Valued commodities.

Trying to catch up on my writing blogs today, and I've seen a number of discussions about literary journals--what journals you read or think are good, and how many of them are struggling to stay viable in this difficult economic climate. I suspect many of my opinions about this or that journal is a number of years old. I even have a stack of unread journals (next to my stacks and stacks of unread books) that I picked up at the last AWP Conference I attended, yet I haven't gotten to them. I most often make time to read for a few minutes every night before I go to bed, but that's still slow going.

Of course, to say something like "I wish I could ____, but I don't have time" is a cop out. You have time for the things you make time for. If you make things like writing, reading books, exercising, cooking healthy meals, spending time with your family, etc., priorities in your life, you will make time for them. Still, I have six more weeks before my wedding, where every few days I seem to break down because of all of the projects I have made myself responsible for.

Yet I would definitely subscribe to more journals if in that subscription was the hour or two it took to read the journal. I have bought some amazing-looking books this summer and have had time to read almost none of them. It must be my fantasy that if I buy the book, I will somehow make the time to read it, and therefore have a few minutes of quiet to sit and relax. If I subscribe to some journals, does that mean I will force myself to make time to read them?

Here are the journals I am thinking about subscribing to:
Field Magazine. $16/year for 2 issues. Field always seems to be one of those journals that I pick up occasionally but really enjoy something in it.
32 Poems. $14/year for 2 issues. Sure, a hipster mag, but there's great thinking material.
Fence Magazine. $17/year for 2 issues. Their content always seems fresh and new, but sometimes I think it's a little uneven, too.
The Paris Review. $40/year for 4 issues. Is anyone allowed to like PR anymore? I know they just went through a big kerfuffle where they rejected a bunch of work they had previously accepted. And really, what if what I liked about PR was the previous editor?
Prairie Schooner. $28.00/year for 4 issues. Consistently good, though never that experimental.

So that's $115 if I wanted to subscribe to all of them for a year. Or just $47 if I only did the 3 cheapest ones. I think it's good to pay money to support the things you find beautiful or interesting. If no one forks over any money, the beautiful and/or interesting things cannot sustain themselves and then no one can enjoy them. But I still think these magazines should consider including an hour or two of time with each issue so that they won't just sit on the shelf. If you were sending time through the mail, would you fold it up and stick it in an envelope? Would it be wrapped up in a ball like string? Stoppered in a bottle like perfume?

What literary journals do you subscribe to? Which ones do you not subscribe to but think you should? Among poetry, money, and time, which is your most valued commodity?

I'm not the bread and the knife. Not even close.

My fiance and I picked up our wedding bands last night. Despite a month of hassle from Jared "the Galleria of Jewelry", who managed to screw up David's ring three times, it did feel really good to have the rings in our hands at last. So much of wedding planning is about the party--the food, the colors, the music, etc. It's nice to have a reminder that the whole point of the wedding is the actual marriage, the promises we make to each other and what the rings symbolize. While thinking of the wedding as an event makes me nervous, I can't wait to be married.

Two of Jared's three screw-ups were related to the inscription, which is from a line from a poem by e.e. cummings that we are having read at the ceremony. Yup, one was a capitalization error (and the first time they left the first word off entirely). My wedding band was ordered from Rogers & Hollands, and while they stumbled a little over the capitalization, the engravers contacted the store to clarify it, and the band was done correctly the first time.

It's important to me to have a poem read at the ceremony, something beautiful and artful. Love poetry is tough because the sentimentality usually makes me uncomfortable. But every time I read this poem, I feel a little flutter, because it is so beautiful and simple, and it expresses a sentiment that I want our marriage always to embody. Can you guess which e.e. cummings poem I chose to have read?

I got to thinking about this because this morning a Facebook friend posted a Youtube video of a 3-year-old reciting the poem "Litany" by Billy Collins. I can't watch videos at work, but I'm sure the kid in the video is both cute and hilarious. I did Google "Litany," though, and read it.

Generally, I find Colllins' work clever but empty, and this poem is no exception. It is a poem which mocks an overused trope in love poetry, and while I am no fan of either overused tropes or love poetry, there is something about it that makes me uncomfortable. Does language Collins mocks edge too close to what I love about the cummings poem we picked for our wedding ceremony? There are few if any rules that cannot be broken in poetry--the reason many people repeat something badly is because a few people did it extremely well. Should I be grateful to Collins for pointing out how more recent poems have cheapened the language cummings used in 1958? I doubt he was the first to use that turn of phrase, but a lot of mid-twentieth century poets used language that no one could get away with today. Or do I just wish that Collins' poem was simply... better?

Confession Tuesday

I realized this morning I had a $2.00 off coupon that I forgot to use. Of course, that is exactly what Jewel hopes I will do, which is better than putting an item on sale, because then they never have to pay out for their promotion. What this illustrates to me is that I have too many things I'm trying to keep track of, and I'm overpaying for things because of it.

I have insomnia caused by anxiety due to wedding projects. The more my fiance puts off things he says he is going to do, the deeper my wedding-insomnia-anxiety becomes. If he will not do these things (i.e., call his friend for his wife's name, etc.), I will have to do them. If he will not help pick church music, I will have to do it by myself. At least then it will be done.

I have had a headache for 4 days.

