A Schedule: Days 3 and 4

Tuesday, June 1. Morning errands that should have taken one hour took four hours. Workout at noon. Lunch on foods that need only warming up so I'm not distracted by cooking, which is my third-favorite activity and a great way to waste writing time. Afternoon, try to read Puddn'head Wilson. Fall asleep, waking in time to watch Judge Judy. After that, read a friend's essay draft, being very judgmental. After dinner, begin to sort through papers, throwing away drafts, duplicates, and obsoletes. Online I find an excellent writer's resource site, www.newpages.com. Read some of their very pointed and frank reviews of litmags. Check in with St. Louis Writers Guild and my publisher. Yoga before bed. Didn't write.

Wednesday, June 2. After a half-hour with journal and one hour of yard work I clean myself up and sit down at computer. Wondering what to start with, suddenly I'm in every writer's dream: I open up a file drafted months ago, one I thought was dross, and re-read it for the very first time. Darn, it's good! It wanted for nothing! Tinkering with it only ruined it! I printed it out, added it to packet I mailed to Southern Poetry Review (their contest closes June 15). Now every decent poem that I have written is circulating. I am aware that some people would prefer that I write essays, and while the poems circulate, am considering topics.

2 Odious Things in Recent Poetry

The poetry one likes is so much a matter of personal taste. But in some recent books highly praised, recommended, etc., I saw some incredibly stupid lines. Example:

Who can see a stranger's wrist/ and not have regrets? (Immediate response: "Me, that's who!")

And You know what else? Caught myself doing this: TOO MANY POEMS today are written addressing "You," but they don't mean the reader. What's going on? I suspect poets have been shamed out of saying "I" -- too egotistical. "You" is a displacement. It may help camouflage the fact that "You" is too often the poet's mom, dad, boyfriend, or somebody else too unimportant to have any identity besides that of a vehicle for, or target of, the poem. I am trying to remind myself to have a very good reason not to use "he" or "she" or "Celia."

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!

Annie Dillard Helped

Annie Dillard (nee Meta Ann Doak) helped me today as I chose 6 unpublished poems to submit to an anthology that is no sure thing, that I suspect might never be finished or published. So I wanted to hold back a couple of poems just too good for it, thinking: I bet these could impress a bigger editor -- later. Then Dillard's words came to mind:

One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better.

And I sent my 6 best poems and felt the rightness of it, the healthiness of having set them free, trusting that I will write even better ones. Thank you, Annie.

Poetry Cover Letter Protocol

Address your envelope and cover letter to the poetry editor, using the correct name (forget Writers' Market, it's always out of date; check the mag's website instead) and, please, the correct gender indicator.

Start the letter by asking the editor to consider the enclosed poems for publication. If you happen to be sending the poems for a future "special" or "themed" issue of their magazine, say so.

Next paragraph: Write, "My work has appeared in. . . " and list your most recent poetry publications, a maximum of five of them. List any prizes won. If you have never published or won prizes, don't say so; just skip this paragraph.

Mention your schooling and profession only if it's related to literature. If not, skip this paragraph. Do not volunteer information such as "I am a stay-at-home mother of twin girls."

If you are "simultaneously submitting" the enclosed poems to other journals, put that in the letter -- but never say which journals they are. If not, skip this paragraph.

Be sure to say whether you want your manuscript returned or "recycled".

Thank the editor for his or her time.

Your SASE should have the magazine's return address in the upper left corner, and should be self-sealing.

Dead Ends for Your Creative Writing

If you want quality readers such as literary agents, Pushcart Prize judges, famous writers, and Best American Poetry anthologists among your readers:

1. Don't submit to a brand-new literary journal. They don't have subscribers, and their newbie editors don't know enough to nominate their contents for Pushcart or other prizes.
2. Don't submit exclusively to journals edited by students in MFA programs. Because the editors change yearly, their contents are unpredictable and can be uneven, and because of this they are not taken very seriously. In fact these journals are referred to in the aggregate as "MFA rags."
3. If you win prizes from your local literary organization's contests and get that good work printed in the awards-ceremony program, or on the organization's website, that may be the last daylight your prizewinning work will ever see. Some litmag editors consider that work to have been "already published."

