I got my latest manuscript more or less under control. It took eight months of wrestling, tweaking, cutting, revising; I’m still not certain it is “there,” but I’m going to start submitting it at last. The process of submitting to publishers tends to be lengthy, but just doing it keeps my mind engaged with the poems as a collection. After I send the manuscript out, and especially once it is returned to me, I feel more agile about further editing. This is assuming it won’t be picked up right away, but that isn’t a bad assumption, based upon my experience.
Furthermore, thinking about the book and where to send it keeps my mind occupied, keeps me in a place in my life where I can take action, where what I decide to do might matter a little bit. That’s a frame of mind I can use at the moment, when my mother has begun to decline rather more rapidly (and there’s not much I can do to stop a 91-year-old from dying, however long it takes). When a former student is recuperating from major accident trauma in the neurology unit of a nearby rehabilitation center. When a long-time friend has suffered a brain bleed and hip fracture–and now, dementia–and will likely live out her days in assisted living or a nursing-care institution. Not to mention the broader concerns and tragedies I hear about in the media, which affect me and those I love less (for the moment), but which have long-range consequences that few of us can avoid.
If there is little I can do to make a difference, I can still do something. We contribute to the life of the cosmos in many different ways. I try to be constructive when I can and otherwise remind myself to enjoy the things life offers. Recently an enjoyment has been the incredibly cool photographs made by my Joya colleague Johanna Rönn. Also Alison Pollack’s tiny mushroom photography posted to Instagram. The internet offers almost as much joy as it subtracts. You might enjoy these images, too.
I’m reveling in local produce, too, which has been lovely this year–good peaches, pears, apricots, though the sweet corn has been a bit disappointing. At my house, we are eating lots of cucumbers and tomatoes.
Also enjoyable? Mornings and evenings on our back porch, looking out at the woods. True, we are saddened by continuous loss of trees along the treeline, and it means work ahead in fall: chainsaws and splitting and stacking. But. In the evenings, bats and the last of the lightning bugs, tree cricket chorus and cool breezes. In the mornings, tea or coffee with the cat at our feet, finches hitting up the sunflowers and amaranth for seeds. Today, a hummingbird flew over from the buddliea and hovered not ten feet from us, weaving ever so slightly as if observing and determining what we might be.
August is the month of the Sealey Challenge, which basically urges those who like/love poetry to read a book of poetry each day of the month. I haven’t given myself the challenge this year, but I am posting individual poetry books on my Instagram account daily–books from my personal library, mostly–and that means that I read a few of the poems, too. Sometimes I get carried away and re-read the entire book. [@aemichaelpoet]
This is not a bad thing.
Meanwhile, August this year behaves as it usually does, weather-wise: blisteringly hot and wiltingly humid. That would be okay except that June was so hot and dry and now an early hurricane has begun its climb up the coast; for now, we are stalled in a heat dome, and by Friday we may be inundated with rain. All of this means that my tomatoes are likely to split just as they all get plump and ripe. It also means that our annual folk life festival (Goschenhoppen) is likely to be a muddy, damp affair with fewer attendees than usual. These things happen, and they happen more frequently when the planet undergoes climate change.
~
August, as most of us learned back in grade school, is named after the emperor Augustus, whose name means “venerable, noble, majestic.” [Source: my favorite, Etymology Online]. The online source notes that “In England, the name replaced native Weodmonað ‘weed month’.” Weed month is a perfect name for August, and I think I will adopt it from now on. It certainly fits the current state of my vegetable patch as the dog days keep the outdoors too miserable for heavy labor in the dirt.
At least for me, however, the laboring can be optional as long as I don’t object too strenuously to a haggard-looking garden. The people who are truly hard workers this time of year are construction and road crews, landscaping crews, farm workers, roofers, line workers, and others who have to brave the heat and humidity to make a living. Also the janitorial staff crews at schools and dorms and other older buildings that don’t have reliable–or any–air conditioning. When we are outdoors working at the festival in August, we get a taste of how challenging it is to do physical work in the heat. This is actually an educational aspect of the festival for those who participate, especially for younger people who are new to the festival. We remind them that people worked like this all the time, in summer and during snowy winters and in the rain and without electricity…with no escaping it, since they needed to work hard just to stay alive.
