July 20: End of Positivity, Dropping off Daughter, Classic Saint Marty, New Cartoon

Today marks the end of my week of positivity.  I think that I stayed true to the spirit of the exercise, even if I bent the rules every once in a while.  I must say that remaining optimistic all the time is difficult for me.  I have a natural tendency toward pessimism.  For instance, after I read my rejection e-mail from the publisher yesterday, I immediately began questioning my worth as a poet, writer, and person.  That's just what I do.  Rejection is difficult to take.

I'm better today, although I'm still a little down. It doesn't help that I dropped my daughter off at Bible Camp this afternoon.  It's hard for me to let go, even though she's been attending this week-long camp for five years.  I know she's 13, almost in high school.  But I still think of her as that little girl with pigtails who used to fall asleep in my lap.

On a totally unrelated topic, I will be introducing a new feature to this blog tomorrow.  I'm calling it Poet of the Week.  Each week, Monday through Saturday, I'm going to feature poems from one poet.  Six poems in total.  I will introduce the featured writer each Monday, and I will include poems from that writer through Saturday.  So, look for the first Poet of the Week tomorrow night.

Today's episode of Classic Saint Marty first aired almost four years ago.

July 29, 2010:  Saint Martha

I've always liked the story of Martha in the Bible.  Jesus comes to visit Martha and her sister, Mary, in Bethany.  While Mary sits at Jesus' feet and listens to Him talk, Martha is busting her ass getting dinner ready and the house cleaned and the good china and silver washed.  (Okay, I don't know if they had good china and silver back then, but I'm sure Martha didn't want Jesus to eat hummus/whatever with His fingers or a stick.)  Martha gets pissed at Mary for not pulling her weight, and Jesus scolds Martha:  "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need only of one thing.  Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her."

I got a letter from my daughter last night.  It was the first of three letters I instructed her to write from the church camp she's attending this week.  I know that my daughter is having a great time, attending worship services, doing crafts, swimming, learning about Jesus and the Bible.  The directions we received from the camp director even told us to pack her Bible, a notebook, and a pen.  So she's studying the Bible, and I'm Martha, telling her to write her letters and do her daily reading of Harry Potter and be homesick, dammit.

So, I thought I'd share the contents of that letter with you.  The portions in bold are my daughter's words.  The portions in italics are my interpretations of her words:

Hi!

(My darling father, whom I miss more than a drowning person misses air.)

first day totally awesome!

(I have struggled through this first 24 hours and am counting the days until you return to pick me up.  I put a smile on my face and pretend to be having fun, but, on the inside, I'm always crying.)

we took a swimming test and I won!!

(They took us down to the lake and let us enter the water.  I really didn't feel like doing it, but I knew you would want me to do my best.  So I participated in their swimming test and did my best for you, Daddy, because you are the greatest daddy in the whole world.)

well, lunch is soon

(I don't really have an appetite, but I'm going to eat whatever they put in front of me because you taught me good manners.  I want you to be proud of me.  I will eat, even though the only thing I'm hungry for is being with you, Daddy.)

I miss you!!

(More than anything in the world.  I cried myself to sleep last night and woke up crying this morning.  I've been crying so much that my eyes are swollen and red.  The camp nurse thought I was having an allergic reaction and tried to give me some Benadryl.  I told her the only thing that would cure me is a big dose of Daddy.)

Love,
(With all my heart and every atom in my body, forever and ever, until the end of time, because you are the best and coolest and most loving father in the whole universe.)

C______
(Your little Mary, sitting at the foot of Jesus.)

Confessions of Saint Marty

July 19: Henry Fussy, Billy Collins, "Feedback," New Cartoon

Dr. Dorian closed his eyes again and went into deep thought.  "Henry Fussy," he mumbled.  "Hmm.  Remarkable.  Well, I don't think you have anything to worry about.  Let Fern associate with her friends in the barn if she wants to.  I would say, offhand, that spiders and pigs were fully as interesting as Henry Fussy.  Yet I predict that the day will come when even Henry will drop some chance remark that catches Fern's attention.  It's amazing how children change from year to year.  How's Avery?" he asked, opening his eyes wide.

Mrs. Arable is worried about Fern.  Fern spends all her time in the Zuckerman barn, talking with animals, and Mrs. Arable thinks there is something abnormal about her attachment to Wilbur and company.  Dr. Dorian is able to quell Mrs. Arable's fears.  Fern is a normal little girl, he assures Mrs. Arable, and, pretty soon, Fern will lose interest in livestock and turn her attentions elsewhere.  Toward Henry Fussy, for instance.

