Laurel talked about drive in the post below and that is a good question, does a poet need drive to succeed? First of all I think it’s hard to have drive if you are not being published. I mean when I am rejected from a journal I feel bummed out but then I remember what it feels like to get in so I send my work off again. Every step feels like I get closer to the goal…and that goal continually changes.
I remember two years ago when I wanted to enter Ploughshares Emerging Writers Issue and I needed someone to sponsor me so I wrote to different people and none of the writers I knew met Ploughshares qualifications so I just off the top of my hat decided to write to Kim Addoznia and asked her to sponsor me. Of course, she already had a student she was entering but she gave me great advice about taking small steps as a poet, of paying my dues. It was then I think I began to work.
Honestly I am a lazy ass poet. I don’t think I’ve even yet truly begun to work. Brigit Pegeen Kelly sometimes spends a year on one poem. I want to have that kind of drive. I’ve never done that and in truth I don’t think the manuscript is done…I don’t think I’ve even begun to work. My lack of drive is something I fight with every day so dear Laurel I think you should get another hero or at least give yourself credit for getting up every day and writing---its damn hard to do that some days.
I think I sent things off so I can live with myself. I know I have to enter Yale this year not because the manuscript is great but because it is a step and a hurtle I need to get over. I am 37 years old. I have three more years to enter this damn thing and then low and behold I’m an old poet:) But I also know it would be so much easier to let it slide till I’m 40 and close the door on myself with the safety net of well maybe….and that does feel like a greater crime.
I got really mad at Carolyn when she said that some poets go 15 years of working non stop to get a manuscript published and it takes that long. She has a good friend who that happened to...I was like, why are you telling me this???? I feel like such a child with her sometimes. Drive...that is a question I ask myself every day. Would I go the 15 years? Honestly, I have no idea...
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15 years? christ. I used to force myself to write everday, but now i don't. if I don't feel like writing something new, i revise something old. revision is writing too, for me, it is the funnest part of writing (jack think im nuts) but it's true--I love to revise. I've noticed that when I go back to old poems after a year or so, I have new insights about the situation and I've learned a little bit more craft to shape those insights. i've ben working on the same chapbook for almost a year. it's been exciting to add poems and eliminate others. i see now that a collection of poems is in a constant state of flux and for some reason, there's a security in that for me.
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