Life: April 2004 Archives
I just learned this afternoon that I've done the unthinkable, from a publishing perspective. I submitted a poem to www.redchinamagazine.com that had years before been published in 2River magazine, and I never gave attribution or warning to the editors. It's unthinkable not just because I oppose this practice (including its less appealing form, simultaneous submission), but because it potentially reflects badly on the two magazines and their editors.
This brings up a question for discussion. How do writers, especially poets and particularly those who've published over a lifetime, how do they keep records? I suspect that, as in any other "business," there are keepers of meticulous records and there are sloppy record keepers. I've always prided myself on being the former. Everything that goes out also goes into a folder on my hard drive so that I know what piece went to whom and when. Purists might object, but I think most people would applaud my administrative efforts. Anyway, it's not like I'm prolific or that I submit every day. I should be able to keep track!
I'm curious to know how others manage the minutiae of publishing (assuming that most poets can't afford and don't have literary agents or secretaries to manage for them). I wonder, is there a database one can use to automatically warn against submitting previously published work?
Yesterday got past me without due appreciation of the milestone that date represents: the anniversary of my quitting smoking. My last cigarette was snuffed out in mid-burn on April 5, 1988. I remember worrying that quitting would harm my writing process. It may not have improved the writing, but it certainly didn't undermine process!
Many years ago in the classroom, I used to ask my writing students to describe their writing habits (where, when, in what position, with what kind of ambiance, alone or in a crowd, last-minute or steady, etc). As inexperienced writers, of course, their habits were understandably undeveloped. But it was a good exercise in getting them to focus on process and how it contributes to one's thinking and feeling.
I remember smoking up to two packs of Camel non-filters a day at one point in my life, usually while seated at the typewriter or with a book. But I wasn't the Perry White kind of writer, with the fag perpetually clinched between my teeth while I pounded away at the keyboard. I typically would light a Camel, take a good drag, then place it on the edge of the ashtray . . . where it proceeded to burn itself out as I wandered through another line or simile. At most, I was a victim of my own second-hand smoke! Of course, the cost-pleasure ratio was entirely out of balance.
Anyway, I've overcome that particular writer's habit only to acquire others. For example, I write poetry most often when I have a deadline looming for some other kind of writing. Poetry is a kind of theft of the world's time. I often write poems on airplanes and commuter buses when the seated-with-your-seatbelt-on time is more than 90 minutes. William Carlos Williams used to do it between patient visits. Frank O'Hara on his lunch break. Richard Long at an all-night Hardee's.
