Yesterday, I was eating some cadbury chocolate and drinking tea and suddenly flashed back to January of my final year as an undergrad, when I recall sitting on my mattress in my room in my parent's house doing the exact same thing (in those years, a single mattress draped with tapestries, very 90's boho of me. Only when you're in your early 20's would that be comfortable.) But I remember getting a copy of an anthology in the mail--it was definitely a sort of vanity thing--not terribly expensive, but absolutely one of the ones that you were accepted into only if you agreed to buy a copy, which was around $20. The poem was awful and probably end rhymed, a habit I was only getting out of, but it sparked something.
The back of Writer's Digest, which I read religiously in those years, were filled with such anthologies. And I actually published in a couple during those years. They weren't exactly filled with genius, but neither was I, and usually the poems were several to a page. While not wowing, that first little publication, for someone who at that point, had only appeared in a couple of college lit mag issues, felt affirming, even if the stakes were pretty low. I knew nothing of po-biz or good writing. What I was doing or where I was going, but it felt exhilarating and like I was on my way to becoming a writer..though probably less far along than I felt at that moment.
Much gets made fun of and scoffed when people talk about "vanity" endeavors--their quality, or lack thereof, of the bad poets who fill such anthologies. But then again, there is bad poetry everywhere, just as much as there is good, and who's to say what any of it is worth in the grand scope of things. I occasionally look at the sort of markets people are dying to get into (ahem..The New Yorker) and find that bad, maybe just in a different way. (maybe not all bad, but terribly boring.) Some folks never progress beyond such anthologies, but I guarantee you, the feeling that they are a writer is just as strong as others publishing in "legitimate" places. Especially if you feel the more academic circles of poetry are closed to you, or even if you, like I did in early 1997, don't really even know that they exist.
So much of being an artist or a writer is about permission--not from an external source--but our own permissions--to create, to feel like we have talent or a voice. Two years later, in my tiny grad school studio apartment here in Chicago, I was again eating chocolate and drinking tea (this may be one of the things I do most often) and marveling over my first "for reals" acceptance letter from a journal. I carefully opened the SASE and probably squealed loud enough to startle my neighbors. It was a tiny, local, feminist journal, but for me, it was one of the biggest triumphs. By then, I was realizing that some opportunities were more curated than others, but I don't feel like the second could have happened without the other. The permission I gave myself after that first publication got me to the place to begin sending work out elsewhere. The more acceptances for work, the more I was inspired to create and send it out into the world. This was particularly true when I first started placing work in online journals after a couple years. I wrote so much between 2001 and 2003 because I felt like I finally had an audience, whether that was in journals or in doing readings locally. And I got better (because I really couldn't get worse..lol..).
I've been thinking about how art takes that permission--I feel this more acutely with visual art, which I have little to no formal training in so am therefore less certain about my skills. Or with the permission we take when we start journals or presses, that our editorial eye is valid and that we have something to offer. When dgp was young, so many people were amazed that I'd had the (what? bravery? audacity?) to start a press, especially when I was in my MFA program myself (though I was older and further along in the journey than people took me for). So much is just a matter of saying "Yes, I can do this." and then doing it.
And we fail, of course...because such permission also gives you the permission to fail. I have a lot of orphan drafts and mediocre, messy collages, failed paintings & prints that go into the trash. Sometimes things don't work out like you intended them to. But keep trying. What's important is doing the thing. So do the thing.
(thus ends your snowy Sunday pep-talk.)
