Not to Mississippi, Not to Tupelo (from "Mexico," by Jump, Little Children)

I was wondering, did anyone else enter Tupelo Press' July Open Reading period this year? I got the rejection yesterday, and it reminded me of the controversy that went on a few years ago. I admire the way Levine writes his letters to sound like he personally cared for, and read, [each] manuscript. Why then are "new readers" mentioned in the encouragement to send to the Dorset Prize?

More so than calling out Levine for being a money-grabbing fool, I just don't know how much stock to put in to such vague and general praise. If one is told that there poems are often original and affecting...may one get some examples? To what extent did TP/JL think this. Which ones did he think sucked and ruined the thing?

I really want to know what isn't working for the reader? What things made them say no? Instead, the escape for not taking my manuscript becomes "Our budget is severely restricted by this economy, and we have to be very careful about how many commitments we make." As personal as that sounds, it's another way of saying "the collection is not a right fit." Either way, the e-mail was filled with awkward, obvious juxtapositions. And then, of course, the encouragement to send to their Dorset Prize, which because of the amount of prize money, I am guessing more manuscripts will be fighting than did in July!

This was the first time I submitted to TP, because their books are beautiful and I thought the price was reasonable, and as much as I'd like prize money, the main goal is to have my collections put out by reputable presses.

I have entered smaller press competitions in the past (Nightboat Books and Tebot Bach's Patricia Bibby First Book Award), and was shocked to get the letter stating that I was a finalist in the Bibby. I know some friends who said, Who are they? What is that? (I want to say, someone who knows that my book is worth reading!) As far as Nightboat Books, all I can say is that they have some younger, known poets as Editors, and that the book they sent me was beautifully constructed.

So, I am 27-years-old, and I have a handful of similar-aged friends in the same dilemma. Are feelings on presses seem to be seasonal, with a winter of small presses and a spring of only the famous. Our moods less on elliptical paths, and more like electrons dancing randomly around the atom. I, for one, go all over the place, day to day, sometimes second to second, with where to send to. I think most writers are kidding if they say they are decisive in where they want to be. They are either kidding themselves or greatly suicidal. Or about to give up from their self-imposed limitations.

So right now I wonder if I will send to Tupelo Press again, or Four Way. I don't like the idea that somehow if there were to be different readers for the press, that somehow I might crack the egg. If, in an open reading, the reading is left to randomness.... I know young readers, and I feel more comfortable in knowing that a press has a set editorial board. Ideally, this would only help, as they know what their press wants most. Readers are just looking what excites them personally, I generalize! Again, even as I write this paragraph I waver. It may be, after all, the reading from one interchangeable part of the press -- that unpaid Grad Student who happens to align themselves with your kind of writing -- that pushes your work through the slush; tattered, warped pages in their satchel.

Kay Ryan

She's a runner! And here I thought, when I started writing poems at 18, how this was not something that anyone who did anything athletic did. Hah.

How did I find out? Well, from my wife's current issue of Runner's World, in which a poet is featured for something other than being a poet (even if her poetry "fame" is what made her make the "I'm a runner" section).

Pretty cool. Go runners.

Top Reasons I Won't Subscribe To A Journal

1. They take too long in making a decision on the work submitted. If a journal neither replies to, or takes eight months or more to send a form rejection, I will not spend the money to buy a copy at Borders or get an annual subscription through the journal. I'm sorry, but I don't subscribe (no pun intended) to business as usual excuses.

If your staff is small then there should be less bureaucracy in decision making. If your staff is small and you are overloaded with submissions, perhaps your staff should spend more time reading submissions? That sounds harsh, but to me it's just common sense. If you are in charge of a journal, you are in charge of a business. Therefore, you have consumers to satisfy. But, too many journals tend to take the "Whoa is me" approach. Poetry is always dying! Poor young apprentice writers are always slaving through slush piles . . . and for no pay!! Not even a Slushie from the local convenience store!!!

