Heart Demons

For Heart Demons I write a personal essay each month. Currently I am working on December’s essay. I started the essay with no idea where it would go. Not an unusual method for me, but maybe it works better with poetry? The writing is good, but so far it seems to be two or three different things, each going off in its own direction. I enjoy the writing, and “do things you enjoy” seems to be advice to grievers. 

Yesterday’s post here about Kent’s haiku — and going through the stack of papers where I found it — made me sad. Only a few days after Kent died back in May I wrote a Heart Demons essay, tears pouring down my cheeks. I have plenty more to write about him, of course. So far the writing has mostly been about me, with the haiku post the first where Kent gets to talk for himself, if only for three lines. 

Heart Demons is hosted by a platform called Substack, which makes newsletters easy. Substack is the hot thing right now — or it was when I signed up last year. i created an account but writing a newsletter just seemed one more thing. How would it be special? I already have two blogs. I think what got Heart Demons into reality was Kent’s health. We couldn’t travel and I had energy to burn. I had Autobiography of a Book to promote, too, and Substack, being the hot new thing, was generating attention. Maybe I could take advantage of that? Somehow? 

As with LoveSettlement, Heart Demons gets its name from two poetry notebooks. I title my working notebooks after I’ve been writing in them for a few months. I write more about how I chose the title in the first Heart Demons essay. If you haven’t checked it out yet, please do. 

haiku by Kent Mannis

Summer, Fall, Winter

Like Costco toilet paper 

Bulk products run low

My husband Kent wrote the occasional poem. In this case it’s the very American version of haiku, the 5-7-5 syllable count what makes it haiku. Kent does refer to the seasons, which is considered another requirement of Japanese haiku. The Japanese want a haiku to evoke the feeling of a particular time of year. Does Kent’s? Perhaps the poem means to evoke winter -- the “bulk products” of nature are abundant in summer, but gradually peter out in fall, winter offering the smallest amounts. 

Kent appends a note, “3 season Haiku.” Was that was the challenge? Write a poem that includes three of the four seasons?

Every so often I sort a pile of papers and today I found the haiku on a crumpled square of paper from a logo notepad. It is undated.

“Mum” at Big Windows Review

Big Windows Review has posted the poem

“Mum” 

I had a poem in Big Windows back in 2019: “you have come to a certain place”

“I Can’t Dance” at Cobalt Weekly

Cobalt Weekly has posted the poem

“I Can’t Dance”

The editors are closing up the weekly, but, they say, they will still be publishing books. 

five poems in #Ranger

Five poems appear in #Ranger, issue 4, spring 2024:

“exact the veil flagrantly”

“the well-curled tip”

“room for advisement”

“a while ago in the dj booth”

“another well recently intercepted”

#Ranger’s motto: “Art that’s not vanilla”

A print issue will be available this summer print-on-demand from Lulu.

two poems in Berkeley Poetry Review

Berkeley Poetry Review, issue #52: When the World Moves On, contains two of my poems:

“A Window”

“A Wind Is Blowing”

Of the theme the editors write: “‘When the World Moves On’” speaks to evolution and memory in a changing world.”

This is the first time I’ve had a poem in BPR since I was on staff back in the early 90s. BPR can change greatly from year to year. It’s a student-run publication, thus whether enough students show up will determine whether there is a BPR in a year. Some years, nothing. In this academic year the staff seems to be promising two issues. They are currently open for submissions. 

If you would like to read issue #52 online — or want to download the whole thing — you can do so at this link. 

Choosy

That magazine published those poems because the editors liked them. The editors got other poems that I know I would have liked — and perhaps would have liked better than anything I saw in their magazine — and the editors chose against them.

one-line haiku in five fleas

A one-line haiku appears in the January 22 issue of five fleas.

“What Has a Secret Life” in Parliament

First publication of 2024:

“What Has a Secret Life” 

in The Parliament Literary Journal, Winter 2024: Secrets 

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.