Tagged david rothenberg

By Simmons Buntin Let’s start today’s conference review off with a true story of an angry submitter, shall we? The publisher residing at the table next to me hales from a distant land, and he’s a nice enough fellow. He publishes authors from North America and beyond, and one such author confronted me yesterday. The conversation went something like this: Pompous poet: “Hey, I submitted to you but you rejected my poem. Fuck you!” Arm and hand gestures followed. Editor-in-chief: “We are quite competitive.” Pompous poet: “Competitive my ass!” He then pulls his book off the publisher’s table, flips it to the acknowledgements at the back of the book, and shoves it in front of my face: “Look at that! All those contests I’ve won!” Editor-in-chief: “Indeed.” Pompous poet: “Your call for submissions said you wanted longer poems, so I wrote a 200-line poem and sent it off.” Editor-in-chief: “You sent it off right away? Did you let it sit a bit first and give it time to consider it?” Pompous poet: “I don’t need to do that shit. That’s a good fucking poem. You suck.”