Poetry Daily,
and elsewhere. Matty is a Vice Presidential Fellow at the University of Utah where he is pursuing a PhD in English. He currently serves as the Managing Editor of
Quarterly West and the Wasatch Writers in the Schools Coordinator.
INTRODUCTION
Write patiently and read generously. The sustainable poet quickly learns patience, whether that be in the writing process and the arc of an individual poem or the hellscape that is the submissions process. As a young writer, I allowed my desire for affirmation or belonging to lead me to submit work that I now (and perhaps then) understand was not ready. Most of that work was mercifully rejected, but some of those poems found homes, and now I have some not-entirely-horrific-but-fairly-sloppy ditties living out there in the dark expanse of the digital ether. Perhaps that’s one of the many reasons I’ve embraced a practice of reading generously. To read generously is not to automatically support a writer or their work or to grant them the benefit of the doubt—an act which frequently excuses harmful behavior and privileges those who hold power in society. Rather, to read generously requires us to fully commit to understanding the project of the poem, what it’s trying to do, and how it fits into our poetic landscape before we render judgment on its success, its failure, or its meandering between these two possibilities, as so many poems do. Writing with patience allows us to develop as poets, while reading with generosity helps us build community and understanding through our craft.