Glenn Ingersoll in Pushcart Prize Anthology

No, I did not get a poem in the latest Pushcart anthology. But we’ll get to more about that later.

Last Wednesday (10/20/22) I attended an SF LitQuake event featuring poets from the 2022 Best American Poetry anthology. I sat next to James Cagney, a friend from our early SF po scene days (the 90s). I said to James, “I was thrilled when I saw that you got a poem in there.” James: “Not half as thrilled as I was.” No doubt.

Other poets I’ve met over the years were included and read that night — Sara Mumolo, Sam Sax. 

I thought I was going to have fun, seeing people I knew (or sorta knew) being spotlighted. But the old feelings of being overlooked, ignored, unread began to swirl. Despite the head noise I did manage to be there and to listen. James and Sam gave dynamic performances, and I generally liked what I heard from the rest. “Fun” wasn’t quite what I had, but, you know, I wish them all well and since the LitQuake event I have been reading the anthology. 

BAP guest editor Matthew Zapruder said series editor David Lehman forbade him from apologizing for the “Best” appellation, so Matthew took a moment at the beginning (no Lehman around) to apologize to the night’s audience. Matthew didn’t claim the poems included were the Best, asserting instead that they were strong poems that affected and stuck with him, and that he probably failed to see many that could have made the cut. There are poets doing great work “including in this room” who ought to be similarly recognized, Matthew said. Matthew does not know me. I have no idea whether he’s read any of my poems ever. But I could imagine myself one of the poets doing great work that he was apologizing to.

No, I don’t write poems for the fame. That would be useless. Or to achieve publication. The times I did were, well, unsatisfying. I write poems because the place of the poem is an important place for me to spend time in. Once written I send the poems out for publication because just leaving them to sit in the journal doesn’t honor them. They go out into the world looking for those persons who might find them of interest. They often wander for some time.

So the next day I am at the library shelving books and I come across the 2022 Pushcart Prize anthology. It’s rare that the branch libraries get a Pushcart anthology. The branches tend to get books the buyers anticipate will go out frequently. All us writers want to get into the Pushcart but the truth is, it spends more time on the shelf than in readers’ hands. Berkeley Public Library shelves such less popular reads in the more generous stacks at Central.  

In 2021 I got nominated for the Pushcart by two different publications. Small presses are invited to nominate poems, stories, and essays that they’ve published during the eligibility period. Each press or magazine is limited to a handful of nominations, so, presumably, they only send in their favorites. Thus it is a real endorsement for an editor to nominate one’s work. My poem “Personal Testimony” appeared in Spillway and was nominated by editors Marsha de la O and Phil Taggart. Chapters from Autobiography of a Book appeared in Witty Partition and were nominated by editors Hardy Griffin and Bronwyn Mills. I later heard from Hardy Griffin that the Book chapters had made the first cull; that is, one of Pushcart’s screening editors had decided the work was worth advancing to the next editorial rung. We heard nothing further.

I would have had to sign a contract or something had anything of mine gotten into the anthology (i.e., “won a Pushcart prize”?), and nothing like that came my way. But as an old reader of Pushcart anthologies I knew there was a section in the back of the book that listed pieces that hadn’t gotten in but that the editors wanted to praise. So there I am shelving books at the library and I see the 2022 Pushcart anthology and I pull it down. On page 463, just after the final story, and just before the comprehensive list of “presses featured in the Pushcart Prize editions since 1976,” are the “Special Mention” pages. The mentions are separated into Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry categories. A parenthetical above the list says, “The editors also wish to mention the following important works published by small presses last year. Listings are in no particular order.” No particular order — not even alphabetical. So I scan the Fiction list. My name is not there; Book was not mentioned. I don’t bother to run my finger down the Nonfiction list. But maybe Poetry? There he is, Glenn Ingersoll. In Poetry. For “Personal Testimony.” 

Well! Isn’t that cool. It would have been really cool to have the poem itself in the anthology. It would have been really cool to have had a poem included in Best American Poetry. Neither of those things happened. But getting this mention was a nice pat on the back, wasn’t it? My work was read last year, and it affected some people, stuck with them. That’s nice to know. Nice to hear about.