WHY EXCELLENCE?
What a conceit: “excellence in poetry”. We assume excellence, don’t we? Why state such obvious criteria? Does anyone aim for mediocrity in poetry?
Hard to tell. I doubt it. But since excellence can be so subjective, publishers assume that high quality is their natural benchmark. But quality might become eschewed when another mission sits center stage. I’ve read wildly radical poetry that misses the mark but got published anyway because it fit a magazine’s criteria of bold, uncompromising and untraditional. And I’ve read poems drowning in sentimentality yet published in formalist magazines because, I assume, they fit the magazine’s basic structural criteria.
