Lately, I am sensing inside me a growing fear of becoming jaded. In fact, to some degree, I fear I may already be there. Lately, I've found myself doing something I all but swore I would never do as an editor - deleting a submission without a response. I will not go into the reason or details here; I will say however that it did take something significantly worse than the number of submissions I keep receiving each month as attachments when it is clearly stated in the submission guidelines that poems should be pasted directly into the e-mail body, or the number of submissions each month containing a single poem per e-mail - even if the author happens to be sending six poems all at once. The advice against this, too, is quite clearly stated in the guidelines. The word "single" in the line which requests that poems be sent "in the body of a single e-mail message", was italicized some months ago - to little effect. I still respond to those however, normally beginning my mail with something like: "Dear Author, As stated in the submission guidelines..."

Lately, I find myself wondering why I bother putting out a print issue. I know that probably over 90% of people reading this are poets - so let me ask you a question: how many of you would like to get paid for your work published online? My second question (well, my second question if taken in proportion should really be "how many of you are willing to pay for reading poetry online?", but I won't even go there) is how many of you have subscribed to a print publication, such as 3rd Muse puts out, which if properly supported would make funds available for paying contributors both online and in print?

Those who answered yes to question 2, thank you and please proceed to my right. Feel free to make yourselves comfortable on the couch. Those who answered yes to question 1 only, proceed to my left, soon as we're able to clear an area for you roughly the size of Texas.

I don't know, maybe I'm just in a rut lately. Maybe it's the fact that for 2 months in a row now the issue had to be late (another thing I all but swore wouldn't happen, although in this case certain factors are simply out of my hands) due to me finding myself basically with "no issue" at the beginning of the month.

In any case, my thanks to the contributors, and all involved in this month's issue, as well as to all who continue to show their support for 3rd Muse.

Mark Melton
Editor,
3rd Muse Poetry Journal