workshops revealed

Brian McGettrick (aka bmcg on this blog) sent me a link to an article by Sam Sacks. this article, ostensibly a review of an anthology (Best New American Voices 2006) is really a look at workshops and what they are doing to American literature.
i've never liked the idea of workshops. like Mr. Sacks says, they only dilute the talent pool. they bring down those who are talented (and therefore don't need a workshop) and bring those who are untalented up just enough to not discourage them from writing. he even touches on the publishing trade, and how little it means to be published.
granted, the article is about fiction (short stories, mainly), but i think the sentiment can be applied just as well to poetry. there ARE poetry workshops, and the same drivel Mr. Sacks mentions is being released from these places.
the key sentence in the whole article is: "As for grammar and mechanics, the only aspects of writing actually governed by rules, they are considered beneath the contempt of creative minds and are omitted from study." i find grammar and mechanics woefully lacking in most contemporary literature, and it's even worse in poetry. for some reason people just can't seem to be bothered with learning the proper way to say things. and don't even get me started on spelling.
i also think the fact that poems are shorter, and words in a poem are at even more of a premium, any grammatical or mechanical error is magnified.
these things matter, folks. punctuation matters. spelling matters. grammar matters. it's all part of communicating effectively. it's hard enough getting people to read poems, there's no sense in putting them off even more with hard-to-read, grammatically incorrect, mechanically cumbersome pieces.
that's my $0.02.

good news

chris kornacki (aka chris k. on this blog) informed me (see the comments on the previous post) that trespass magazine updated their website with information about the new issue (#2) and used my poem Midnight Trains as a teaser. that's great news. thanks for passing it along, chris!
and this afternoon, i received my two contributor's copies. another poem, the emptiness of a moonless night, kicks off this issue. trespass is a beautiful magazine that will only get better with time. i'm convinced of it.
other poets in this issue include Glenn W. Cooper, Owen Roberts, john sweet, J.J. Campbell and Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal.
if you're interested in trying to get into the next issue of trespass, they are open for submissions until January 15. i know i will shoot some their way. maybe the ones that were rejected from Poultry Broadside. then again, maybe not. after all, they were only "almost there, but not quite."

insult to injury

in the last post i talked about how my writing has trickled to a near stop. and those few poems that i am able to squeeze out aren't worth much (in my opinion). well, today i received some confirmation of that. i sent three of my recent poems to Poultry Broadside, also mentioned in the last post, and received a reply today that all were rejected. the editor said that they were "almost there, but not quite".
that's the story of my life: almost there, but not quite.
whether i'm trying to write poetry, successfully do my job, pleasure my wife or appear suave, the end result is always the same. almost there, but not quite.
oh well. he did say i could try him again in a few months. but, i'm not sure what makes him think i'll be fully there in a few months.