Submissions and the online workshops: In preparation for flying on my own! Part 2

Submissions and the online workshops: In preparation for flying on my own!  Part 2

Of course, whom these poets / moderators favor in the forums change.  They are seasonal just like everything else in the macro - micro cycles of our contingent existence.  In some cases, and I say it only because I have seen it happen, even the moderators are replaceable.  Loyalties change with the rhetoric that goes on behind closed quarters.  In some cases, the result is very destructive. 

I remember that brilliant woman, an excellent poet, a so, so moderator, who disappeared for a few months because of cancer -- only to come back and find she had been replaced, permanently replaced.   The reason?   Now, that I have had time to reflect on the issue, I realize she was not applying that push for a mainstream poetics in the forum.  The excuse, she had forgotten to fill out some paperwork while she was recovering from therapy. I have no idea if she ultimately would agree with me on this, but I think this was what caused her demise.  She was replaced by an academic poet that had been fishing for her position for a long, a long time.

  We all lose when things like this happen in workshops.  Yet, if we keep our eye wide open, we can also gain some insight into the mechanics of online workshops.  That winning poet, presently a moderator, has never really given his/her name.  S/he uses a pen name, although I get the impression it is a man and that he is not really from the US.  My guess is that he is Canadian.  If he isn’t Canadian then he is a Republican ghostwriter for Arnold Scharwzennegar.  We have them, these “guerrillas in our mist,” in workshops as well.