Perhaps unfortunately, our forebears’ grinding efforts may have led to the idea that only hard work will save us and make us morally upright human beings. Few of the early Germanic settlers here had much time to read or compose poetry, to savor novels, to learn to play an instrument. Art was acceptable to a degree, so long as it decorated otherwise-useful objects. The poetry of the Bible was acceptable, but it wasn’t studied for its beauty. A person with my sensibilities and temperament would probably have been an outlier in Goschenhoppen’s historic community. If I’d lived to be 66 in the early 1800s, I’d be considered “an old cripple,” mostly blind and bent over with arthritis and stenosis. But maybe I’d be the kind of old woman who tells stories.
On the other hand, maybe I’d be considered a witch! I guess it depends on what sort of stories one decides to tell.
At a previous year’s festival, with my daughter. Bewitching the local kids with potato candy!
I wrote a poem for my brother 25 years ago or more, when he was in his early 30s and having mysterious and frightening cardiac issues. He was working on geological and wetlands surveys for the county and feeling fairly uncertain about his career, as often occurs when one is in early mid-life. My initial drafts included a quote from a Rilke poem and some geological terminology. That poem draft, as a whole, didn’t quite “work,” however. I gnawed on it for well over a year, tweaking and revising. I showed it to Ariel Dawson, a friend (alas, now gone) whose critique and suggestions I respected. She gave me some ideas for revision and told me she thought this was a poem with real possibility. I just hadn’t quite gotten to the final possibility yet. She told me it was a poem I should believe in, keep working on.
Some years later, after a major reworking, I sent it out. Several times. No one accepted it; a couple of years later, I realized where it was in need of a change. Tried that. It felt better to me. But no one accepted it for publication. Fast-forward about 18 years, and I made yet another change in the poem. I thought maybe it was still worth submitting to journals. Nope. But, last year, reassessing some older work, I came across this poem and thought it was actually a pretty good poem, worth sending out a few more times. One might say I believed in the poem.
This post is to say: Be persistent, writers, and do believe in your work! Because Jane Edna Mohler at Schuylkill Valley Journal chose “Heart-Work” and two of my other poems for the issue that just came out in print (and I do love print journals!). [Purchase the issue by clicking here]
That poem found its way into print 25 years after I first drafted it.
Something equally as nice occurred when I received the print copy in my mailbox. Peter Krok, the long-time editor in chief at SVJ (since 1990) and a long-time colleague-in-poetry, sent along a lovely note in which he praised Jane Edna’s editorial sensibilities and then kindly said he felt that my poem “Heart-Work” was exceptional. How frequently does that happen? Not often, I can promise you–although I suspect such comments are more likely from small independent journal editors and presses. Those lovely people are involved in the arts for the love of poetry and the humanities. When they find time, they can be marvelously encouraging. Let us thank them personally and to the world!
Trapped inside with the air conditioner on for over a week, I sat by my bookshelves going through the poetry books in my library. I’m re-reading, assessing which books I truly want to keep because I turn to them often or learn something each time I read them, which books I keep for sentimental reasons (maybe I know the author personally), which ones to keep because they are signed copies, which ones are long out of print and I would never be able to replace them. Some of them remind me strongly of places or eras in my life: I bought this one in a small bookshop in Grand Rapids MI, or this one at Barnes & Noble when it was just one store on a NYC street corner, or these at the storied and much-mourned Gotham Book Mart or St. Mark’s Bookshop. What are good reasons to keep books when I really have to downsize? It’s not an easy task, and the first of many in the process of getting rid of stuff so my kids won’t be stuck doing it. Besides, I enjoy re-reading these books. My children are not as enthusiastic about poetry as I am, so it makes sense that someone who loves the works on the shelves be the one who makes such decisions. It feels good to be surrounded by the words of wonderful writers when the outdoors is brutally hot and humid, and every joint in my body aches.
Surrounding myself with other people’s books also acted as one more way of avoiding my own creative work. Sometimes, though, waiting around and doing nothing on a project ends up bringing clarification or new ideas. It can prove useful. I have been stalled on my in-progress manuscript, so a month or so back I asked someone to take a look at it–and then I got caught up in doing other things. Like getting cataract surgery and having covid, and then it was gardening in full swing under sweltering weather, and then the bookshelves… I wasn’t exactly procrastinating, but neither was I actively working on, or even thinking about, the collection.