My daughter is leaving to Bible Camp tomorrow afternoon.  My wife and I just spent the evening packing our daughter's suitcase, making shopping lists, filling out medical forms.   We had to buy her a new sleeping bag this year.  She's had her old one since third grade, I believe.  It was a little small.  My daughter is really excited to go.

It's really a blessing that she's so independent.  She makes friends easily, and everyone loves her.  What's not to love?  She's funny, smart, compassionate.  Oh, she's really pretty, too.  She's been texting one boy from Bible Camp since last summer.  I'm not too keen on all the Henry Fussys that are going to be sniffing around the girls, but that's part of the allure, I guess.

I'm really happy that she's going to be spending a week with good, spiritual people.  She looks forward to it all year long.

Tonight is the last night of my week of positivity.  Therefore, I will wait to discuss the fact that I received a rejection notice from a publisher.  I submitted my new poetry manuscript to them about a month ago.  It didn't take too long to get the "Thanks, but no thanks" e-mail.  But I'm not going to talk about it, because I'm happy and thankful tonight.  I'll save angry and bitter for tomorrow.

I chose a Billy Collins poem for you guys and gals this evening.  It's from his collection Horoscopes for the Dead.  Hope it makes you chuckle.

It made Saint Marty laugh out loud.

Feedback

by:  Billy Collins

The woman who wrote from Phoenix 
after my reading there

to tell me they were all still talking about it

just wrote again
to tell me that they had stopped.

Confessions of Saint Marty

  

April 16: Secret Visitor, Publication, Rejection

In spring 1909, Elwyn drew upon his experiences with the secret visitor in his bedroom and wrote a poem, "To a Mouse."  The budding author, not yet ten years old, bravely sent the poem to Woman's Home Companion.  To his astonishment and delight, they accepted it for publication--and even awarded him a prize for it.

E. B. White published his first poem in a national magazine when he was nine-years-old.  Nine.  He won his first writing prize when he was nine-years-old.  Nine.  That's pretty impressive.  I could be snarky and say that the standards for acceptance must have been fairly low.  I could be even snarkier and say that it was only Woman's Home Companion, which sounds like the equivalent of Good Housekeeping.  But I'm not going to stoop to such levels.  The thing that sticks out in this whole discussion is that little Elwyn became a nationally published author when he was only four years out of kindergarten.

I didn't publish my first poem in a well-known journal until I was in graduate school.  That would put me about, oh, almost 17 or 18 years behind E. B. White.  Not that I'm competing.  I'm not.  Really.  I can't wait to find out when White published his first book.  He was probably all of twelve or thirteen.  A late bloomer.

I used to be really lucky.  For a while, every poem I sent out received an acceptance.  It was kind of crazy.  I submitted my first book of poems to one publisher.  One.  And it was accepted.  Like I said, crazy.  Of course, that streak ended quite a while ago.  In the past few years, I haven't been very successful in the acceptance department.  One or two poems, here and there.

That comes with the territory if you're a poet.  I had a student once ask me for the most important advice I'd give to any aspiring writer.  My answer:  "Get used to rejection.  A lot of it."  Poetry is an ego-bruising endeavor.

Thank God I've developed such a thick skin.

Now, if you'll excuse Saint Marty, he's going to curl into a fetal position and suck his thumb for a while.

Get used to feeling like this...

April 16: Decorating for Spring in a Snow Storm

I've had a fairly productive day.  I've checked quite a few tasks off my list already:

• Prayer and devotions--done
• Morning blog post--done
• Type up agenda and minutes for Worship Meeting--done
• Work on job description for church--done
• Correct quizzes--done
• Record grades--done
• Take down Easter decorations in the medical office--done
• Put up Spring decorations in the medical office--done
• Put together lesson plan--done
• Work on Project Memoir--done
• Afternoon blog post--almost done

I'm impressing myself, and I don't impress easily.  The fact that I actually got to do some writing this afternoon should indicate my level of energy and focus today.

Right now, it's snowing outside.  Hard, needling snow.  The kind that hurts when it hits your skin.  The wind is howling, and these little chunks of ice are pounding sideways through the air.  The fact that I just put up all the decorations for Spring in the medical office seems a little ironic.  I'm surrounded by flowers and birds and birdhouses inside, and I'm surrounding by gun-metal sky and wind and ice and snow outside.  That's pretty much par for the course in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  When I left for work this morning, the temperature was close to 50 degrees.  It's probably around 20 degrees at the moment.

Well, I just spoke with my wife.  Remember how I got an e-mail rejection this morning from a poetry editor?  My wife received a rejection letter from the business she interviewed with last Monday.  It's pretty much rejection all 'round for our family this Monday.  I think that's the reason I've gotten so much accomplished today.  I'm pissed.

