Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Resolutions

So I'm finally falling back into the rhythm of classes, teaching and taking them. We talked about Ammons and Gluck today. I asked several questions I only half knew the answers to and was happy to have smart things said by the class. I know this last semester is going to move fast, but I'm thankful that I'm concentrating solely on poetry--I've been writing some things that I don't quite hate. See below. But enough about me, how are you?

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Killer opening line of the now:

"I remember how it was to drive in gravel,"

from the second section of Roethke's "Journey to the Interior"

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Drafted another sonnet for the Aerials sequence the other night, I haven't yet lived with it for much time, so I imagine I'll regret posting it here, but thankfully it will disappear soon.

*plish*

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I've decided I'm not going to send out anymore submissions this semester. The practical reason being I don't want to send journals SASEs with an address I'll no longer be living at in four months, but also because I think it will do me some good to sit on these new-ish poems for awhile, to let them marinate more than I usually do before firing them off into the world. I may make an exception for Tar River Poetry, a journal I really dig that's given me some encouragement in the past. They have relatively short reading periods, but their submisisons are online, plus they are usually lightning fast. Anyway, something to ponder.

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Apartment view just after the rain:


2 comments:

Keith Montesano said...

I've been thinking about my next "move" also, and that's a reason I'm hesitant to send new work out in the upcoming months.

But man, with so many good journals either accepting via email or some kind of submissions manager, you could certainly get a good batch out there.

Or you can always have the SASEs sent to your permanent address -- something I'm considering if I get my ass writing and decide to send out before the summer comes.

But don't let moving be an excuse for you not to get poems out in the world... because it's really easy to do.

And poems need to be out in the world.

Luke Johnson said...

You're probably right--the more I think about it the more I think I'm just giving myself an excuse to be lazy. Off the top of my head I can think of 5 pipe-dream journals that take submissions online (Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, AGNI, VQR, West Branch). Point taken.