Time is the best teacher.
Sadly, it also kills all its students …
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Today I’ve spent my writing time doing what I’ve been promising myself I’d do for months.
Yes, I’ve actually gone on to submittable.com (the website most poetry magazines use to manage submissions) and submitted five of my recent poems to literary magazines. It’s a scary process and most likely no one will publish these poems.
But you never know. The fortunes of poetry might be with me this week. This last summer I was able to attend a poetry conference and did attend a few workshops on “How to Get Published.” The stories are daunting. One novelist described sending out nearly 200 queries to publishing agents before getting a book contract. The poets tended to fair worse as there are fewer opportunities there.
There seems to be a certain alchemy where, skill, good writing, and landing in the right inbox on the right day is the magic combination – when you are blessed with an editor who will publish your stuff. You rarely get paid. The words “poets” and “starving artist” often are used in the same sentence.
So why try to publish? Validation, and need are two reasons. I’ve invested a lot of effort in my writing and I think these words deserve an audience beyond just my computer hard drive. Perhaps that’s a bit egotistical, but there are days when I read a poem I’ve written and say to myself, “That’s good and needs to be shared.”
Validation is that other thing – perhaps the more common side of me, the part where self-doubt enters in and I just look at my work and say, “This is crap and I’m a horrible poet.” Then there is that unspoken part of every open mic reading or poetry workshop I’ve attended: The “real” poets are the ones with published poems. Of course that’s not true, but it is that thing that quickly separates a room into the published and unpublished.
It’s a kind of badge of honor.
And if just just one editor choses my work, then maybe, perhaps I could get that self-doubt to be quiet or at least take a break.
Maybe.
Friday Wisdom – Halloween Note
Never knock on death’s door.
Ring the bell and run —
he hates that …
Wind
It’s windy in California. The dangerous winds of autumn. The leaves of the trees are starting to turn color while the grass dries. The rains of winter haven’t touched the hills in seven months. The air is dry. Years of drought have killed millions of trees and a bonfire stands ready for that single spark.
Californians have always risked living in the land set on the great Pacific Ring of Fire. Earthquakes and volcanoes rip through this land – shaping it, molding it, pushing the earth up from the ocean depths where grass, tree, and bear come to live in the sun. A land of extremes.
Santa Ana winds. Dry, hot, and blowing inland to the sea. Backwards. The air doesn’t bring in the refreshing sea air or the cleansing rain. It brings dust. It dries the grass, rattles the roof and swings the power lines. It always comes in the fall.
Power. Our modern world is driven by power. Electricity driving the engine of the world. Lights, TVs, stoves, refrigerators, cell phones, and computers. We’ve lost the ability to see the night sky or grow our own food. Each technological advance turns up the need for power lines across the forest and over the golden grass.
It only takes a spark. A carelessly thrown cigarette, a lawn mower hits a rock, a campfire imprudently managed, the wind pushes an old tree into an electric line or the rusty clamp on a high tension line breaks in the Santa Ana gale …
Now we again watch as fire fills the air with smoke. 200,000 of our neighbors are ordered to flee the flames. 78 square miles are on fire and to prevent more sparks the electricity has been turned off to 2.7 million people. Now they sit in the dark, fearing that they may need to join the exodus.
And in their control centers, offices, and seats of power, those charged with preventing this tragedy again prove they are unable to protect those they are suppose to serve.
Again nature proves its power over us.
And again we fail to learn the lesson we’re being taught.
Andrew's View of the Week 