Under a sweet June sky

stung with stars
(David Baker, from 'Murder')

Submissions in May: 2
Responses: 3
Rejections: 2
Acceptances: 1 (phew, that was almost a month with no good news)
New poems: some
Things on my 'to-read' list: many
Time: insufficient
Submittable poems still in my possession: only 4 or thereabouts...
Poems still out in the world: 8
Made up statistics: none, this month

Bit boring, this entry! In a more interesting vein (?) I had poems in Ink, Sweat & Tears and the Cadaverine this week. Click the links to go and read them.

A month of two halves

I think the poem I quoted before by Jonathan Galassi was prescient; this has certainly been a month of two halves - cruel and not-cruel.

Cruel:
The month commenced with terrible rain, during which I got a stinkbomb of a rejection from a large magazine which shall remain nameless. 'We enjoyed particular words and phrases, but...' Christ! Rejections are par for the course, I know, but that was unnecessary; I'd rather they hate my writing entirely than think that parts of it were OK. One of my friends says they were trying to be nice; another thinks it was a little dig for getting their hopes up with the 'particular words and phrases'. I moped briefly, looked at what I'd submitted, got irritated at the stupid end-rhymes and slant-rhymes that I can't stop adding, resolved to give myself a break from it all in July, read a load of poetry by people I admire, despaired, went and sat in the Poetry Library, read some magazines, felt a bit better...and then, in a fit of masochism, submitted two out of the three that got rejected to another large magazine.

Not-cruel:
Because this is Britain and the weather is schizophrenic, the rain and cold disappeared during the course of a single day, and the editor of the other magazine replied and accepted everything. She also asked me to submit more, which is a mixed blessing - on one hand, appreciation of your writing is the only reward in poetry, because God knows there's no money in it - on the other, I don't have anything else I would be happy to submit there at the moment; the other stronger things I've written are all tied up in competitions or other submissions, and won't come 'home' for a while. One of the magazines I submitted to asks that you only query after 9 months (!).

I hope that doesn't sound obnoxious. Does it sound obnoxious? I don't know how to write about the highs and lows of submitting poetry without coming across as whiny, smug or boring. Most of the time I am just watching trash on 4oD and waiting around for replies, which doesn't make for thrilling reportage.

Anyway, that was May so far. I'm still planning to take July completely off from submissions. I need some time and headspace to work on all the annoying drafts and salvage fragments and read - and read some more - and try and write the sort of poetry that I believe in and want to be writing, as opposed to the sort of poetry that I think editors will accept. Hopefully, there is some overlap between the two.

Still the unresting castles thresh

The Trees

~Philip Larkin

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

* * *

I don't really need an excuse to post a bit of Larkin, and this is a classic. I'm never quite sure if Larkin was a frustrated optimist or a frustrated pessimist; his best poems always end up in that odd space where stark reality is moderated by a tantalising (if illusory) prospect of transcendence. L remarked himself that 'one of the jobs of the poem is to make the beautiful seem true and the true beautiful, but in fact the disguise can usually be penetrated.'

God, I love Larkin. He was so....accurate. Anyway. Less writing about writing and more writing.

Storni translation - Plaza in winter / Plaza en invierno

Plaza in winter

Bare trees run a race
by the rectangle of the square.
The skeletons of discarded umbrellas
have settled
amid their epilepsy;
the yellow lights
flock tightly together.

Inhospitable, damp banks
eject sleepy emigrants
from their verges.
Hearing the citizens' cheap shots,
a hero,
motionless on his column
freezes in his bronze.


Plaza en invierno

Árboles desnudos
corren una carrera
por el rectángulo de la plaza.
En sus epilépticos esqueletos
de volcadas sombrillas
se asientan,
en bandada compacta,
los amarillos
focos luminosos.

Bancos inhospitalarios,
húmedos
expulsan de su borde
a los emigrantes soñolientos.
Oyendo fáciles arengas ciudadanas,
un prócer,
inmóvil sobre su columna
se hiela en su bronce.

~Alfonsina Storni

from Mundo de siete pozos (1934)

This is a clever poem - subtler than the majority of Storni's other work. Hope I did it some justice here; I had to change just about all of the word order and line breaks to make it sound less like a translation.

Notes:

'volcadas' - perhaps a bit stronger than 'discarded', more like 'dumped' or 'junked'?
'emigrantes' - note the context
'faciles arengas' - this could have been translated in a number of different ways. The dictionary definition of 'arenga' is an 'impassioned speech'; 'facil' means 'easy'. I can't think of a closer phrase in English than 'cheap shot'.

The month after the month they say is cruel

is and is not
(Jonathan Galassi, from 'May')

1. Another round of waiting now, having submitted and resubmitted the majority of the work I have which stands a chance. Submitted to Brittle Star for the third time. If I get a rejection saying I got shortlisted again, I'll...I'll...well, I probably won't do a whole lot, actually.  

2. The more I look at my writing the more of it I dislike. Bother. Why is it so hard to write poetry that works. Weep, gnash. Pessoa had the right idea in adopting a load of pseudonyms. You can pass their work off as crap whenever you want. Of course, Pessoa had no need, as he was excellent under all of them.

(The alternative to publishing crap under a pseudonym is of course to work harder.)

3. I am reading too much fiction at the moment - I know, how can there be such a thing - but too much fiction relative to poetry, which makes me want to write prose. I am in awe of novelists. Been reading a column where authors describe the genesis of a recent novel - some of them took decades to finish. Decades! I can't begin to fathom.

4. Of late it has rained with such determination that I've gone through three umbrellas in the space of a month.

5. There is no number 5.

In vino veritas

...in aqua sanitas. But how could I pass up a name like this?

Qu'il pleuve sur le cimetière

Separate submissions in April: 4 

Poems submitted in April: 11 

Percentage of those that were resubmissions: 73% 

Percentage that were new submissions: 27% 

Percentage of the new submissions which were also new poems: 66% 

Competitions entered: 2 (a first time for everything) 

Responses received: 6 

Acceptances: 4 

Rejections: 2* 

Number of times Beckett submitted Murphy for publication: 29 

Number of times it was rejected: 28 

Relevance of this: Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. 

* Finally got a cordial rejection through from Poetry Review. Not much more to say as I can't tell whether a) it is a promising one b) they are masochists and use form rejections inviting submissions from hopeless poetasters forevermore. Either way, it's useful to have the poems back again. I have already resubmitted one of them. 

*            *           *

I was in Paris recently and made a pilgrimage to the Cimetière de Montparnasse to see Beckett's grave (he famously specified 'any colour, so long as it's grey'). It was only a brief visit because the weather was terrible. 

Il definitely pleuvait sur le cimetière. 

 I wonder if cosmetic companies use Montparnasse to test the staying power of their lipsticks. They should do. Various famous graves (Baudelaire, Sartre/de Beauvoir) have kisses all over them: 

The other thing I noted was that even if you don't die a Beckett or a Baudelaire it is still possible to get people to take pictures of your grave. This is accomplished by:

a) insanity

b) considerable gothic appeal 

(click the image for the full horror)

                                     c) mummy issues.

Am currently working on the design of my multicoloured skull-shaped crypt with mosaic detailing and added Electra complex.