Another Plan
Editor Owen, of San Jose,
Commonly known as 'our friend J.J.'
Weary of scribbling for daily bread,
Weary of writing what nobody read,
Slept one day at his desk and dreamed
That an angel before him stood and beamed
With compassionate eyes upon him there.
Editor Owen is not so fair
In feature, expression, form or limb
But glances like that are familiar to him;
And so, to arrive by the shortest route
At his visitor's will he said, simply: 'Toot.'
'Editor Owen,' the angel said,
'Scribble no more for your daily bread.
Your intellect staggers and falls and bleeds,
Weary of writing what nobody reads.
Eschew now the quill-in the coming years
Homilize man through his idle ears.
Go lecture!' 'Just what I intended to do,'
Said Owen. The angel looked pained and flew.
Editor Owen, of San Jose,
Commonly known as 'our friend J.J.'
Scribbling no more to supply his needs,
Weary of writing what nobody reads,
Passes of life each golden year
Speaking what nobody comes to hear.
poem by Ambrose Bierce
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Related quotes
Which editor? I can't think of one editor I worked with as an editor. The various companies did have editors but we always acted as our own editor, so the question has no answer.
I'd come from the bottom of the barrel. Just Owen Hart getting out of the shadow of Bret Hart's little brother. Everyone figured, this is a joke, Owen's going to get squashed.
But for me, being an editor I've been an editor of all kinds of books being an editor of poetry has been the way in which I could give a crucial part of my time to what I love most.
quote by Peter Davison
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Acting is more fun than writing. Writing is harder, more like having a term paper.
quote by Owen Wilson
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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A letter to a Captain
Captain Owen
Did you find your glory?
The glory you left home for
You should have stayed
Stayed safe at home
Captain Owen
I have seen your photographs
The photographs of words
The photographs of death, of war
The same war you died in
You shouldn't have gone
You should have stayed
Stayed safe at home
Captain Owen
You deserved to live
You would've lived if you never went
And yet if you never went
We would have never known
Captain Owen
Did you get a medal?
I will give you a medal
A medal of humanity
A medal of capturing what no one saw
Deaths that everyone turned away from
But you ran to save
poem by Mariam de Haan
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An Editor becomes kind of your mother. You expect love and encouragement from an Editor.
quote by Jackie Kennedy
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The writer who can't do his job looks to his editor to do it for him, though he won't dream of sharing his royalties with that editor.
quote by Alfred A. Knopf
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Editor
tonight
he will read many poems
and he cannot sleep because as always there will be many poems from me. he asked for them anyway. and everything i have in my mind
will always be poems.
the editor is an insomniac.
and from the hundred that i emailed for his perusal.
i guess. i need only to see one
that he thinks deserves
his choice.
i laugh. how can he ever find that piece of little garbage
as art form?
funny. dear editor, everything is a fake.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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I Am Visited By An Editor And A Poet
I had just won $115 from the headshakers and
was naked upon my bed
listening to an opera by one of the Italians
and had just gotten rid of a very loose lady
when there was a knock upon the wood,
and since the cops had just raided a month or so ago,
I screamed out rather on edge—
who the hell is it? what you want, man?
I’m your publisher! somebody screamed back,
and I hollered, I don’t have a publisher,
try the place next door, and he screamed back,
you’re Charles Bukowski, aren’t you? and I got up and
peeked through the iron grill to make sure it wasn’t a cop,
and I placed a robe upon my nakedness,
kicked a beercan out of the way and bade them enter,
an editor and a poet.
only one would drink a beer (the editor)
so I drank two for the poet and one for myself
and they sat there sweating and watching me
and I sat there trying to explain
that I wasn’t really a poet in the ordinary sense,
I told them about the stockyards and the slaughterhouse
and the racetracks and the conditions of some of our jails,
and the editor suddenly pulled five magazines out of a portfolio
and tossed them in between the beercans
and we talked about Flowers of Evil, Rimbaud, Villon,
and what some of the modern poets looked like:
J.B. May and Wolf the Hedley are very immaculate, clean fingernails, etc.;
I apologized for the beercans, my beard, and everything on the floor
and pretty soon everybody was yawning
and the editor suddenly stood up and I said,
are you leaving?
and then the editor and the poet were walking out the door,
and then I thought well hell they might not have liked
what they saw
but I’m not selling beercans and Italian opera and
torn stockings under the bed and dirty fingernails,
I’m selling rhyme and life and line,
and I walked over and cracked a new can of beer
and I looked at the five magazines with my name on the cover
and wondered what it meant,
wondered if we are writing poetry or all huddling in
one big tent
clasping assholes.
poem by Charles Bukowski
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Book writing is a little different because, in my case, my editor is a year younger than me and basically has the same sensibility as me.
quote by Chuck Klosterman
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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My Angel.
MANY OF YOU DON'T KNOW YOUR ANGEL
BUT I DO,
I KNOW HER NAME AND THIS IS TRUE,
MY ANGEL LOVES ME WITH ALL HER HEART,
ALTHOUGH I CAN'T SEE HER
WERE NOT FAR APART,
SHE WAS ONCE LIKE YOU AND I,
MY ANGEL GREW WINGS
AND FLEW TO THE SKY,
MY ANGEL IS ALWAYS BY MY SIDE,
ALTHOUGH I CAN'T SEE YOU MOM
YOU WILL ALWAYS BE WITH ME DEEP INSIDE.
