[lit-ideas] Re: Poetry and Madness
- From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 23 Sep 2006 11:25:56 -0400
I just wanted to have some fun with it, that's all, play with some words maybe.
Absolutely no serious ambitions whatsoever toward poetry or writing in
general. Once upon a very long time ago I interviewed for a job as an
assistant to somebody who probably had more literary hopes than he was
literary, in NYC. I brought in something I had written, and I thought it was
pretty good (and it probably was pretty good); it was actually an excerpt out
of some fictionalized accounts I had done of how I had envisioned my
grandfather's experience. Well, he tore it and me into shreds. He said he was
published in Playboy and nobody read stuff like [the junk] I had written, etc.
etc. Needless to say I threw my masterpiece out, and that was the end of that.
Thinking back on it, I have no idea why a writing sample was required for an
assistant level job. It makes me feel better to think that maybe my sample was
too good for him, even if Playboy material it obviously wasn't. He probab
ly did me a favor to end my literary forays, such as they were, early on.
Anyway, the poetry is just for fun, nothing even remotely more than that. I
also don't have much time to devote to it. Plus it would get in the way of my
latest obsession about current events (which might be burning out now; it's
much too hopeless). Speaking of getting published, I was reading some poetry
in the New Yorker recently, and it seems poetry is anything anyone wants it to
be. Some of it is so bad that they probably include it to make their cartoons
look better. Do they pay off editors to get this stuff published I wonder?
----- Original Message -----
From: Lawrence Helm
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: 9/22/2006 5:47:37 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Poetry and Madness
But maybe I ought to pause to ask, Irene, how committed are you to the idea of
writing poetry?
Lawrence
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