I used to send out a batch of poems, they’d all get rejected, and I’d hide for six months. Then I started keeping track, found that my average (of getting something in a batch accepted) was approaching .500, so I would tell myself, “A rejection, yes! An acceptance will come tomorrow! Better send out another batch!”

My current 30-year record is 288-209, a .579 pace. I do advocate that at 300 acceptances I’m moving into Randy Johnson, Early Wynn territory, and ought to merit serious consideration for Cooperstown.

The poet owes her work an honest, energetic and right-sized representation. Hustling and putting your stuff in front of editors is a worthy and unglamorous part of the poet’s vocation.

On the other hand, to shift the baseball metaphor back where it was, nobody hits 600 dingers. The great Chilean poet Gonzalo Rojas (b. 1917), whom I translate, told me once, “We all end up with five or six poems. Well, maybe if you’re Neruda, six or eight.”

(shrug) Maybe. I like a challenge. I like desire. I like truth.

“The point is, poetry is both subjective and ever-present.”

This turns me off. It’s a boring idea. “Ever-present?” Good lord, *everything* is ever-present…

“Millay only hits as many homeruns as you’re there to see. For me she’s hit 5. Maybe you love Millay and she’s hit 500 for you. What’s wrong with that?”

She hit 400.

Get your facts straight.

But seriously.

The difference between Mantle and Mays is minor, but the difference between 500 and 5? That’s huge. Someone’s got to be wrong, in that case. Unless you’re making the coy point that I have read 500 pages of Millay’s book and you have only read 5, which I don’t think is what you’re saying.

I just don’t think it works that way: everyone in a bubble liking every single part of reality in their own unique way…Nature and Society, by necessity, entails more agreement, and I’m not saying their OUGHT to be more agreement, I’m saying anything which lacks agreement fades away, dies, ceases to exist. I don’t think you’re in a bubble as far as Millay goes; I think someone else has told you how to think about her, and you think about her not in pure Millay terms, but in terms shaped by your critical universe, which has been shaped by others, and so forth, and that 5 and 500 cannot both be correct, and that wrong (which must exist in this case) is the most important wrong in the world, at least in terms of how society and Letters interact.

Thomas

That said, the Ted Williams exemption probably makes the argument more accurate — poetry has its share of Hall of Famers who defy the odds. Everyone has their own list, but for me, it’s hard to find a poem by Jack Gilbert or Kim Addonizio or Li-Young Lee that I don’t like. Every swing seems like a hard line drive. But the vast majority of poets publishing today aren’t Ted Williams. 30,000 of them have submitted to Rattle over 15 years — they’re all over the place, and for them (most poets) there’s not a lot they can control but diligence.

And that, to me, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I’d sell my soul to be a journeyman middle infielder in the show. If you love the game, it’s always worth playing. (My only gripe is with those who focus too much on the paycheck.)

You cannot “argue” with a .400 BA or a World Championship witnessed by millions of fans.

Imperfect umpires, the betting scandal of 1919, the recent steroid issue, aside, the talents of ball-players and a “W” are pretty much objective facts.

One can argue Mickey Mantle v. Willie Mays for days, but the objective worth of both players is never in dispute by either side of the debate—-which is a quibble more than a real argument.

This is why spectator sport is such a popular pastime: it turns war’s subjective menace into a game’s objective quibble.

Poetry has not been a popular pastime for a long while, and I think one of the reasons is that ‘the objective’ has gone so completely out of it.

Edna Millay slugs 400 lifetime homers and brings home several world championships, but with a little revisionism from well-placed sources, it turns out… she’s only hit 120 homeruns and never won a championship.

It doesn’t really matter if one, personally, thinks Millay hit 400 dingers or not; it’s the change in fortune which puzzles the public and makes poetry seem less stable, and thus less real, than major league baseball, for instance.

Subjective opinion may thrive, but if no façade of objective stability exist over and above that subjectivity, and the public senses no objective control, public interest is sure to wane—eventually destroying contemporary poetry’s legitimacy.

Strike three! You’re out! Sit down!