Years ago a mentor told me, “always have something under consideration.” I took her advice seriously and for the past several years I have always had quite a bit of work under consideration at quite a few magazines. Until the last year and a half, nearly all of those were print submissions.

There was a tangible excitement to getting the mail everyday—the predictable time and, with the quantity of work I was sending out, the predictable flow of mail. Sure, it was mostly rejection, but I was once again holding that envelope, laboriously self-labeled, with the knowledge that it had been in the hands of someone whose decisions had a real impact on my life.

Some journals consistently wrote personal notes, mentioning a specific poem that came close, or at least encouraging me to send again. And without any sense of masochism, I have saved all of the rejections I have ever received. They stand as the physical representation, however slight, of my tenacity.

When a few, then many, journals started offering, then encouraging, the option to submit electronically, I bit. It was more efficient, less wasteful and usually free. Responses arrived more quickly, though unpredictably, and my tracking system became streamlined. And yet, these rejections almost never include a personal note. I have continued to see the varying tiers in rejection, but the absence of the personal touch is troubling.

Some of the journals that finally took me on after years of rejection encouraged me along the way, letting me know I was at least aiming in the right direction. Of course, this wasn’t always the case, but it seems with electronic submissions there is an ever greater distance from writer to editor.

Even so, I’m still a sucker for the convenience, so much so that in the past year I have nearly submitted work entirely to magazines that accept work electronically. I’ve been busy and broke, and trying to follow my mentor’s advice has been a challenge. “Like” isn’t the right word for how I feel about rejections, but I do appreciate them and believe they are as valuable as acceptance. One needs to continually recommit to this often thankless practice and for me rejection has strengthened my devotion.

Seeing as I’ve been on the other end of the stick, turning other writers down, I know it doesn’t take too much to send a bit of hope when earned. I’ll keep up my end of the deal sending in any form possible and hope that editors might learn to bring along their old practices to this still-new digital medium. After all, writers and editors depend on each other to do good work—and we all know a few words can go a long way.

I have been a teacher in many capacities and environments for several years, but sometimes I still feel like a kid who’s just pretending he knows what he’s doing. For years I led canoe trips in the backcountry of Canada—from 5-45 days in length. Our focus was on leadership development, but I always brought along my love of the written word and taught journaling as well. Later, I worked at a public charter school in Minnesota for a couple years, leading poetry seminars, a boat building coarse and a group to Guatemala, among other things. I taught an intro poetry workshop at the University of Washington and assisted with an innovative class called Writers on Writing. Most recently I joined Seattle Arts & Lectures as a Writer-in-Residence. They run the incredibly successful Seattle branch of Writers in the Schools.

My first residency with SAL took me to Children’s Hospital where I worked with patients ranging in age from three to 20 years old. Every day required innovation and improv on the spot. The work was one-on-one and quite unpredictable. Even when the work was challenging—which was always—it was rewarding and because the program was new it was a fine place to learn on the job.

My upcoming residency is going to be more traditional in the sense that I will be teaching poetry to 8th graders in a classroom setting. I’ve worked with 8th graders before, but something about this scenario is even more intimidating than walking into a complete stranger’s hospital room, introducing myself and helping them to write something on the spot.

All this is to say—or ask, I suppose—how does one teach poetry? It may be a familiar question, but for all the talk out there I have never heard a clear answer. Sure, we can teach form, technique, craft and tradition, but poetry remains a mystery even to me, someone who tries to write everyday. My goals are to get kids excited and engaged in the world, to invoke a curiosity and attention that just might offer access into a fresh way of saying the world. I work intentionally, but also intuitionally, which means my methods are under constant revision.

I’m not aiming to become a traditional classroom teacher anytime soon and even when the setting calls for a familiar approach, my experiences (as mentioned above) always lead me to push the boundaries. I guess I work best on the periphery. And, as a working poet, I’m used to being there.

How do YOU think about the teaching of poetry, or any art for that matter? Chime in if you have something to say. Onward.

In the past two weeks I have ingested around 1,200 novel pitches as a screener for a book contest. I’m a poet. I work to make small things do big things. So from the start I respect anyone willing to embark on a 50,000-plus-word adventure.

That said, a surprising number of entries were poorly written, chock full of cliches and stunted by grammatical errors. It’s hard to move past that kind of distraction. What struck me most, however, was not the continually repeated story patterns (there were many), but the way in which authors presented their manuscripts. I’d have to say around 70% were at least partially framed in the second person, gesturing very loudly toward me, the reader, as if to say: Like me! Relate to me! Publish me!

Some of my favorite novels out there offer characters who I don’t easily relate to immediately. I draw my connections from the situations the characters are placed in and how they maneuver through them. Sometimes this aligns with my own life experience and sometimes it gives me an experience outside of what I’ve known. I like to be surprised—both by “the shock of recognition” and by a discovery I had not considered. Beyond these small insights, though, it is good writing that draws me in. A strong voice and command of the language.

