Submitted by George Fillingham, Jul 10, 2007 11:56

I write poetry. I have been published in some regional publications and I can boast of having been recognized as a pretty good poet by at least six little prizes over the past 10 years. I have worked hard to achieve the small recognition for my part in the great book of Poetry and continue to work hard to find a wider readership for my poems in larger markets. . . markets like the Antioch Review. I admit to being a late bloomer mostly because of the Viet Nam war and the grudging service I had to do. My father was a soldier. I grew up in the military life and had already had my fill of it. I am not ungrateful, but that is another story all together. I am the product of a good home albeit a poor one. I did not have the benefit of college until I got the GI Bill. I came out of High School knowing I was facing the WAR and probably death. But I didn't die. Instead I grew up, became independent, and started seriously writing poetry, the artform I had loved since I saw Robert Frost read his poems from a podium in a field . . . on television. My point is that people can stop changes as much as they can start changes, or rather they can change for the better as much as for the worse. That TV has fallen from the "golden age" when feature length plays (like The Iceman Cometh) were presented as plays for television, on television, and that programs for writing have gone from explorations of talent to OJT for publication (talent or no) says more about letting stupidity in the door than shoving intelligence off the balcony. When editors remember what real literature is; when critics critique; when poets read their brethren past and present with as much fervor as they expound themselves; when we all remember that not every "innovation" deserves preservation, then maybe schools like Antioch University and journals like Antioch Review will not be threatened with extinction and Humanity can be taken off the endangered species list.

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