Milestone
As those of you who read the blog regularly know, I've made little effort to publish my own poetry. For years my inner editor has been throwing cold water on my writerly ambitions. To give you a sense just how reluctant I've been, three years ago I won a scholarship to attend a writer's conference, and the poet teaching my workshop told me I was "ready." Nonetheless, I couldn't bring myself to start submitting. It wasn't simply that I was afraid my poems might be rejected. I worried that if my work were accepted, I'd be embarrassed by its publication. Looking back on the poems I was writing in '02, I still think it was the right call.
Fast forward to last month. After a visit from Scop & Lyco during which we all read our work aloud, I let Seth talk me into finally sending out some poems. And today I got my very first rejection!--a form letter vaguely encouraging resubmission, with a hand-written note from the editor. I can't think of a nicer way to be let down! It wasn't ink from the regal pen of Christian Wiman, but the journal does get a four in Jeff's ranking system. Between you, me, and the fifty other people reading this blog, I'm giddy as a schoolgirl! I don't plan to celebrate every scrap of paper that comes waltzing through my mailbox, but I couldn't resist making a note of this small milestone.
I will let you know as soon as someone pops my SASE though...
Comments
Hey, Ginger!
"congrats" on this. I think it's pretty great that you finally decided to start sending work out. It'll find a home soon, I'm sure.
Tony
Posted by: Tony | November 3, 2005 11:27 PM
I think I was about 28 or 29, and had been writing poems for 15 years or so, before I started sending my poems out to magazines. (I'm not counting here a couple of attempts very early naive attempts when I didn't have a very good sense of what I was doing.)
My first time I published a poem in a magazine (it was in the early '80's) happened when I was handing out copies of one of my poems, leaflet-style, at a small press book show, and a poetry magazine editor a friend had introduced me to asked to publish the poem. So, it happened like that.
For a while, I put rejection slips up on a bulletin board on the wall across from where I often sat and wrote. I did this as an act of defiance, an exercise to toughen myself.
It makes great sense to me that you've waited until you felt ready. I still don't send out large numbers of poems to magazines. Partly that's because I don't write poems in enough quantity to be sending out new batches two or three times a month. (Also, I don't work in the academic world which means I don't have to worry about publishing in order to get tenure, etc.)
I say go for it, definitely. The important thing, the essential thing, is always the writing. To write what feels true. Stronger than embarassment.
Posted by: Lyle Daggett | November 3, 2005 11:49 PM
Hey Ginger,
Nice milestone! I'm glad to hear you are sending your work out there; it's damn good.
Posted by: Jess | November 4, 2005 01:46 AM
Good for you, keep sending stuff out. It won't seem so fun after a bunch of 'em, though. :-P
I hope you'll send some poems the Eleventh Muse's way someday too...
Posted by: Steve S | November 4, 2005 01:43 PM
Good for you, keep sending stuff out. It won't seem so fun after a bunch of 'em, though. :-P
I hope you'll send some poems the Eleventh Muse's way someday too...
Posted by: Steve S | November 4, 2005 01:44 PM
Please please please don't publish too soon.
Good for you for having reticence about it. I regret almost all of mine.
Posted by: Laura | November 4, 2005 06:01 PM
Thanks, Tony!
Lyle, your story sounds incredibly familiar. I just turned 30 and have been writing poems on and off since I was 14. My 'exception' is a single batch of poems I sent off to The Atlantic Monthly in my early 20's! And yes, the writing is always, always, always the thing.
Jess, thanks for the good words!
Steve, hopefully I've got a long way to go before this gets depressing. :-P But I know what you mean. I have to get departmental permission via a writing sample to take an advanced poetry workshop next semester, and if I get turned down for that I think I'll be devastated.
Laura, in my opinion, you're still young enough that you needn't seriously regret a thing. Think about all the bad first books written by the likes of WCW, WB Yeats, etc. If there's one thing *I* regret, it's not doing more to write through my aversion to my own mistakes. Beside, I've read some of your published poems, and no matter what *you* think of its specific manifestations, your very real talent is all over them.
G.
Posted by: Ginger | November 5, 2005 10:33 AM