For these reasons, the second person framework feels like a cheap gimmick, immediately cheesy, only interested in ushering me through the door and less interested in having something worth sharing. It’s a hard game, though, trying to imagine the stranger that might be handling your dream.

I don’t mind being critical here for two reasons: first, I participate in the game of sending my precious work off to unknown hands all the time, and secondly, even with my hopes for publication, I expect editors to filter out the stuff that isn’t ready for print. Sure, there are some fine hairs to split in that last category, but that’s after you’ve weeded through the majority of what comes in.

Even though I’m not signing rejection slips here, this work makes the karmic circle a bit more complete. I don’t smile while saying “no.” But I’ll probably feel a bit lighter the next time rejection rolls my way. Which is, inevitably, going to be very soon.

As I mentioned in a previous post, it was Emma Bolden’s work that introduced me to Toadlily Press. I recently got ahold of her and she was gracious enough to share a new poem and talk about her current poetry project.

In the wake of reconstructive jaw surgery Emma found herself reading The DaVinci Code, which referenced “Malleus Maleficarum, or The Hammer of Witches, a kind of handbook for trying and punishing witches and other heretics against the Catholic church…..  Before I knew it, I was obsessed,” Emma writes.

She spent nearly six months researching “religicomagical practices in early modern Europe,” during which she actually travelled to Austria to “see: the landscape, the woman, the village, and, eventually, the poems.”

Without meaning to, Emma found herself devoted to a book project that told the story of a witch and the villagers that accused her of witchcraft. She worked hard to remain truthful to practices and historical ideas without being bound to the story of a specific historical figure.

As I worked through the book, I realized that I was really working through my ideas about difference – how “the Other” is so greatly feared, and so often stripped of his or her own voice, identity, and humanity so that persecution becomes a possibility.  Through giving voice not only to the woman but to the dangerous forces that labeled her as a witch, I hope to have broadened the manuscript to explore ideas about what I feel is the most dangerous part of being human: we can so easily see others as Others, and not us, and not like us, and, therefore, respond to difference not through empathy and understanding but through confusion, rage, and even violence.

You can find some of her latest “witch” poems in recent issues of The Greensboro Review, Indiana Review, The Journal, Linebreak and other venues. Her chapbook, How to Recognize a Lady, is included in Edge By Edge.

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THE WITCH SHOULD LAMENT THE WORLD

Wax men folding     flamed

.   arms over pins     or posies

. woven on the altar     a wreath

ringed by buds     hidden from the priest’s

. eye     I thought     the world

. was a word     for me

the sallow     field wearing

.       its wig of rye     emptying dark

. dreams     into the wood-

colored curve     of my ear

. malleus     pounding power     pounding

. to quiet     the body’s bickering     need

and need     and need     but

.   my world became     the embrace

. of flame     the sun’s gold

gown a gleam     over field and     far

. I fell     from grace     to feel

. the village     unlace

my skirts     tie my right

. hand to left hand     to the steps

. of the stake     not

yet     not yet     first

. the taste     of seared

. meat     cradling the whole

of the fire     between

. my teeth     first     the flicker

. face of the ordinary     boy I’d never quite

not seen     before

. that light     which drew upon his face

. shadows     spells     the soft

incantation      of long

. arms dancing      first

. the geography     of hands     the hushed

rustling     rumors     of pyracantha scratching

. my back      unfeeling      I

. only breathing     a world of unknowable

perfumes     calendula     candle

. wax     the red     tapers I dipped

. anointed     lit     singing a  spell to create

those bushes     that moment     that

. night the hinge     our bodies made

. a door     opening

to another world     the alien

. intoxication     pink and pinker

. aster     nasturtium     poppy     fire

was a sea    in which I swam

. suspended     from his body      every

. cell’s song      a singe      I

was less     flesh       than flame

. and fate     was a ring     I forged

. for my own finger    poor

girl     possessed     of my own power

(fist appeared in The Journal)

Diana Woodcock, whose Travels of a Gwai Lo appears in our 2009 volume, By Way Of, will speak on “Women Who Tapped into the Power of Poetry” at the 2010 Virginia Humanities Conference at Mary Baldwin College, Staunton, VA, March 25-27. For conference details, click here or visit vahumanitiesconference.org.

Jennifer Wallace, whose chapbook Minor Heaven is included in Desire Path, has been up to more than poetry lately. During the past two years she has turned her attention toward producing a documentary that explores the notions of where nature begins and where it ends. The film narrows in on the perspectives of people living in Baltimore and maps quite an interesting range of responses.

The film begins with an interesting representation of the city-scape, dissecting a photo along shape lines before reassembling the place. I was surprised at how it forced me to be aware of the contrasting elements in a scene. And later I was surprised again at how often people mentioned “trees” when thinking of “nature.” I sometimes take for granted how central they can seem in a city.

