Saturday, March 24, 2007

Scrambled and Frantic


Oh Dear. I really have no idea what to start on first. Should I go for the big paper on William Carlos Williams' Paterson, or should I read The Year of Magical Thinking and write that paper? Or should I grade the almost foot-thick stack of annotated bibliographies my students turned in yesterday? Or perhaps should I start on the one, preferably two book reviews I should have ready for the Sycamore editor by Wednesday? Or my tax return? Or record reviews, or typing critiques for the other memoir submissions for Monday, or the two poems I need to have written for Wednesday, the short reflective essay I need to have for Tuesday's class on Langston Hughes, or perhaps even start with revisions for the Memoir class, since I've got to have a final revision portfolio due in less than a month. Happy place, Dave--go to your Happy Place. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

In new fantabulous news, I got a reject letter from the Indiana Review! Yay! Yay! This may sound strange, this being giddy about a reject letter, but, knowing what I know so far of the world of literary journals, this reject letter was wonderfully good news. Rather than being a 6th of a sheet of paper with no signature saying "We appreciate your interest, but...." I got an actual short note signed by the poetry editor expressing interest in further work and even specifying a piece of those that I submitted that was especially liked. I walked around the house with a spring in my step. I just need to add sending out submissions to more journals this month to my things to do list above.

With potato chips and orange juice,
I remain, oh fair readers,
most frantically
and frothily
yours,
Davo

1 comment:

Kristen said...

Hey, that sounds like a nice rejection letter!

So, um, sounds like I should bring some sedatives when I come...