The Caretaker's Manual

After a few months of organizing and revising earlier this spring (I went back to work full-time in January), I'm happy to say that my book, titled "The Caretaker's Manual," is finally done. In the excitement of finishing it, I somehow neglected to mention it here, where I've been tracking the development of said collection. Good lord. Anyway, click on the link to take a look and order a hardback copy of your very own from Lulu.com.

Thanks to everyone who followed my posts and offered encouragement for this little project. I hope you like the poems.

Ending A Writing Year

Officially at least, today is the last day of A Writing Year. Tomorrow I return to my regular job full-time, and resume writing the way I did before -- whenever I can.

Since I know from past experience that "whenever I can" is not very often (except for some regular writing time in the mornings, which I aim to continue), I've done my best to set things up so that I can complete the manuscript of poems I'm working on by the end of January. Out of the 75 or so decent drafts that I wrote this year, I've settled on about 40 to be included in the collection and have retyped those line by line, editing them in the process. I've also started on the Afterword to the manuscript, where I hope to reflect on my experience of the year and draw whatever small conclusions I can from it.

This is not to say that the prospect of ending AWY is entirely somber. I'd say it's bittersweet. The year has gone by quickly, and I can't help but wonder if I used it as well as I could have. In many ways, AWY was my chance to try out a writing life and see if I could make poetry work for me in a more significant way, so in some respects ending AWY represents the winding-down of a certain whirring set of aspirations.

On the other hand, my regular job has grown far more engaging over the past six months, and I think I'll feel relieved not to have to balance my commitment to it and to my own writing any longer. Also, having had an opportunity to devote this time to my writing, I feel satisfied to move on. I started AWY because I felt the undertow of everyday life and knew I'd regret not giving myself a chance to be a poet before it swept me out. Now that I've had that chance, the currents feel less threatening. Writing poems may never be a full-time occupation for me, but it will continue to keep me occupied.

So what's next for this blog? Over the next month I'll continue posting updates here, if sporadically. Once the manuscript is complete, I'll post a link to the Lulu.com page where you can order a copy for your personal library. Then you will be able to judge for yourself whether this was a worthwhile endeavor or in fact a regrettable waste of time. After that, I hope to write a few more things about the process of transitioning back to work, and maybe to shop around pieces of the collection. I do hope to leave the blog up and running for a while, in keeping with my goal of providing a resource to others.

Anyway, that's about it for now. Check back for more over the next few weeks.

Final Week

With the holidays coming up next week, I'm in the final days of AWY. There's still a lot to do, but I've been lucky enough to get this week off of work to concentrate on finishing. By Thursday night, I hope to have retyped all of my stronger poems into the manuscript and started the afterword I want to write about the process. That seems--at least from the vantage point of 9 AM on Monday--well within the realm of possibility. Talk to me Wednesday night and I will almost certainly be in despair. Well, we'll see.

Also, I'm very happy to have received a positive response from the Virginia Quarterly Review about a poem I submitted late this summer. Editor Ted Genoways wrote to suggest a few possible areas for improvement and invited me to return a revised version. I'm optimistic that he'll take the poem, provided that I do not manage to make it worse through my fiddling. Consequently, I'll also be spending some considerable time this week thinking through those edits so that I can respond soon after the new year. Needless to say, I would be enormously excited to place a poem in VQR.

How do I feel as I look toward the end of AWY? That's a question I've heard from many of my friends, and one for which I lack a clear or definite answer. Forlorn? Anxious? Relieved? It's complicated. It varies by the hour. It will have to be the subject of another post.

Rate the Rejection -- Shenandoah

Just days ago I wrote about Shenandoah's novel approach to subscription solicitation and noted--though not with a great deal of optimism--that my rejection fears had not materialized. Yet.

