manuscript breakthrough. let go of any poems already published in previous chapbooks. let go of trying to claim again as new what you wrote last decade. take remaining core section of old manuscript and drop into missing section of new manuscript. celebrate results, toast moving on. regret a little what version's currently out there. relish the past never came true. wonder what this time brings.
1 hour ago
7 comments:
lovely bit - and an even better idea...perhaps you should make this your new title poem.
ps: it is advice I think i shall take.
Don't you just hate that? When a poem from the ms gets taken at a good mag or you make a big change in the ms and the damn thing is already out at like 10 places! Horrible. I always get so down on myself thinking that the version out there will NEVER get taken b/c the changes I've made are so drastic and so good.... Agh. But then I send the new(est) version out to the next set of deadlines and I'm still insecure. The story of our lives, I suppose.
You both totally got this post. The other big breakthrough I had is realizing the manuscript doesn't cocoon waiting for an SASE to return. If it's gonna molt or lose weight or bulk up I'm not gonna hold it to a contest schedule. So today I emailed several places considering the old version and requested to withdraw it. If you're confident what you're holding now is a better first book than what is out there, don't worry about who might of liked that last draft because that's not your first book anymore. You never know, one might just email back and say, "we liked what we saw, why not send the new one?"
i liked that you emailed them and said "nix it" because that means you really did put a new heart into it and you love that new heart.
Good advice, Brent. "Wake" continues to evolve between contest entries...maybe not enough to ask to withdraw it, but just minor adjustment and tightening. I continue to tweak poems long after they've been published. And as for dropping in an entire chapbook into a new manuscript...definitely not.
Sounds like really good stuff. Celebration's important.
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