PHV Blogger Elizabeth Cantwell’s December 2016 Update (+$180.50): THE END OF POETRY HAS VALUE
Hello again!! Where have I been since October, you might ask? I know, I know. I didn't get things together in time to write an October round-up, and now here I am staring down the barrel at a combined October-November-December round-up. How did 2016 end so quickly and so horribly slowly all at the same time? How did I forget that the late fall/early winter is a BRUTAL time for a high school teacher to try to submit, let alone write? How did I fail to factor in the HORRIBLE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION when I was thinking about how much writing I'd get done in November and December?
I don't know how to answer any of these questions. The point is, the last few months have not been great for my writing life. I had goals and I didn't meet them. But I'm not going to get bogged down in that. I'm looking at a Buddha ornament sitting at the top of our Christmas tree right now, and remembering how I quoted Walt Whitman to my son earlier today, in the car, when he asked If you're not alive, are you dead? Is that it? and I said Well, when you die, you don't really stop being. All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, and to die is different from what anyone supposed, and luckier. That's what Whitman says. We talked about how your spirit becomes part of the universe, and how plants die but leave seeds behind to grow new plants, and about how everyone is the Buddha, even you, even Gram, even the dog, even a scorpion who bites you. Even the writer who didn't write.
I did get a lot of rejections! Looking through my completed Poetry Has Value spreadsheet, it looks like I only have two submissions still outstanding from 2016. One of those I'm pretty sure is going to never receive a response (I submitted in January, I just have a feeling it's gonna be one of those never-hear-back situations), and one is still in the running. The rest are either accepted (I did have a few this year, a very few!) or personally rejected (always nice) or form rejected. And even looking through the form rejections and trying to count them up, I've been encouraged. In most cases, I still really stand behind the poems. I tried this year to not submit poems until I really felt good about them, which is different than in the past, when I'd submit as SOON as I finished something just because I was excited about it. But this year, I don't feel bad about the poems that haven't found homes yet. I still think they will. They just need a little more time.
At the end of this year, I can confidently say that participating in the Poetry Has Value project has changed my outlook in a lot of really wonderful ways. And I know that I'll continue to be much more conscious of how the journals I submit to treat their writers, how submission fees or contest fees are used, and how to continue to resist underselling myself when I talk about my writing. I'm so thankful for getting to know a little bit more about all the poets I've read on this blog, and for the chance to discover new journals and magazines and poetic outlets. And even though 2016 has been resoundingly shitty in a whole lot of ways, I feel like it's been very, very good to poetry. Last night, gathered around the remains of Christmas dinner, I read my family (husband, son, parents, in-laws) a James Tate poem that I picked at random from the traditional Best American Poetry volume that my mother gives me every year. It's called "Dome of the Hidden Temple" and, in true James Tate fashion, it's funny and weird and surreal and then suddenly truthful. ("A man walked up to me and said, 'Do / you know where the Dome of the Hidden Temple is?' I said, 'Yes, / but I can't tell you. It's a secret.' 'But I'm supposed to meet / somebody there,' he said. 'Then that person should have told / you how to get get there,' I said.") It felt like the right way to end the day and maybe to end the year.
I guess what I'm saying is: all goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, and poetry is perhaps the least collapsible thing of them all.
Submissions (to either paying or non-paying markets): 0
Rejections: 10 (The Kenyon Review, Fugue, Crazyhorse, Copper Nickel, Isthmus, BOAAT, Qu, Bat City Review, Ep;phany, FENCE)
Money Spent in Oct/Nov/Dec: $0
Money Earned in Oct/Nov/Dec: $0
Total Money Spent in 2016: $33.50
Total Money Earned in 2016: $214.00
2016 FINAL TALLY: $180.50
Elizabeth Cantwell is a poet and high school teacher living in Claremont, CA. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of journals, including PANK, Epiphany, The Los Angeles Review, and The Literary Review. Her book of poems, Nights I Let The Tiger Get You (Black Lawrence Press, 2014), was a finalist for the 2012 Hudson Prize; she is also the author of a chapbook, Premonitions (Grey Book Press, 2014).
