Estella Ramirez

A special note: let it be known that, as of yet, I have never published a poem on the internet…

It was recently brought to my attention that a person named Estella Ramirez has submitted a poem to poetry.com. The site is questionable, at best (the site is a scam), so I would never submit to it. And let’s be honest, I’ve written some bad poems in my life, and will probably continue to write bad poems into the future, but I’d like the burden of only those bad poems I write myself, and not those of others who submit poems online under my name, even though it is, of course, their name too.

This is the problem with my namesake. If this other Estella Ramirez had been a mechanic, or a painter, well then, I’d be just fine; what an interesting story to tell about the “other” Estella Ramirez…but what happens when both of us are aspiring poets? How to distinguish?

I would like to believe that my work would be my signature in the universe; surely no one could read my work and then read hers and believe they are from the same author? But what if I am wrong, and both mine and hers get lost in the fray of poetry’s mediocrity, neither of us distinguished from even each other–what a sad fate for our poems.

And what if someone I know runs into this person’s poetry, and believes (humiliatingly enough for me) that I had written these? Friends, acquaintances, you have been alerted.

But I can’t help but imagine what would happen if one or the other of us did gain some recognition for our poems, or even reach large audience even hundreds of years from now. What would Estella Ramirez-ians make of the “other” Estella Ramirez? Her or me?