Persona Poems, Rejections, Decluttering, and Trash Pandas

Since abandoning Effbook and InstaTimeSuck, I've been waaaaay out of the poetry-world drama loop. This has been a very good thing. Of course, sometimes I have twinges of Fear of Missing Out, but they are really, and somewhat surprisingly, few and far between. Also somewhat surprisingly, I've discovered that I like minding my own business.

I did catch wind, however, of "that poem" published in The Nation in late July from fellow poetry bloggers, who have been more or less my one way of staying connected, however loosely, to the poetry world at-large (which is, ya know, still fairly small). I'm not going to rehash all of that here, but I thought that Kristy Bowen wrote a good meditation on crafting persona poems as a result, and so I'm sharing it here.

August has begun its now-typical delivery of multiple rejections, as most of the awards and contests to which I submitted my manuscript earlier in the year (and one proposal to a conference-of-which-we-won't-speak-because-OH-MY-GOD) have reached their decision-making deadlines. So there's that happiness. I'm watching my list of submissions dwindle on Duotrope and it's both depressing and kind of relief-inducing. I'm nearing the point where my MS won't be out in the world at all. That makes me both weepy (well, it would, if I was a crier) and kind of elated. One can't be rejected if one's not putting oneself out there. Of course, one can't be published, either. 

But there's a small collection of poems growing still -- and after I get some distance from them and then return and edit them with some discretion, perhaps I'll begin submitting those. Maybe I should just set my sights on journal publication and give up this book nonsense.

That last sentence is probably disingenuous but I'm more or less thinking out loud with this blog. 

Our house has come a few steps further to being decluttered/cleaned up after this week. We even had a contractor come look at the bathroom to discuss finishing the renovation, because A. separated his shoulder in a BMX accident (you read that correctly) and I've run out of time on which to work my severely-limited magic on that particular project. 

Class prep is going far more slowly than I wanted/anticipated but that's what happens when I have poems to write. I'm not complaining. Currently. I might have regrets in September or October, but I doubt it.

I am about to leave for another last week in Virginia before the school year begins, too. I'm looking forward not so much to Virginia's August heat as I am to seeing my family and also some friends I've been neglecting/hiding from all summer. This desire to slink away from the world and hide out is intense and very real,  but also sometimes one needs to pull one's head out of one's ass and talk to the people one loves. Or those people might not want to talk to . . .  one  . . . anymore. 

I'm beginning to get all screwy with my grammar so this is probably a good place to end this post. I'll leave you with a photo of the adorable little asshole who's been cheerfully destroying our trash can/recycling area (despite using bungee cords to lock the lids down) each night this summer:

He's so cute! And such a jerk.