Sorry. But, I quite enjoyed being on the CPR staff in grad school, not getting paid did suck, so did not getting a stipend, but I enjoyed banging my head through 500 poems over a weekend trying to find the 30 or so to come back to. And when I was co-editor, that was more fun, though still no pay or stipend. To me, these excuses are . . . excuses. Poor, artist-standard excuses.

2. The opposite of that diatribe is: free subscriptions, or free access. I like getting a year's worth of a journal and not just the issue my poem(s) is (or, are) in. I also like that Poetry Magazine now puts everything on-line, so I don't have to spend time at Borders or waiting at the mailbox to read a journal in which . . . I'll stay positive. So, it's nice to read amazing poems on-line. I love, love, love DIAGRAM and Boxcar Poetry Review. (And even if my work wasn't lucky to be in them, I'd still love them.) There's free, delicious work in every issue. And, they have friendly staffs.

3. Which brings me to: rude, crude writing. Badly worded Submission Guidelines, Form Rejections that include solicitations for a contest or annual subscription, or just plain annoying and sloppy editing in which editors: ignore queries, but somehow end up being able to e-mail mass e-mails that ask for my support (and yours, and yours). Seriously, I've waited that eight months, sent a very polite query, and you have time to ask me to spend money I don't have on you, when you can't spend time doing your job?

Surly, whiney, bitchy, catty. Honest. I'm not in a bad mood, not having a bad day, week, or summer.

4. I just don't have the money or time. As someone carving out time for an abundance of writing projects -- fiction and poetry -- teaching at two colleges in the city, being married, having a needy but adorable job, and being a devoted sports enthusiast...I just don't have 36 bucks to spend on a mixed bag of writing when I can read the journals in other places, for free! I read probably five hours at day, minimum. Poetry, fiction, news, sports news, student work. My wife and I have four four-shelf bookcases. One of them has two shelves full of journals. There is also another two shelves worth of books that "I've been meaning to read." Will I ever get to Auggie March? Or, will the next hot thing at the library distract me? Oh, Jose Saramago, how you entice me!

5. It's like dating. No matter how much I like you, you're just not into me. So, hot lady, out of spite, I am NOT going to propose we go on a long vacation together just so that I am reminded, at the end of the week (year), that you've enjoyed yourself (with my 36 dollars) and I am left with the bill and no reward (continuous rejection, especially formulaic ones, duh).

In an ideal world, I would support your existence, your beauty, if that is indeed what I found in you. But, alas, the world is NOT ideal, and there is no Midwestern field where I can sow money seeds and grow money crops.

If I did not consider my work worth it, gave up writing, and was JUST a reader of literature, then yes, I would subscribe to more journals, buy more single issues at bookstores.

But I am a writer, and why, as a writer, should I be sending my toiled cash to a place that obviously is full of staff that for one of an infinite number of reasons never supports my writing career by acknowledging my work in its pages? I have nothing against the journal for wanting to stay alive and be appreciated, but I am not going to be its life support if, in return, I am still in need of my own career support. Besides, I am a writer, and we all know how masochistic our lives are anyways. I know this is how you ensnare us. I can't keep falling your your tricks, Cincinnati Kid.

publishers

Top 5 Presses I would love to design and publish my first manuscript (and second...):

1. Graywolf Press: I own more of their books than any other, at least in individual poetry collections.

2. Yale, duh.

3. BOA

4. Four Way Books

5. Tupelo Press

must check out

The newest issue of Boxcar Poetry Review, which has nine sweet reads. My favorite was "Appalachian Aubade." I also liked "Revision" a fair amount!

I am also happy to know that my poem "on barns" ("Sun Peels the Skin Off a Barn") has a sister poem "on barns." However, the sister is at Boston Review ("Road Rising Into Deep Grass"), while my own barn burner (I'm lame) remains only in my first manuscript (currently Drowning In Defiance). Of course, if only BR would have more than personally rejected this poem and the others. Perhaps Ms. Steele stole my spot? Oh well, I love her poem.

