Yearly Archives: 2017

90 posts

Mommy Dearest vs. Writers Block (Like Godzilla vs. King Kong!)

draft

Just finished John McPhee’s newest collection of essays, Draft No. 4, and though it’s not a writing advice book per se, it does contain its fair share of writerly wisdom, many of interest to poets. Here are some quotes from the book along with comments from the peanut gallery.

“Though a man be more prone and able for one kind of writing than another, yet he must exercise all.”

COMMENT: This is not McPhee, actually. It’s Ben Jonson. I agree, though admit I’ve been only writing poetry the past few years. Jonson must mean “in his lifetime,” then. No, really. The point is well taken. And I do dream of novels still. They wake me up.

“It takes as long as it takes.”

COMMENT: Also not McPhee, but his boss, New Yorker editor William Shawn. McPhee was amazed at how much time Shawn was giving to McPhee’s article as the New Yorker hurtled toward a deadline. Shawn’s coolness under pressure and unrelenting attention to revision and detail sent a message. Don’t rush. Too many writers want to be published more than they want to write–and writing is rewriting first, then doing it right (editing, proofing) second. Hold, hold, hold before you send!

This quote is advice McPhee mailed to a former student, Joel, who was making a living as a writer but claimed to be suffering writer’s block: “Dear Joel: You are writing, say, about a grizzly bear. No words are forthcoming. For six, seven, ten hours no words have been forthcoming. You are blocked, frustrated, in despair. You are nowhere, and that’s where you’ve been getting. What do you do? You write, ‘Dear Mother.’ And then you tell your mother about the block, the frustration, the ineptitude, the despair. You insist that you are not cut out to do this kind of work. You whine. You whimper. You outline your problem, and you mention that the bear has a fifty-five-inch waist and a neck more than the thirty inches around but could run nose-to-nose with Secretariat. You say the bear prefers to lie down and rest. The bear rests fourteen hours a day. And you go on like that as long as you can. And then you go back and delete the ‘Dear Mother’ and all the whimpering and whining, and just keep the bear. “

COMMENT: Brilliant! McPhee’s strategy is to tap into our natural tendency to complain, so why not complain about the project that’s blocking us? If you’re struggling with a poem, it works just as well. You write to Mom and go on and on about the imagery and the word choice you’re trying and before you know it, you’ll be trying new imagery with new words because, well, you’re one eloquent whiner, aren’t you?

“Ideally, a piece of writing should grow to whatever length is sustained by its selected material–that much and no more.”

COMMENT: This is from the chapter called “Omission,” where McPhee reminds us that what we choose NOT to write (or choose to take out when revising) is often more important than what we put in. Amen, brother.

Michelangelo: “The more the marble wastes, the more the statue grows… Every block of stone has a statue inside it, and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.”

COMMENT: Also from “Omission.” For poets, the white page or monitor replaces “block of stone” and the word “poem” replaces “statue.” The more words on the cutting-room (reviser-room) floor, the better.

This quote is advice McPhee sent his daughter, Jenny, when she was a senior at Princeton High School suffering over a piece of writing in class: “Dear Jenny: The way to do a piece of writing is three or four times over, never once. For me, the hardest part comes first, getting something–anything–out in front of me. Sometimes in a nervous frenzy I just fling words as if I were flinging mud at a wall. Blurt out, heave out, babble out something–anything–as a first draft. With that, you have achieved a sort of nucleus. Then, as you work it over and alter it, you begin to shape sentences that score higher with the ear and eye. Edit it again–top to bottom. The chances are that about now you’ll be seeing something that you are sort of eager for others to see. And all that takes time. What I have left out is the interstitial time. You finish that first awful blurting, and then you put the thing aside. You get in your car and drive home. On the way, your mind is still knitting at the words. You think of a better way to say something, a good phrase to correct a certain problem. Without the drafted version–it if did not exist–you obviously would not be thinking of things that would improve it. In short, you may be actually writing only two or three hours a day, but your mind, in one way or another, is working on it twenty-four hours a day–yes, while you sleep–but only if some sort of draft or earlier version already exists. Until it exists, writing has not really begun.”

COMMENT: This, from the title essay, is where McPhee tells us that the lion’s share of time in writing goes to the awful first draft. Subsequent drafts go a bit smoother and faster, but only if you suffer through that all-important first draft. My only add would be “I wish” to the “Draft No. 4” part. I feel most of my poems go to “Draft No. 44.” What can I say? They’re attention hogs.

