Richard, I can certainly see how it would be hard, if not impossible, to approach each poem you read with the kind of respect that is needed not to overlook the gems. A food critic eats three dinners a night and can't sit down at every table with a proper appetite. But when I'm the cook, I prefer my guests not to have snacked on their way over.
I'd be a lot more enthusiastic about sending out my poems to magazines (something I don't do at all, by the way) if I felt that the editor would take my poem home with him and then drink some rum or smoke a joint and get comfortable in a big wing chair near the fireplace and read my words out loud with the expectation of being filled with insight and music. Of course, this wouldn't guarantee that the dog wouldn't start howling in protest or that the editor wouldn't fall asleep and spill his rum all over the rug, but at least I'd have a fighting chance.
I'm not blaming the editors, of course. They get thousands of poems and there are only so many nights by the fireplace, and some of those may be given over to Frost. But it's a shame that the only way a new poet can reliably break through the practical barriers and get a fair and close reading is by being recommended by someone who knows the editor, which generally means that you need to take courses and enroll in MFA programs or otherwise become part of the organized poetry establishment. It might be nice if there were a better way for people who don't choose that particular lifestyle to be viewed as something more than another wad of poems that editors are looking to clear from their desks as quickly as possible.
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