CONSTRUCT A ROAD TO THE UNKNOWN AND SEE WHO'LL WALK IT!

A check arrived in the mail for hundreds of bucks for my poems -- how unusual (but thank you, Ruth Lilly!). And I cheerfully accept it for Back-to-School Shopping! In exchange, the Poetry Foundation has reprinted four poems from THE THORN ROSARY:

"I DO"

"II. Homunculus"

"The Forced Departure"

"The Investment Banker"

Within the Poetry Foundation site, my poems then are categorized within such categories as "Prose Poems" (of course), "Art & Science," "Free Verse Poems," "Social Commentary Poems," "Activity Poems" and "Relationship Poems." Okay: no problem with any of that. I guess it's part of the attempt to "to challenge the perception that poetry is a marginal art by making it directly relevant to the American (sic) experience."

Anyway, I treasure all responses to or interest in my poems; nor do I privilege one type of respondent over another. I note this interest by the Poetry Foundation because the path I've chosen has been mostly the indie path -- I rarely traffic with poetry establishment venues, not because I'm dismissive but because I've found it more gratifying to expand where the poem might travel. So when such an established venue welcomes my poems, it validates what I was just telling a young poet struggling with finding publication. Basically, I suggested not just submitting to others but making your own spaces for your poems. Construct a new world (for which poetry is such a marvelous tool!) and if the content is _____ (you fill in the blank), they will come.

Essentially, after my first year or so as a poet where I innocently sent my poems to any literary journal whose existence I stumbled across, I've learned to submit to only one thing when it comes to poetry: Faith.

Relatedly, Moi recommends Sheila E. Murphy's new interview where she says: "The miracle of living and talking and writing and relating is that we control some things and do not or cannot control others. Or so it would seem. At the same time, what we MAY do is be in a position of greater strength when we are simply BEING and focusing on the many things worthy of our reverence."