How to Be a Poet: A Choose-Your-Own Adventure Story! and a new review for Unexplained Fevers

I often get asked for advice on “how to be a poet.” And just what does “being a poet” mean, anyway? Does it mean simply that you write (and publish) poetry? That you make a living from poetry in some way (good luck!) or that you have some validation in the form of fellowships, titles, grants, prizes, or what-have-you?

I’ve discovered that being a poet is a lot like those early 1980s “Choose Your Own Adventure” books. Sometimes you make a choice and you end up in a totally different place than you expected; sometimes you accidentally do something right (or wrong) and advance in a way you couldn’t have foreseen.

For instance, when you are sending your work out, you can:

–Choose to send to only one or two very exclusive magazines for five years, and land nothing but rejection. Go back three spaces.–Or, start with smaller literary magazines, one poem gets published in ‘Tiny Obscure Review” and makes it onto Verse Daily and into the Pushcart anthology – forward four spaces!

See what I mean? And when you’re sending your book out:

–You send to very expensive contests, end up spending your rent money on book contest fees, lose your lease, end up on the streets. Or…

–Send your book to “open admission” venues, end up with a good small press…but the press folds and your book goes out of print. Or…

–Send your book to a well-known press, they end up taking it, but they do no promotion, never pay you royalties,  refuse to answer your e-mails, and the book goes nowhere

–You get lucky, your book gets taken by a contest or a highly reputable press, the book gets great promotion and press, and you end up winning a ton of prizes, the Whiting Award, move to New York City and teach at a prestigious school, and have presses lined up anxiously for your next book! (This last has actually happened to people, trust me. Just not to very many people.)

Or…Get an MFA or not – and then, low-res or residential? Full student loans or try to eke (eek?) it out with a part-time job? Teaching or non-academic poet? Apply for that fellowship, grant, or position? Chapbook, book, or series of books? Is poetry truly only something for the wealthy, a luxury, or can “regular” people afford to do it too?

Most of the time we are making choices that feel random and feel like they are having random results, which can be not only frustrating but bring on a kind of nihilistic depression that I have seen a lot of poets fall into.

Right now the “choose your own adventure” place I am at is…what to do for a living, you know, for money. Do I:

–Adjunct? Work at a non-profit? Get a job writing for money, like ad copywriting or tech writing, again? If I do blank, will I end up too stressed out and sick to write? If I do blank other, will I constantly feel anxious that I don’t have enough money or enough time to write? When is volunteering a good thing and when are you overdoing it?

Many poets survive on a combination of part-time, usually adjunct, teaching work, tiny reading honorariums, freelance writing, and odd jobs. We don’t mostly make money on publishing our poetry, because there’s not enough of an audience to make that happen. Which is sad. Some poets turn to writing erotica, romance novels, teen or children’s books, etc…just so they can stay afloat, not because it’s their passion. Some poets, but a minority, get those tenure-track teaching jobs (an ever-shrinking pool, I’m afraid, especially if you’re female, because studies have shown women are much lesss likely to get tenure than men…) and end up spending a lot of time teaching and in staff meetings and again, little time writing. I can see all the webs to possible futures stretching out…but none of the webs feels totally right for me. So I’m at a loss for the next step, the next adventure. Being Poet Laureate of Redmond this last year has meant a lot of community work, which can be satisfying, but has left me without a lot of time for writing or sending out work…so it fulfills some of my ideas about what I want to do with my life, but also has drawbacks. It’s hard to decide on choice A or B or C without knowing for certain what the outcome will be…You can see how this post connects with my last post of self-care and self-pity – as poets doing what we love isn’t always practical, but if we want to prioritize it, we usually have to give something else up – so how do we continue pursuing a passion in a way that doesn’t make us sick or discouraged or so poor we can’t afford our expensive medical treatments, etc? I don’t want to just complain or feel unhappy with the life I’ve forged for myself as a writer, I want to embrace something new that will be both fulfilling and practical, if there is such a future out there for me. I hope so!

In unrelated news, thanks to Jessie Carty and Wild Goose Poetry Review for this lovely second official review of Unexplained Fevers! It’s tough to get attention for poetry out there, and most poetry reviewers are volunteering their time to do this kind of work, so thank you to everyone involved!

http://wildgoosepoetryreview.wordpress.com/2013/05/13/jessie-carty-review-of-jeannine-hall-gaileys-unexplained-fevers/