Sylvia Plath and the Tee-Shirt

Wore this today to town and to the gym. This tee-shirt (I thought) was in bad taste on any occasion -- I mean, a depressed poet, dead by suicide -- so I owned it for two years before I finally wore it to a buncha-writers dinner party, but today it was the only clean shirt, so I wore it to town: to the Christian café (it has wireless), to the gym, the post office, and pharmacy. The lone comment came from pharmacy technician. Squinting at the image she said, “Is that one of those shirts that they give you at high-school reunions, showing what you used to look like back in high school?” Sylvia’s my main lady, but I never expected to be mistaken for her.

If You Want to Be Famous. . .

By the time you read this, Meet Me: Writers in St. Louis, will be at the publisher's, in production. Curious writer friends now ask why I didn't interview THEM for the book (since it's a book of interviews with St. Louis writers). The men ask jokingly but directly. Miffed women give me reproachful looks and won't congratulate me on publishing the book.

Look, writers: If you want press, if you want to be interviewed, you will have to:

1) write something and make it available.
2) alert the media. They won't come looking for you. I know you think they should. But they're media. They have to hear buzz.
3) do some publicity on your own, such as scheduling a book launch, sending postcards, press kits or other. That may be beneath you, but it is rather like going to the bathroom -- you can't deceive yourself that you're above all that. Get a publicist if you can pay for one. College students majoring in marketing are a good option.

My interviewing-writers days are over, but remember the above, because somebody else someday is going to be seeking out and interviewing writers about their processes and secrets.

Don't Be Modest

The most overrated virtue in a writer: modesty. Especially when opportunity doesn't just knock -- it clubs you upside the head.

Last time I sent my latest book ms. out was February; the rejection (fourth) came in August. I sighed and let the manuscript rot. This past week I had lunch with a publisher. We weren't there to talk about my books, but the publisher described books the press was looking for, saying, "But who has a book like that?"

"I do," I boldly ventured for the first time in my life, "and it's finished, about 35,000 words; it has this, and this. . ." Mmmm, let me see it, said the publisher. I hate to think I almost said nothing -- out of misplaced modesty. It needed only to be printed out (pat myself on the back). Off it went into the mail today.

The Poet's Ego

Friend of mine, younger and talented, is still trying her best to get the work honed so it can be published in high-level rags. Hopes to publish enough to impress a book editor or win a contest, and then secure a job teaching full-time in a university, and thereafter have a nice life. That's what I wanted for myself.

The good side of giving up on this is, I don't sweat anymore about publishing in the right places or even the wrong places. I don't even have to try. It saves a lot of mileage on the poet's ego. It's enough for me to have somebody HEAR my poems, if they won't read them.

And this has led me back to why I wanted to write in the first place: to communicate. To tell the truth as I saw it. To have fun. For art & beauty. To get my ideas aired. To show off my individuality and my passion and my very nice mind. Long leap from those original ideals to applying for a position at Squat University -- a starter university, of course, until I worked my way up to one of the Big Ones.

It strikes me that this -- the academic job -- was the only goal anyone thought was worthwhile, that made a poet successful. Golly, what a wild imagination those people had!

When Poets Gave Orders

"We order that the poets’ rights be revered:

• To enlarge the scope of the poet’s vocabulary with arbitrary and derivative words (word-novelty).
• To feel an insurmountable hatred for the language existing before their time.
• To push with horror off their proud brow the wreath of cheap fame that You have made from bathhouse switches [clearer translation: "from toothpicks"].
• To stand on the rock of the word “we” amidst the sea of boos and outrage."

The above is from the Russian Futurists' manifesto, "A Slap in the Face of Public Taste," 1912. By comparison, our poets are people-pleasers and wusses. Each of these century-old demands is, for poets in 2008, a total taboo. We say, "I don't think your experiment with coining new words is very successful," and "I don't know where you'll find a market for this," and "If only I could make it into Best American Poetry 2009," and "I can't figure out who is that collective 'we' being referenced in your poem."

By comparison, how timid we are! And how powerless! Are those things linked?

Advice to a Co-Worker Leaving Her Job to Enter an MFA Program

• Get to know everyone.
• Attend every literary event that you can.
• Keep a journal.
• When you’re suffering, telephone (don’t E-mail) a fellow student.
• Your mistakes are okay.
• Understand that some of your fellow students applied to the MFA program and didn’t get in, so they are getting a regular M.A., and boy are they jealous of you.
• If you teach freshman composition, know that some of your students cannot be saved.
• Sleep on it before submitting it to workshop.
• Love affairs that start in the first weeks of grad school will end badly.
• Get a bicycle.
• Make yourself go to your writing professor’s office during office hours, just to chat.
• If you need money, get a part-time job no matter what your contract with the college says.
• Don't bug famous writers to help you, because they won't.
  
• It's not an illusion: Male and female writers are not treated the same.
  
• You'll get discouraged sometimes, but don’t let anybody stop you.

Just Saying "No"

At this point, after the fourth rejection of my "Interviews with 11 St. Louis Writers" book manuscript, I could cultivate the familiar writerly psychological problems: "I did my best, it wasn't good enough," "Why try," and "I could have predicted this," & so forth. Against those I repeat 50 times: "Writing is an art, publishing is a business." But there's new spot in the Petri dish -- maybe because this is a new kind of manuscript for me -- and it communicates thus:

"You're so arrogant, thinking you can publish a book as-is and get a smidgen of glory. Get real. Remember you are a servant. You serve the publisher and readership. The publisher suggested you compile full bibliographies of all 11 authors. In certain cases, such as Gerald Early's or Don Finkel's, this would take years and you'd come out, as in grad school, with a face like a sneaker sole. But you should do it as a service. Learn to think not like an author, but like a servant."

To this I said (to myself): "That violates my boundary. I think it does. Yes. It does. I perform a service. But I am not a servant.

"H-ll no!"

Ways to be Part of the Future

Do you write because you want to live forever? You can start on that right now.

1. Write poems? Post a poem or two on the Net at www.poemhunter.com. Sure, there are lots of poems on there. Sure, many are junk. But not all of them are. And yours certainly are better than most.

2. Have you published a book? Is it still in print? Every library system has an "acquisitions" librarian. Find the acquisitions page on the library's website and suggest the library acquire your book. You can suggest books for any library system you belong to. Ask your friends in other counties and states to suggest your book to their local and university libraries.

3. Have you written a book? Do you own the electronic rights to it? Can you turn the computer file into a pdf file? If so, you may upload and publish it as an eBook, for free, at www.lulu.com. People can then visit lulu.com, and find and download your eBook. You can also download others' books for free. eBooks are the way of the future. Get on the wagon now.

4. Help a young writer, a child or a teen. Just encourage them, no matter what they are writing, to keep on writing things. You know from your own experience that writers of any age can get a lot of mileage out of a few kind words.