On Acceptance & Rejection

I am honored to have had a string of good news lately:

• Yesterday, I heard back from Dovecote Magazine.  They'll be publishing my poem "Baptism for the Living" in their upcoming issue.
• Last month, I received some beautiful proofs from Arc Poetry Magazine.  My poem "This is Not the Jesus Year" will be in their upcoming Summer issue.
• Last week, I was offered an emerging writing creative writing position at a liberal arts college.  For the first time in my life, I turned something down.  I loved the school, but couldn't justify leaving something stable for something so uncertain.
• Today, I finalized plans for my upcoming artist residency at the Massachusett's Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA).  Not only is this my favorite museum in the country, but it is a tremendous gift to be going there in September for a week to refine my (nearly there) poetry collection.

This video of Julian Swartz's "Tonal Walkway" is a good example of why I love being the Mass MoCA.  ​The museum itself is in an old mill, and features of the original building remain.  The art is immersive and encompassing.  It presses boundaries into the five senses and cracks open my (often ekphrastic) poems.

But even as I write about all of this good, I find myself thinking about a post I read on Facebook recently, written by poet Benjamin Garcia, who is - in my opinion - one of the most talented poets currently producing and publishing work.  After years of coasting under the radar, Ben has recently started getting attention, publishing works, winning awards, being seen.  He posted the following on his FB page:

I was struck by a number of things that I related to.  My own "stuff just underneath" look like years and years of rejection after rejection:  A novel I spent ten years writing is still struggling to find a home.  It keeps getting responses like, "we really love this story but we don't think we can market it."  The short story that I love keeps getting grouped with the "almost" pile. 

And the same gaslighting Ben mentioned has started to really sting.  I had a colleague who told me that her husband's poetry collection wouldn't get picked up because "they are only publishing people of color right now."  This she says to me after congratulating me for my own publications.  Even though I know a string of non-people of color who've published books recently.  Even though a couple of those non-poets-of-color ended up on a recent "13 New Poetry Collections You Need to Read" list.  Even though what I want to say - what I should have said - is that maybe instead of thinking of it as "only" you can recognize that the playing field has simply broadened.  That I've been waiting a LIFETIME for this broadening to happen, and that it's a relief, and that we should all be grateful for the influx of historically unheard and under-represented voices.

This is all to say that even with acceptance, there is doubt - doubt put on me from others and doubt put on me by myself.  Doubt from past rejections which almost made me quit writing altogether, and worries that good news bits will dry up, that the writing will stop.  BUT, all that said: today, I woke early and spent the earliest parts of the day working on a new book.  And right now, I feel tremendous gratitude that my work is slowly but surely finding homes.  

So thank you to Dovecoat, Arc, and the Mass MoCA Studios.  And please artist gods, keep the good news coming.