I'm trying to figure out what to read for the CPL Partner's in Rhyme reading on Saturday. Once again, it's freaking me out that I have to carry the whole thing myself, that I have to attract an audience somehow, that my parents are coming for the first time to hear me and I fear no one else will show...and it'll be this whole "I guess she's not doing as well as we thought" thing. Yesterday, a rejection from TriQuarterly on the way to workshop, once again pre-empted by a reading/book release for a rather uninspiring book, but that we were basically forced into going to. Despite my preconceptions, I bought a copy, hoping maybe I was wrong. Incidently this was also the poet involved in the whole--MFA coffee--wait-to-to-publish debacle. perhaps she should have waited a bit longer herself.
Of course, it was certain death had we skipped it. Last time, when a few people skipped out on the lecture that pre-empted workshop they got a stern talking-to by the director. Also the same director who I remember telling me something to the effect that in the first few workshops people had seemed to be in awe of poems, but that now my style was predictable, and they weren't impressed anymore and that there was too much distance between me and the poems...they were too stylized, baroque..ad nauseum...my favorite being when he held one and looked at it and said there was something not right about it but he couldn't pin it down, but didn't I see what he was saying? and that was the good workshop last year...
Sorry, self-pity is awfully boring, I know...
On the plus side, Wicked Alice is now accepting my log-on, so the spring issue should be up the beginning of next week. Anyone who submited and haven't heard back from me is still in the running for the summer edition.I seem to be getting increasingly more submissions and am not quite as on top of everything as I once was.
