New Year So Far, Poem in Natural Bridge, Lunch Dates with Poets and Poet Letters, and 2019 Goals

Sunrise on the New Year

Happy Brand New Year!

Good morning and Happy New Year 2019! Hope you had a wonderful New Year’s celebration! Miraculously I wasn’t too sick on New Year’s Eve, so Glenn and I were able to do a daytime stroll to enjoy the sunshine and then go out in the evening to Willows Lodge where we toasted and listened to a live band and generally enjoyed ourselves – we got home in time to watch the Space Needle Fireworks, by which time the city was locked in icy fog, so we were happy to be home and warm! We ate grapes for luck, and then I stayed up late afterwards writing a new poem and working on my new manuscript – still in its birth phases, but definitely shaping up.  Auspicious writing start – actually writing a poem within ten minutes of 2019!

Sylvia in linen closet, her favorite reading space

First Poem of the New Year in Natural Bridge!

Thanks to Natural Bridge for publishing my first new poem of the new year – “Self-Portrait as MRI.” Here’s Sylvia hiding in the linen closet with a copy, and here’s the poem:

From Natural Bridge’s newest issue

Sarah Mangold and I in black and white

Poet Lunches and Reading Poet Letters

One of my goals for 2019, besides getting more sleep (I average four hours a night, which I hear from doctors is not enough, what?) is getting out more and spending more time with wonderful creative people! Yesterday I had the chance to meet up for lunch with the lovely and talented local poet Sarah Mangold. I had run into her work at Open Books and liked it, so I was happy to have this opportunity to talk over coffee. And now I’m looking forward to reading her chapbook, Cupcake Royale! Nothing cheers me up like spending time with artists, writers, and musicians – I think it decreases the feeling of “I am crazy for doing this” and always inspires me to do more in my own creative life!

I’ve been reading a beautiful hardcover illustrated edition of Virginia Woolf’s letters and the second volume of Sylvia Plath’s letters. Virginia Woolf is always cheerful, restrained and clever in her letters while Plath is a little more self-revealing, passionate in her happiness and her disappointments, but I think both can teach us lessons about women writers. I’m also reading After Emily, a book by Julie Dobrow about the two women who devoted a ton of time and energy to make sure Emily Dickinson had a legacy and a reputation as a great poet. It’s kind of a wonderful lesson in what it takes to become a household name in the 1800’s in upper-crust society in New England and dispels the illusion that Emily didn’t make en effort or that she became a sensation out of nowhere – a sort of early template for PR for Poets! (Book Clubs were very big, FYI.)  (Another 2019 goal: less television and social media and more reading books!)

One quote I thought I’d share – I was reading Sylvia’s new years letters from January 1957 – and she had just had poems published in The Atlantic and Poetry, but was running into trouble getting teaching work for either her or Ted without PhDs, which frustrated her. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, was my thought about her quote after getting a flurry of new year rejections – which I also got (albeit nice rejections):

“These job refusals plus a pile of rejections (of really fine poems, too) are enough to make me think the teaching profession is run by slick closed-shop businessmen and the literary magazines by jealous scared over-cerebral fashion-conscious idiots.”

Well, you can always count on Sylvia to cheer you up in the new year!

Poetry and Gardening – Things to Look Forward to in 2019

Now, since last year I did lots of individual poetry submissions (and even a couple of fiction subs) but not so many manuscript submissions, I’m going to take an ambitious stab at getting Flare out into the world and work on getting my in-process seventh manuscript finished (themes of witches, religion, nature, politics?) Some of my spring bulbs are already poking up out of the ground – it’s still the dark rainy season, but I’m feeling ready for spring! We planted 45 new bulbs last fall, and had a least a hundred in the ground from the last two years, so hoping for lots of hyacinths, daffodils, and tulips. Poetry and gardening have that in common – the more you put out there, you might get more rejections (unsuccessful bulbs) but also more to look forward to? How about you? What are you looking forward to in 2019?