have
some beer or
some wine
or maybe nothing
at all
and I'll be
85 years old
driving it home
to
you and me
and to the little girl
who lost her
sheep.
or her
computer.
poem by Charles Bukowski
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For over a year I continued to submit mss, and have them rejected - the last few with rejection letters indicated the story was pretty good, but I was American.
quote by Nora Roberts
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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What They Will Say
Some times, I wonder if I write for the future.
That may seem like a strange statement to make.
Forty-three years ago, I wrote a poem
that at the time no one wanted to know.
Now it is my best-loved poem
read by countless people around the world.
Thirty years ago, I wrote two poems
and each one won me an award,
but at the time I wrote them,
no one wanted to know.
All of which makes me wonder
if what I wrote in my yesteryears
that then none wanted to know.
Could they all be popular now?
Today I started collecting and retyping
short stories I wrote twenty years ago.
At the time, publishers and agents
didn’t want to know.
Now twenty year on
I am wondering what they will say.
24 January 2009
poem by David Harris
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I think that they had afforded me many opportunities to do good work there, and I think I did. It was a wonderful four years. I really worked with some great people, terrific producers, terrific editors.
quote by Connie Chung
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Forty years ago, we were on the tail of the Front Page era. There was a different point of view. Reporters and editors were more forgiving of public people. They didn't think they had to stick someone in jail to make a career.
quote by Mike Royko
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