As for poets, too many claim “block” because they’re not brave enough to write a first draft. It’s garbage, they think. An embarrassment. But who’s going to read it? Only the author. And even if it’s three pages of garbage, there may be one twenty-dollar bill in the mix, accidentally thrown out with the overcooked chicken divan. Find it! Cash in! The nucleus of a poem is born!

It’s enough to make even Andrew Jackson smile.

Dying Frogs in High Windows

Lost Sherpa of Happiness my poems poetry

frog

Now there’s a mix! You don’t often get dying frogs in the same breath as a high window, but that’s the case with my poem, “Night of the Dying Frogs,” appearing in the U.K. e-zine The High Window this week.

This poem, like many I write, is based on a rather unreal real-life experience. One day when both the rain and I were driving, I came across a stretch of road that was bubbling in more ways than one. I soon managed to figure out what the problem was–the macadam was alive not only with puddles boiling with rainfall but with frogs jumping for their lives (and no, I don’t live in Calaveras County).

They were all over the place, heavy yet lively, bull frogs leaping con brio, all headed in the same direction. As no one was behind me, I braked, hoping to swerve my way through them, but their numbers seemed legion, and I’m not sure my tires managed the gauntlet, tread as they might.

Frogs or no frogs, that morning made for a difficult drive to work. Darkness. Sheets of rain. Standing water on the roads. Low visibility. In short, drivers were knee-deep in trouble. But hey, I made it, and the polliwog of an idea was born. One tail less and four legs later, the poem from that unusual episode was born.

“Night of the Dying Frogs” will appear in my new book, Lost Sherpa of Happiness, coming soon to an amphibious bookstore near you. Many thanks to David Cooke and Anthony Costello for making it a part of their journal.

Word Up!

poetry writing poetry

dictionary

Aspiring poets always think it’s all about the poetry. Read poetry. Write poetry. Study poetry. Buy poetry (via those expensive stores, M, F, and A). But, no. There’s more to it than that. There’s the simple stuff, often overlooked. Let’s start with words.

I can hear you now: “Words? What do you mean by words. I use words all the time! What do you think my poems are made of–broccoli stalks?”

Well, first of all, that would be pretty cool. And nutritious. But I mean word choice–or, as the French call it, le mot juste–and word choice depends upon a solid store of words, one that has a loading dock out back where trucks marked Brains R Us can bring in more supplies each day.

School didn’t end with school, in other words. You need to boost your vocabulary, mostly so you can understand as many words as possible when you read poetry, but also so you can avoid using these words in your own poems.

Ha-ha. A little curveball for you. I say avoid using them because, like thesaurus-itis (that dreaded disease), strutting-your-vocabulary-itis can be life-threatening to poems. Occasionally you will use a new vocabulary word, but mostly you will take a pass on it, especially if it’s a fancy, Latin-based word.

Don’t get me wrong–the dead language will have its place in your poems now and then, but the lion’s share will be Greek and Anglo-Saxon based. Plus, you want the nuclear option to use any old (or new) word you know because that’s power, the kind found in your pencil or keyboard thanks to the cauliflower pulling the strings (we’re back you your brain via vegetables, you see).

So, how do you do it? One simple way to boost the number of words available to your poems is to sign up for Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day. I look forward to my morning word-in-the-inbox. Yes, it’s often familiar (like today’s “malign”), but its roots, related words, and etymology are often not so familiar. What’s more, M-W gives you two examples of the words from the real (vs. the one in Washington D.C. right now) world.

