Poetry Postcard 6

The sixth postcard in  my project went in the mailbox Saturday night. Our neighborhood is late on the mail route -- close to 6 PM -- so the card probably left the post office this morning.

Resolution

River ice floats by,

confection for the eye --

rock candy striped

peppermint, blueberry.

Don’t taste it.

Crunching candy

is hard on teeth.

Don’t let it linger

on the tongue

either. Sugar seeps

into enamel

sure as ice melt

creeps up the gums

of the Hulahula River.

Laura Shovan

The postcard behind this poem is a copyrighted image, but you may view it at the photographer's website. His name is Art Wolfe.

The card arrived in an envelope of postcards from my friend Patricia VanAmburg. Patricia is a poet and retired (sort of) Howard Community College professor. It is a striking image of ice floating on Alaska's Hulahula River.

The river is popular for rafting expeditions. You can read about blogger Eric Goldman's adventure here. It's located in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and is considered a threatened river.

Hulahula River from equinoxexpeditions.com

I began working on this poem right around New Year's Day, which made the idea of a resolution appealing. But every attempt at being "environmental" with the poem led me nowhere.

Instead, my point of entry -- as it often is -- was visual. The layers of color in the river ice ranged from deep blue, to a blueberry lollipop color, to white. To me, the ice seemed confection-like.

The lines "Crunching candy/ is hard on teeth" may have been influenced by my daughter's recent oral surgery. A week later and she still can't chew properly. (She did go back to school, at last, today.)

I was surprised when the poem circled back to an environmental theme, after all. The last several lines snuck up on me and earned the poem its title, "Resolution."

http://adventure-travel.findthebest.com/l/1018/Alaska-Rafting-the-Hulahula-River

Those of you following the project: I wrote the eleventh poem today, which means I have completed a quarter of the postcards!

So far, I have learned about the Merrimack & the Monitor, 50s era starlet Vera Ellen, and the Hulahula River and become reaquainted with Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle. 

I've been photographing the front of each card before mailing it, but realized I should record the info on the back also. I began doing that this morning, with postcard #9. Should have thought of it sooner.

Last night, I read two of the cards, "Thick Skinned" and one I haven't posted yet, at Minas Gallery. People seem to like the poems. Several in the audience gave me an address to receive a card. One person was in town for the holidays and asked if I'd be willing to send her postcard to Shanghai!

At the end of the project, I'll post a list of states and countries where the postcards were sent. So far, two countries outside the U.S. I haven't made a count of the states, but I'm guessing it's at least half a dozen.

Six Questions for... Expanded Version

Looking for advice on publishing with small presses and lit mags? Check out Jim Harrington's insightful blog, "Six Questions for..."

Twice a week, Jim poses six questions to an editor. My interview in my role as editor of Little Patuxent Review went up yesterday.

Our most recent issue: Audacity, Summer, 2012.

The six questions are:

1. What are the top three things you look for in a submission and why?
2. What are the top three reasons a submission is rejected, other than not fitting into your answers to the above question and why?
3. Which of the following statements is true and why? Plot is more important than character. Character is more important than plot. Plot and character are equally important.
4. What advice can you offer new authors hoping to publish their first submission?
5. Based on your experience as an editor, what have you learned about writing?
6. What one question on this topic do you wish I'd asked that I didn't? And how would you answer it?  

My favorite question was #5. I appreciate that Jim recognized I am a working writer, as well as an editor, and that the experience of editing has helped me grow as a writer.

You can read Jim's post and my answers at his blog.

It's been a few months since we did the actual interview, so I'd like to expand on a few things.

Laura's Editorial Pet Peeves:

Overly used and smarty-pants words. I see the word "cerulean" way too much. Can you honestly say you know what makes a blue "cerulean?"

This is what "cerulean" looks like,
according to the Pantone color system.

The overuse of words like "cerulean" -- an editor/poet friend said her pet peeve word is "shards" -- can be a red flag. Is the author trying to impress with fancy vocabulary when a simple word would do? Overly verbose writing often comes across as amateurish. An author who trusts his or her voice knows how and when to use S.A.T. words. More directly, I don't want to see the word "cerulean" unless your character is an artist and has a reason to use that very specific word. And I don't want to see "shattered cerulean shards" unless they are part of a stained glass window in your poem or story.

Cerulean stained glass.

FYI: One of my favorite poets, Kay Ryan, excels at using simple language. She might include one or two high-vocabulary words in her short poems. This practice adds emphasis to the heightened language when and if it appears. Instead of being buried in a barrage of unusual, rich language, the every day words buoy and highlight a word or phrase that's less familiar.

Jumping on the theme wagon. Take a look at author Rus VanWestervelt's take on this issue. He compares his NaNoWriMo project to preparing a piece for Little Patuxent Review. What I responded to was Rus' realization that writing a new piece just to fit a journal's theme (in other words, writing something with the sole aim of seeing it published) is a bit backwards. An author who does this is not writing for herself, so the work won't feel authentic, and she is probably rushing the process.

Ideally, the poems, essays and short stories that are submitted to LPR would be pieces that  you -- the potential contributor -- have been working on for some time. You have taken the piece from initial draft through several revisions, shared it with your critique group, worked with their feedback. Then, you saw LPR's call for submissions. "Oh -- they are doing an issue on Music. [Note: We are. Submissions open December 1.] I have a perfect piece for that!" Check out a back-issue of the journal to get a sense of what we publish. Give your piece one more polish and send it in.