Betting on an Acceptance

It couldn’t be any harder to bet on a horse or gamble on a stock than it is to submit poems. Even if there’s no exchange of money, there’s a sense of sending out your soul for approval. 

Journal editors ask that we, the submitters, *read* the journal before submitting. Definitely do your homework, but even so, there are tremendous odds against one of your poems being selected.

How often have I chosen, printed, folded and placed five poems I’m sure are my best work in an envelope? How often have I waited months for a positive response, and then received that horrible super-flat envelope (which, I might add, I addressed to myself)?

Rejection is humbling, but if you keep trying, sometimes your horse comes in first, or the stock rises. Just enough times to keep going.

Performance Poetry - Where it Starts

Ouka Leele, one of the photographers in a show called Women & Women 

In March, words will blow around me like a storm. 

Slowly, over the next weeks, I plan to tell you a bit about three performances I have scheduled – all are poetry-based, but each one unique.

One of the events is a collaborative word-response to an exhibit at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque. The exhibit showcases enormous photographs by five female artists. I am working with three women poets to create a group response. 

The first step was personal. A few weeks ago, I stood in front of each photograph and looked at it. I looked into the room of each photograph. When words came to me, I wrote them down. I wrote sloppy descriptions, and I wrote about how each photograph made me feel. I wrote words like “polywog clouds” because that’s what I saw.  

Silk Shirt Metaphor - Part 2

As you can see, I like choices. This is a photo of a few of my artworks. A few! Really.

Let me go back to that statement: “Writing well is like a closetful of silk shirts.” I want something lovely that’s not super-fancy. Something I can put on and take off again. I need to be able to change my mind; that’s the kind of person I am.

I want to be able to like one sort of writing one day, and have an entirely different opinion about what I want to dress myself in the next.

Today, for example, I’m wondering which silk shirt should I wear, Stick with me as I empty out the writing closet. I’m going to hold each thought up and feel it -, by which I mean, I’m going to write about good writing. And at the same time, I’m going to be continually trying to figure it all out.

Audio Saucepan: The Gathering Episode

Thornton Dial's artwork - There's nothing like seing it in person. The sloppiness, the color, the rough edges... 

“Audio Saucepan: The Gathering Episode” airs tomorrow night on KSFR. Every week I give my shows episode titles. Some day we should talk about titles, but I’ll leave that topic for now. I’ve written a lot of titles over the years, and I’ve rewritten a number of them.

Tomorrow’s show includes the poem “Boston Year” by Elizabeth Alexander (from The 100 Best African-American Poems; published by Sourcebooks); an excerpt from the short story “Loot” by Nadine Gordimer (from her book Life Times; published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and an a quote from the artist Thornton Dial (from Hard Truths: The Art of Thornton Dial; Prestel). 

Public Radio - Nadine Gordimer

Nadine Gordimer

Nadine Gordimer’s story "Loot" rolls around so smoothly in my mouth. I heard her read it some years ago at Santa Fe’s premier performance space, The Lensic, as part of a Lannan Foundation Reading & Conversation. It will be fun, and tongue-twisting, to read into the station’s half-falling apart microphone “feet slipped and slithered on seaweed and sank in soggy sand, gasping sea-plants gaped at them, no one remarked there were no fish…”

Try reading that aloud. It’s different from seeing the words on the page; these words especially are demanding to be spoken. The whole story is like that. It keeps rushing along, with its litany of lists and commas. And, even though I’m not reading this part on the air, I love the image and the wording of “disintegrated human ribs and metatarsals.” There’s a glorious rhythm to that, even in its appalling imagery. Say it aloud. Watch what your mouth does.

Poetry and Public Radio

Every week I host and produce a radio show on KSFR, Santa Fe Public Radio. For six years, I put together a three-hour jazz show and, each week, I’d toss a poem into the mix, even though it didn't exactly belong.

Last summer, I switched to a 1-hour show and an entirely new format. Instead of playing one jazz track after another – classic, contemporary and everything in between, I began wanting to take my listeners on a journey into more poems, philosophical fragments and literary excerpts. I broadened the musical selections, too. You’ll still get a dose of jazz, but now you’ll hear  it intermixed with music from across the globe.

The show is called “Audio Saucepan” and it streams live at ksfr.org (5-6 PM Mountain Time). Tune in sometime. You might not like it all, but you won’t be bored, I promise.

The Silk Shirt Metaphor

The title of this blog is a metaphor. Blogging in general is a metaphor for something else. A metaphor for some kind of feeling, perhaps.

Metaphors work best when they make a connection for you, something you’ve never quite thought of before, but once you do think of it, or once someone tells you that this might be like that, it makes absolutely perfect sense. Metaphors are one of those things we all use sometimes, but when you start reading and writing poetry, they become much more familiar.

I’ve decided writing well is more like a closetful of silk shirts than it is like a platter of cupcakes. Don’t believe me? Well, okay. You’re entitled to your opinion.