White Post-Christmas and Happy Almost New Year

It’s almost the New Year, and I’m on day eight of no solid food (still getting tests for food allergies etc. No fun!) Despite this, I’ve been madly productive, finishing up an article for Poet’s Market on Micropresses, finishing up a manuscript consult for a terrific book of poetry, generally responding to e-mails from students and others, finishing up Christmas business.
We’ve already taken down the tree when low and behold this morning we woke up to a late white Christmas, silver downpour on our trees (though I heard sleet at about 4 AM in the morning against the windows – so hard it woke me up.) Right now it’s snow showers, snow showers, with a white sky above. Haven’t written or sent out much poetry, which I intend to do as soon as Glenn finishes my Christmas present – a submissions tracking database. Then I just have to find some good places to send to.
These are some of my wishes for the new year:
–Health (sooner rather than later would be nice)
–A big happy welcome for book #2, She Returns to the Floating World, when it comes out in July.
–Dare I say: placing MS #3 and/or #4?
–Financial grace (jobs, fellowships, awards, freelance work or etc…)
–a permanent residence, perhaps?

It was nice to read Kristy Bowen’s post here on how her attitude towards poetry and “the po-biz” has changed over the past few years. I feel now, embarking on the launch of a second book, with lots of published poems in lots of wonderful literary magazines over the past seven or eight or so years, with my part-time working teaching poetry, that I am lucky and blessed, not in so much of a rush, with less anxiety. I spend more time thinking about how to help others, how to move people ahead to their own best next steps, how to calm their anxiety about writing or sending out or etc. I think about how trends change, how people in charge of things shift, how more women my age are starting their own magazines, presses, etc. I feel that spending time writing, a life devoted to writing, is a gamble, a gamble that we can’t know is worth it until the end, maybe not even then. I can’t say to anyone else, yes, for you the gamble is worth it or not, but for me, right now, yes, it is.