Dreams and poetic fame

I have been so preoccupied with my poems the past two weeks. I’ve written a couple of new ones, which is unusual for this semester so far—I’ve barely had time to read one lately, much less write anything. Maybe this is my one effort to preserve something of my work life that’s not just routine go to class / go to meetings / grade papers—which is about all I’ve had time for lately.

I have two sets of poems out that I sent out last July—way past time to have heard anything from them. I emailed both the editors in the past couple of weeks querying about the status of the submission, but haven’t heard from either yet. I dreamed last night that I checked my email (this is how sick my life has become) and I had a response back from one of the editors saying, of course we’re going to take your poems, the work of an established poet such as yourself! I about literally woke up laughing—which fortunately I didn’t because sometime during the night William had gotten up and got into bed with me and Chris, so he was restlessly playing with my hair and I am sure would’ve woken up again in a second. This morning Chris said he was sure I got up in the middle of the night to check my email—I hope I’m not sleep emailing now.

But it would be fun to be a famous poet. Why not be somebody rich and famous, I’ve been asked by my dear husband, when I expressed this sentiment? Wealth would be great, I agree, although we’re clearly too far behind to make that happen. But I am pretty sure I’d never want to be really famous: too high maintenance. Famous poets wouldn’t be recognized at airports or grocery stores—and rarely on university campuses. Famous poets would rarely be stalked. Worst case scenario in being a famous poet (I imagine) would be having to read lots and lots of bad poetry written by those who want you to connect them up with a publisher. Although I imagine second book anxiety must be pretty high if you become famous from your first book… Best case is being brought into campus somewhere to read poetry and visit a class and be feted at a lovely local restaurant—on top of having people actually read and respond to your work.

I guess that’s the crux of the matter for me right now—I feel so isolated writing with very few people reading my work. When I have something new and wonderful, I have to email it to my friend Lisa far far away. When I have something new and awful, I can’t find anybody to help me figure out what would fix it. I might eventually figure it out on my own, but it would be so good to have a workshop partner.

I’m going to a poetry reading next Monday night to try to see what might develop—maybe I’ll meet somebody. But it’s worse than dating. You can’t just walk up to somebody and say, hello, “I want to be a famous poet, but first I need a workshop partner. What are your qualifications?” I need somebody who’s also not a student, but not finished developing as a writer either. Somebody who lives nearby and is willing to take time to meet regularly. It’d be great to find somebody else with kids—or at least a solidly grown up life that doesn’t involve a fantasy about reading poetry in smoky bars. I actually went online to this Meetup.com place to see if I could find any local poetry groups—and since apparently the local poets around here are also into Satanism, I guess I’ll pass on those.

Maybe it’s telling that I’m looking for a workshop partner and not a teacher. I keep thinking too about my teachers in college. The smoky bar school of poetry must be really well established, since they were all hanging out there, as were all their characters. For a long time I thought I would never be able to write anything worth anything because I don’t drink and don’t like bars—so what subjects were left? What a relief it was to discover poets like Linda Pastan and Sharon Olds and Eavan Boland. The newest issue of Southern Poetry Review had poems by Linda Pastan and Susan Ludvigson and Kathryn Kirkpatrick—I wish my poem had been in that issue.

In the meantime, I’m revising my book-length manuscript and trying to decide whether to send it out a bit. I’ve been concentrating on my chapbook, since I feel pretty confident it’s very nicely finished, while the book still has some rough poems in it and I don’t think the structure is quite complete. And I guess we’ll see what happens at the poetry reading. It’s definitely a slow process.

But one good thing about my poor beleaguered husband, sadly reading poems at gun point: he thinks eventually I’ll reach poetic fame, since a great poet must suffer—and, he added, since I’m married to him, I’m guaranteed to suffer enough. Maybe he has a point.