I think some MFA rags are wonderful, but if you're career-minded, learn to think differently. The above information from a seminar I attended last Saturday on poetry publishing.

Marianne Moore Would Hate the Internet

I hope you agree that Marianne Moore looked like a dork in that tricorn she affected later in life. Oh, and how she would simply hate the Internet! Wouldn't she? She would say:

1. “I’ve googled myself and what’s on the Net is fragmentary and totally inaccurate!”

2. “Why have an email address and get bothersome letters from every Tom, Dick and Harry?”

3. “I’ve found my poems online – used without my permission!”

4. “Call me old-fashioned, but I favor the printed page.”

5. “On the Internet, people can get directions to my home; it’s appalling!”

Miss Moore, you once wrote, Patient or impatient repudiating of life just repudiates itself. There is no point to it....

Repudiating the Internet won't make it go away. Here are some facts:

1. You can post correct information about yourself and your books, anytime, and quite easily, on authorsden.com. Or ask your publishers to do it.
   

2. Seems to me that you did your share of letter-writing, sometimes 50 letters a day, but, that aside -- fewer people want to contact you than you think. Out of 350 million people in the U.S., only about 10,000 have heard of you, 150 would like to talk to you, and 100 of those are too polite to bother you. Of the remaining 50, 30 are too lazy to send an email, leaving 15 grad students who want to email you about your poems, and 5 professors of English interested not in your poems or even your sex life, but in The Dial or why you were snide to Sylvia Plath. These are the people who have always sent you letters.
   

3. Be flattered! Some stranger liked your poems enough to type them out and post them online. Readers now needn't travel miles to a library or pay $18.95 to savor one. English teachers can instantly show your poems to their classes. Your works are being read, admired, shared and talked about, far more so than when they were first published! Isn't that why you wrote them? Perhaps you wrote them for the money? All this online chat about your "illegally" published poems will only sell more of your books.
   

4. You got to like the printed page when you were admitted to its exclusive club of "legitimately" published writers. Before then, The Dial and The Egoist, not "legitimate" outlets, helped you amass poetic street cred and friends, published your first book, and got you the "legitimacy" you are now stuck on. Books will always exist and you can enjoy them. But no literary revolutionary should plume herself on being "old-fashioned" -- unless she's doing it to hide her fears about the new.
   

5. Directions and maps to anyplace are available on GoogleMaps and Mapquest, so the Internet isn't picking on you. Besides, you never hid the fact that you lived in Brooklyn – as embarrassing as that must be for a native of fine Kirkwood, MO.

Oh, and, Miss Moore, until we meet again: Think of the Internet as an imaginary toad with a real garden in it!

The Almost-Finished Poem

I have this little paradise of almost-finished poems: a file called "Completed Poems - Almost."

When I have a block of time, preferably about six to ten days, I draft poems like crazy, writing big, big, long, sloppy, inclusive first drafts. I let it all hang out. I run the idea into the ground. These drafts are raw material. I mark each of them "Draft 1" and print them out. They go together in an envelope marked with the approximate date of composition (such as "Fall 2007").

When there's another spot of time (at least six months later) I delete and toss the hopeless drafts. Those that still stand are so long 'n' sloppy I can easily refine them simply by cutting. If after that I still care, I print these drafts out, mark them "Draft 2," and then the intensive crafting work begins.

When a poem is almost finished -- when it's whole except for, say, that one nagging word, or one line, or a closing line -- it is promoted to the file "Completed Poems - Almost."

I visit this file with pleasant anticipation, when I have time, usually every six months or so. Often I can immediately see what the unfinished poem needs, supply it, and promote it to "Completed Poems." They get printed and put in a binder, marked "New Poems," and then I toss the drafts.

A really sticky "almost-poem" I'll read aloud. My sense of embarrassment, boredom, or distaste tells me exactly where to apply my crafting efforts -- or whether any further efforts will be in vain.

Some drafts do hard time in that "Almost" file. But I like that file even better than "Completed Poems." A completed poem is satisfying, but the adventure of making it, the romance, the wild guesses, the risks, the faith, the Nikola-Tesla-like experimentation, the race to the finish, that chance that this poem will be really, really great -- is so OVER.