I've been on vacation (which is more like an intense amount of driving, per usual). Also, had a non-poetry, real life dream-come-true. As Lynn appropriately described by tour of the Michigan Wolverines football facilities: "It's like this is one of those Make A Wish fulfilled wishes...my husband isn't dying, is he!?!"

Thanks to Anand and his father for making my childhood, and my adulthood, worthwhile! No, seriously, getting to watch the Michigan defense run through part of their first Fall practice: amazing.

On poetry news: tinkering, re-naming (of course), and avoiding new drafts. I have been in the perennial summer void.

I've read a lot of novels. I've been jotting down ideas for 2 novels and one short story collection. I am reading the largest novel I've yet to real (2666) and I'm too tired from staying up too late doing nothing, though. I need to get out drafts. Any drafts. Skunky beer drafts, even.

peace out,

C.

This little Bird (Julie Bird), stopped me at the fence..

with this brilliant couplet:

This cloud of breath’s a borrowing and lending

which links everyone, including me and you.

from:

Article of Faith

Et tu, Brute.

Brutus, even you.

Don’t tell me it’s not true,

the college city urban myth

that every breath you or I or anybody takes

contains a single molecule of air

expired with Caesar’s dying words.

To me it is an article of faith

that my blood, yours and everyone’s

is salt with two thousand year old oxygen

and, it follows, grains of every sneeze

or yawn or opera that there’s ever been.

Steam from Stephenson’s first Rocket ride,

songs that went to space and back,

each bark and war-cry, each World Cup whistle blast,

Spartacus shouting I’m Spartacus,

Kirk Douglas shouting I’m Spartacus—

particles of these are sherbet in our throats.

And this is where I make observance :

the front row seat in the stalls

for the opening speech of the final act,

at the foot of the soap-box and the busker’s pitch

and in the market, where the man who sells fruit

is zesting the air with his citrus patter.

Here, my lungs are nets to catch

this glitterfall of exhalation

to keep with Caesar’s sigh and Cassius’s kiss.

This cloud of breath’s a borrowing and lending

which links everyone, including me and you.

Do you believe it too ?

Breathe, if you do.

may I recommend...

Elizabeth & the Catapult. If you like jazz-influenced pop rock, or the sound of Pop Rocks fizzing in your mouth (remember this great candy?), then you might like the debut album, Taller Children. The title-track song "Taller Children" encompasses what I most find worthy in music (including poetry): wry lyrics, just enough attitude in Elizabeth Ziman's subtle straightforwardness and pitch, appropriate use of repetition that will eventually unravel about 2/3 the way through, and a guitar solo that reminds us once again how influential the Beatles are and will be. So this last one doesn't really enter into "poetry," but poets, Get over yourselves . . . pretty please.

"Race You" is an elementary-aged child's escape from the doldrums of school. Of course, this is the world the song implicitly presents, but any light-hearted fool who needs release will like the magic world Ziman offers as narrator...almost as if you and her on a first date:

I'm gonna race you, race you, race you,

race you back home.

The sun's goin' down now,

and I'm ready to go,

yeah I'm ready to go.

/.../

Cause it's a shot-put down the beaten path:

one step to the right, three to the left.

The moon so high. The wind so fast.

It makes us feel like Alices."

The frenetic pace of these lines add to a moment where logic is set aside for child's play, and as a listener I am perpetually pulled down into Wonderland. Charming.

My only caution is the song "Right Next to You," which risks being elevator jazz. Friction slowed down the music too much here in Track 8. Thankfully the foggy moment clears up in the preceding "Everybody Knows," in which the piano is stripped away just as we are made aware that there's too much jazz! Instead, we get an a cappella introduction interlaced with a background Stomp-like beat that'll make you snap your fingers (or, if you're sitting, pretend you're steppin' on the bass drum pedal of your imagination).

...and this, apparently, is me attempting to be a music reviewer! Eh, at least I wrote something. Now I must get back to menial Summer tasks.

CANNOT WAIT ANY LONGER TO SEE HARRY POTTER TONIGHTS (yes, TONIGHTS)!!!