I've Wondered How Billy Collins Does It

Ariadne explains.

Is your Collins poem done?

Who should we imitate next?

Walt Whitman? Emily Dickinson? Jim Lewis? Jane Hirshfield? James Tate? Louise Gluck? Bill Tremblay? Dorianne Laux? Russell Edson? Linnea Olson? Stephen Dunn? Carolyn Forche? Carl Phillips? Sylvia Plath? Ted Lardner? Sarah Stella Nelson? Donald Illich? Lisa Isaacson? Chris Spain? Mary Oliver? John Keats? Larissa Szporluk? George Kalamaras? Lynn Rose Carnrite? Lawrence Raab? Rich Furman? Jolie Elizabeth Clark? Fanny Howe? Chris Howell? Marie Howe? Joshua Clover? Laurel Dodge? Evan Oakley? Veronica Patterson? Tony Park? Lisa Zimmerman? George Heath? Arnold Kapushin? Marjorie Perloff? Jim Grabill? Linda Aldrich? Carl Dennis? Adrienne Rich? Donald D. Wise? Erika Lenz? Glenn Ingersoll? Marilyn Nelson? Langston Hughes? Alberto Rios? Marilyn Hacker? William Shakespeare? Laura Kasischke? William Matthews? Joy Harjo? Dan Coven? Jane Kenyon? Pablo Neruda? Ellen Bryant Voigt? Dean Young? Erin Belieu? Art Homer? Deidre Agnes Hand? Cesar Vallejo? Laura Mullen? Yusef Komunyakaa? Maxine Kumin? Michael Van Wallegen? Lia Purpura? Ted Kooser? Rita Dove? Ray Gonzales? Issa? Virgil Suarez? Cheryl Witt? Tim Siebles? Lynn Emanuel? Li Po? Margaret Gibson? Mark Doty? Jean Valentine? Robert Pinsky? Judy Allison? Wislawa Szymborska? Leslie Hodges? Sharon Olds? Bob Hass? Eliza Rotterman? Greg Randall? Jill Bergantz? Steve Masamilla? Sara Wallace? Primo Primavera? Zanni Schauffler? Christine Hume? Adam Zagajewski? Linda Lang? Lance Hug? Cheryl Martella? Keith Moore? Brenda Hillman? James Galvin? Claudia Rankine? Robert Haas? Rae Armantrout? C.D. Wright? Lyn Hejinian? Ranier Marie Rilke? Heather McHugh? Tony Hoagland? Matthea Harvey? Frank Bidart? Sylvia Jeanne Hollman? Pat Auker? Naomi Shihab Nye? Sherman Alexie? Beckian Fritz Goldberg? Franz Wright? Anna B. Hatchett?

Pick your favorite. Don't be limited by my suggestions. I'm sure we can follow Ariadne's suggestions/method to imitate almost anyone who has a recognizable voice.

May Rejection Update

Notre Dame Review 12/23/05, rej 5/4/06
Black Warrior Review 12/19/05, rej 5/15/06
Margie 5/1/06, rej 5/15/06
ACM 8/9/05, rejected same submission twice: 3/27/06 & 5/19/06
Sentence 1/5/06, rej 5/26/06

Another compliment from the SCG

The quietness of a manhole cover cannot compare with the wild vapours of nylon I sense in your larynx.

The Surrealist Compliment Generator Speaks Again

Your pendulous thorax makes cellists envious of the rotund sounds emanating from your nose in D minor.

SCG

Do you have a rejection story?

When I first started sending out poems, I had one accepted by Exquisite Corpse, but I didn't know it. I'd submitted poems to Exquisite Corpse and about twenty other magazines. After receiving eight or nine rejections in less than two weeks, I quit opening the SASEs. Instead as they arrived, I threw each, still sealed, into a Reebok shoebox.

Maybe six or eight months later, when I went back to open them, I found the acceptance. It was a handwritten 3x5 notecard from Codrescu. This happened in, oh, 1992, or so. I waited and waited, but they never published my poem. As I recall, the poem was called "This Is Your Leg." It was a surrealist clocks and saxophones as landscape and geography poem. This was before the Corpse went online. So to see if they'd printed my poem, I had to go to the university library and check it out.