How cool is that? Ask your air conditioner, then word-up

A Sunday Stream of Consciousness

poetry

stream

It’s Sunday, but there are no Sabbaths for the monkey mind.
“Monkey mind” being the enemy of Buddha-like meditation and the friend of poet-like brainstorming-without-a-banana.
I kind of like the “free” subscriptions you get when you enter a poetry publication’s annual contest. It kind of makes up for the expense of missing first place by kind of making you deceive yourself about the meaning of “free.”
In poetry, you cut to the bone, taking a scalpel to expressions like “kind of,” for starters.
While drafting poetry, I have found that many bad long poems are hiding good short poems. Ones in the second trimester or so.
I proved this to myself by rewriting a long poem Dickinson-style. All I needed was a few random dashes and capital letters (found in Aisle Emily, bottom shelf, at Ocean State Job Lot).
The cover of the October issue of Poetry reminds me of the Beatles‘ White Album.
Speaking of, I wonder how Jorie Graham feels about being the centerfold.
There’s a new sheriff in town (starring Kevin Young) at The New Yorker. Too bad they had to close submissions on July 3rd. The good news? The market reopens on Nov. 1st, and just because your poems were sent home before doesn’t mean they will again
Which reminds me: Poetry is subjective. A lot rides on particular editors’ eyes. If it gets that far.
Which is not to say there’s no such thing as “bad poetry” (I often send it to its room without supper).
Still trying to get over my prejudice against form poems by reading Ellen Bryant Voigt’s The Art of Syntax.
Wasn’t it Ben Franklin who warned about two sure things in life: death and syntaxes?
As usual, the list of National Book Awards for Poetry includes books and authors a.) I haven’t read and b.) I haven’t even heard of. Guess I need to listen better.
Does anyone still write poems with pencil and paper? I do. But it’s ideas for poems only. Once I start writing, it’s on the trusty word processor.
When a poetry manuscript is accepted for publication, the toughest part is starting the next poetry manuscript. Especially with so many laurels lying around, waiting to be rested upon.
Poets need more patience than doctors. Can you say “wait time”? As a submitter of your work, you’d better be good at it. The competition is fierce and the numbers are legion.
My first love in poetry is predictably Frost.
I do not think “Stopping by Woods on Snowy Evening” is corny. So sue me.
If you call yourself a reader but don’t read poetry, are you really a reader?
If a tree falls in the wilderness, does it make a sound?
No and yes.

When Your Muse Is the Buddha

poetry

buddha

Like a lot of Americans, I find Buddhism both fascinating and mysterious. Fascination and mystery, it so happens, are great muses, which is why some of my poems speculate on such foreign (to Americans) concepts as dharma, samsara, and moksha.

Buddhist-inspired poems (loosely termed) will appear in my new book of poems scheduled for release this December, but here’s an example from The Indifferent World. In it, I tackle reincarnation as seen through samsara darkly.

Truth is, to western ears, reincarnation–getting second and third and fourth chances (á la Phil Connors in Groundhog Day)–sounds pretty good, but life, coming as it does with struggle, suffering, pain, and death, might not be the comeback bargain we think. In fact, it might be worth an escape (to a Nirvana concert or something).

By way of example, here’s one of my Buddhism-imbued poem from The Indifferent World:

Samsara

After years of meditation, the Buddha found
my problem—I cling to life,
I cannot release, I am no sooner dead
than crawling back, hours or days later,
as apparent man, woman,
fire ant, tiger, pelican, newt, box turtle,
hemlock tree, narwhal, salmon, roadside
weed. Clinging to a new womb, sac, egg, seed.
Thirsty for more warmth, mothers, suns. Crying
for the feel of water, food, breath.

Again and again, the barb of my beetle leg’s clinch,
the proboscis of my mosquito want, the bristle
of my moth antennae’s search. I crave. I need.
I suck from the marrow of my prison. I cannot
recall the womb that recalls me.

The Simul-Sub Dilemma

poetry

NYer1

Simultaneous submissions, like the Internet, are both boon and bane. They giveth and they taketh away. As a writer, you love journals that accept simultaneous submissions because they maximize your poems’ chances for publication. But…

First the little “but.” The niggling problem–a nice one to have–comes when you get an acceptance. You have to go through the courtesy of letting other markets know that the poem you simul-sent is taken. This means record-keeping. And though Submittable is a helpful tool, many markets are still mail-in and e-mail only. They mustn’t be forgotten, lest your name show up on a black list of rogue poets.

And now the big “but” (no cheeky jokes, please). Responses to poetry submissions are notoriously slow. Let’s say you’ve written a batch of poems you have high hopes for. These are your “breakthrough poems,” the ones that will vault you into such heavenly markets (both pay-scale-wise and prestige-wise) as Poetry and The New Yorker. It so happens that both of those publications accept simultaneous submissions. Yay, you say.

But hold on a minute. Yay? Really? If your best stuff becomes a simul-sub and you send it to the big boys, you know and I know that the response time from said big boys will be up around a year due to gazillions of Wanna-Frosts out there. A year! Meantime, if they’re that good, the poems are sure to be snapped up by smaller markets, ones that would not fall into your “first choice” and “greatest hope” categories. (Sound like the college submissions process all over again?)