Saint Marty would like a little helping of ice cream and hot fudge to go along with his failure.

I wish I'd thought of this cartoon...

August 8: Rejection All 'Round, New Poem

Yes, it was a good first day of vacation.

My son let me sleep until 7 a.m.  That may not sound like much, but when you're used to rising at 4 a.m., that's an extra three hours of sleep.  I got to have ice cream with a good friend, and I drove my daughter to her dance lesson, where she learned she's going to be dancing a solo this year in competition.  She's a little excited.

When I got back home, I checked my e-mail, and I found out that my friend from the university and his wife can't accompany my family to camp on Thursday.  In the same batch of e-mails, I found a rejection from the magazine Black Warrior Review.  No big surprise there really.  BWR is pretty experimental, publishes language poems, the stuff that's very in vogue right now.  My prediction is that those kinds of poems are going to be pretty forgettable ten or 15 years from now.  However, double rejection never sits well.

I just got back from a budget meeting at church, talking about new boilers and furnaces.  It was about as exciting as attending a meeting of the local chapter of Young Republicans.

I do have a new poem for today.  I've been struggling with it for the last few hours.  I have to let it go.  I think it's done.  For now.

Saint Marty, signing out.

New Poem Day

With its August heat,
Its swallowtails, rain-starved
Grass, cumulus sky, its lack
Of wind outside my office window,
Today seems like a new poem day.
It could be the bags of clothes
I dropped off at Good Will,
Shirts and pants and socks too small
For my almost teen daughter,
Who discovered two hairs
In her armpit last night,
Took them as a talisman
For the upcoming school year,
Changes about to burst open
In her body like tulip bulbs.
It could also be these quiet minutes,
When I sit with pen, notebook,
Scribble syllables, lines, search
The details of daylight for meaning:
Flat tire on my son's stroller,
Brown spot on my banana
Where I dropped it this morning,
Accidental violence to its ripe
Curve, a bruise so deep
I contemplate amputation of the lower
half.  I can't stand the imperfection
In this fruit, want it to be yellow,
White, untouched, smooth
As a toddler's calf.  It could also
Be the argument I had yesterday
With my father, when he yelled
About Democrats, I yelled
About Republicans, he slammed
A plate in the sink so hard
It shattered, sliced his thumb,
Or the guilt I've felt today,
Like a sinus infection in my nose,
Throat, raw as January ice.  This new poem
Could bandage my father's hand,
Return us to the entropy of late summer,
But he doesn't understand,
Won't read or accept my words
To heal his wounded flesh.
Instead, he'll crumple up this day,
Toss it into the garbage.
Like an empty beer can.
A greasy napkin.

July 19: Perspective, Being a Loser, Harry Potter

Well, after several hours of mulling over the fact that I didn't win that poetry contest, I have taken stock of my life, reevaluated my goals, focused on the really important things in my life, and come to a conclusion.  Losing sucks.

I know that rejection goes hand-in-hand with being a writer.  I know some of the greatest writers never really gained recognition during their lifetimes.  If I don't want to experience rejection, I should probably make chocolate chip cookies for a living.  Poetry, and judging poetry, is so subjective.  The poet who judged the contest which I just lost abysmally did not like my work.  That does not make my poetry bad.  That just means his aesthetic and my aesthetic do not coincide.  (That's a very nice way of saying his taste in poetry is for shit.  Not that I'm bitter.)

I did find out the name of the person who won the contest.  I googled him and read some of his work.  He writes the kind of poems I dislike reading, full of imagery that doesn't come together into something organic and whole.  (That's also a very nice way of saying his poems are for shit.  Not that I'm bitter.)

Gaining some perspective?  Not.

I guess I don't have as much perspective as I thought I did.  Give me a few days, maybe a few shots of tequila.  I'm going to see the new Harry Potter movie tonight.  That will divert my attention from my disappointment and despair for a few hours, anyhow.  Well, that and the garbage can of buttered popcorn I plan to consume.

I think Voldemort judged the poetry contest

Right after I found out about my loss, a friend called to tell me her daughter is in the hospital, dealing with addiction and mental health problems.  I felt like a schmuck for sitting in front of my computer, feeling sorry for myself.  In the grand scheme of things, one little chapbook contest doesn't really amount to a whole lot.  My wife is well.  My kids are healthy.  I have jobs that pay the bills.  Yadda, yadda, yadda.  I get it.

But that thousand dollars in prize money would have really come in handy this summer.

Saint Marty is going to wallow a little while longer.

My schedule tonight