Sadly, I was right not to expect too much. But in the interest of science I'll put aside my disappointment and carry on. Let's assess:


Rating Summary: Shenandoah's rejection slip is printed on card stock and nicely formatted. It fits neatly into a standard envelope, which I realize isn't saying much, but it beats the carelessly folded and wrinkled rejections of some other journals. I think it's clever that they have left space on the slip for an editor to write comments. It's not visible in the image above, but the card is also printed on the back, with a short description of the journal and additional space for notes.

The content of the pre-printed note itself is mediocre. It's hard to get around the awkwardness of starting out, "Although the poems, story or essay in this submission...." They might as well have put a check box next to each possible genre. Why not just keep it to "your submission"? Also, though I appreciate that they appreciate my "fine work," I wish that they would have left out that particular adjective, which clearly is not sincere. I'd prefer to see something that recognizes that what I wrote took effort and a certain commitment, without making any claim as to its quality -- after all, it's a rejection, so that's already been done.

I can't tell from this note whether the penned "Thanks for trying us!" comment is actually or only apparently personalized, but I think that it was inscribed by a real human being. I suspect the hand of an intern at work, but I'm okay with that. I much prefer it to a blank pre-printed note, which is far more common.

As for turnaround time, Shenandoah was fast, responding to my submission in just four weeks. I appreciate that more than anything else.

The Grade: A-. Shenandoah got just about everything right. They lose a few points for the quality of the note's content, but give me little to complain about overall. See? It's not that hard.

Click here for more about the Rate the Rejection series and links to other rejections I've rated.

Counting Down

With the end of AWY fast approaching, I've continued to prioritize ordering and editing the poems I've produced so far. Now that I have figured out the basic structure, I'm focusing on organizing each of the four sections and revising the individual poems they contain.

Last Friday I spread each section across the floor and arranged and rearranged the sequences until I was satisfied with the basic progression. I also took out a few poems that I'm not sure are salvageable, and shifted a few others between sections. It looks like I'll have about nine poems per section. Now I'm retyping each of those poems into the document that will be the full manuscript. It takes some time to do, but I find that retyping my work draws my attention to flaws and possibilities for revision in a way that nothing else does. It has already helped me to identify significant improvements in two poems I felt needed a lot of work.

So that's the recipe for the remainder of this week: retype, revise, repeat. I hope to have at least three of the four sections in good shape before the end of the year, but that won't be easy.

Piling Poems

Yesterday and today I spent some more time sketching out the structure of my collection. I started by trying to figure out which poems I wanted as the first and last of the manuscript, which turned out to be easier than I'd anticipated. Both are poems I like a lot and they just seemed to make sense in those positions.

After that I began looking through the remaining poems that I'd triaged for further edits, thinking about where I wanted each one to fit in. I printed them all out and put them in piles on the coffee table. This was hardly a sophisticated or especially careful process; I just went with my gut reaction of whether each one should be towards the beginning, the end or the middle. Ultimately I realized that I'd begun ordering them into four different groups, so perhaps "beginning, middle 1, middle 2 and end" is more accurate. (I meant to take a picture, as this is one of the few occasions where a photo could benefit a writing blog, but couldn't be bothered. Sorry -- I realize I am lame.)

Anyway, I did not make any effort to pay much attention to the specific order of the poems within those piles, though I did make a mental note when I discovered one that seemed to hold promise as the first or last of a section. Now that I've got them into these smaller groupings, I've started to go through each one and think about what makes the most sense in terms of the internal progression, and identify any holes. Much to my amazement, it's gradually coming into shape.

Not a Shenandoah Rejection (Yet)

A couple of weeks ago I sent a few poems to Shenandoah, a journal published from Washington and Lee University. When I got an envelope back from them this weekend, I steeled myself for the rejection slip and hoped that it wouldn't be something so awful as to undermine all the positive things I'd heard about editor R.T. Smith.

Interestingly, though the letter was response (of sorts) to my submission, it wasn't a rejection. Instead, it thanked me for my submission, reiterated the journal's typical response time and requested that I consider subscribing. All in all, I found it well-written and considerate.

