It’s 1:00 pm on an August Sunday in New Jersey and it’s so dark outside, it feels closer to 9:00 pm.  The rain is coming down like an Indian monsoon.  There is thunder and lighting, and a river running down our street that spans from the gutter almost to the center line.  This weather is very strange and makes me anxious.  I grew up mostly in Washington State, where thunder and lightning are a rare event, and rain is usually more of a steady drizzle.  People don’t need sump pumps in their basements there.  Even last summer, our first full summer in NJ, it didn’t rain like this.  We had afternoon thunderstorms, sure, but they were quick and not anywhere near as violent.  This summer of 2009 in NJ is defined by these crazy, over-the-top rainstorms.  It has made the summer feel very short — we’ve only been to the pool three times and it’s already August. Let’s not even talk about the climate disruptions that are causing this kind of crazy weather all over the world.  Global warming causes unseasonably cold weather in some places as well.  It’s not just everything getting a little warmer — it’s all weather getting a lot weirder.  Unsettling, to be sure.

So in poetry news, I’ve been doing some writing and some revising (something I always hate and that feels like a huge chore until I actually start doing it), and we’ve finished the selection process for the Fall issue of LA Review. It is an incredible issue and I’m very, very proud of it.  Right now I’m taking lots of time for my own writing work.  I’ve had a couple more poems picked up, which is always a thrill.  One by Naugatuck River Review, which is a new, but very well done, narrative poetry journal.  I really enjoyed the issue they sent me.  It’s a good choice if you only subscribe to a few but like narrative poetry.  Another by Tipton Poetry Journal. I also had a very painful rejection yesterday when the list of poems chosen for Meridian’s Best New Poets came out.  I’d been nominated, but was not chosen.  I normally do not let rejections depress me — they are a fact of life for writers.  But this one was really tough.  I actually shed tears, which is ridiculous and embarrassing, but it happened.  After rolling around in all that woe-is-me for awhile, I got back on the big black horse of DOOM and sent out a few more submissions, including the poems that had been rejected by Best New Poets.  I will try again next year, in the open competition if I don’t get nominated again.  It’s so easy to let rejections sap your mojo, especially big rejections like that one, but I’m determined not to be one of those poets who just stops trying.

Also, it made me think about what I really, in my deepest heart, want from my poetry career.  Do I want fame?  I won’t get fortune, for sure, and if I get fame, that will only mean my fellow writers will know my name.  Most poets can’t hope for more than that.  I certainly want to publish a book of poetry — several, ideally, although at this point I’ve only written one.  For me, the most satisfying thing is writing a poem that I’m proud of.  Getting it picked up for publication validates me, and I like that too.  But do I need to have recognition?  Probably not.  So I guess it’s ok if I’m not one of the Best New Poets this year.  It’ll happen someday.  I’m young and I have a lot of time to write and publish.  It wasn’t that long ago that I thought I’d never get a single poem published anywhere, and look at me now.  So yeah, keeping the faith.  That’s me.