I'm doing 16 things
hullo. my 1st entry over here, i came through the lovely MissOtter.
i sit here tonight editing my collection of “possibles” for my MFA program’s thesis/manuscript. i’m in my last semester of my low-residency grad prog., and this is my 2nd chapbook length collection i’ve ever compiled. the first was for my college thesis, i called it “the skunk at the garden party.” i am thinking of “assasination brunch(eon)” for this one. teapartyer much?
sorry. a bit lit over here. trying to say, well, my awful (to-me) advisor in undergrad in a never-again repeated rare-moment of complimentary commentary once said very softly under her breath, “well, you’ll have to publish a book of poetry in your lifetime…” in an “of course” tone. and then immediately returned to making me squirm. as if you-must-and-should-will?-be-published was a given, as if i should it any way know that is how she felt about my…ouevre? well.
it’s funny. being published in journals doesn’t appeal as much as it should as a necessary evil of being a certain caliber of poet in this world (i’m sorry is it taboo to talk this bluntly online about this stuff? i do in my real life w/ cohort—writers both very and not-at-all published sorts, desolee)
i think the completion, the thingitude, the solidity of an objet/book appeals as a work of art the most. which is why i don’t feel angsty/troubled about the one day actual published thing (and it being far off/out of my horizon-of-conception of the moment) when i gift and make and sell zines i sew/illustrate of poems. the booklust is sated by that, somehow. so i know it’s not the official nature (fait accompli) of a big publishing company that appeals, i suppose it’s the physical distribution that entices me. and that’s so much easier when you’re not the distributor, maybe?
as jack terricloth of world/inferno friendship society says (i hope i’m not mashing it up here), “success is the ability to go to failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”
and then some.
