Monday, March 22, 2010

Back Like Cooked Crack (Maybe Not Quite THAT Back, but Close)

Back in the Blue Ridge after an amazing two-week spring break. Great to spend some time with old friends in North Carolina and Seattle, though, it's definitely nice to be back in my house, with my hound-dog, my mountains, my bed. We've only got 8 weeks left of school, which seems surreal, especially with a 4-day weekend for Easter and my own 4 day weekend for AWP. I imagine it will all happen pretty fast, which is sort of exciting. I'm ready for Summer, for a new place, for whatever comes next. I might talk more about my desire to leave my current gig (which includes housing, meals, and health insurance, yikes.) later, but then again, I might not. Suffice to say: it just seems like the right thing.

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After an encouraging note from long-time dream journal The Southern Review, I'm energized to send out some poems, something which I've been much more lax about doing in the recent months. Some places I really dig that I haven't sent poems to in a while: Boulevard, Hayden's Ferry Review, Massachusetts Review, Cave Wall, Pleiades, Western Humanities Review, and Cincinnati Review, just to name a few. Side-question for the blogosphere: how soon is too soon to send some poems back to Southern Review, or, any editor who offers encouragement?

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Mr. Johnson added that the book’s migration to the digital realm will turn the solitary act of reading — “a direct exchange between author and reader” — into something far more social and suggested that as online chatter about books grows, “the unity of the book will disperse into a multitude of pages and paragraphs vying for Google's attention.”

(from the NYT)

Interesting article. Though, since I'm blogging, giving you only a brief out-of-context quotation, does that mean I'm part of the problem?


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Killer first line of the moment:

"Day wound to a heel-spur in the yellow light of winter,"

from Judy Jordan's "Prayers to My Mother"
(Carolina Ghost Woods, LSU Press, 2000)

Loving this collection, by the way.

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3 comments:

Matthew said...

Re: the rebound send. I'm no expert here (i.e. not the editor giving the encouragement), but I'd base it on whether you really think you have great new stuff to send them. I've been a bit quick in the past, amped on the bit of sweet possibility that is the near-miss, but as long as you haven't been bombarding them with submissions and you feel your shit is the shit they need, why not send now? It always takes a bit to get to work after it arrives, so the break will be built in. Best of luck.

Traci Brimhall said...

I usually send during the next reading period for a couple of reasons. One, I've read it several times on submission guidelines to only send once per reading period, and I'm afraid of annoying editors. Two, because you might be super stoked about the poems you're sending, but in between your encouraging note and sending new poems, they've seen perhaps hundred of others and probably accepted a few, thereby lowering your chances. But I also know of someone who turned around the next day after an encouraging note from a journal, sent more work and got one taken, so do whatever feels right to you.

Luke Johnson said...

Thanks for the input, Matt and Traci. My gut tells me to send again right away, but my head knows that the poems that garnered this kind note (she called my poems "smart, thoughtful, and well crafted. please send more work."!!) were the best I have in the hopper. So I suppose I'll wait a few months and see if I churn out anything, keeping TSR at the top of my list (though, they've been there since I started submitting in fall of 2007). Onward.