Acquired when I was much younger, and cool bookshops abounded.
And one night recently–during a much-needed rainstorm–I got a brainstorm! I realized I was trying to pack too many topics into what really should be a manuscript more closely focused on how people who love one another vary in their relationships to old age and death, and on how the contemporary social and medical aspects of the aging process pull us in uncomfortable directions, often distancing us from those relationships. So yes, there should be family poems, hospice poems, biblically-influenced poems, and dealing-with-everyday observation poems. Also some poems of hope and love, poems reminding me (and readers) of the need for compassion in all dealings. But the draft had 92 poems in it, far too many; and some were there just because I like them or they’d been published in a good journal. Which are actually not good enough reasons to include a poem in a collection, according to most of the editors I know.
I am back to thinking about the manuscript and digging up potatoes–a nice crop this year–instead of culling the poetry books because, thank goodness, the heat wave’s subsided a bit. But in the process of this non-routine summer I have allowed numerous weeds to flourish and set seed; all the more work for NEXT year’s gardening, but it’s been too hot to deal with said interlopers. I like to believe the weeds and I are reaching a sort of understanding, but it is not really a compromise. All the concessions have been on my part. [Note: weeding a personal library is less physically taxing but not really any easier.]
When my children were learning to talk, I remember finding the process of language acquisition so amazing that I briefly considered going back to college to study it. I have two children about 18 months apart in age; many of my friends had babies the same time I did, so I had a range of small children to listen to and be amazed by. Each child seemed to develop their own method of learning to talk, beyond the general similarities among human beings that many scientists and linguists have studied. I wondered what made those small differences–the way parents spoke to the child or to one another? The temperaments of the children? Exposure to music or grandparents, older siblings, the radio??
I can admit that I was an exhausted young(-ish) mother, but also so intrigued. I wanted to learn as my children were learning. There was such excitement and joy–it seemed as though every new day brought further leaps in communication as my kids discovered pronunciation, verbs, adjectives, vocal stresses, and body language to convey what they were noticing, experiencing, needing, complaining about. As a lifelong learner, autodidact, and amateur researcher, I found myself reading up on language and its acquisition and history.
A few moments stay vividly in my memory. One summer day when we had a sun shower, my barely two-year-old son pointed up to the sky and announced, “Sun out. Rain coming down.”
I think of that with joy every time we get a sun shower. Over 30 years later.
~
Now, I’m trying to find the same fascination, the same learning-endeavor, with my mother’s loss of speech. I want there to be some joy or benefit in this reversal of language, something I can take away from it other than a deep sense of losing the person she was. This has meant reading books about dementia, aphasia, aging, and all the rest. It’s meant trying ways to get her attention and jog her memories when visiting her; talking with her caregivers; and reminiscing with my siblings, as well as conferring with them about her current situation as it evolves.
It’s meant finding some humor in the inevitable mix-ups that happen when communication gets woefully impaired. It has also meant finding peace, or comfort, in just sitting beside my mother in silence, holding her hand in her quiet room. She was always a fairly reflective person–capable of hilarity and chattiness, but more often keeping things to herself. Maybe revealing her thoughts some time later. Now? Who can tell. I find that I return from my visits with her feeling increasingly reflective myself, wondering where she “goes” when her attention seems to wander, wondering what she would say, if she could. I find myself wanting to research, even more than I have, information on neurology and cognition and what happens when the neural synapses that lead us to language begin to get trimmed away.
Not everyone who gets past 90 experiences such neural shut-downs in the language-generating parts of the brain; I know several folks who were, and are, quite fine with speech and thinking into their late 90s! Alas that my mom isn’t one of them. My task is to find joy in whatever her moments of being are at present while she is still physically among us. Not always an easy task, it sometimes saddens me. But joy tempers sorrow, just as sorrow so often tempers joy.
Momma. If you could only read this, or understand me when I say it: I love you.