Now, I realize that this is a solicitation more than anything else, but it's also a clever way of acknowledging receipt of a writer's work, showing a little respect for the writing they've received, and setting expectations for what will happen next. Moreover, by pitching the subscription offer now, Shenandoah avoids the awkwardness of rejecting the work and begging for subscriptions simultaneously--a situation in which many other magazines find themselves.

The communicator in me rejoices. A round of finger snaps for the good editor, please.

A Thanksgiving Poem

I don't normally post my poems to this blog, but what the heck, right? Happy Thanksgiving everybody.

On Thanksgiving

Black spasm
of starlings from
the lone spruce,
like a silenced cough or
the sudden
sloughing of each
branch’s shadow.
Mutely they
pulse among
the gusts—not like
us, walking
loud on the packed gravel,
chattering
about the spiced
sweet potatoes,
the hike up
the bluff, the time
it will take
to get home
tomorrow. No,
none of us is
so graceful but
like them,
sometimes we find
the shape of grace
in our very
gathering.

Kiss-Me-I'm-Poetical Junk

I've been making my way through Kenneth Koch's Collected Poems (and what an odd and brilliant way that is) and thought I'd share his rules for knowing when a poem is ready for the wide open world. (Kenny, forgive the scrambled line breaks -- blogger wasn't made for long-lined poems.)


"... Just how good a poem should be
Before one releases it, either into one's own work or then into the purview of others,
May be decided by applying the following rules: ask 1) Is it astonishing?
Am I pleased every time I read it? Does it say something I was unaware of
Before I sat down to write it? and 2) Do I stand up from it a better man
Or a wiser, or both? or can the two not be separated? 3) Is it really by me
Or have I stolen it from somewhere else? (This sometimes happens,
Though it is comparatively rare.) 4) Does it reveal something about me
I never want anyone to know? 5) Is it sufficiently "modern"?
(More about this a little later) 6) Is it in my own "voice"?
Along with, of course, the more obvious questions, such as
7) Is there any unwanted awkwardness, cheap effects, asking illegitimately for attention,
Show-offiness, cuteness, pseudo-profundity, old hat checks,
Unassimilated dream fragments, or other "literary," "kiss-me-I'm-poetical" junk?
Is my poem free of this? 8) Does it move smoothly and swiftly
From excitement to dream and then come flooding reason
With purity and soundness and joy? 9) Is this the kind of poem
I would envy in another if he could write? 10)
Would I be happy to go to Heaven with this pinned on my
Angelic jacket as an entrance show? Oh, would I? And if you can answer to all these Yes
Except for the 4th one, to which the answer should be No,
Then you can release it, at least for the time being.
I would look at it again, though, perhaps in two hours, then after one or two weeks,
And then a month later, at which time you can probably be sure.

Rate the Rejection -- Kenyon Review (Strike 2)

Put yourself in the position of an editor at a respected literary magazine. (Nice, isn't it? Now stop fiddling with your smoking jacket and pay attention.) Say you received a submission from a writer a while ago and decided not to take it, but encouraged him to try again a few months later. You're feeling generous, maybe. Time goes by and, like magic, a new submission appears. But eh, you're not so excited this time around. You decide it's not publishable. Now the question is, having spurred this writer's hopes, having extended the literary magazine equivalent of a come-on, are you obligated to respond with anything more than a standard rejection letter?

That's the question I'm pondering, having received this email from the Kenyon Review yesterday:


Which is obviously about as generic as you can get. So, Editor, do you owe me anything more than this?

I'm really not sure. On the one hand, as a human being, I'm offended that I got diddly in the way of follow-up. Not even a "sorry, thanks for trying again but it just isn't going to work out." On the other, I realize that it's impossible for editors to invest the time that would be necessary to keep up a meaningful dialogue with their submitters, and I wouldn't want editors to hesitate to offer encouragement to writers for fear of signaling a kind of commitment that they aren't prepared to make. It's complicated.

