Leslie Has Something to Say About Publishing, the Contest System, the Life of Poetry

The po-biz is small. And in the larger culture it is at best an afterthought, most often completely disregarded. Within the po-biz, it might help if we weren't always at each others' throats, trying to climb over the back of someone else to get ahead. Get ahead of what exactly? Even if you win the Yale, get a ton of press, get a ton of sales, so the fuck what? Almost a 100% of your countrymen will have never heard of you. And you still have to show up at the page the next day, and the day after and the one after that. You still have to, and can only, write the poems you have to write. And there is nobody who can help you do that, nobody who can stop you.