Saturday, February 6, 2010

Neo Transcends the Poetic Line

Getting ready to push the revamped version of After the Ark onto some more unsuspecting book contests. My list for February/March deadlines (feel free to guffaw at my prospects): National Poetry Series, Morton Prize at Sarabande, Four Way Books Intro Prize, Agnes Prize at University of Pitt., and the AWP Donald Hall thinger-ma-bobber.

I looked at my MFA thesis the other day, from which this manuscript has evolved, and cringed mightily. It's a much better collection now, I think, which scares me. But what if a year from now I cringe at the February 2010 version? What if a year from then I think back on my year of dramatic monologue prose poems inspired by the Matrix trilogy and realize I might have waited too long and turned the collection into complete crap? I guess all I can be sure of is I'm proud of the manuscript as it stands right now--there's no way to know whether or not I'll still like it tomorrow. If I don't, I guess I'll just have to keep writing poems.

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Had two poems accepted by Nimrod today. Yet another place where it's taken me a few tries to crack, yet another place where I'm grateful to have my work appear...


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Killer first line of the moment:

"Rain is holding its breath--water-damaging"

from Alex Lemon's "Look Close"
(Satellite Convulsions: Poems from Tin House, Tin House Books, 2008)


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[*Something about how much it snowed*]


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How come Skillz doesn't get more love? Love that Million Dollar Backpack album...been listening to him since From Where??

Anyway, late pass:

2 comments:

Sandy Longhorn said...

Good luck with the contests and congrats on Nimrod!

Matthew said...

I've got about the same line up for my ms. Cross your fingers and hope to....