mimsy and outgrabe

Writing here last week about "weird blotches of language" prompted me, this week, to revisit those pieces and shape them into something looking more like poetry. Next step: have them sounding more like poetry.  It's good to have some drafts of poems building, albeit slowly. It's been too long a time since I've done this, really. Exhibit A: How I torment my teenager I've been looking a little bit at submitting, too, but just the MS because I don't really have enough individual poems to send out (and I'm trying not to simultaneously submit -- for some reason I can't exactly remember, I made that decision a few months ago . . . ).  Of course, for the past two years, I've more or less thought, "this is the last year I send out Fabulous Beast," and then I come across some publisher or contest and think, "hey, it's worth a try." But I'm doubting more and more that it's worth a try. I have a good num...

I really should expect by now that with Good News comes News I'm Not Quite as Excited About. I received my first rejection from the contest circuit for the full-length ms of Fabulous Beast , and I'm not going to pretend I'm overjoyed about it. It put a depressing final note on yesterday, which was filled with conferences and grading and a really deep kind of exhaustion, as I didn't sleep very much the night before. My eyes were red and swollen and I'm actually thankful to the three or so students that stood me up, because it bought me more time during the day to grade and get myself organized for the week.  I was leaving the office, still really tired but feeling a little satisfied, knowing that I'd managed to get a good number of things done, and then I received the email form rejection. I don't mind the email rejection -- a true child of the information age, I definitely prefer the speed with which I can find out that a journal or book doesn't wa...