I look at the first part of that subject line and think I'm about to give
into the demands of a robot.... Anyway.
At 11:25 AM 9/28/2003 -0400, you wrote:
>Gabe elsewhere has said, "No."
>
>Hal Serving the tri-state area.
>
>Halvard Johnson
I finally get to ask this of people who might know.
Twenty years ago...even more recently...it made sense to say "No email,
paper only." Then it became "electronic okay, ASCII text only, no
attachments." Some people now accept attachments, even in this age of
total cybernoia. I wonder if the fear of what's been wrought by some brats
with hacking skills and the moral sense of hamsters will turn even those
journals that accept electronic submissions routinely away from the practice.
Let's assume for a minute that hacking/cracking isn't the issue. I have
never understood what is served by refusing to review
electronically-submitted work. Oh, I'll venture guesses but I don't really
KNOW. The Paper Only rule of course applies to some of the biggest of big
guns in journal publishing as well as presently lesser stars in the
firmament. I don't get it. Perhaps accepting electronic submissions
requires someone to create computer storage space for them, or print them
out in order to review them. Maybe there is the risk of loss, the
inconvenience of mass backups to hold onto stuff, the extra
overhead. Perhaps there is just something about holding a submission in
your hand, written and printed by the author, that cannot be replace by
viewing text onscreen.
Or it could be that the editor is winnowing out his or her contributors: it
is easier for a writer to collect a bunch of poems in a single file and
email it than to print out each poem, do all the rigamarole with envelopes,
go to the post office, get them weighed, and purchase twice the appropriate
postage. In other words, writer, how badly do you want into this journal
and are you willing to do the inconvenient administrative junk to get there?
The first time I submitted to the NJ State Council on the Arts, there
weren't just guidelines, there was an entire protocol to be followed:
multipage application, X copies of each poem printed out, no name on the
pages, one cover page with name and address, everything but a statement
disclaiming connections to the Mafia in Hudson County...and at the end,
they told you to sign your name in BLUE ink. Not black, not red. It had
to be blue. I wonder how many potential winners knocked themselves out of
contention because they signed with a big flourish in black
ink. Administrative nonsense of this kind of is necessary if you WANT one
of those Fellowships badly enough to violate the first rule of most poets,
i.e., never follow a rule you didn't make yourself. Does that apply to
submitting work to journals?
Ken
-------------------------
Kenneth
Wolman http://www.kenwolman.com
http://kenwolman.blogspot.com
"Sometimes the veil between human intelligence and animal intelligence
wears very thin--then one experiences the supreme thrill of keeping a cat,
or perhaps allowing oneself to be owned by a cat."--Catherine Manley
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