They hadn't. So every three or four months or so, when I'd think of it, I'd run over to the library to check. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Finally, I sent a query letter in 1994, or so. I explained the situation and sent another copy of the poem they'd accepted. Laura Rosenthal wrote back and said something like, Why did you wait years to query? And thanks for sending another copy, but whatever we liked about this poem back in 1992 "no longer twitches."

After that, well, I figured what the hell, and started sending out poems as fast as I could. I mean, I figured, what else could happen?

What's your strangest rejection story? Put it in the comment box or track down my email and send it.

So far this year, I have one set of poems that's been rejected twice by the same magazine, but I only submitted once. Both rejections were in SASEs with my handwriting on it. The second must have been the SASE I included in query sent a couple months. They also took nearly a year to get around to rejecting me twice. Oh well, editing's a tough job. No?

By the way, have you read Codrescu's essay about riding along on Creeley's birthday drive?

Another Place to be Rejected

William Pitt Root, Poetry Editor
Cutthroat, A Journal of the Arts
P.O. Box 2414
Durango, Colorado 81302

Creative Writing and the Profession

The more interesting stuff on Alberto Rios' "Creative Writing and the Profession" class pages is here:

Readings

Have you read Rios' new book, The Theater of Night?

Submit to Poetry

guidelines

Why not?

May Rejections, so far

Notre Dame Review 12/23/05, rej 5/4/06
Black Warrior Review 12/19/05, rej 5/15/06
Margie 5/1/06, rej 5/15/06
ACM (rejected me twice for the same submission) 8/9/05 rej 3/27/06 and rej again
5/19/06

Poetry about Food?

Glenn, in response to your question about Alimentum, the question in your comment on the previous post, on Alimentum's SUBMISSIONS page it says:

We're seeking fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry all around the subject of food. Ongoing submissions accepted via snail mail (include SASE). Five-poem limit on poetry submissions. We do not consider previously published work. Simultaneous submissions accepted. Please allow one to three months for response.

Alimentum
P.O. Box 776
New York, NY 10163

***

ON their ISSUES pages, it looks like they've only done two issues, I find two excerpts of poems about food. The first is:

From "How to Wolf a Cook" by Leslie McGrath

Prepare the mis en scene: lower the lights
and pour from her slim-necked carafe a half glass
of something chilled, astringent. Now let
your ravening gaze travel her nether-curves
as she spoons the stew or ladles the soup
into a shallow bowl and dresses it
with thyme she's torn from the stem.
You notice her thumbprint in the biscuit
as you bite down, a bit of gristle buried
in a chunk of lamb, the potatoes
neither raw nor soft, but to the tooth. . . .

***

The second is:

From "Tomato Garden" by Kerry Trautman

As I raised the first wedge to my lips,
I saw, in the pink flesh, a tiny worm,
mucously translucent and gold
curled still in his juicy home.

I forgave my tomato and ate the wedge
despite its worm, never tasting him,
so infused was he with juice,
so resigned was he to my tongue.

***

Glenn, I was thinking that Alimentum might like your poem about the baker, the one you were working on in plain view at your Lovesettlement blog.

I don't know yet what'll send so that they will be able to reject me, but I'm going to try to get a submission out to them before the end of the summer.

Link to Poets and Writers Article

What struck me about the article "The X Files: Confessions of a Cranky Lit-Mag Editor" is that the author, Peter Selgin, coeditor of the literary journal Alimentum, made rejecting submissions sound kind of fun, like he was doing a service to humanity.

(I wonder if I can get Alimentum to reject me.)

Of course, you can't read Selgin's article at the Poets and Writers site. You have to buy the mag. But there are other things to read there. Steve Almond's article about his collaboration with Julianna Baggot is available, and it's worth a read.

Jink Tarmac as Pantoum

Honied adder devil.
The best flume.
Bed down ruin.
Botany tooth wreckage.

The best flume.
Retire soil thief.
Botany tooth wreckage.
Red hash hugged me.

Retire soil thief.
Bed down ruin.
Red hash hugged me.
Honied ladder dive.

Jink Tarmac

Honied adder devil.
The best flume.
Bed down ruin.
There's botany tooth wreckage.
Retire soil thief.
Red hash hugged me.
Honied ladder dive.

Teutonic Milkman Piano

Ah, the morning music as he conquers house after house.

June Rejections

No June rejections yet.

July and August also look good so far.

May Rejections Begin to Roll in

Notre Dame Review 12/23/05, rej 5/4/06