Ides of April

Half-way through April, which means I have a couple more weeks to milk the artifice that is National Poetry Month and further develop the habit of writing poems daily and submitting them on a regular basis.

https://poets.org/national-poetry-month

And by "artifice" I do not mean to suggest that National Poetry Month does not have value or validity. In fact, I recognize that this pandemic has increased everyone's appreciation of, and need for, the arts in general and poetry in particular. A quick search of "poetry for the pandemic" brings up scores of articles about poets and their responses to covid19 and sheltering-in-place. I only mean to say that National Poetry Month is an external agent that I am using to push myself to do what I haven't yet done before on my own.

It's a little sloppy and a little contrived, this releasing poems into the world every day. It serves a purpose, and because of it, I feel a whole new level of confidence that I am capable of the same kind of stubborn resolve with poetry that got me through the birth of two kids without pain killers. (Not to discount the element of luck involved with any such birth.) But I can already envision trading a daily submission with taking more time to research markets and become familiar with what suits each journal. And I am starting to look at whether I might have the makings of more than one manuscript (chapbook or otherwise) which I could build as a next step.

I'm nervous that once I'm back to 10- to 12-hour days away from home I won't be able to do any of this. But I've been writing new drafts in the morning and submitting and blogging at night, and those habits seem, potentially, sustainable.