So what makes me think I’m qualified to select poems to be presented to good readers? Well, on the one hand I’m somewhat confident, and on the other, I’m not doubt-free.* But my confidence is based on a good track record (Barnwood imprint since 1975), plus my personal vita of good audience reception my own poems, plus many years of studying and teaching poetry and poetry writing.

My personal taste probably reflects my childhood immersion in 19th century American and British lit and in the lyrics of American pop music circa 1890-1960 (and of course beyond). Then in college I discovered Modernism (with growing interest throughout grad school and then teaching), reading not only the American and Brit authors but also Continental and South American lit plus classical Chinese and Japanese. In the last couple of decades of my college teaching, especially with the help of young colleagues, I added post-Mod lit and theory. (My sense of my own writing is that it has happened somewhere in the transition between Mod and post-Mod.)

So I tend to be eclectic, personally enjoying a wide range of poetry, and I think that I'm often able to recognize particularly effective poetry. My idea all along has been that Barnwood would never be able to afford to publish a large number of poems or books of poems, and so I try to be highly selective, with the hope that each individual reader will enjoy a high percentage of the poems that Barnwood offers.

*Here is a paragraph from my standard letter declining to publish a book ms.:

“It has been my own experience, as a poet and as an editor, that a “rejection” says nothing about the quality of the work. Factors influencing an editorial decision vary, from the financial state of the press, through the size of the backlog and the current energy level of the editor, to the individual editor’s taste or poor judgment.”

I do think that’s true, to a significant extent. And I haven’t even mentioned literary politics and friendship, or the socio-psychological pressures of academia (from which I’m now retired).