Lewis Turco
<[email protected]> wrote: 3 July 2008
C. Dale Young
Poetry Editor
The New England Review
Middlebury College
Middlebury VT 95753
Dr. Young:
Having Googled your name, I can see how busy you are, but that doesn’t excuse you from the discourtesy you showed when you sent me the printed rejection slip that I opened this morning. Your busy-ness as a doctor and as a writer, and as an editor and as a teacher is no reason for treating so shabbily someone who has done as much as I have, in almost twice as long as you’ve been alive, for the art you like to dabble in.
I assume that being a physician is your primary interest, as it was for W. C. Williams, but my primary interest in life is poetry, and it always has been. I resent being insulted by someone who is apparently a dilettante. I’d be willing to bet, from what I know of him, that Williams never sent anybody a printed rejection slip in his life, though he showed that it is possible to blend medicine with poetry.
Please understand that I’m not complaining about the rejection, only about the form of that rejection. If you can’t do any better than this, I recommend that you quit some of your dabbling and pay attention to what it is you do best (I trust, but from what I’ve seen of it — which isn’t much, I admit — that isn’t writing poetry).
Sincerely.
Lewis Turco
"C. Dale Young" <[email protected]> wrote:
Dear Mr. Turco,
I have assistant editors who reject work, so I may not even be the one who rejected your poems. Our assistants do not typically write things on rejection slips, but I do stand by their judgements and take full responsibility. I do not read all 44,000 poems we receive at NER in a year. I read what is passed on by our assistant editors. We have readers in VT, CA, MA. We opt to use standard rejection slips in order to help speed up our response time, which we have now brought under 12 weeks for the most part.
I am sorry receiving the rejection slip made you feel shabby; that is not our intent. But with the volume of poems we receive, I don't foresee us changing that policy any time in the near future. Even if I were to quit medicine, quit teaching once a year and quit writing my own poems, I could not read every submission and pen a personal note. I wish I could, but that would mean earning less than 5 cents an hour. The stipend I receive for editing poetry at NER is less than many poets receive for doing a reading.
I am sorry you feel we have treated you poorly. I wish I had better news about the future. But with MFA programs now graduating well over a thousand writers per year, I suspect the volume of submissions will only continue going up. NER exists now purely as a charity of Middlebury College, considering subscriptions do not even cover the cost of printing and distributing the magazine.
Sincerely,
C. Dale Young
Lewis Turco <[email protected]> wrote: 3 July 2008
Dr. Young,
Since the postmark of the envelope was California, I suspect it was, indeed, you who sent me the printed rejection. Be that as it may, your reply is cautionary. I said you appeared to me to be a dilettante, now let me prove that to be the case: You write, "I do not read all 44,000 poems we receive at NER in a year. I read what is passed on by our assistant editors." Let me substitute a few words: "I do not read all 44,000 x-rays I receive at my hospital in a year. I read what is passed on by my medical assistants."
You need to stop being an "editor" and spend your time being a doctor. If I operated the way you do, I'd deserve to receive nasty letters from the people who ask me for my help. I don't know how many individual poems I read in a year, probably not 44,000, but people are always asking me for help. Yesterday I read and criticized a poem that Dean Stephen J. Herman wrote to celebrate his marriage to his partner of many years (in San Francisco; he is a former student at Oswego from the late '60's); today I received an email from a man in Iraq asking me to send him a free copy of my BOOK OF FORMS; I replied at once; last week I read, and wrote a blurb for, a manuscript of poems by Rhina Espaillat, and I took the time to give Bryan Bridges information about the terzanelle verse form for an essay he's doing for the ezine TRELLIS; the week before, I read and criticized a manuscript of poems for Miriam N. Kotzin, the editor of another ezine, PER CONTRA; I am often asked to judge poetry contests, but I don't let the organizers sift the entries, I read them all myself...and here I've been "retired" for twelve years.
In other words, Dr. Young, I spend ALL my professional time these days (as I always have) working in the field of poetry, to which I've dedicated my life. It really pisses me off when an editor tells me he's "too busy" to read the poems I submit to his magazine. If you're too busy to do what an editor is supposed to do, you should stop being an editor, because you're not doing your job.
Lewis Turco
"C. Dale Young" <[email protected]> wrote:
Dear Mr. Turco,
Thank you for your letter. I obviously have not helped the situation by responding to your previous email in the first place. It appears that nothing I can say will satisfy you, and I have no intention of resigning my post at NER. There are hundreds of literary magazines in the country, so I wish you the best with your work and placing it with them.
Sincerely,
C. Dale Young
Dr. Young:
Thanks for your advice, but I’ve already published in most of them over the past fifty-five years. As I said before, it’s not the rejection I object to (lord knows I’ve received a few of those in my day), but the printed rejection letter. And I guess you’re right; there’s no profit in our continuing this correspondence, is there? You’re way too busy anyway.
Lewis Turco
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Wow. But how do you really feel????? Great response.
But did you have to remind me that I was a student of yours in the 60's??? Only kidding.
Stephen J. Herman
Oh Dear Lew:
My face is purple. Do your scathing thoughts on rejections apply to email and ezines? Ah what to do...?
PAX,
Carolina
Hi Lew,
That's telling him... Won't do much good, but feels good anyhow.
Wiley
Lew,
Pretty hilarious — in a sad way — to read that email exchange with the NER guy. He's actually a nice guy, but the management structure of literary magazines — of many non-profits, for that matter — is more top-down than Halliburton.
Dan
