Serious Study
So I reckon I’m getting an MFA. Yep. There it is. One more car I’ll never own and all that. But it will be worth it. I want to delve and wallow in poetry. Eat it, learn it, know it, consume it. Live it. Swirl and torment in it. I want to stretch and reach and overtake and overcome and do and do and do and I’ve reached an impasse: I believe that I need direction, help, guidance. Focus. Serious study. And I will get it in a program of study. I may not ever become a super-serious scholar, but surely I will become a better writer. And if I don’t, then I can always quit. At any rate, I want it and there is at least the possibility that I will have more job security in my future. At least more options. They may boot me from UTC, but I can go elsewhere. And I will have the satisfaction of knowing that I have a terminal degree. That disease of scholars, that going all the way, that complete consummation. So okay. I’m going to get Rick Jackson to help me prepare my manuscript. He teaches in the Vermont low-residency MFA program. And that’s what I’m going to do, low residency. I could run myself ragged and get an MFA by driving three hours three times a week to Vanderbilt in Nashville (if I could get in) or I could get a PhD by driving twice a week (or three times a week) to UTK at Knoxville. Or I might be able to do the MFA program in Atlanta. These programs would be much cheaper, maybe even free, but my sanity is surely worth thirty thousand dollars. Ouch. That’s a lot of money. But I won’t think about that right now. I’ll just forge ahead. It will work itself out. And it’s only two years. Two years for something so valuable. Knowledge. Stretching. Knowing. Being. Becoming.
In other writing news, I heard from Kristy Bowen at Wicked Alice. She’s taking two of the new poems that I wrote at Dairy Hollow. And I got another request from an editor who wants me to explain a little about my work:
Rebecca,
If you don't mind, could you just talk to me briefly about the cadence and style of this piece. How it is that you came to write it in this very abstract way?
I realize how fortunate I am to be asked these things, to have editors willing to take the time to even wonder. But it still makes me laugh and bitch a little, all at once. I mean, really. But it’s good for me to justify/explain things all the same. It gives me insight.
I got a really nice rejection from Puerto del Sol and they “highly encourage” me to send more work. I think I’ll do that tomorrow. I’m also going to enter Night Train’s fiction contest. The entry fee is only ten dollars. I need to do lots more submissions of the new poems. I want to get them out there. I’m still waiting to hear back from about four journals I submitted fiction to back in February. Most of the journals who haven’t gotten back to me about poetry, I’ve just written off as rejected or whatever. Most of those places have received so many notifications of certain poems I submitted being taken by other places that they probably wrote me off. In some of the batches I sent out, as many as four of five poems were taken, leaving only one left for their consideration. I suppose they may get annoyed with me. You never can tell. But whatever. Onward and upward.
~r.
home bio news word word archive doodle poems prose links friends gallery email me
view guestbook