“Love’s settlements”

“O Need, beloved Adversary to Love’s settlements …”

— Robert Duncan, from the poem “Preface to the Suite”

Early on I described the source of the name of this blog:

I title the notebooks in which I write poems. One I titled "Love", the subsequent I titled "Settlement"; when time came to set up the site I already had these two nice titles, and, heck, don't they go great together?

When I came across Robert Duncan’s line recently it caught my attention, of course. Duncan does seem to be using my preferred definition for “settlement” — that is, a dwelling-place — rather than the less friendly sense of resolving a dispute, usually through unsatisfying compromise, a divorce settlement, say; settling for the best you can get, rather than holding out for the win. 

I am considering starting a Substack newsletter and titling it using the same method I used when setting up LoveSettlement. My latest poetry notebooks are called “Heart” and “Demons”. 

source: 

Practising Angels: a contemporary anthology of San Francisco Bay Area poetry

edited by Michael Mayo

1986. Seismograph Publications, San Francisco

Glenn Ingersoll listing at Poets & Writers

Check out my listing at Poets & Writers: Glenn Ingersoll

Currently it’s pretty bare. No bio yet. Maybe tomorrow …

I’ve thought about having a listing at Poets & Writers since I found out there was such a thing. Years and years ago. 

Once I even  put together an application packet. I think this was before the internet, when you were required to send pages photocopied from magazines. I never submitted it. I’m not sure why. 

Or, wait, was there a Poets & Writers directory pre-internet? I'm not sure. In the internet’s early days P&W could still have wanted the supporting documents hard copy. Literary culture hadn’t exploded online. Few literary magazines had a web presence, let alone posted poems or stories.  

I am self-conscious about this sort of thing. Self-promotion vs. letting the work speak for itself. Maybe I didn’t finish the application process because I didn’t feel worthy. Maybe I was afraid the editors would reject the application because the magazines in which my poems had been published were too obscure. Maybe I was afraid that I would expect a listing to have some meaning, some consequence. If I got a listing and nothing came of it, nobody wrote, nobody called — would that hurt my feelings? Or was following through just too much bother? Not worth the cost of postage? Might there have been a charge to be listed back then?

This spring, what with the covid shutdown and the things-to-do list getting a few line-throughs, I looked up the latest version of the directory application. Like I said, I’ve thought about getting listed for years. The application has been made easy. If your stuff is up online — and the venue is one P&W officially recognizes (not “too obscure” or too vanity-press) — you just upload a link. Six links are required. The P&W directory editors review the application, then add your name to their database (or, I guess, don’t). 

Once you’re in you can expand the listing with author photo and bio. I see there’s even an option to link to video. 

If you have any suggestions for improving the listing, leave me a note in comments below. Or send me an email.

brass bell haiku includes haiku by Glenn Ingersoll

Brass Bell Haiku is a haiku ezine formatted like a blog. Editor Zee Zahava publishes a new issue every month or so. Zahava announces a theme then chooses from what is sent her. She never publishes more than one haiku per poet. I think she may publish one haiku by every poet who offers work; if so, she has a pretty high calibre of contributor. 

I got my first haiku in brass bell in 2015’s November issue on the theme “Morning”:

I wash my morning bowl over last night's dishes

*

The theme for the May 2016 issue was “Small Things” and included this one of mine:

the huge black bee

comes back in the window

I didn't close

*

The September 2016 issue was “Kitchen” and included this one by me:

sweeping broken bowl into cracked dustpan

*

Each of the above haiku were written after Zahava’s call for poems. I did also send along poems written at other times, but she only was going to include one, and the one she chose was one that happened to be fresh. The theme for the October 2016 issue, on the other hand, was all about  freshness. The theme: “September 22, 2016,” that is, the haiku had to have been written on that date. Here Zehava picked:

back from vacation

a voicemail message

what's my password

I have a haiku in the next issue, which will be posting on December 1st, I believe. The theme is “Homeplace.” I will give her first dibs on exposing the ‘ku to the world. 

Futures Trading 4.2 contains two poems by Glenn Ingersoll

The literary ezine Futures Trading 4.2 includes two of my poems, “The Idea” and “Because a man stood up for human rights!”

--ah: anthology of American Haiku, edited by Jonathan Hayes & Richard Lopez

contains four haiku by Glenn Ingersoll -- get yours today!

BlazeVOX #16, which includes 4 Ingersoll poems + pwoermds

  BlazeVOX16 - Spring 16 by Geoffrey Gatza

eight of nine

Since the post at the end of January I have received notification from all of ONE of the NINE magazines to which I sent work. That's just shy of eight weeks so far for eight of them. Huh. Based on the old days when I was sending work out regularly I expected to have heard from, oh, three or even five by now.

The single response was the sad but popular "these don't meet our needs."

One should not really count the days like this. The goal of the professional is to keep work circulating, to put poems out there without fretting over the fate of any particular batch. You hear when you hear, or you make up a cut-off date and figure any batch that's been out past that date is effectively rejected and you move on.

So I'm not a professional? Yeah, no.

Sending out work for me is emotionally fraught and it's not easy to face that kind of inner turmoil. The world is the world, of course, and goes on about its business without taking an individual's feelings into account. No editor should be worrying about my feelings; they should be doing what they do as best they can, putting in an interesting order work they think of value.

I won't make any money out of this. That's not what's going to happen, not even if I suddenly start getting a zillion acceptances. And the people who make magazines are barely getting by so they can't afford to pay contributors anything, except rarely. It's not about the money.

What is it about? Being part of the conversation? If current literature is a conversation, both with readers and with other writers, then, yes, I want my voice a thread in the weave. I read my contemporaries and it seems to me my work is not out of place. Even if it were, or when it is, I would still want to be noticed. That's ego, isn't it? Yes. But if you think what you say is worthless, you hold your tongue.

Where the name "LoveSettlement" comes from

I've had a website for my poetry for a couple years now. It's also called LoveSettlement.

I title the notebooks in which I write poems. One I titled "Love", the subsequent I titled "Settlement"; when time came to set up the site I already had these two nice titles, and, heck, don't they go great together?

My guy is a lawyer and he immediately thought of a legal settlement, thought the idea of a "LoveSettlement" not attractive. Tho' I did think of that, I'm more inclined to the settlement in the wilderness, thus "LoveSettlement" is a place love sets up housekeeping. Surrounded by hostile forces? Surrounded by other forces, some hostile. A new place. But I don't mind there being less hopeful meanings.