There’s the rub. And the solution has a “deep blue sea” look to it, too, now that you think you’ve solved the devil. Let’s say you send your five best exclusively to The New Yorker. That market, tighter than two coats of paint, means the odds of slipping a poem in remain minute. Certainly less than one percent!

So the solution of voluntarily making a simul-sub market a “no simul-subs allowed” market could fail mightily and cost you a year in the life. A year in the life! (I repeat.)

What a way to make a living. And a decision.

Of course, if you generate enough poetry, sending exclusively becomes easier, so I guess that is the ultimate solution to this conundrum. Still, time and odds are not a poet’s friend. And who would’ve believed that strategy and playing the odds–such unartistic talents–would figure so prominently in the writing arc of poets’ careers?

But thanks to the odd bedfellows of writing poetry and marketing poetry, that’s just the case. If you invent a solution, let us know. And if not, I hear there’s money in building a better mousetrap….

The Upside of Negative

poetry poetry books

negpos

Negative. It sounds so…negative, doesn’t it? And yet, in the “up is down and down is up” world of poetry, negative can prove a high compliment. Ask John Keats, the wunderkind of poetry. In a December 1817 letter to his brothers, he wrote:

…and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously–I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.

Hmn. Sounds like the exact opposite of Walt Whitman’s Learn’d Astronomer. In fact, I wonder if old Walt used Keats’ quote as inspiration.

This is my last riff on Matthew Zapruder’s book Why Poetry, but instead of commenting on the final chapter, I thought I’d comment on Chapter 7, “Negative Capability,” because, at first glance, it looks like something a poetry editor might write on a rejection slip. But, no. Keats! What Keats would, later in the same letter quoted above, call “half knowledge.”

MZ thinks it akin to a state of reverie (just west of the State of New Hampshire, I think), a place where one can find truths due to being unsure. A Utopian state, then, for both writers and readers of poetry (the former, because the wonder is a siren call to the Muse; the latter, because it opens one up to the possibilities that poetry is famous for exploring).

Zapruder writes, “This is what negative capability means in poetry, to be in the state where you can accept a succession of things, especially if they contradict each other, in order to allow within yourself an experience that you will not have elsewhere in life.”

What I did not know until reading this chapter was Keats’ almost religious preoccupation with Shakespeare. He used the Bard as a constant source of inspiration. (And here I am, resting on decades-old laurels because I took not one but two Shakespeare courses in college–one on the comedies and one on the tragedies. Shakespeare is not a “been there, done that” kind of writer, Keats reminds us. After reading this, I have decided to embark on a rereading schedule that periodically uses the plays as an inspirational interstice between my regular reading. Once a month, or every other?)

Zapruder uses Keats’ “Ode to a Grecian Urn” as an example of the negative capability theory. “If in reading the poem you get distracted by an irritable need to come up with a consistent, coherent set of ideas that the speaker has in his feelings about the urn, an overall message about the urn, or silence, or time, or mortality, instead of thinking about the statements of the poem as a series of deeply felt, shifting, even contradictory thoughts, you will miss what is truly great about the experience of reading it. Maybe poems are not to be read for their great answers, but for their great, more often than not unanswerable, questions.”

Luckily, MZ remembers to warn us that not finding a definite single meaning to poems doesn’t mean we are free to believe whatever we wish them to mean. That is a common student overreaction, one many a teacher of poetry bangs his head against the wall over. Rather, we are in middle ground here, hoping to encourage not one and not many interpretations while staying close to the text and accepting the poet’s musings as something triggered within the realm of doubtful possibility. (Clear as muddy water, right?) Bottom line: Personal reactions are OK on a personal level, but should not be wildly and openly declared as the true secret meaning of the poor poet, who might mightily object were she present (or alive).

If the thought of negative capability is liberating, you’ve read Zapruder (channeling Keats) well. Men of Science need not apply. People with all the answers can go directly to jail without passing go. Leave the mysteries to the readers and writers of poetry. And, in the name of Keats, reconnect with your Bard, won’t you? All the truths of human nature are mysteriously there!

(And, as this is my last post on Zapruder’s book, I’d like to personally thank him for the inspiration his book provided. Thanks again, Matthew!)

