June is my favorite month. Divinity is everywhere you look: sky, clouds, grass, daisies, elusive little skinks, rabbits up to their ears in uncut grass. God has it all heated, cooled, tooled, jeweled, furnished, decorated -- he's an artist. All he wants our appreciation. I appreciate your work, God.
I live where there is beauty. I want it said of me, "She loved beauty." I love this quotation that is originally from an English gravestone:
The wonder of the world,
the power and glory,
the shapes of things,
their colors, lights, and shades,
these I saw.
Look ye also while life lasts.
I'm a writer. Totally without irony, God gave me the gift and drive for poetry -- with one book in print, called Fierce Consent, published by WingSpan Press (and were they ever good to me!). However, I'm known in these here parts, the bunbun-filled Ozark foothills, for my essay writing, too.
Yesterday a sheaf of poems came back from The Georgia Review. This was the same sheaf that came back from Boulevard -- with a note saying they ALMOST wanted them. I was crushed. But now that I've self-published a book, and made an eBook of it on lulu.com, and can post my poems on poemhunter.com or on any of many, many Internet sites -- well, this is the first rejection I ever got that did not bother me one whit. In fact I was glad they sent it back sooner than they said they would (they'd said five months).
I'd still like them to appear in print. So I'll keep trying for that. But in the meantime -- for the first time of the thirty-five years I've been publishing poetry -- because of the internet, self-publishing, eBooks, and more, the POET is in CHARGE. The WRITER is in charge. Things are changing for the better.
Right now I'm collecting nonfiction for a book I hope to publish this year. Queried my first choice of publisher today. More about it, and my other books, later.
I sent a question about my future to an online swami. When I get it, I'll tell you what the answer is.
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1 comment:
Mmm! Just how I feel! Yes! Divinity is everywhere - isn't She? I think in fact that She is everything!
I love the title, "Fierce Consent" - interested to read some of your poems. I guess if I trawl Google I'll find some.
Thanks for the tips about lulu and poemhunter. I actually have been thinking about lulu - my husband is wanting to publish through lulu . Here in Sydney we have a great Feminist Bookshop who sponsor a great "Perverse Verse" poetry reading during our Mardi Gras. I am planning to submit my work to them. I write sporadically which I post on my blog. Regards, Paula
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