Simultaneity

April 9

I went to get the mail at work today, which can be quite a production if I want it to be. It's a fairly long walk to the mailbox, and I usually take a book. If the weather's nice, I dawdle. Today I uber-dawdled. As I walked I read Ellen Bass's Of Separateness and Merging, amazed as always by the power of her poems. She's so real and concrete, and she has a way of exploring the inner spaces of relationships via very specific images and instances. Her language is simple, but beautiful... wow. She always blows me away. And she's such a nice person in person, too!

As I was walking and reading, I realized that I've received some poems in my capacity as Speculon's poetry editor that are just as good, just as moving, as some of Bass's poems. Very different, of course-- and the poems I'm buying are very different from one another, too, for that matter-- but just as powerful. I've received some truly amazing submissions. I could fill two issues with poems I love at this point-- which means that I'm choosing among poems I love, and having to pass on some of them. I don't want to spend my whole budget this month, so I'm trying to buy selectively.

I was virtuous tonight, and went through most of my inbox. There are still a few people who haven't heard from me about submissions (at least one of whom reads this journal-- hiya! I'll let you know soon!). Those are people who sent me poems that I'm torn about, or trying to choose among. I have several poems I'm holding, too, on which I'm trying to decide. I'm still amazed at the high quality of submissions-- I think I've only received one poem that I thought was totally amateurish. The rest have been adequate-to-great. A lot of that's subjective, sure, but I think I have pretty good taste...

Walking along, reading Ellen's book, thinking about buying poems, I realized how much I really love being an editor. I've done this for, what, three weeks? But it's so cool. I've read great poems, I get to give writers money, I get to publish poems I like! How cool! This rules. Timprov rules so much for giving me this gig.

Who would've thought a boy from eastern North Carolina would grow up to wield such power and influence, hmm?

I got together with D. for a bit tonight. We try to catch up every week or so, have beer at Pergolesi. After chatting with him for a while, I did some work, then returned to the coffee shop to write some poetry. I listened to a girl I used to have a serious crush on talk about how she hates guys with long hair, and how she could never date a guy who didn't have "style."

I have long hair. I have no style. I guess it's good I never tried to flirt with her, huh? Then she screamed at her friends for a while and threw a bunch of books on the floor and went away, and the room was much quieter, so I managed to write for a bit. My crush is officially uncrushed.

I wrote three poems, two of them bad, one of them salvageable. Plenty of subject matter, but I had trouble focusing, so I wrote lots of abstract, rambly stuff, which is fun for the soul but not good for verse.

Sort of like this abstract rambly entry, huh?

When we first met
I wanted, so badly, to write you a simple love poem.
Simple, the song any lover would sing to her love,
in Medford or Afghanistan,
having nothing to do with eggs for breakfast,
my wandering jew, or the hat rack we got
for $8 at Willow Furniture.

-Ellen Bass, from Of Separateness and Merging