My traffic at this blog has increased recently for some reason, according to StatCounter. It isn't often that I get more than a handful of unique visitors and returning visitors. For the past two weeks, I have been getting five times as many unique visitors. I'm happy to get the traffic, but I am a little embarrassed at not having added much to this blog as of late.
Noticeably absent this year, perhaps, is my annual list of jazz releases. I haven't been listening to as much music as I used to. I generally reserve those times in which I listen to music to driving and to working out.
Previously when driving, I was listening to Daniel Herskedal's Harbour, a 2021 release. This album contains a trio composed of Eyolf Dale on piano, Helge Norbakken on drums, and Daniel Herskedal on bass tuba and trumpet. There is now more attention given to the tuba in comparison to Herskedal's previous albums, that is, Voyage (2019), The Roc (2017), and Slow Eastbound Train (2015). This current album rivals Slow Eastbound Train. One of the few albums that I bought in 2021, this album proves delightful because of its greater emphasis on the trio. Some of my favorite tracks are "Ice-Free," "Hunters Point Drydocks," "Arriving at Ellis Island," and the alliterative "Dancing Dhow Deckhands."
On one occasion recently, I was walking back to my car after having returned my shopping cart when a young guy stopped me to ask whether I could give him a ride. Foolishly, I agreed to give this guy a ride to the library, a fifteen minute trip. I learned during the ride that he had been kicked out of his parents" house for some reason and was trying to get a job, despite not having any identification, something that prevented him from getting hired at the grocery store where he had stopped me. During the trip, he asked me whether I could take him to a different city or let him stay with me. Once we learned that the library was closed and that the Salvation Army was closed, I offered to drop him off downtown so that he could hitch a ride to Kansas City. Along the way, he spotted a restaurant/bar and asked me to let him off there. All during this time, I was playing Daniel Herskedal's Harbour in the car although this guy didn't once mention the music.
******
My wife and I, as I have mentioned, have created a literary press named Choeofpleirn Press and have been releasing four literary journals per year. Late last year, we started getting more art. Earlier, we were using my own photos to create breaks in the text, to separate a poem from story or a poem from nonfiction, for example, and to establish a parallel between the art and the succeeding work. I was getting tired of seeing my name in the Table of Contents.
One element of working as a poetry editor that I hate is having to send out rejections. My own work has been getting rejected since the 1970's when I first started sending out my poems. I have gotten something like five rejections from Poetry and three rejections from American Poetry Review. When my wife and I were talking about The Georgia Review, a journal that gets a hundred thousand submissions annually, I was able to say that I have gotten a standard rejection from them. Despite these experiences, it is still difficult to reject the poetry of people submitting to Choeofpleirn Press. Our issue of Coneflower Cafe this time is the largest journal that we have put out and includes forty-three poems when some journals only include ten poems per issue. Rejection for me is probably hardest when I send out poems with the belief that getting one or more accepted is a sure thing, after having revised the poems extensively and after having researched the journal. The rejection stings a little harder on those occasions. Natalie Goldberg reminds her audience in Writing Down the Bones that the writing is far more important than getting one's work published. One has to believe in oneself and in one's work, no matter how tough it can be getting one's work read by others.
No comments:
Post a Comment