poetically challenged

About 10 days ago, I had been commenting in my journal that there were several magazines that have not yet replied to my submissions, and that the time to start hearing responses was probably at hand.  Since then, I got three responses, all rejections.  Funny how that works out.

Today as I was writing in my journal, I commented that it is alright — I prefer timely responses, even if the news I hear isn’t what I would have preferred.  

I didn’t realize I’d grown so thick-skinned!

I have sent in some work that might be of interest, and you can view these poems on the site there now:

Enjoy!

The first entry in the journal is from 21 December 2005.  I talked in that entry about wanting the concepts in my poetry to grow out of language, instead of trying to force language to fit what I already had in mind.  I hoped that this would generate more creativity in the themes of my poems, instead of rehashing the same ideas in different forms.  

I have to say that this is an area that has really improved in my poems since that entry 2 and a half years ago.  It began with a conscious effort, and has become something more or less natural to me now.  It is very common in my reading that I come across a word that hits me differently than it ever had before, or perhaps a group of words that I had not formerly seen as connected, but now see some new connection between them.  This often grows into some poem or another, and the results are usually much better than when I have an idea and somehow try to find (or force) words to fit it.

One of the things I started doing at that time was the dictionary game.  The first poem that came out of that game, “Temenos,” is one of my favorites.  It is a complex piece, rather intricate in how it fits together.  But what is interesting about it is that it grew out of the connections between the three words chosen at random from a dictionary, rather than me first having an idea in mind that  I wanted to explore.

It is fun revisiting this journal, and I will probably spend some time doing so over the next few months.  I’ll post interesting ideas I find here, from time to time.

One thing I hope to find is a record of a poet’s growth.  It will be rewarding if I see that.

I actually am not much of a detail person, and usually hate taking time to look into all of this kind of thing.  But it seems to me that it has been a very good exercise this time around, and it is helping my work to take better shape.  It is looking better, at the moment (though there is still a bit more work to do).  Most importantly, it helps get it all organized in my head when it is more orderly on my desk.

It isn’t my favorite part of writing, but the discipline is well worth the time invested.

If one keeps writing well, it is funny what can happen.  I didn’t write that article in hopes that it would get any wider circulation than what it sees on my blog.  It’s nice that someone else came across it and wants to publish it on her site.  And, best of all, she is going to send me a copy of the play reviewed there!

Can’t beat that, can you?  Free books!

For some time now, I have been intending to start writing literary essays (in English!) and submitting them for publication.  Somehow, it has eluded me, and I have always found myself writing poetry instead.  But since I have started taking my class, that has changed.  Somehow, the writing of essays seems to just be in my brain now, and it seems to have carried over from Chinese class into my creative writing space.

I think it is about organization.  An essay is organized very differently than a poem.  I think that putting my brain into gear for essays for class has made it so that I just see things that way at the moment.

What you write, when it comes down to it, depends on how you see the things around you.  For me, for now, I am seeing things as essays.  And that’s a new adventure for me in my writing.

A friend of mine has commissioned me to write a poem for the kindergarten graduation at the Shanghai Singapore International School.  The poem will be memorized and read aloud by some of the students who are finishing their time in the preschool and moving on to the primary school.  

There are about 100 children in the preschool department at the school.  I don’t know exactly how many people will be in attendance at the graduation, but it is kind of nice to know that my poem will be read out there.  

My first commissioned work!  

The game is to write a six-word memoir, like that Hemingway famously wrote to win a bet.  The exercise is good because it seems to me that it demands an economy of language that is very closely akin to poetry.

For me, the exercise meant I had to land on an image first, and from there, find the best words to express what the image says to (actually, in this case, about) me.  It was a very good writing exercise to go through.  

Even if you weren’t tagged for the meme, feel free to post the entry on your blog.  Consider this your tag!