New arrivals

It's always fun to receive a new journal or book in the mail, and it's especially exciting to receive a publication in which one's own work appears. As I write this, I realize how egocentric it sounds. But I'm also reminded of something a renown poet once said to MFA students in her workshop at Pacific University. 

After having everyone in our small group introduce themselves and talk about what motivates them to write poetry - with answers like "I just feel I need to," "I want to improve my craft," "it helps me understand myself and the world," and "I love to play with language" - she said something like, "Well, that's all very pleasant..That's all lovely." Then her look and tone hardened and she said, "Now stop being so nice and polite and tell us what you really want." 

It only took a moment of stunned and awkward silence before someone (whose star has been rising ever since) to say that she didn't know about the rest of us, but she was in this to win awards, to be published and to be lauded. That opened the flood gates, and one by one, nearly all of us admitted to hankering after recognition. We did want people to read our work, and we did want to see it in print and we did want it to be praised. She had stripped us of our gentile blanketing of ambition.

I do not consider myself as ruthless as others. I'm more driven than some, perhaps. The desire to write is nearly constant, the energy to do so is usually present. But the push it takes to put things out into the world with focus and strategy waxes and wanes a bit for me. In the last few years, I've sent out hundreds of poems (often in simultaneous submissions) to scores of journals and anthologies. A very small percentage are accepted, but apparently (according to Duotrope), my acceptance ratio remains higher than the average "for members who have submitted to the same publishers/agents." That encourages me to carry on, so it seems clear that external validation plays a role in my work. I love to write poetry. Being published ain't bad, either. 

Within the last few weeks, I received two new printed publications with my poems in them: volume 64 of Spectrum, put out by U.C.S.B., and the chapbook of contest submissions for Black and White in Black and White, featuring the beautiful photos of John Johnson. Here's a photo to mark their arrival for myself and the two international spambots who are, I think, currently the only readers of this blog.