The Art of Name Dropping

So, for all that I fear some of the literary world relies on "who you know," or the art of name dropping, I do have a fun anecdote from college days that shows if you're not artful, then dropping the best names in the world won't help you any.

I had a college poetry workshop with A Very Famous Poet. (Blatant attempts by some students to completely suck up to Very Famous Poet were pretty ridiculous, in fact.)

Anyway, one student wrote a poem that I remember was one of the worst pieces of schlock I had ever read. Okay, we were all in college so maybe that was mean, but I wasn't an entirely nice person back then. So, part of her exercise was to send it off to a magazine that Very Famous Poet had suggested.

So in her cover, she wrote something along the lines of, "Very Famous Poet suggested I send this poem, XXX, to you."

Her poem was rejected. Howevr, at the very end, the editor wrote, "Please tell Very Famous Poet that I say hello."

NICE.

So, yeah. I'm sure networking and contacts help but sometimes, a bad poem is just a bad poem.

Thanks for reading,

LLB