Joyfully Ambushed

poetry poetry books reading poetry writing poetry

brain

One theme touched on in Matthew Zapruder’s Why Poetry is “associative movement,” a term he rather dislikes as being too “clinical sounding,” but uses anyway because its meaning is so vast that it’s hard to label and shelf as something else. What can it mean? Lots of things, but for my purposes, I’ll call it the feeling readers of poetry get when they are “joyfully ambushed.”

That term itself is associative. When I preach poetry in the classroom, I praise the value of “unexpected word pairings” — words we seldom (or, better yet, never) see together. Our first reaction, when we read them, is, “Wha–?” And our second reaction is, “But, you know what? I kind of get that, now that I think about it!”

The ambush is part one: the jolt, the surprise, the unexpected idea. The joy is part two: the caboose connection, as if the train of the poet’s thought has latched onto you at the last possible moment, and now you feel the pleasure of being pulled along by this new association.

On a larger scale, Zapruder goes beyond words and discusses how many poems “leap” from one thought to another, similar to the “monkey mind” practitioners of meditation warn us about. In this sense, poets are like hydroelectric plants on a river, harnessing the turbulent white water of their minds to create poetic energy.

A microcosm of the “leap” theory is seen in haiku. Never mind the syllable-counting so beloved by schoolchildren’s fingers, the essence of good haiku is line 3, which takes a tiny leap from lines 1 and 2–different, yet the same. A new trajectory, but in the spirit of the set-up. Zapruder uses a Basho as a for-instance:

The cicada.
Nothing in its song reveals
that tomorrow it must die.

And then a Sora:

The coastal wind
disorders above the sea
the seagulls’ wise drawings

Robert Bly even wrote a book called Leaping Poetry. Zapruder shares a quote from that book which discusses leaps from image to image:

In “Nothing but Death,” [Pablo] Neruda leaps from death to the whiteness of flour, then to notary publics, and he continues to make leap after leap. We often feel elation reading Neruda because he follows some arc of association which corresponds to the inner life of the objects; so that anyone sensitive to the inner life of objects can ride with him.

Most people think of daydreaming as the enemy, but in associative parlance it is above all an ally. You need only order these Dionysian delights with a dash of Apollonian “structured mayhem” to find “the inner life of objects,” as Bly puts it.

Metaphor itself provides such associative treats. A is like B? Readers delight in C-ing such novel connections. It’s as if they have been allowed to clamber upon the back of the poet so they can cross a river for the first time and get to the other side–a new place affording a new view and offering a new reckoning on life.

Zapruder’s book is rich with researched gems, quotes that reinforce his lines of thought. I particularly like this one by Roger Shattuck, taken from the introduction to his book The Selected Writings of Guillaume Apollinaire:

I spoke at the start of a criterion applicable to all art: that it should present both clarity and mystery. These terms and the evaluations they permit can now by elucidated. The clarity of a literary work of art lies in its reference to experiences already familiar and available to the reader, which allow him to orient himself within this territory called art. The mystery points toward experience not yet known, to an extension of the consciousness.

Ah, yes. The old “extension of the consciousness” bit. It’s not just our bodies that need exercise, it’s our brains, too, and there is no better fitness coach than a talented poet taking us on associative leaps we’ve never experienced before. Aerobic food for thought. Eating and breathing poetry. Me, I’ll walk knowing I might be “joyfully ambushed” by such clear mysteries (or mysterious clarities) any day of the week.

That’s why I read–and write–poetry.

When Famous Poets Get Lost…

poetry reading poetry

gulliver

It’s a sad feeling, watching a poet you like slowly transform into a poet you like a little less. Or into a poet that’s a bit more mortal than believed. Or maybe into a poet that’s cashing in on his own capital, cannibal-like, over time.

The classic example nowadays is Billy Collins, former Poet Laureate and Everyman, a rare and precious combination in poetry-writing circles. Yes. Billy whose verse could speak not only to academics but to the masses. Billy who was both wise in his ways and homespun in his approach. Billy whose wit was drier than the Gobi on a sandy day (wait… oh, never mind).

These thoughts came home to roost yesterday when I read Billy’s latest (“Safe Travels”) in America’s glossiest (The New Yorker). Shall we voyage together?

Safe Travels
by Billy Collins

Every time Gulliver travels
into another chapter of “Gulliver’s Travels”
I marvel at how well travelled he is
despite his incurable gullibility.

