DOWN WITH THE 'SLUSH PILE'!

Can the publishers, editors, writers, and readers of poetry agree on one thing?

I propose we eliminate the immensely derogatory phrase "slush pile" from the vocabulary of poetry publishing. Replete with negative associations—the icy soup you don’t want in your winter boots, the Committee to Reelect the President fund that ultimately sunk Nixon, etc.—its current use as the aggregate of unsolicited manuscripts that too many editors feel too put upon to navigate is, well, a pile of slush. (For a fascinating treatment of the etymology of “slush pile,” check out this 2010 piece by an intern at The Awl, a now-defunct website. Preview: the phrase originally referred to a passel of fraudulently watered down fruit.)

My main objection to the term is that it relegates perfectly well motivated people to the scrapheap of history. (Ugh.)

More nauseatingly, it elevates those entrusted with publishing poetry to the obnoxious position of regarding themselves as being above those who write it and have the temerity to want to see their poems in print. O, pity the poor editors who, by midnight oil, must apply their picks and shovels and sieves to the burdens of the pile! Remember that you too have been buried under such a pile.