Glimpse, spring 2022, issue #55, includes my poem “I am throwing away.”
Fun to be included with Marge Piercy, Ron Koertge, Stephen Dunn, among others.
I’m not sure how one gets a copy of an issue, as editor George J. Searles says he doesn’t sell them. He doesn’t even offer subscriptions. Not paid ones, anyway. He might send you one if you wrote to him and asked nicely?
In May these poems posted at BlazeVOX, issue #22, Spring 2022:
I’ve had poems in past issues of BlazeVOX — BlazeVOX #19, Fall 2019, and BlazeVOX #16, Spring 2016.
Plus, there’s this blog post about the poems being read.
I have been collecting possible epigraphs for Autobiography of a Book. I don’t know how (or whether) I will use any of them. The epigraphs I’ve posted so far have personified books in some way. The lines below do something a little different. They address the materiality of the book and how that affects the reader’s experience.
A slight texture to the book’s first pages,
discernible to fingertips alone. Blank pages,
which I thought were meaningless, are now adding texture
to my attention.
from “Ill-Timed (24.2)” by Rusty Morrison
I did my best to reproduce the spacing the poet uses.
source:
Beauty is a Verb: the new poetry of disability
edited by Jennifer Bartlett, Sheila Black, and Michael Northen
appears in the first issue of the new Crowstep Journal.
“Crowstep Journal is a space that explores themes around ancestry, the natural world, the extra-ordinary in the ordinary and the magic of everyday things,” say the editors.
A one-line haiku appears in the issue of brass bell: a haiku journal that posted on Feb 1st.
Editor Zee Zehava runs the haiku alphabetically by the poet’s first name, so scroll down to the Gs for Glenn Ingersoll.
A haiku about peanuts appears in haiku kontinuum, a haiku ezine out of Hungary.
My haiku appears in issue #2 on page 27 (they number the pages).
Follow the link to a haiku about serving coffee.
I discovered Spillwords when a friend published there. When I looked at the submission guidelines I saw that they would consider a single haiku. I’m not sure why that appealed to me so much. Anyway, I'm glad they liked the one I offered.
The poem
appears at Rejection Letters.
The editors, on how the ezine came about:
“Rejection Letters was founded in April 2020 by D.T. Robbins. It was kind of a joke at first. “Let’s publish fictional rejection letters!” Of course, this was after getting, like, four or five rejection letters in one day. Because rejection letters suck, even if they’re warranted. We all cope in our own weird ways. But then it became something else, something I’m not too sure how to describe, to be honest.”
It may have started as a lark, but it’s going strong.
The poem
appears in flux
Fifth Wheel Press calls itself “an independent community-focused publisher of art and writing by queer, trans, and gender non-conforming creatives.”
Three poems are up at inksac:
The editors at Cephalo Press describe their mission:
“At heart, we’re interested in literature that explores the highs and lows of human experience. … Our aim is to publish work that resonates with people, questions societal beliefs, pushes boundaries, and makes people think. We want to publish brave, often experimental works, that sit proudly outside mainstream publishing.”
Alan Bern, Rebecca Radner, and I collaborated on a photo/poetry piece. We’ve collaborated before on renga, but this is the first time we included (and responded to) photographs. The editor of Arteidiolia wanted to publish our “Renga of Haiga” (renga being a haiku chain; haiga being a combination of haiku and image), but he only wanted excerpts. Alan, Rebecca, and I decided we were okay with that. Just one of the photos is mine. The accompanying words are more of a mix of contributions.
It turned out well, I think.
“I’m Not Waiting” appears in the first issue of New Note Poetry. Scroll down to page 20 (or maybe 21, depending on viewing platform).
The issue published to the web on December 31st. So I included it on my list of 2021 publications.
Editor Nathan Nicolau writes, “One day, while listening to Blue Note jazz records and admiring their sound and album artwork, an idea dawned … : What if I could do this but with poetry?”
The pandemic continues, so the opportunities for in-person engagement continue to be limited. I can send out copies of “Thousand” to people I like/admire, a project that doesn’t require spending time in company. It would be nice to do more of that, but I do what I can. (Yes, this is a standard script.) I did one Zoom reading in 2021. I suppose I could look for more zoom opportunities this year.