I don’t enjoy travelling anymore
because, for instance,
I still don’t know the difference
between a “bloke” and a “chap.”

And I’m embarrassed
whenever I have to hold out a palm
of loose coins to a cashier
as if I were feeding a pigeon in the park.

Like Proust, I see only trouble
in store if I leave my room,
which is not lined with cork,
only sheets of wallpaper

featuring orange flowers
and little green vines.
Of course, anytime I want
I can travel in my imagination

but only as far as Toronto,
where some graduate students
with goatees and snoods
are translating my poems into Canadian.

It may be a bad habit, but I often wonder if famous writers’ works would see the light of publishing day if they were subject to blind readings. The opening stanza, not exactly intriguing as openers go, offers a poor play on words, first the title of Swift’s book becoming a noun and lower-case verb and second the pun on Gulliver’s name and the word “gullibility.”

Stanza two offers two British terms as reasons for Collins’ self-enforced (and Proust-like) sedentary ways.

The highlight of this poem comes in the third stanza with its alliteration and its simile (loose coins as pigeon feed), but then it’s on to Proust and the assumption that readers know the French writer kept house in a cork-walled bedroom.

What really throws me is the end. Like the opening, a poem’s last play calls for a trump card. Here it comes across as a rather random deuce. Toronto? Graduate students in snoods? And, as in the first stanza, a rather lame joke (translating English into Canadian) coupled with a lamentable tip of the hat to self: “translating my poems.”

That last grates a bit, almost as if Collins is in on the joke: “Ha-ha, look at me, famous poet using his name to take up bandwidth in the rich medium known as The New Yorker, writing poems alluding to my poems!”

Or maybe it’s mini-me, munching sour grapes on Lilliput. Acting like a Yahoo in general. And wishing I had a Houyhnhnm’s chance of horsing around on The New Yorker‘s pages, too.

Cold Comfort: Poems That Make the Big-Time

humor poetry publishing reading poetry submitting poetry

angeldevil

Reading published poems–especially poems published in the heavyweight division, where you find periodicals like The New Yorker–can be both frustrating and edifying. Before I count the ways, let me share a poem published in the The New Yorker’s Aug. 28th issue:

SON by Craig Morgan Teicher

I don’t even know where my father lives.
I know his number, and whenever
I call he answers and gives
the usual update about getting together
with the stepkids and their kids,
about the latest minor crises
with his health, about what he did
with Maryanne for their anniversary.
He lives somewhere in Connecticut,
near where he lived before.
It’s been easy not to go there, but
I know I should–there won’t always be more
time. There will always be less.
I don’t even know my father’s address.

Here’s the conversation in my head–or shall I say, between my shoulders. You know, the one between the kind angel on the right and the surly devil on the left.

KA: Wow. Heartwarming sonnet. For me, the key line is “I know I should–there won’t always be more time.” It’s a message that resonates for all of us.

SD: Clichés resonate, too. That doesn’t mean they deserve a precious three inches in The New Yorker.

KA: Finally, a poem that doesn’t leave your average reader scratching his head! It’s poems like this that can bring poetry back into the mainstream.

SD: Still, a little heft counts for something. This is prosaic, mundane, drab. Editors of lesser magazines would have given it the boilerplate rejection letter upon one reading.

KA: Did you give it a chance? Did you read it more than once? Did you note its form and rhyme? Good poetry merits more than one reading, as you know.

SD: Please. Don’t patronize me just because your shoulder is right. Rereading poetry offers its rewards, but only if there is a challenge or special beauty in the words, not if your father lives in Somewhere, Connecticut.

KA: So you’re jealous, in other words. One of the Seven Deadly Sins.

SD: I’m inspired, actually. One of the Seven Deadly Hopes. If “Son” passes muster in a big glossy like this, then surely I, too, might make a big splash in the Big Apple.

KA: I won’t begrudge you that, though I believe they closed their submissions page on July 3rd and will not open it again until the fall.

SD: Never say the word “fall” around a devil.

KA: Pardonez and moi, Sir, but it gives you that much more time to revise whatever it is you’re working on.

SD: A Shakespearean sonnet called “Daughter,” if you must know. Rhyming more or probably less. The magic number is 14. All other sonnet rules fall into the “As You Like It” department.

KA: Good luck, Son. And don’t forget to abab cdcd efef gg visit your Father! If you can match “Son,” you deserve to be published!