At one of the many events I attended this fall, a magazine editor, reflecting on downsides of a generally rewarding job, sighed and said something like “so many bad poems.” What’s hardest for me about selecting poems for Shenandoah is how many good poems I receive, way more than I can accept, given a limited budget and small production staff. “Good” can encompass a lot of values, but I think what I mean here is not only skill–the sense that someone has read a lot of poetry and is crafting their diction, linebreaks, etc. with care and knowledge of the options–but something like sincerity. I sometimes roll my eyes at the word “sincerity” when applied to literature, because art isn’t life. Yet it matters when a reader can sense a person behind the poem, when the piece conveys vulnerability or a sharp mind in motion or searching honesty, especially in this AI-blighted moment. I often feel moved and intrigued by submissions that don’t quite make the difficult final cut. It’s both beautiful and heart-piercing to know how many dedicated writers are trying to deliver their work to readerships.
With all of these feelings, I’ve been whittling down a pool of entries for the Graybeal-Gowen Poetry Prize during the past few weeks–I try to give at least the small mercy of a timely decision–and finished late Friday. Some of the poems I rejected are staying with me, as well as the terrific pieces on the finalist list.
Editing has both steeled and tenderized me. Sometimes knowing what it’s like on the other side of Submittable dulls my will to try–how does anybody ever rise to the top? Should I even bother drafting a poem if I don’t have a shiny, high-stakes idea? (The answer to that is yes: the process has to matter more than the product.) But I understand now that when I’m rejected, I may still have reached one or a few appreciative readers who lingered over the work, thought about it for a while. That’s not nothing. Reading submissions reminds me, too, that persistence matters. As an editor who has rejected good writers multiple times, I root for those stalwart subbers to break through with a poem I cannot pass up. I also respect poets who are just done with the discouraging struggle to be published in traditional ways–or perhaps done with my rejections specifically! There are many ways to write a “good” poem and many ways to share it. As often as I think “this poem has strengths but isn’t in its best possible version yet,” the writer might counter, validly, that I’m just not the right reader.
On the subject of my own persistence, because I am indeed bullheaded about trying: I just broke through on an honor I’d applied to for years without success. I’m going to Homer, Alaska for a Storyknife residency during the second half of April. I almost didn’t send in an application because I sensed that I would never make this particular cut. Most of us applicants don’t, most of the time. But a friend encouraged me, so I decided okay, one more time. I feel like one of the perverse critters on the Wheel of Fortune card just grinned at me: gotcha.
My otherwise beautiful and stimulating trip to New Mexico last weekend ended in a 50+ hour sojourn home with many boring, stressful delays and zigzags you don’t want to hear about–although may curses rain down upon this vengeful, tyrannical president and his transportation secretary forevermore for making travel harder than it was already (among much worse crimes). I hereby wash away the aftertaste with some snaps from exhibitions in Santa Fe, a city famous for art galleries. Most are from Site Santa Fe: first a row of art by writers who have some Santa Fe connection, then a few pieces I found memorable. I’d never heard of Agnes Pelton, whose surreal images were influenced by Theosophy–wouldn’t that make a stunning poetry book cover? There was a whole room in the O’Keeffe museum devoted to spirals, a figure I’ve been contemplating in poems for more than a year now. And the skunks by Awa Tsireh–I just love them. (The featured image of Mycocosmic among the shrooms, by the way, is thanks to Jeannine Hall Gailey.)
The last row: a peek ahead at late fall/ winter events: more literary luck, however you slice it. If you’re in Miami, you can see more about my SWWIM reading at the Betsy Hotel with Haya Pomrenze on the EventBrite page.
I know plenty of people who loathe Thanksgiving for valid reasons, but I hope that for the United Statesians among my readers, many of whom get a couple of days off, it’s at least an edge-free week for you, with lots of art, rest, and hunks of pie. I’ll be chopping vegetables for family in a Pittsburgh rental, near my spouse’s parents who aren’t up to much travel anymore, although they took epic trips back in the day.
LESLEY WHEELER 