People are walking furiously to and fro outside my office door. It sounds like Pamplona out there.
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Last night I got banned from a blog and then received a rant from the blog-owner over email about his ex. Non sequiturs abound.
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Community is, always has, and always will be a huge part of poetry. Of course you have your Dickinsons but--come on!
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So an editor solicited some work from me after having seen some poems online that he liked. After waiting for what seemed an unreasonable amount of time, I queried him via email. He mailed back promptly, indicating that they had never received my submission. So imagine my surprise when I got home last night and found a form rejection from this editor in my mailbox. And the odd thing is, it was completely blank. I've submitted to this particular journal at least two dozen times over the past 8 years or so, and the editor ALWAYS scribbles something on my rejections, and occasionally scribbles a lot! Odd, this editing thing.
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I wrote a poem for my pal Josh a few weeks back. One of my poetic comrades looked at the first draft and proclaimed it "grossly sentimental." So I revised it. I basically cut words and lines. And now it's a little minimalist gem. Heh.
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It's odd--the poems coming together to form the second section of the 81 poems project seem somehow less coherent than the first batch--disjointed, darker, more chaotic. The first ms. was written in about six weeks. I've been working on the second batch for over six months.
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If you read her letters, it is clear that Emily Dickinson had a community -- of readers, of other writers, even of editors (like Higginson). Her agoraphobia did not keep her from seeking out literary community however she could, and her poems were often directly addressed to her friends (and included as gifts in letters). I guess her "friend only" policy made her an OUTRAGEOUSLY EVIL EXAMPLE of poetry's cultural elite.
I have come to the conclusion that people are f*ckholes. Though not all people are f*ckholes, only just the people who complain angrily when people are brought together through a mutual love for poetry. HOW DARE THEY HAVE A MUTUAL INTEREST IN ART!! THIS MUST BE STOPPED! bah
What is particularly appalling about that stance is that poets as a group are bizarre, maladapted, distraught, crazed, ugly, weird, poor dressers, high-strung, etc. -- or, I mean, if you have the slighest love and dedication to poetry, you will be embraced by the other loathesome despite your every loathsomeness (my every loathsomeness) -- and all this loathesomeness is okay, because we have the poems. So how overwhelmingly loathsome must a person be to be rejected by the rejects of the world -- the poets? And then how loathesome to complain?
But I have heard how loathesome. Pretty damn loathsome.
AB
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