Yesterday as I was writing my little post about how I perceive the literary world through the lens of my AS, I kept cutting myself short because, well because I have an almost compulsory need to explain myself ad nauseum. So, that I am here this morning talking more about all of this should not be a huge surprise. I certainly saw it coming.
First, I want to thank those who took the time to read yesterday's post and made comment. It really does put off a lot of the frustration i feel on a regular basis over the idea I might be saying things and being brushed off. I would also like to thank Shaindel Beers for pointing me in the direction of another writer with AS a few posts earlier. I wrote to her, and even though I have not heard back (after all, the prospects of dealing with another AS writer is not always a pleasant thought) I am certainly open to the idea of seeking out other writers with AS from time to time to see what's what.
I do not feel at all upset about piggy-backing on my last post so quickly because this will actually begin the discussion of what I said I was going to talk about---my Alexithymia, and how it affects my writing. But more about that in a later post. Right now I need to stay on topic and talk about what I started with.
I want to add another number to the list of things I talked about. I want to go into a little more depth with actual Poetry Business. What follows are a few examples, illustrations made with the best of my ability, to show you what I feel like when poetry business happens. And when over 100 of your Facebook friends are poets, you tend to get a lot of this news all of the time.
The Poetry Editor for The New England Review, C. Dale Young, is stepping down after almost 20 years of holding that position. I know C. Dale in the Facebook way you might know someone. I have spoken with C. Dale, posted on his thread, e-mailed him a few times regarding certain issues which have come up over the years, and he has been kind enough to take me seriously when things were serious and joke with me when things are funny. Now, this is not about C. Dale, but he is part of this first example.
When C. Dale made his announcement today who would be replacing him, it wasn't all of a sudden made real for me---I didn't freak out about who or that it was really happening, I freaked out over something entirely different. I freaked out at how everyone was talking about the announcement, how speculation began with a poet innocently asking if anyone knew who the new editor was and all of the 'knowing' and 'wink wink' talk which ensued. Are they a secret cabal of poets who, like the Illuminati, are moving towards world domination? No. Absolutely not. But my brain started to review the entire list of reasons why I will never be a real poet and this . . . this latest discussion of who is in the know and who is decidedly not, is just the latest piece to the puzzle of why I cannot get to Poet Island with all of the other poets.
The next example is a result of the North Carolina Governor naming a self-published poet as Poet Laureate. From everything I read, at least half the anger directed at the governor was not aimed at selecting a poet who was talented enough to properly represent the state, but that he had, in true Neo-Conservative/Tea Party Bully tactics, appointed said poet without consulting the North Carolina Arts Council and picking a poet from their short list. To me that screams elitism and idiocy. To me, if the governor of a state has the right to appoint the Poet Laureate all on his own, then you get what you get. Do I think the poet in question should have been named? Probably not, but so much of the poetry community's outrage was aimed at the process, leaving the spirit of poetry to choke and gasp.
Finally (well, not really, but this is all I am going to share), my focus, or special interests affect my writing, and when I write, I tend to write about the same thing for extended periods. I write about something until the wheels fall off. While this might be a good thing because it helps with my book manuscripts being more than just a gathering of poems, it means editors get really tired of reading what I send them as a matter of course, and what I tend to focus on has usually ended up being, for lack of a better phrase, outside of the general realm of popularity.
Take for example my romp into the realm of ars poetica. Everyone loves the occasional ars poetica poem, a poem which turns poetry or the poetry world on its ear, and I would get a lot of poems published. Problem? Nobody wants to look at an entire manuscript of them. I was very lucky to get two chapbook manuscripts of them published by Foothills Publishing. Another problem? I am about 15 poems away from having enough poetry to make for a really great full length manuscript, but my focus has shifted and I can't for the life of me write another decent ars poetica poem. It's all landscape meditation and 19th Century Mormon Agrarian poetry, which as you can imagine, wows all of the editors.
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That's quite enough for now. I sure feel better. How about you?
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