Gossip [&] the Devil

grilled cheese, fries, red velvet cake and Merlot for breakfast.

I have two posts written and nearly ready to go next to this one. There’s just nothing in them, they’re full of buttercream. I’d like to think I’ve grown past faking it. But maybe not. As a good friend once wrote: “fake it till your dreams come true.” Part of me has a sinking feeling that said dreams will be sitting on the bench a long time while their half-formed shells play the court [jester].

I haven’t felt like connecting at all lately. Not on the internet, not personally, not creatively. I haven’t felt a strong connection with any of my muses in the last few months; instead I’ve been using fucked up medical insurance policies and missed prescription refills as creative fodder. Did you know it can cost in upwards of $1200 a month to stay “sane?” I didn’t until last Monday.

I’ve drowned myself in reading about manic-depression. Books like Touched With Fire: Manic-Depression and the Artistic Temperament and An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness by Dr. Kay Jamison and  Manic-Depressive Insanity and Paranoia by Dr. Emil Kraepelin (who’s considered to be the founder of contemporary scientific psychiatry, and one of the first to truly commentate on manic-depression as a legitimate disease). To break from the science-speak, I’ve been re-reading certain classics under scrutiny, namely The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (duh) and The Voyage Out by Virgina Woolf, with breaks in between to satisfy the Taurus in me with The Hedonism Handbook.

You probably don’t give a shit about my reading list, but there you have it. The stones in my pockets keeping me under the ocean and away from humanity. There’s a war being waged up on shore, and I’m content to listen to it crumble from down here.

To get back to poetry-related things, I was in Birmingham, Alabama recently to see Amanda Palmer. The trip was part of a series I’ve yet to discuss on here, which I’m tentatively calling “The Art of the Oxymoronic Jetset.” (Or “A Pauper’s Jetset?” Regardless, stay tuned for details.) While I was waiting for room service to grace me with a glass of much needed Merlot and grilled cheese, the editor for The Great American Poetry Show, Larry Ziman, called me unexpectedly. To paraphrase, for length:

(click the cut to read the conversation)

• L: Hey, it’s Larry Ziman, from The Great American Poetry Show.
• L: Yeah, I had your poem in an envelope to reject it, even though I’d already accepted it.
• J: Oh.
• L: Yeah, but I couldn’t do it. it’s too good.
• J: …Oh?
• L: Yeah. If you submit this poem to any other format, or when you do, it’s going to get rejected. This poem will be rejected by most other poetry formats but it’ll make you famous.
• J: Thank you.
• L: It’s true. Time will tell if you’ll be able to do it again but this one is excellent.
• J: Thank you. Narratives are what I do well.
• L: This is the most blunt poem that will be in the book. It’s almost too blunt. It will make getting this book into libraries difficult. I could tell a young woman wrote this, an older woman wouldn’t have written a poem like this.
• J: Hm. Yeah?
• L: There are a couple things I’d suggest editing.
• *tells me to cut most of the comma’s, and change the word “come” to “finish,” since the poem is blunt enough, and doesn’t need the overkill*
• J: I can accept that.
• L: This poem was actually rejected by my other two editors.
• J: So is that a yes or a no?
• L: It’s a yes.
• J: Thank you.
• L: I’m not going to take up any more of your vacation time.

The poem in question was one I’d written called “Voyeur” about a girl watching her boyfriend fuck another girl. Simple. I remember I wrote this poem in one of my classes with the renowned poet, Ai, in college, and that day she’d called it first to be read out loud, after an enthusiastic “oooh, ‘Voyeur,’ let’s read this one.” Ai was awesome like that. It was also the only poem to be accepted from the over 40 (yes, forty) submissions I’d sent in to TGAPS. I’d seen their ad in Poets & Writers and loved their aesthetic, read their work, liked the talent and started submitting. I wrote and submitted for a year and a half before I had anything accepted, and that’s a pretty short time, considering. In any artistic endeavor, you’d better read the book on patience and persistence if you want to succeed.

Look for The Great American Poetry Show Volume 2, where I’ll be appearing in Summer 2009.

Also for reference, that was the first time in my career I’d ever gotten an actual call back from an editor. As in spoken person to person outside of college presses. I was excited. I’ll beat this game yet.

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