I've been reading Heather Clark's biography of Sylvia Plath, RED COMET, and Plath's rigid sense of self-worth=literary productivity is really scaring me, because I see some of that in myself too. I wish there was a medicine for it.
I read it, too. Plath was driven, obsessional, and competitive. Poetry is not competition and your poetry is impervious to whatever anyone else is doing or not doing
Thank you for this. In hindsight I often see my decisions as naïveté. My impulse has always been to improve as a writer and clarify my ideas. I tend to submit very little and not until I feel the poem has accomplished my goal. I see groups that have a goal of 100 rejections for an obvious outcome. I think that places emphasis on racing the poems to a finish line when they’re lame or incomplete. My lack of an MFA and my tendency to apologize that my advanced degree is in another field is self-punishing. This article helps me stick to my writing guns.
People have as many reasons for trying to get published as they do for writing. Quantity over quantity is not always the best way to think about poetry. But others' goals have no bearing whatsoever on your goals. You are not a factory that produces verse
I've been reading Heather Clark's biography of Sylvia Plath, RED COMET, and Plath's rigid sense of self-worth=literary productivity is really scaring me, because I see some of that in myself too. I wish there was a medicine for it.
I read it, too. Plath was driven, obsessional, and competitive. Poetry is not competition and your poetry is impervious to whatever anyone else is doing or not doing
I'd argue the inclusion of Hardy, as the poetry came after successive novels...
Thank you for this. In hindsight I often see my decisions as naïveté. My impulse has always been to improve as a writer and clarify my ideas. I tend to submit very little and not until I feel the poem has accomplished my goal. I see groups that have a goal of 100 rejections for an obvious outcome. I think that places emphasis on racing the poems to a finish line when they’re lame or incomplete. My lack of an MFA and my tendency to apologize that my advanced degree is in another field is self-punishing. This article helps me stick to my writing guns.
People have as many reasons for trying to get published as they do for writing. Quantity over quantity is not always the best way to think about poetry. But others' goals have no bearing whatsoever on your goals. You are not a factory that produces verse