2023 in publications

Mollyhouse
Evening Street Review
Otoliths
Pure Slush
Dark Winter
Cream Scene Carnival
The Quarter(ly)
Exacting Clam

Autobiography of a Book, a 220-page volume from AC Books, became available as a pre-order. Physical copies are expected in February. 

I found a publisher for a full-length poetry manuscript, but then things seemed to go off track. It may yet be possible to bring it back on track. We’ll see. 

I had a featured reading with Lyrics & Dirges here in Berkeley. I hit a handful of open mics. 

The list of publications is shorter than the average of the last few years. Did I send out fewer poems? That might be so. I spent quite a bit of energy rerouting rejected work. Looking at the list, the only poems accepted this year that hadn’t been previously rejected was the batch at Otoliths. It was Mark Young’s final issue so I sent him poems I’d just revised. It was a group that wouldn’t work for most, I thought. Too weird, maybe. There is another set from the same project; no bite so far. 

I got a friendly rejection from Poetry Magazine: “We won’t be publishing anything from this submission, but we really enjoyed reading and discussing it among the editorial team, especially ‘The Heart Again.’ We’d love to read more of your work and hope you will submit again soon.” At the bottom of the message they emphasized it: “P.S. We really enjoyed you work!”

After decades of sending Poetry poems — everybody who’s written a poem wants to see it in Poetry — this was the first time I received encouragement. The rejection came in October, 2023, the poems having been uploaded to Poetry’s submission manager in September of 2022. That’s a wait of thirteen months, right? 

I had a fresh batch of poems, so I sent those right away. Here is what came back: “We won’t be publishing anything from your submission, but we wish you the best of luck in publishing it elsewhere and appreciate you sending it our way.”

That is standard language, generalized, not cruel, but not really encouragement. No “enjoyed” — not once, let alone twice. The sort thing they’ve sent me from the beginning. Yet I only had to wait two months. That’s a record in recent history for me. Usually it’s a year or more. So maybe Poetry has different tiers? The when-we-get-around-to-it tier for all the unknown poets (my tier up to now), then a look-sooner-shows-promise tier? Or maybe they finally staffed up with enough first readers that rejection wait times have been pared down by 80%? Or … 

Anyway, it would be nice to have a poem in Poetry. The encouraging rejection may be as close as I get. As you’ve seen, I’m right back to the unencouraging. I sent again. We’ll see if I am back to a 13-month wait as well. 

Interesting that the poem singled out for praise — “The Heart Again” — was brand fresh in September 2022. I was so pleased by it I sent it immediately to Poetry. By the time Poetry rejected it, “The Heart Again” had been rejected by 27 other faster-deciding zines. It has since been rejected four more times. That’s true of all the other poems in that 5-poem batch. Back in my 20s I would not have been able to endure 30 rejections of one batch. It would have been too bruising — and too expensive! I would have given up on good poems because I couldn’t afford the postage and because I couldn’t handle the dislike. Here in my 50s what’s changed? The basic expenses are different — having a computer, which I couldn’t afford in my early writing years, having an internet connection, paying reading/entry fees. I rarely pay fees, though. I can’t quite justify them. The average reading fee these days is $3 — and these venues typically do not provide any compensation, not even a contributor’s copy (not that that’s a thing with online publication). “The Heart Again,” the poem Poetry almost wanted, would have cost me $90 in fees by now. I can afford more rejections these days, but $90?

There are likely better publication-seeking strategies than my rather random style, I admit that. But I’m a rather random person, and I’m not going to turn into somebody else. Besides, it’s hard enough justifying the whole thing. There’s no money in it. There’s very little compensation of any kind, including making a name for oneself. I continue to send out my poems to honor my poems. They are good poems. They deserve to be little stars in the universe of poems.