[New-Poetry] Lifshin Syndrome

[Bob Grumman]

jforjames at aol.com wrote:
> 'A lot of it is good,' would be one of those 'bad blurbs' one could 
> envision on her multi-volume collected poems set
> (which I don't think will ever appear, unless her heirs publish it). A 
> poet like Lifshin becomes a kind of curiousity
> really. What is this need to fill every nook & cranny of small litmag 
> world with your precious poetry? There
> is something sad and needy about her career. Years ago when I edited a 
> small journal (and I mean micro
> small) we'd get 2-3 submissions from Lifshin a month. We'd get several 
> envelopes stuffed with well-circulated ms.
> pages (in the days before word processors, it wasn't easy to keep 
> clean drafts in the mail) before we'd
> even gotten around to rejecting prior batches we had on hand. 
>
> Finnegan
>
My good friend Richard Kostelanetz is similar.  Gotta get published!  
Anywhere!  I think Lifshin has let up quite a bit of late, though.  My 
problem is the reverse.  I find it hard to make any effort at all to get 
published.  Now.  Twenty years ago, I tried a bit, got published in the 
micro-press and then let up.

--Bob