In absence of a clear answer, and in absence of any sense at all for the editors' actual reaction to my work, I'm forced to return to my usual criteria. Let's have at it.

Rating Summary: It's an email message. There's little or no sign of an actual person behind it, and no individual's name at the bottom. Finally, as ranted-about above, there is clearly no acknowledgment of the fact that I had submitted before or that I'd been invited to try again. In appearance it is woefully plain. All in all, an efficient little dart that highlights the worst of email-based submissions systems. Efficient it is, however -- the Kenyon Review spat it back in just under two months.

The Grade: D. That's what I said the earlier one would have deserved, were it not for the editor's encouraging words. This time around, the only thing saving it from complete failure is the Review's relatively rapid turnaround time. If you're going to inflict pain, at least make it quick.


Click here for more about the Rate the Rejection series and links to other rejections I've rated.

Cataloging

As I was considering how best to start organizing the poems I've written this year into a coherent collection, I realized that I first needed to better understand what I had to work with. I could easily keep in mind my most (and least) successful drafts, but the remainder -- those that still needed work, but were promising -- were a blur. Likewise, I tended to forget about some of the older poems I'd written, which were eclipsed by newer drafts that retained the shine of recent experience.

I decided the easiest way to take stock of what I had written and determine where I needed to focus my energies in the weeks to come was to catalog my drafts systematically. I created a simple spreadsheet with the names of all my poems in one column and a kind of status rating in another. Then I spent about an hour and a half on Monday briefly reviewing each poem and assigning it a rating of 1-5 (1 being, "this poem is technically finished but deeply, embarrassingly flawed;" 5 being, "ready for publication and possibly fame and fortune"). I expected that most poems would earn 3's and that very few would earn 1's or 5's.

It was unscientific, to say the least, but if nothing else it gave me a sense of how the collection was shaping up. Curious about the results? Here you go.

Out of 74 total drafts:

• 9 got 5's -- all have been submitted to journals at one point or another
• 23 got 4's -- I consider these solid poems that just need a little more work
• 23 got 3's -- these strike me as good starts that require reshaping
• 15 got 2's -- wow, I really wrote a poem about shopping for housewares?
• 4 got 1's -- let's not talk about these anymore

An interesting if somewhat odd exercise. What I intend to do now is focus on the 4's and then do another screen of the 3's to figure out which of them really deserve further work. I'm also considering adding a third column to this spreadsheet that would provide an assessment of each poem's potential fit with the larger theme I have in mind for the collection; that way I could further triage which poems get my attention and which do not. In the end, I'm hoping to emerge with at least 40 poems that would rank as 5's. With 74 drafts right now, it's not looking so good for the 1's and 2's (seriously, housewares?).

Two Months to Go

Now home from New York, I'm looking to get back into rhythm as quickly as possible. The official end of AWY is on the horizon (just two months left), and I'm increasingly conscious of the limited time I have remaining -- especially since a couple of those weeks will be eaten up by the holidays. I don't expect that the end of December will bring an abrupt and complete halt to all things writing-related, but I do know that I shouldn't count on getting anything major done after that time. What I hope to do is have the first draft (at least) of a manuscript complete by January, so that I can work on revisions and final details in the following weeks.

Right now I'm focused on several things. First, I want to send out another submission -- it's been a while. Second, I need to review the poems I've drafted so far and start cataloging which ones are in good shape and which need work. That will also provide a foundation as I begin organizing everything into a coherent collection. Third, I'd like to begin work on an essay about this experience -- something I've had in mind as a goal from the outset. Finally, I'm going to start planning for some of the other details involved with getting a manuscript together (cover design, etc.).

Right. So, back to work.

Travel Writing is...

... not as interesting when you're only going to New York for a conference. Yet that's where I'm headed for most of this week, which unfortunately almost guarantees zero productivity from a writing standpoint.