My two book-length manuscripts are out to publishers. My poetry manuscript (currently titled “Nobody You Know”) is out to one, and has been rejected five times since 2017. “Autobiography of a Book” is out to nine, has been rejected 12 times, also since 2017, though most were just in the past year, which means I’m keeping things moving. There are publishers who will consider prose without a reading fee. It’s a struggle finding any poetry publishers who will. After an ezine editor told me he sent his first novel to 100 publishers, I set a goal of 100 for my manuscripts. I’m 20% of the way there with “Book”.
My thoughts on reading and contest entry fees would be a screed for another day.
There was talk at the library of restarting programs. But that was before omicron, the latest covid variant. We’re back to wait-and-see. I miss both my poetry programs, the Poetry Circle and Clearly Meant. In 2021 I finally got permission to post the Clearly Meant videos on the Berkeley Public Library YouTube channel. I have one or two more to edit and post.
I will continue to put together new batches of poems to send out, and continue to circulate those that haven’t yet placed. In order to reduce the power of rejection I hadn’t been keeping track of rejectors. It’s come to the point it’s more helpful to know where pieces have been than to shield from my tender view the gruesome pile up.
#keepyournumbersup … Rather than the goal being to get into any particular venue or achieve a certain number of acceptances, I make the goal pure numbers. I let the number be vague, but more is better. This is really the only aspect of the process the supplicant has control over. No control over length of time editors take, no control over their responses (if any). So worrying about such things is not fruitful. Worry takes energy, and if I have energy, it’s better to use it sending work out.
One thing happened in 2021 that I didn’t foresee. “Thousand” got taught. Two writing teachers included “Thousand” in lesson plans. Both told me that their students were intrigued by the method of composition (100 words a day for a thousand days). I don’t know how one might follow up on that. But things happen that surprise you.
What more to look forward to in a new year — nurturing/enjoying relationships, travel, reading, writing, healing.
It’s been a sunny 2022 so far. Nice, as we always say in California, but we need the rain.
A quick list of the places that included something of my work in 2021:
bottle rockets
Soul-Lit
Chronogram
Haight Ashbury Literary Journal
fresh.ink
Second Chance Lit
Last Leaves
brass bell
ubu
GAS
Mercurius
The Sparrow’s Trombone
Unlikely Stories
Heliosparrow
New Note Poetry
placed in single poem contest:
DiBiase Poetry Prize runner up
readings:
for the 50th anniversary of their fan fiction annual, Oziana, I read a short story
Bird & Beckett series hosted by Kim Shuck
Berkeley Public Library Clearly Meant reading & interview series hosted by Glenn Ingersoll (years of videos finally available on BPL youtube channel)
in classes:
two writing teachers included Thousand in their lesson plans
Four haiku posted on 14 November at Heliosparrow.
This one, among them:
a breeze
shades and unshades
the leaf litter
“… Does a poem go on existing
even if it's not being read? Does its meter, let's say,
still measure? What really happens to a poem, while it
sits closed in the dark of a closed book? Do spirits
live there? Are there sperm-like, invisible strings
that stretch back from them to other poems from
hundreds or thousands of years ago that have been
lost, but which keep spawning poems?”
In these lines from his poem “Could Someone Tell Me Why” Kent Johnson touches on territory ‘Autobiography of a Book’ writhes around in, especially whether books can communicate with each other, whether one could see books as begetting other books (or poems). In Johnson’s talking about poems as entities, I also hear echoes of my ‘Fact’ series. Poems, stories, art as a new form of life. More discrete than the virus-like “meme,” a word coined to describe the transmission of ideas through human societies.
The full quote is a bit unwieldy for an epigraph, plus I’m not sure Book wouldn’t feel preempted. Anyway, it always interests me to see other people wandering around a world I’ve been lost in myself.
source:
All Because of Poetry I Have a Big House
by Kent Johnson
2020. Shearsman Books Ltd, Swindon UK
The theme for October’s brass bell was “numbers,” specifically editor Zee Zahava wanted Arabic numerals, that is, 1, 2, 3, etc.
This is the one of mine she chose:
on the porch
3 peanut shells
wet with squirrel spit
Glenn Ingersoll
check out the whole issue.