I do not much care for air conditioning, and I believe it is bad for the environment; yet I admit I’m grateful for it lately, as I reside in one of the many regions of the USA that’s been enduring dangerously high temperatures for more than a week straight. I feel lucky that we’re not struggling with the heat wave–that we can shut up the windows and turn on the AC. We’re also in an earlier-than-usual drought situation though the air feels muggy and humidity has been as high as 98%.
My garden needs water every day; I generally water in the evenings because that is when the garden is in shade. The barn swallows swoop around me as I make sure the tomato and cucumber plants’ roots are getting a deep soaking. While I water, I watch for insects–fireflies, moths, dragonflies. And for bats, which have returned but aren’t as numerous as they once were. It’s pleasant for me that there are fewer mosquitoes and gnats, but I’m concerned about a drop in the number of junebugs and moths, and even (yes) mosquitoes. The heat and drought have taken a toll on all kinds of wildlife.
This morning, a pair of finches dive-bombed a squirrel that was up in the pear tree, chasing it far into the hedgerow. It may have been after the unripe pears, but squirrels also sometimes eat songbird eggs or chicks, especially when the squirrels are nursing kits or when there’s a lack of other food. The deer are so thirsty and desperate for greens that they’ve eaten every last hosta in my landscape, including the ones right up at the house foundation. They are consuming plants they have overlooked before, but I can’t blame them. Since it has been so miserable outside, I haven’t picked black raspberries this year; I’m sure the deer are happy about that. But I do wish they’d eat the poison ivy, wintercreeper, oriental bittersweet, and honeysuckle vines…that would make my landscaping tasks easier!
I’ve kept a garden journal for 30 years. If you have a garden, you don’t need to be an environmental scientist to recognize that the climate is undergoing changes. This is not a political statement but a fact. Everything right now is stressed–including the gardener! The stress enters into my consciousness and, I suppose, into my creative life. My poem drafts of the past week have been a bit on the bleak side.
Here’s a draft of one of the 7-line poems I was working on last week. Suits the weather, I guess.
~
Sweltering
A description accurate for the days past solstice when even the wind lies sweating in a hammock unable to rise for a brief turn around the block. Blackbirds slow their trills, robins shelter in shade, all the tasks we should tend to we leave undone. Hours of lethargy seep into skin and set up house, keeping us damp, achy, sunburned with the blues.
During the past few weeks, I have been reading–one at a time, with pauses–the essays in Ross Gay’s book Inciting Joy. His earlier book (The Book of Delights) was easier, a bit less complicated. About, you know, gratitude–even though he describes his father’s death in the first essay of that one. He gets to something about grieving in the 13th “Incitement” of this book, however, that made me put the text down and say to myself: This is what I have been trying to get my poems to do for some time now.
(I did pick it up again and finish reading it, by the way.)
He insists that we remember how transforming grief is. Not can be, but is. Always: “When that one thing [that we grieve] changed, everything changed. Light through the trees in October now different. The sound of the playground…cooking a meal. The future. The past. All of it changed. That is what the griever is metabolizing.” He points out this metabolizing can’t be timed, that grieving pays no attention to whether it has been a day or a year or decades: “It seems to me that grief is not gotten over, it is gotten into. And the griever teaches us, or reminds us, there is no pulling it apart. Because grieving, alert to connection, is never only one person’s experience.”
Maybe we grieve for one person, or one beloved companion animal. Maybe we grieve that our youth is over, that our children are grown, that our favorite mom & pop store has been razed to make way for a Starbucks. Or perhaps we grieve for our planet, as Greta Thunberg does: “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words…People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing.” There are so many reasons why we feel loss. Loss is what life offers us, loss but also transformation. I think what Gay tries to say in his recent essays is that because there is something to sorrow that we all can connect with, our grief itself can connect us, give us understanding–maybe even joy.
A complicated kind of joy. A joy that acknowledges that life can be tough and sad. And instead of reeling away from people who are clearly–and sometimes not so clearly–suffering, we could connect instead, even though we are also terrified of suffering. Maybe that is another reason I became a hospice volunteer years ago, after my dad had been in and out of the ICU frequently, even though I had spent my childhood and many of my adult years being frightened of death and dying.