I don't know how writers who travel frequently manage to work despite the disruption it causes. I guess they must get used it, but for me it seems almost impossible. The distractions are endless, the process exhausting. That said, I do find that I tend to return from trips with new ideas for poems, so it's not a total loss. We'll see if this trip finds me coming home with souvenirs. I'll let you know next Sunday or Monday.

Also, late last week I sent another batch of poems to my readers. This is the ninth group I've asked them to review, and I expect to send at least two more before A Writing Year is up. I'm excited about these recent poems and looking forward to getting feedback.

October Update

A long silence between posts, owing to back to back trips out of town and general work craziness. To shake off the lingering effects of not writing for the last few days, I thought I'd take this opportunity to take stock. Here's what's going on:

• Submissions: I'm still waiting to hear back from VQR. No clue whether the mounting weeks my poems have been under review is reason for optimism or not. I suspect not. Before I left for my trips I also sent off some poems to the Kenyon Review. I don't expect to hear back from them for a while. Finally I'm hoping to submit at least one other batch before the end of the month, maybe to Shenandoah or a local Chicago journal.
• Poems: I've drafted around 15 reasonably solid poems since July, some better than others. About a dozen of those were written in the past two months or so and embody the new style I've embraced.
• Reading: All told I've read 33 books for AWY so far, including 24 collections of poems and 9 books on writing/poetics. Eventually I'll get the full list up here.
• Events: I have to say I've done terribly in this respect. It has seemed all but impossible to get to readings and other literary events after work, especially, but really there's no excuse. It's downright shameful.
• Manuscript Preparation: I've got the concept. Now I just need to get everything in order. I expect to spend a lot of time in late November and December combing through what I've produced and revising older poems. Figuring out an effective structure could be a challenge, but I'm looking forward to it.
  

Published in Poetry

Well, technically at least. The editors at Poetry haven't changed their minds about not wanting my poems, but they called yesterday to say they're going to print a letter I wrote in full in their November issue. As I said to my wife, if my dream of being a poet doesn't work out, at least I'm well on my way to an equally glamorous and enriching career in letter-writing about poetry. It's always good to have a backup plan.

UPDATE: The November issue is now available. You can check out pieces of it online, here.

What's in a Name?

The new poems I'm writing now are a lot more playful than many of those I've written in the past. I thought I would give you a peek through the keyhole at all the wackiness by listing some of the draft titles from the past month. Probably these are illuminating to some, alarming to others:

• "Babies"
• "Feeding Your Neighbor's Cat"
• "Lunatics"
• "What You Don't Know"
• "Weathermen"
• "Wipe On, Wipe Off"
• "The New World"
• "Kryptonite"
• "Dragonflies"
• "To Paper Towels"
• "When Walking on the Beach"
• "Being a Superhero"
• "Zombie Uprising"
• "Picnics"
• "When You Are Gone from Home"
• "Watch Out for Eagles"
  

Oh my. I should emphasize that many of these drafts will never, ever be allowed outdoors, but at least a third or so of them are keepers. Having submitted a few to the Kenyon Review yesterday, I can only hope I'm not delusional about that.

Books!

Running perilously low on reading material ("perilously" because of the way an hour or so of reading kicks off my writing day, every day), I went searching this weekend and returned with some great stuff. I've found that the work of a few poets in particular resonates with the new kind of poems I'm writing now. For the most part they're poets I've always liked, but now I'm seeing something new in them. People like Kay Ryan, Kenneth Koch, August Kleinzahler, Billy Collins, Tony Hoagland, Dean Young, Ruth Stone, Kevin Young, etc. Very exciting. Anyway, here's what I brought home this weekend:

• Ambition and Survival (essays by Christian Wiman)
• Embryoyo (poems by Dean Young)
• Halflife (poems by Meghan O'Rourke)
• Donkey Gospel (poems by Tony Hoagland)
  

Just an Update

I'm feeling guilty, as usual, for not posting frequently enough. The truth is I've been running out of time in the mornings, when I've been prioritizing new poems. A few days ago I wrote about the lucky moment when I realized what kind of collection I wanted to put together, and fortunately that realization has continued to be a source of energy and inspiration. I've gotten some good feedback from my readers on the initial drafts that emerged from it and have been moving forward with others that I'm excited about. So good news there.