I really need a day off work where I can get some of these things done that are killing me.

Returning from the Flood

On Friday I actually did accomplish sending some poems out, some to magazines I had been meaning to for almost 2 months. On the one hand, this tells me I need to send work out more often, on the other, it annoys me how long it takes. I used to be able to print out paper copies of all my poems, tweak cover letters, and print out addresses on envelopes, all in about 3-4 hours for about 10-12 packets of poems. On Friday it took me 3.5 hours to send out 2 packets and a chapbook submission--electronically. The problem is, every magazine that takes electronic submissions has a different process and requires a lot more than changing an address and stuffing envelopes. While I love the Internet, in some ways I prefer the old paper process.

Our lovely suburb of Westchester had some flooding problems this weekend. We got a few trickles of water in our basement but feel lucky; some friends of ours had 5 feet of water in their basement. It feels like something of a close shave, since we bought our house last summer, and we spent a lot of July 2009 looking at houses in the areas that were flooded.

On Sunday I felt flooded on another front--everything having to do with the wedding planning. All of these decisions and money to be spent feels overwhelming. This might be in no small part because I keep putting off things, so they feel like they're piling up. I decided that I need to just get moving on these things, so that as much can be considered "done" as possible. It may be a fantasy that I will have virtually everything done a couple weeks before the wedding, but I certainly don't want to put off everything and then having a breakdown! Basically, I need to stop saying "Ooh, I should do that," and start knocking this stuff out. Buy the stuff that needs to be bought, make the decisions that need to be made.

Things I'd Like To Do Before the Summer Ends

IttyBiz has an interesting article on eating an elephant one bite at a time, that is, tackling an impossibly huge task one step at a time, just by jumping in and doing the first job that needs doing, then moving on to the next, etc. It's a good reminder that you don't have to have everything worked out in advance. Sometimes the toughest thing is just getting started, getting the momentum working for you instead of against you.

My to-do list is filled with things that have to be decided, purchased, or just plain done by certain dates. If you've ever planned a wedding, you know how this is. Every vendor you work with needs a certain amount of lead time, you're dealing with delivery time, you have to purchase shoes before the dress fitting, etc.

If I was not planning a wedding, I would have a whole lot more time to do things I just want to do, party-planning aside.

1) I am going to knock out the books I cleared off my to-be-read shelf. Either I will read them or I will read enough of them to know I shouldn't bother, but one way or another they will find another home besides the top of my dresser. This amounts to a few hours here and there, but it can be tough to find them.

2) I will brew a batch of beer. This one intimidates me, because it involves buying supplies and equipment and doing something for the first time. It also involves planning, and since all of my planning energy seems to be taken up right now, I haven't gotten this done. But other than the shopping trips this involves just and afternoon's worth of work. Doable.

3) I need to get into the habit of sending out work. I have some out right now, but a few packets came back and I need to send them out again. I have tomorrow off, so that looks like a good opportunity.

Hey elephants! I'm lookin' at'chu.

Confession Tuesday

It's Tuesday. Time to come clean.

1) I really did intend to get a lot of wedding things out of the way on Friday and Saturday, but problems came up and things didn't get done. We didn't get the rehearsal dinner space saved, because I'm not happy with the pizza place's basement party room and too many people have complained about the space at the restaurant I want to have it. We did not get the wedding bands purchased, though admittedly they are picked out. Invitations are not finalized, because we are missing certain pieces of information. I continue to put off contacting our florist about pricing out things like a church runner, flowers for the cake, and table center pieces.

2) The past two Sunday nights, I have messed up in orders I have placed, not noticing as extra charges have been tacked on or if promised discounts were appropriately applied. This is me being careless and wanting to get things done (to a degree, not wanting to do them at all, just wanting them to BE DONE).

3) I haven't been making to-do lists lately because I end up not doing 9 out of the 10 things on them. But without lists, things don't end up getting done either. I need a new way of making sure things get done. Advice?

All of my guilt is tangled up in buying and planning. Once again, I remind myself to simplify, delegate, and go for easy decisions. I know I will be happier with a wedding day that is less harried, more serene, so I can grab a few moments to actually enjoy it.

New Poem Monday

I sometimes find I miss being in a poetry workshop. At the time I left school, I was pretty much done with workshops--done as in D-U-N done. I knew what had to be done with a poem once I thought about it some. Many times in workshops I would get advice from people who didn't understand what I was going for or they would say "Great! Love it!" which isn't particularly helpful either.

But this is Monday's revision effort, based on a draft from a couple months ago. I suspect it isn't done yet, but I think it needs a little air.


Think Again

Proofs can be stuffed into a satchel;
if only one could carry around
understanding in a canvas bag.
In a book untouched for fifteen years,
I find an old note used as a bookmark.
The back has half a recipe for
your mother's green bean casserole,
breaking off mid-word. We launch
and return, reserves reduced to fumes.
Call me Flash Gordon, a satellite
whose orbit always returns me to you.
I lace up my clodhoppers and step
across this cluttered earth, hauling
ledgers filled with figures and formulae
to justify enumeration: one, two, three--
bang. No matter how I twist the page,
memories reinforce the connection.
I am as familiar with your life today
as I am with the surface of the moon.


Questions, comments?