I’m delighted to say that I’ve been having good luck with submissions the past few months.  I’ve had plenty of rejections, of course, but have had enough poems picked up by journals to make the rejections much less painful.  I’ve got stuff forthcoming in Spillway, Rattle, 34th Parallel, and Redheaded Stepchild. And the poem that Nimrod took almost 18 months ago is finally in the current issue.  HUZZAH!

So all is well, right?  Well, not so much.  There are two problems: 1. I am running out of decent poems to send out because so many have been taken over the last couple of years (not a bad problem to have, admittedly), and 2. I am not at all satisfied with my manuscript as it stands and it needs a lot of new work to make it publishable.  And then there is the third problem, which is that I’m not writing much.  I’ve been out of my MFA program for over a year, and I’ve written maybe 10 poems, six of which are even remotely publishable.  At that rate, I’m going to be a granny by the time my manuscript is really ready.

Yesterday on Facebook I noticed that Kim Addonizio is holding an online workshop, which begins Monday.  First of all, I’m a huge fan of her work.  Secondly, I really could use the feedback of someone with a different aesthetic than the poets I worked with in my MFA program.  They were very talented and taught me more than I could have imagined about the craft and art of poetry, but it’s always good to get a different angle.  And thirdly, a workshop is the only thing that is going to force me to write a new poem every single week, and one that’s good enough to show to a group of people and one of my poetry idols.

I can’t wait to begin! (And am ignoring my fears.)