I am getting pretty well lost in this entire discussion.  I wish at this 
moment I did NOT have a dog in this fight, but I do, it is becoming 
disturbing, so I have to ask these naive questions in a rather 
disconnected format:

    * Tell me: why would the Poetry Foundation NOT charge a reading fee
      for the Emily Dickinson Prize.  Could it be that the Poetry
      Foundation has so damned much money right now they don't need to
      ask me or anyone else for twenty-five bucks?  Maybe they expect
      the winner to immure her- or himself in a house in Massachusetts
      while wearing a white dress.  Or is there some implication of
      corruption attached to the idea of a reading fee itself?

    * The fact they have not announced their judge(s) is a hopeful sign
      that something like merit (however it's defined) might win the
      day. That is, if I send work to a truly blind contest, I have to
      be who I am, I cannot tailor my work to kiss anyone's ass.  Not
      that a thing like that would ever happen, but....

    * Win the day?  I'm making this sound like Agincourt.  Actually
      Agincourt was probably pretty messy.

    * If I learned that I had worked for months to assemble years' worth
      of work into a book manuscript, only to have it discarded in the
      recycle bin without being opened, I might need to do a huge anger
      management job.

    * It dismays me to see the names of people I respect and who
      influenced me thrown into the Foetry dog kennel.  I remind myself
      we are all fallible.  No, I don't think anyone got paid, this is
      not politics in Trenton, NJ after all, but favor-for-favor and
      barter seem to be old and respected ways of doing business.

    * Foetry again.  It won't go away.  Maybe it should not?   The
      owner's list of names includes people he sees as corrupt.  It also
      contains names of people who seem to have no connection
      whatsoever, or whose connection is a true case of ex post facto. 
      Forrest Gander becomes friends with a guy whose book he judged the
      winner, and after the fact, so that besmirches his name?  Did I
      read this wrong.  I no longer know what is true and what is prejudice.

    * I must disagree with one thing I read earlier, that the important
      thing is to get work out there, regardless of single poems or
      book.  I am not 100% sure of who on this list has and hasn't been
      "booked," but I'm one of the Nots.  To me a book, honestly come
      by, is significant to me because it validates that someone thought
      my work sufficiently valuable to issue it between covers.  I don't
      care if it winds up remaindered an hour later or if it sells to my
      kids, my girlfriend, and my exwife (so she can sue me based on
      content). The idea it was issued at all is what is important.  (I
      doubt anyone will be tasteless enough to say Vantage or
      Exposition, thank you.)

Can I go home now?

Ken