Copyright ©2009 Jose Murguia
9/21/09
poem by Jose Murguia
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Waiting
The sun has slipped his tether
And galloped down the west.
(Oh, it's weary, weary waiting, love.)
The little bird is sleeping
In the softness of its nest.
Night follows day, day follows dawn,
And so the time has come and gone:
And it's weary, weary waiting, love.
The cruel wind is rising
With a whistle and a wail.
(And it's weary, weary waiting, love.)
My eyes are seaward straining
For the coming of a sail;
But void the sea, and void the beach
Far and beyond where gaze can reach!
And it's weary, weary waiting, love.
I heard the bell-buoy ringing--
How long ago it seems!
(Oh, it's weary, weary waiting, love.)
And ever still, its knelling
Crashes in upon my dreams.
The banns were read, my frock was sewn;
Since then two seasons' winds have blown--
And it's weary, weary waiting, love.
The stretches of the ocean
Are bare and bleak to-day.
(Oh, it's weary, weary waiting, love.)
My eyes are growing dimmer--
Is it tears, or age, or spray?
But I will stay till you come home.
Strange ships come in across the foam!
But it's weary, weary waiting, love.
poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar
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You know, people always think if you start out as a film editor, you shoot less footage. Actually, just the opposite is true. I tend to grab as much coverage as I can because as a former editor I know how important it is to have those few frames.
quote by Robert Wise
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Hunter
I was alone and sickly
It was a quarter of a moonlit night
I heard him cry through my window shade
And it filled me so full of fright
But I could not turn my back on him
I put on the back porch light
Can I help you, said the good samaritan
Can I help you, said the good samaritan
I brought him bread and a blanket
But I told him, you cant come in
You can sleep outside in the tool shed
Though a little rain comes in
Oh, I dont know you, youre a stranger
I dont know where youve been
You cant come in here, said the keeper of the inn
I dont want you in here, said the keeper of the inn.
But I couldnt sleep for the thinking
You know my night got so insane
I thought, maybe he was an angel
And I left him out in the rain
And what if he was the devil
Hed be coming after me again
But when I woke in the weary morning he was gone
When I woke in the weary morning he was gone
I thought maybe he was an angel
And I left him out in the rain
And what if he was the devil
Hed be coming after me again
When I woke in the weary morning he was gone
When I woke in the weary morning, lord, he was gone
song performed by by Joni Mitchell
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I'm Owen Hart and I have my own identity and my own style.
I lived through a classic publishing story. My editor was fired a month before the book came out. The editor who took it over already had a full plate. It was never advertised. We didn't get reviewed in any major outlets.
quote by Anita Diament
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Problems Of A Journalist
“I want to get away somewhere and re-read Proust,”
Said an editor of Fortune to a man on Time.
But the fire roared and died, the phoenix quacked like a goose,
And all roads to the country fray like shawls
Outside the dusk of suburbs. Pacing the halls
Where mile-high windows frame a dream with witnesses,
You taste, fantast and epicure, the names of towns along the coast,
Black roadsters throbbing on the highways blue with rain
Toward one lamp, burning on those sentences.
“I want to get away somewhere and re-read Proust,”
Said an editor of Newsweek to a man on Look.
Dachaus with telephones, Siberias with bonuses.
One reads, as winter settles on the town,
The evening paper, in an Irving Place café.
poem by Weldon Kees
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And in that I cannot send unto you all my businesses in writing, I despatch these present bearers fully informed in all things, to whom it may please you to give faith and credence in what they shall say unto you by word of mouth.
quote by Owen Glendower
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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When The Sleepy Man Comes
When the Sleepy Man comes with the dust on his eyes,
(Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!)
He shuts up the earth, and he opens the skies.
(So hush-a-by, weary my Dearie!)
He smiles through his fingers, and shuts up the sun;
(Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!)
The stars that he loves he lets out one by one.
(So hush-a-by, weary my Dearie!)
He comes from the castles of Drowsy-boy Town;
(Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!)
At the touch of his hand the tired eyelids fall down.
(So hush-a-by, weary my Dearie!)
He comes with a murmur of dream in his wings;
(Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!)
And whispers of mermaids and wonderful things.
(So hush-a-by, weary my Dearie!)
Then the top is a burden, the bugle a bane;
(Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!)
When one would be faring down Dream-a-way Lane.
(So hush-a-by, weary my Dearie!)
When one would be wending in Lullaby Wherry,
(Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!)
To Sleepy Man's Castle, by Comforting Ferry.
(So hush-a-by, weary my Dearie!)
poem by Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
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A Child's Even-Song
The sun is weary, for he ran
So far and fast to-day;
The birds are weary, for who sang
So many songs as they?
The bees and butterflies at last
Are tired out, for just think too
How many gardens through the day
Their little wings have fluttered through.
And so, as all tired people do,
They've gone to lay their sleepy heads
Deep deep in warm and happy beds.
The sun has shut his golden eye
And gone to sleep beneath the sky,
The birds and butterflies and bees
Have all crept into flowers and trees,
And all lie quiet, still as mice,
Till morning comes-like father's voice.
So Geoffrey, Owen, Phyllis, you
Must sleep away till morning too.
Close little eyes, down little heads,
And sleep-sleep-sleep in happy beds.
poem by Richard Le Gallienne
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