Speaking of readers, this weekend I also enjoined my friend and certified AWY reader Lars (who works in design) to help create a cover for my collection whenever I finish it. My current idea is to self-publish what I'm able to compile this year through Lulu.com or a similar site -- not so that I can claim I'm a published poet or anything ridiculous like that, but to have a record of what I was able to accomplish this year. I feel like that's important, regardless of whether I'm able to get the poems published elsewhere as well. In any case, I'm happy to have Lars on board.

What else? I need to send out a few more submissions, whenever I can get my act together on that. VQR still has a few poems of mine. I need to send a few more to Kenyon Review this month or next (to try to capitalize on an encouraging rejection I got earlier this spring), and I'm considering sending a few to a new literary journal here in Chicago, the Packingtown Review. As always, I'll keep you posted.

Tasty

The September 2007 issue of Poetry has an essay by Brian Phillips on "Poetry and the Problem of Taste." It's a good piece, but like many other articles about the culture of contemporary American poetry, it puts too much emphasis on the extreme factions. I got so worked up about it I wrote a letter to the editor. Who knows whether they'll print it, but I will, right here and now:

Dear Editor,

I appreciated Brian Phillips’ exploration of taste and beauty in the context of contemporary poetry (“Poetry and the Problem of Taste,” Sep. 2007). Mr. Phillips’ careful articulation of this inherently abstract issue is especially praiseworthy. It’s one of the few essays I’ve read recently that made me think about a much-belabored subject (the problem of poetry, call it) in a new way.

However, I wish that Mr. Phillips had more steadfastly resisted the pull of the prevailing narrative about the American poetry community, which insists on dividing its members into two neatly oppositional camps; in his words, the “poetry activists” and the “anti-activists.” I understand that he embraces this structure in part for the sake of argument, in part because that’s how everybody else talks about it, and in part to save time. But like so much other rhetoric that relies on rigid binary relationships for its foundation – “red states and blue states,” “you’re either with us or against us,” and so on – the end result is oversimplification.

I think it’s fair to say that, in real life, most poets, poetry critics, and poetry readers are somewhere in the reasonable middle, watching the volleys arc far overhead with bewilderment. They don’t really care which side you’re on, just whether or not you’re writing good poems. That takes me back to the issue of taste and the central question of Mr. Phillips’ essay: how and if anyone can make such a judgment. Well, to paraphrase the late Justice Potter Stewart on the challenge of defining pornography, those of us in the middle may not always be able to articulate what a good poem is, but we know it when we see it.

Sincerely,
David Keeling

Restrain Yourselves

This morning I re-read W.D. Snodgrass' masterful essay on poetry, "Tact and the Poet's Force," which he wrote just under half a century ago (and which is included in a book I've raved about before, Claims for Poetry). In it, he states that, "it is a poet's business to say something interesting.... He always says something we have not heard before; he always suggests possibilities," and explores the three ways poets create something "worth stopping for":

1. Through a new idea
2. Through new details or facts within old ideas
3. Through a new style

What I find most compelling about the essay, however, is Snodgrass' exposition on the critical role of tact and restraint in poetry, and the necessity of restraint in order to write effectively about the extraordinary and difficult truths that characterize human history. He makes the case that poets must be ambitious in what they write about; discussing Randall Jarrell's poem about the holocaust, "Protocols," he writes, "Such subjects become almost impossible to write about--during the war, in fact, Auden said they were impossible. Yet, if you cannot write about these, almost the key subjects to our civilization, why would anyone go to the terribly hard work that writing is?" It's a great piece -- a reminder of what poetry is all about and how poets can approach even the largest looming subjects.