pen ink river

Only two months after submission, not bad, and a nice note, actually:

Thanks so much for sending your work. I'm sorry it didn't find a home here, but we can say yes to just a fraction of the good work we see.

Many thanks again, and all best,

Alice Quinn
Poetry Editor

On 6/15/07 11:09 AM, "Nancy Flynn" wrote:

15 June 2007

Dear Ms. Quinn:

Below please find three poems for your consideration for publication in the New Yorker: Leda Before the Swan; Sara's Eyes; and The Cat Lady. Thank you for taking a look at my work.

Sincerely,
Nancy Flynn

Posted by peninkriver at 07:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Arrived in today's mail from the newly-reincarnated, Poetry Northwest, based in Portland. Discouraging as they are looking for new work but my four pieces don't cut whatever new they want, I guess. I can't let this color my decision to try and reach out to these folks and their Attic Workshop when we move up to the city. Don't pass judgment on a community or a writing scene before you've experienced it firsthand, right? Still, a Friday evening sigh. Back to the drawing board, back to reading these mags and trying to figure out what they want, what they prefer. Maybe I'm too set in my ways, too idiosyncratic, too wanting to write the way I want to write to bend to au courant poetry whims. Or maybe I'm simply deluded about my ability and the quality of my work. The latter's more likely. Oh well, this too shall pass.

Posted by peninkriver at 05:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

...or rather not winning a contest. This one Speakeasy, judged by Jane Hirshfield who says this about Rebecca Aronson the winner: “What I admire about these poems is the quiet clarity of both their vision and their writing, and the precision of compassionate presentation. These poems observe and note down with a musical and mental calligraphy subtly yet distinctively their own. They do not insist or demand, only offer, yet the pressure of the imprinting image leaves its mark."

Make me want to read her poems. After I surrender the self-doubt and deflation that come every time another one of these crossed the electronic or mailbox threshold. It's all subjective, I tell myself. There is room for many, multiple voices. The "not good enough" has to turn into "keep trying." If, as Wendell Berry says in his essay "Damage" the work of writing is what we do, how we live, that there is no separation between the work and the life.

"If I live in my subject, then writing about it cannot 'free' me of it or 'get it out of my system.' When I am finished writing, I can only return to what I have been writing about."

Accept loss forever. Acceptance is all.

Posted by peninkriver at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This from a rejection letter from Howard Junker, editor of Zyzzyva, a San Francisco literary magazine: "The truth is I have so little space, I must return almost everything--99%--of what's sent to me, including a lot that interests me and even some pieces that I admire. (Also, I make mistakes; my taste is erratic, my judgment flawed.) The important thing is this: Do not be discouraged by this or any other momentary setback. The road is long; the struggle must go on. Then, too, the ways of the Muse are strange. When she does visit again, I hope you will give her my best regards."

Posted by Nancy Flynn at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Finally, after more than three months, got a letter from Zachary Shuster Harmsworth, the literary agency based in NYC and Boston that had called back in February after learning of my Oregon Literary Fellowship and asked to see my work. Of course, they don't feel The Muse of Hanging is a fit for them. I knew that when the envelope was my SASE and not a larger, business envelope that might, oh joy of joys, include a contract. Still, a small crumb in what I don't think was a form letter:

"...we commend your literary fellowships and appreciated your sparsely, elegant, often dreamy prose."

So I guess they at least read it. Have I grown thick skin, is my lack of emotion part of being 49 or simply a Zen acceptance of the utter weirdness that is trying to make it as a literary writer these 21st century days? Truth to tell, I'm relieved to now know one way or another so I can keep working and work some of the other literary agent contacts I've got.

What a line of work to want to be in. Back to reading the new Harper's and an essay called: "Doing Time: My years in the creative-writing gulag" by Lynn Freed.

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