My experiences living in cities and places nearly empty of people have led me to the understanding that “nature” is everywhere. It’s a complex word with a lineage that recognizes “‘essential qualities’ and ‘innate disposition,’ as well as ‘creative power in the material world.’”  The root natus means “born” and the latin natura includes the “‘course of things, natural character, the universe.’” To me, this sounds pretty inclusive and suggests that we belong to nature, which would further suggest that our actions are also natural.

This is where it gets complicated. We can quite easily speak of human nature and the natural world in the same sentence, and the two seem to have almost nothing to do with each other. The word is entirely dependent on our perceptions of the world, which is exactly what Wallace’s film explores. As I’m still pondering these questions and have a different foundation for my understandings, I’ll let the film speak for itself.

Below you’ll find a rough-cut, un-narrated version of the film.

Today, while I’m busy looking in at the world created by Larry Levis in his posthumous collection, Elegy, I’m glad to know that people like Diana Woodcock are looking out. In a way, both Levis and Woodcock work to give us a recollected world in order to show us what has been taken away. Levis meanders into the realms of thought, but returns to the world with the sharpness of someone who has witnessed loss. Woodcock never strays from the scene at hand, an act of witness that gives the reader some chance to know the weight of her sorrow.

Diana Wookcock’s chapbook, Travels of a Gwai Lo is included in By Way Of and she’s graciously allowed us to reprint a poem from her latest chapbook, Mandala. I hope you enjoy the poem as much as I have. —Matthew Nienow

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FOR LHASA

March 17, 2008 I could not shake
the thought of you in flames.
Throughout the day whispering
the names of those I know still
living in your center, on your
periphery. Felt your misery.
Smelled burning shops, overturned cars,
Chinese flags. Saw smoke rising like

incense over the Potala and Jokhang.
Heard the rumblings of a hundred
tanks moving through your hallowed
streets. Remembered the soldier
who narrowly missed me, knocking
me down-bicycle and body sprawled
on the ground as he sped past laughing.
Today I said it out loud to no one

in particular, to the nameless faces
in the crowd, “I never left you nor
loved any city more.” So tonight
I’ll fill seven prayer bowls, make a
mandala out of Arabian desert sand,
remember as I dangle my feet in Gulf
waters the source of the Ganges,
and wonder if indeed I am a certain

lama’s reincarnation. I’ll take that
long flight back, walk the famished,
enflamed road leading to the holy
city where I’ll rise up like incense,
a faithful wife burning on her husband’s
pyre because I can’t forget
you, most fragile tragic city of Tibet.

—Diana Woodcock

(first appeared in Atlanta Review)

I was lucky enough to discover Toadlily Press via the work of Emma Bolden, whose chapbook How to Recognize a Lady was included in Edge by Edge. From that introduction I decided to submit my own manuscript last year and was delighted to be included in the most recent edition of the Quartet Series, By Way Of. Having worked with other editors on a previous chapbook, in addition to my many small encounters with journal editors, I expected my interactions with Toadlily Press to be fairly limited.

This was quite wrong.

Throughout the nine months from acceptance to publication, the editors were in regular contact, generously offering their time, insight and wisdom. They kept me updated on the process and worked to acquire grant money in order to help me make a trip from the West Coast for the launch reading. The editors invited me into their homes and, subsequently, into their community.

All this is to say that Toadlily’s mission of developing a community of writers and readers is no token statement. The substance behind their words is substantial. The editors recently asked me if I would be willing to help facilitate the ongoing conversation and, for all their prior generosity, I could not say no.

Each week I’ll add something to the conversation. It may include new work by past contributors, interviews, essays and audio. We’ll keep it regular, so subscribe to the blog with your favorite RSS feed if you haven’t already.

Remember, there is just one week left to submit a manuscript for this year’s collection! And unlike the majority of chapbook and book publishers out there Toadlily does not charge an entry fee. You can’t beat those prices. And I can say from experience that this is a community worth being part of. Stay tuned as the conversation continues.

—Matthew Nienow

We’re delighted that Toadlily will have a table at the CAPITAL LIT festival in Albany on Saturday, Feb. 20, 12 PM to 6 PM. Representing us will be Noah Kucij, whose chapbook “Burned Papers” appears in The Fifth Voice. Details are below:

CAPITAL LIT
CLMP’s First-Ever Albany Lit-Fest
Saturday, Feb 20, 12 PM – 6 PM
The College of Saint Rose
Saint Joseph Auditorium
940 Madison
Albany, NY

As described on CLMP’s website (www.clmp.org), “this all-day literary festival will present one of CLMP’s popular Lit Mag & Small Press Fairs, as well as a panel discussion on publishing, readings by some of the region’s most notable authors, and the Albany debut of Karaoke + Poetry = Fun, a raucous marriage of poetry and bad singing! The Fair will feature the books and magazines of regional and national independent literary publishers, all converging to sell journals for only $2 an issue and books for $4 each.” Hope to see you there.

Our 2010 submissions period is officially open. Visit our Submissions page for guidelines.