Pacifica Literary Review posted my poems “Mixed Media.”
Tonight’s the Floating Bridge Review #5 gala reading–7:15 PM at the Jack Straw building, 4261 Roosevelt Way NE, Seattle.
And this morning my cat’s going nuts.
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Tags: acceptance, poetry
It’s 6:45 on the East Coast. Often, in the morning, I finish my journaling, move my thouhts ahead three hours and back a few thousand miles, and I wonder, “What are the East Coast editors doing?”
Are they getting another cup of coffee? Are they sifting through poems? Are they grading papers, teaching classes, going to meetings? Are they, like me, holding down a day job and looking at submissions on the weekends? Are my poems still in one stack or another?
Will I hear from them today?
Then I remember to “be careful what you wish for”–but I know what I’m wishing for, among other things.
And if I sent poems to Hawaii, those editors would probably still be asleep.
One of those other wishes: A good Thursday for the world.
Tags: acceptance
The new issue of Ekleksographia, guest-edited by my good friend Judith Skillman, is now live—and it includes two of my poems.
Tags: acceptance, poems
It could have been a contender for one of the crappiest rejections ever.
I received an email message that my poem had been accepted for publication in a review. But the title of the poem didn’t look familiar. Did I write it so long ago and send it out so long ago that I didn’t remember it? How embarrassing. Gwen Head once wrote, “Mes poems sont mes enfants.” My poems are my children. Had I forgotten a child?
After looking high and low for some trace of this mysterious work, I sent a sheepish response and received my reply this morning: I was sent that acceptance by mistake.
Uh…
That took the wind out of my sails, and I’ll admit that I felt mopey and pretty snippy, too.
But then, all kinds of nice things were happening. Friends were calling, sending email, stopping by. I finished a project that I’d been putting off. I started another project that I enjoy. I pondered words for today’s poem. I had fun, and then I got to ride my bike home and it wasn’t even raining.
In the middle of so much goodness, I read this on Debra Jarvis’s site. A good reminder, and it made me laugh.
***UPDATE***
I heard again from the aforementioned publisher, and they accepted another poem (one that I did write). So I enjoyed a fabulous day with very minimal wallowing, and in the end one of my poems found a home after all.
Now, if only my back wasn’t complaining from that little bike ride…
Tags: acceptance, rejection
I complain all the time (all the time) about receiving rejections when I submit my work, so I thought I’d mention that I did get an acceptance from when it rains from the ground up. The next issue will be launched at Hugo House on June 7th (see the link in my brand-new little Reading & events list).
Woo-HOO!
And then again…
Today on her web log First draft: Leonardo likes gulls, K.R.A. posed the question “I kind of like poetry, but I don’t know anything about contemporary poetry. Who should I read?”
and then listed 12 poets, with the following rules:
No blog friends
No real-life friends
No real-life mentors
Alive as of this writing
Her 13th? “Someone I haven’t read yet”
I thought, “What a great idea! Which poets would I recommend?”
I started my list and immediately bumped up against the not-a-friend/mentor and alive-now parameters (good-bye to my good friends, whose poems I admire; good-bye to Frank O’Hara).
After the cross-outs for the previously mentioned reasons, I had a start:
Louise Gluck
Linda Bierds
Olena Kalytiak Davis
James Galvin
Henri Cole
Naomi Shihab Nye
(and I really want to add Lynda Hull because, she would have been alive if she hadn’t died early)
Whoa!
I stopped. I realized that my list was mostly women, probably all white, and probably all or mostly living in or from the United States. I added Rita Dove—a very strong poet to include on the list, and I need to read more of her work.
If a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, it can also be a very helpful thing.
I see that I have some reading to do—not just casual poem-of-the-day reading, but some real deep dives: more contemporary African American poets, more African poets, more Central and South American poets, more European, Asian, and Middle Eastern poets. Remember: to meet the criteria of the list, they need to be living right now.
I see another trip to Open Books in my near future.
Tags: acceptance, poetry
