The Poetry Judge

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By Garrison Keillor
(The Atlantic, Feb.96)

“There are four hundred poems," the president of the poetry society said over the phone, "but judging won't take you that long, because most of them are pretty bad."

Garrison Keillor's account of being a poetry judge is the most entertaining and accurate narration about judging poetry ever done. Apparently, when your English teachers talked about poetry being universal, they really meant that the crappy quality and agonizing experience of trying to read it is universal. You do not know pain until you try to read hundreds of poetry submissions. The rest of Keillor's take can be read here.

Keillor has advice that all inspiring writers should heed. We want to take a moment to emphasize his point at the end:

"Self-expression is not the point of it, people! We are not here on paper in order to retail our injuries. For one thing, it is unfair to bore someone who doesn't have the opportunity to bore you right back, and for another, we have better things to do-to defend the hopeless and the down-and-out, to find humor in dreadful circumstances, to satirize the pompous and pretentious, to make deer appear suddenly in the driveway.

Writing is a blessed life, no matter how hard it may be at times, and a person is lucky to be a writer. So go be one."

~Woman, Bring Me a Beer! & Get Back in the Kitchen!