One of the hardest truths of this world is that each of us is original, but we might not have found an original way to express our originality. At least not yet. As Marcel Duchamp says, “The new is always ugly.” The literary landscape is as inviting as it is tough to break into. There are many opportunities, which can mean many chances to get rejected—but I believe in a poet’s commitment to a vision, their way of perceiving the world, and their unique ability to represent these in language as ways of superseding what can feel like a barrage of disappointments. Writing and publishing are two threads in a life that won’t always stitch as we’d like. Reading for a journal or a press is surprisingly time-consuming work that few are correctly compensated for, at almost any level, but we do it because we love it. At Denver Quarterly, we put a lot of effort into finding poets and writers who take aesthetic risks, whose love of language leads them to interesting places, whether they are known or not. Our editorial team is deeply invested in publishing work from all kinds of writers, writing from anywhere in the world. Try us. If that first try doesn’t work, please, try us again.
—Daniel Ruiz, poetry editor, Denver Quarterly
Photo credit: Linda Núñez