Good poems offer readers that sense of connection, which Gay and others sometimes refer to as mycelial (Lesley Wheeler in her poems, Robin Wall Kimmerer in her books and Merlin Sheldrake in his, the movie “Fantastic Fungi”…among others). My favorite poems by my favorite poets, now that I think about it, have always had that effect on my heart: recognition of connectedness with other humans or with other beings, with the environment, with the past-and-future, with (thank you, Walt Whitman) the Kosmos. The recent interactions I had and connections I found at the Joya residency cemented this fundamental awareness, that all of us are part of our huge, interconnected experiences in life.
Of course, writing strong work isn’t easy, doesn’t often happen; but here’s the place in our mutual social connectivity where intentions really do matter–because the intention impels us to work, practice, and dream. The intention is to create and, through whatever we create, to extend our human network. NOT our much-ballyhooed “social networks.” Those can go to hell (and we can’t take ’em with us).
Anyway, such are my intentions for working in the world of words, of poetry. And that’s also the reason I read so much poetry, in case you were wondering.
I’ve been challenging myself to write 7-line poems lately. Half-sonnets? Not necessarily. Just an exercise in writing a poem in brief. I have used haiku and tanka as brevity/image exercises in the past, and that work has been helpful. While I seldom write poems that are longer than, say, 30-35 lines, practice with conciseness never hurts, especially when my inclination is to go narrative.
I’m not knocking narrative poetry: I love it. Love reading it, love writing it–especially the lyrical narrative. In addition, I’m a big fan of the discursive and tangential in poems and essays (looking at you, Ross Gay). But one does tend to fall into familiar territory, and it’s useful to push away at what’s easy. That means, every now and again, trying something unusual: persona poem, aphorism poem, Spencerian sonnet, cadralor, surrealism, slant rhyme, golden shovel, or an invention of one’s own…something to freshen up the craft.
Many writers I know rely on prompts for imagery, language use, theme, or topic. For some reason, that sort of prompt seldom gets me really working in a new vein, though I can get a poem draft or two that way. Using a form, trying something new with how the words land on the page, is much harder to do (for me)–and therefore, more useful. I honestly want to feel as though I am working at poetry, doing the good and rewarding sort of work during which I learn new techniques and rediscover how craft can deepen meaning.
Real work takes practice. And real practice doesn’t actually lead to perfection. It leads to new explorations and revelations. There’s my wisdom-for-the-day to poets who are just starting out.
Probably because I have been stalled on my manuscript (see previous post), I’ve been reading blogs and speaking with friends about the whole “project” of publishing poetry books. People sure have widely varying opinions. It had occurred to me there would likely be some controversy over this even in a world as small as poetry; but I am surprised at how heated poets, and publishers, can get concerning the whys, whens, and hows of poetry collections. Whether a poet’s work is ready, for example, or–as some folks might put it–worthy of a book or chapbook, and when in one’s “career” is the time to put a book out into the world…and whether the time it takes and the costs of submitting and contest fees are worth the effort or act as a barrier to the underfunded, the less-known, and the uninitiated (or to people who just are not very good poets).
Where a writer is in her poetry (career, journey, artistic path, life, whatever) surely makes a difference in whether or when she pursues manuscript-making. Some folks suggest getting a chapbook out as soon as one has enough good poems because a chapbook looks good on a poet’s CV. Others insist it is better to wait and get work published poem-by-poem in journals and literary sites.
Some poetry publishers are more selective than others, so writers new to the process are likely to feel discouraged when they keep getting rejections from these “top tier” places. There are publishers who are less selective, but sometimes writers get warned away from having their manuscripts produced by a so-called poetry mill. “Get your books accepted and published by the best-regarded publishers,” they’re advised; a chapbook-mill press will not look as good on the CV.
But getting that manuscript accepted by the best-regarded place can take a long, long time. (Speaking from experience!!) What to do?
I’d advise poets who want to compile a manuscript to think about what the purpose of doing so is. There are more reasons than you might realize. Are you trying to get a job in a creative writing program? Are you trying to stand out in the crowd? Do you want to publish mostly for your friends and relatives? Or for yourself? Do you need publication in order to stay on the tenure track? Does your manuscript represent the creative output of a difficult time that you want to make art from and share with others? Are your poems gathered together in order to inform, to argue/convince, to entertain, to be relevant in the moment? Is your manuscript a kind of personal document, a memoir in verse and, if so, do you view it as important for other people who may relate to your experiences? How crucial is is to have the book published soon? Do you think it is important to have the book be a prizewinner?
