Literary crisis

I just got home a little while ago from the student literary magazine meeting. It’s an odd deal, a multi-district magazine that includes I think maybe as many as ten different school districts in this area—and all the schools within those. So the competition to get into the magazine is pretty stiff, since it includes all grade levels at loads of schools.

There’s also this notion that the magazine publishes the best work, but . . . if a school doesn’t have representation otherwise, the committee members can choose a work that’s not as strong so that somebody from that school is published. In other words, at least one entry is published for every school’s submissions. In some cases, only two or three kids any given school are submitting work—so one of those is guaranteed to get in, regardless of the quality of the work. In fairness, I will say that I didn’t see anything truly awful included in the magazine today during the final sorting/initial proofreading—weaker than the rest, yes, but nothing terrible.

Other schools, however, might have had many children submitting, several of whose work was ranked the highest. And, well, we can’t publish everybody because then the magazine gets too expensive and too long, so some of the work that’s been ranked highest is cut, while other work that’s been ranked lower is included. All this makes perfect sense, and fundamentally I have no quarrel with it, although obviously it’s not ideal.

But (you just knew that was coming, didn’t you?) . . . this whole setup is pretty weird for me. I got on this committee rather by accident, since they needed a member from the sponsoring university and I happen to teach English and write poetry. Nothing odd there: I’m enjoying the reading; am contributing to the process pretty helpfully, I think; and this is a great community service opportunity for me. The awkward thing is that my daughter submitted a work to the magazine this year.

I have been operating under the assumption that I should just keep my mouth shut about her poem. At the end of each meeting, I would sneak quietly over to the O. Elementary pile to see if her work had made the cut again, and yep, every time it has. She had the highest rankings across the board—and I never pointed out the fact that this budding brilliant writer was my own sweet girl. Most people on the committee don’t even know each other, much less me, so her poem was chosen on its own merits. I felt odd about it because my name’ll be on the editorial board listing—there’s always this question about whether I somehow was responsible for her work being selected.

Her work was sent off to the typesetter, but apparently there were too many entries for that page—and her poem was cut at the last minute (literally after I left at the end of the last meeting!). I wouldn’t have normally said anything about it; I hadn’t told Laura that the poem had been selected because it didn’t seem fair that she should have advance knowledge when not of the other kids did. So her feelings wouldn’t have been hurt. But I swear, they were including all this work with lower rankings, and it was really just bugging me fierce.

We’re working along, and somebody finds a student who has had two works chosen. But you can only have one published, and somehow this had slipped by in the earlier meetings. The elementary group leader cut out one of the poems out and said, “What are we going to put in its place?”

Well, I ask you, what would you have done? I did say, “Listen, this is my kid, and I’m biased, but if you need something for this spot, here’s this beautiful poem that’s gotten all high scores. . .” I was upfront about it. The other readers who had chosen it all chimed in, yes, yes, it should definitely be included—and so it was. But I feel terrible!

I’ve been struggling with this feeling a lot lately. I’m very involved in Laura’s school—on the School Improvement Council, used to be on PTO, always coming for after-school stuff, and I’ve been on at least one big field trip with her class every year. I used to tutor kids there too before I got so busy. So many of the teachers know me, and all the administrative staff do. Laura doesn’t exactly get preferential treatment, but I know that the fact they all know me influences how they deal with her. I stay out of things directly involving her anytime I’m there in a non-parent capacity—and maybe that’s the issue. When do you speak as a parent, and when as the School Improvement Council member? Because sometimes you have to separate those things: what’s in your own child’s best interest is not always in the interest of the school.

I think that’s why I finally did speak up for her poem today: it really was much better than some of the other work that was being included—and I am speaking as a publishing poet here, thanks, and as a mother who wouldn’t let Laura send in any of her poems that weren’t very strong. Maybe I’m stewing over now because I don’t want Laura to feel she didn’t earn her place in the magazine. I think she’s still young enough to be happy her poem was included regardless of the fact that I influenced that selection—it’s not as if the poem wasn’t good and hadn’t already been chosen in the first place. The magazine will certainly not suffer from the inclusion of her work—and aside from that, my heart was broken. How she’ll feel about this later, I don’t know. Did I do the right thing? Or should I have stayed quiet? I guess I need some worry beads to stew over a bit.