Folks, I put balls on the anvil and stick my neck out all the time. Just got Chris Wiman's response:

"We do strongly prefer that our poems have no previous publication, and we do count the Internet as publication.

That said, to my memory (an important proviso!) we've never turned down a poem we would have accepted because it had been workshopped on Eratosphere or somewhere else. We'd probably never even know.

So I guess I'd say this: if we love a poem, we're going to find a way to
publish it, even if our rules have been violated slightly. But if a poem is
on the margin for us, then any sort of previous publication will likely tip
the balance toward a reject."

This is a prompt response, and I made a serious argument, that Jan at his cattle station in the Outback and I in North Dakota must make use of the net even to write for Chris' desired standards. I'm grateful, and I am going to send him a couple poems workshopped at Whup-Ass.

I think of a workshop as a modern form of the traditional coterie group, where poets would circulate manuscripts of their work for the comments of other poets.

Sure, the workshop is a very large coterie, but the principle holds, I think.

And what Poetry seems to be saying is something like: "it has come to our attention that other poets have been shown your poem, and perhaps a few stray passers-by have seen it also. This appearance of your poem to a few hundred readers means that we can no longer share your work with our 60,000 regular readers."

Would passing the poem around an office also be considered "publication"?

Mr Wiman's memory is indeed an important proviso, I doubt he recalls his letter to me some three years and it's possible, I suppose, from the way his response was evidently phrased, my most recent effort never reached his desk. Non-the-less, the result stands for both of us, so felicitations indeed.

It would appear also that Wiley has cause to feel somewhat unfortunate
in so far as he was the recipient of contrary advise to that received by you.

Anyway, continued good luck to you, in your Whup-ass submissions, and just as important, I'm sure you will concede, to those of us persisting with Erato submissions now that we have clarification and precedence to quote.

Well, that must certainly come as a surprise to his assistant editor, Fred Sasaki, who not all that long ago wrote
If the workshop is closed--that is if one has
to enter a password to read it, or the website is an education tool
restricted to enrolled members--then we can still consider the work.
If I can find the poem through Google, then we cannot consider it.
Maybe a more apt rule is a Google rule of some kind in response to a question from Poets.Org about Poetry's policy towards accepting poems workshopped on The Internet.

http://poets.org/forum/viewtopic.php...oetry+magazine

The whole thing really begins to sound distasteful.

Much like politicians who seemed so clean until it turns out they didn't always pay their taxes like the rest of us did the world of poetry appears to be getting pretty darn murky, too.

That whole icky quote from Wiman makes it sound very much like rules are only rules some of the time and for some of the people in poetry as well as in politics.

More's the pity for those who honestly try to follow them, though.





,

Jamie,

Few submissions reach Wiman's desk. Wendy and Alicia and I went in cold. Cold called and cold cocked an editor. Aliki's poems weren't workshopped here, Wendy's probably weren't, but Tim's were. The POINT is, it doesn't matter. This is a great institution with a lot of money behind it. Can we quit whining?

Jim, just remember to begin new poem posts protection code that has been confirmed to completely prevent Google indexing. That should prevent rejection in the future of Erato-workshopped poems based on Google searches.

Tim, thanks for taking the initiative to contact Poetry and getting clarification from them. Hopefully, they won't feel the need to apply their 'marginal' rule in the future as there'll be nothing to find.

Cheers,
...Alex

Thanks Alex, your efforts are very much appreciated,even if, as appears, somehat redundant.

I have no idea how (or why) you presume to speak for Wendy and Alicia Tim, but do appreciate your sharing with us the most effective means of getting "Chris's" attention.

Whining is a poor choice of word.

Had to quote the lot Mark.

There is a very similar (and misguided) principle in operation here to that which underlines the Data Protection Act (UK law). You can write what the hell you like on paper, and tell the most outrageous lies verbally, but woe betide you if you once commit any of that to an electronic medium.

There is always a kind of moral panic about the internet, email etc.

Philip

Or take copyright law. I could transcribe a poem by another author and send it to my 1000 friends (who meet as a fan club in a phone box every second Wednesday unless Hamilton Academicals are playing at home) and none shall say me nay.

I put the same poem on a website that only 10 people visited in the last year (6 of whom were robots programmed by the US military in their search for terrorists) and I'm busted. (Hypothetically - this has never happened to me. Except for the US military bit - very noticeable for their extraordinarily, astronomically high bandwidth).

Alex,
I tried using the noindex code you provided on my most recent posted poem on TDE. I could still Google it. Is there something I am doing wrong?

Susan

Hi, Alex. Susan's post prompted me to do another Google search. This time, I got a response - it was search results from Eratosphere! I googled my name in quotes and the title of my poem in quotes (the one now in TDE with "rich" in the title).