These are just a few things to consider. Other reasons abound. And at any rate, thinking about what you want your book to be or do or accomplish should help you to decide the where and how of getting it into print. Or if that is even necessary. These days, poets can garner quite a few readers by having poems that get posted online in literary blogs, journals, social media platforms, and other sites. Do you really need, or care about, having a book? What makes the process “worth it”?
Then there’s self-publishing–which, thanks to Lulu, Amazon, Blurb, BookBaby, and similar businesses is not that hard to do–and which no longer carries quite the stigma of “vanity presses” (though if you are trying to get tenure, I’d advise against this choice). Not all of us feel up to learning the ins and outs of templates and design limits that these businesses offer. Some presses began their lives as ways to self-publish or to publish the work of a poet whose work wasn’t getting much attention; Lamont Steptoe started Whirlwind Press (now defunct) to publish Dennis Brutus‘ poetry, then started publishing his own work, then morphed the press into Whirlwind Magazine for several years. Of course, there is no promotion at all; poets have to do their own PR even with some very good presses, and self-publishing requires even more.
Then there are the “mills” I mentioned earlier. These would be poetry publishers that, critics note, are less “discerning” than the hard-to-crack literary presses. The ones I know of are not as predatory as vanity presses and are easier to work with than the Amazon-style self-publishing route. Some of them offer promotional advice or social media activity, and some may invite their authors to participate in regional group readings. And in fact, I have had one book and a chapbook or two published by presses I’ve heard referred to as mills. I suppose the publishers might object to the characterization, but it doesn’t bother me.
My feelings on getting my books in print have evolved over the years, and I think that they should. I am no longer a young poet new to the challenge of getting my poems into magazines (they were all print when I was starting out) and thinking about whether I wanted to work in the creative writing field or not. As it turns out, while I did earn an MFA, I never really used it in the academic area where I ended up. But I attend writing conferences, engage in critique, send my work out for publication–singly and in manuscript form–which are all parts of the poet’s career (if you can call it a career).
At this point in my life, I want to make books! I love books, and I love reading poems in books and not on a screen of any kind. It doesn’t matter to me if my books win prizes (though one did!) or are published by top-tier literary presses (er, no…), or if they ever result in my earning anything from my writing (not yet…). Yes, I want my manuscripts to be worthy–by which I mean that a few readers find something of value and enjoyment in them. On balance, that seems good enough for me.
Recently, reading through Dave Bonta’s Poetry Blog Digest, I noticed a few posts on stalling with a manuscript and subsequently clicked on those links and read what other poets have to say about it. Mmm, yeah. I understand the challenges. I have kind of stalled on my next book, too. Or shall I say, neglected my work on it. In fact, today–when I finally thought I had some time to review the draft ms–I could not find it. I had forgotten where I put the printout.
Yes, it resides on my computer. But I prefer to work with hard copy when structuring a collection. And where was the hard copy? I wasted a good half an hour seeking it but finally noticed it peeking from under a pile of other papers. This is not a sign of determined intent.
Why do I allow it to languish? There are so many possible answers to that. The poets who posted (see above) had structural concerns, other things going on in their lives, also a bit of second-guessing and self-doubting. I had eye surgery and covid, but those circumstances did not keep me from drafting new work, only kept me from putting the book together. I recognize now that these tasks involve, for me at least, very different processes, and maybe that is why I’m stalled but not “blocked.” I mean, hooray, I’m writing poems! Which is a process I enjoy, along with revising. But drafting and revising revolve around the process of an interior reflection and creative surge. I wish I could feel that way about putting this collection together, but I don’t. The manuscript-making process is lengthier, broader in scope, requires more critical analysis and a consideration (to a degree) of audience/readership that an individual poem does not. It asks questions of chronology, topic, and forms in aggregate that matter much less when working on one poem at a time.
Perhaps that means I’m not ready to put this collection together yet. Or that I have chosen the wrong theme or mix of poems, and I should reconsider the entire project.
*le sigh*
Maybe I need to take another amble around the garden to clear my head. It’s nice to have that option. It feels more like rejuvenation and less like…procrastination.
ann e michael 