The most published poet alive writes twelve poems before breakfast. They're all terrible.
Not "needs work" terrible. Not "rough draft" terrible. Genuinely, breathtakingly awful. Rhyming "heart" with "cart" Comparing moonlight to spilled yogurt. Poetry so bad it would make your high school English teacher weep.
This poet has three books with Copper Canyon Press.
Meanwhile, you've been perfecting the same stanza since October. It's good, really good. Maybe your best work. It lives in a folder called "Almost Ready" It's been living there for three years.
There's a reason the terrible poet has three books and you have three perfect stanzas. It's not what you think. It has nothing to do with connections, workshops, or MFAs.
It's something much stranger. Something that goes against everything you've been taught about poetry. Something that explains why messy first drafts become classics while careful, beautiful manuscripts gather dust