Tag: Poetry

FROM POETRY WINNERS TO MIRACLES

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

Continuing this month’s survey of Books Read, here are a few more entries:

  • Poetry book competition winners, mostly. Mary Biddinger, Prairie Fever (Steel Toe); Chuck Carlisle, A Broken Escalator Still Isn’t the Stairs (Concrete Wolf); Mark Conway, Any Holy City (Silverfish); Becky Gould Gibson, Need-Fire (Bright Hill); Michelle Gillett, The Green Cottage (Ledge); Noah Eli Gordon, Acoustic Experience (Pavement Saw); Jason Irwin, Watering the Dead (Pavement Saw); Joshua Kryah, Glean (Nightboat); Rachael Lyon, The Normal Heart and How It Works (White Eagle Coffee Store); Dawn Lundy Martin, Discipline (Nightboat); Rusty Morrison, The True Keeps Calm Biding Its Story (Ahsanta); Heather Aimee O’Neill, Memory Future (Gold Line); Simon Ortiz, From Sand Creek (Arizona); Pitt Poetry Series, New and Selected 2012; Liz Robbins, Play Button (Cider Press Review); Jonathan Thirkield, The Waker’s Corridor (Louisiana State); Cider Press Review, Vol. 12; Slipstream, No. 31.  By and large, how dreadful – even meaningless or worse, false – I find these hermetic works of creative writing MFAs, often incestuously selected by associate professors of creative writing or literature. Far from finding anything I might wish I had written, I’m instead left grasping at straws for anything I might even admire – even a single line or stanza seems elusive. On top of it, the pervasive anti-Christian invective in many seems to amplify the shallowness of much of any thought running through these – often, there’s only a vague link to the title. And all of these similes!  Admittedly, many of these are gorgeously produced – their covers, especially. So what I’m keeping, this round: Need-Fire, with its impeccable scholarship of early Christianity in England and its lovely reconstruction of early English verse; Glean, with its lacy evocations. Ortiz remains in a class by himself.
  • Albert Goldbarth: Heaven and Earth. Wonderful collection (poems).
  • Poetry, December 2011-April 2012. Catching up! Some good work by Dan Beachy-Quick, Dick Allen, and Linda Kunhardt (December), varied responses to prayer and faith (“One Whole Voice,” February), Marina Tsvetaeva plus Kabbalah-influenced work (March).
  • American Poetry Review, March-April 2012. No keepers, apart from an essay on metaphor.
  • George Fox: Book of Miracles. A reconstruction of pastoral work by Fox, with extensive introduction looking at the expectation of miracles and providences at the time.
  • Evelyn Underhill: Abba. A close gloss on the Lord’s Prayer and its radical implications.

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FROM SHAMANS AND NICE GUYS TO THE LEFT HAND OF GOD

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

With the annual Christmas shutdown, I thought my reading drive had also collapsed; seemed during the first two months of 2007 I wasn’t getting any traction, either. Only when I sat down to update the list did I realize I’d got up through quite a number here, and there may have been more. So to continuing this month’s survey of Books Read, here are a few more entries:

  • Jeremy Narby and Franics Huxley, eds: Shamans Through Time: 500 Years on the Path to Knowledge. Anthology of selected excerpts of field observations of “magic men and women … with the power to summon spirits.” Ranges from hostile writings by missionaries to anthropologists who submit to healing sessions, and from Siberia to South America and Africa variations. Includes mention of the dark side of the practice, too.
  • Paul Coughlin: No More Christian Nice Guy. Argument for a masculinity that has boldness in the face of fear – one that confronts prevalent assumptions in society at large, protects the weak, and upholds Christian values in the home and the workplace.
  • Stephen L. Carter: Integrity. This legal scholar of ethics presses the case that integrity is more than simple honesty. Rather, it is a matter of actions based on deep reflection, which also demands listening to perspectives other than one’s own. The crux of integrity, he says, is the willing of good rather than the willing of evil.
  • Geri Doran: Resin (poems). “We rowed all night in the river of God, / singing kyrie, kyrie.”
  • Sascha Feinstein: Misterioso (poems). Pieces rooted in and flowing through jazz.
  • Toni Tost: Invisible Bride (prose poems). “My friends are wheels turning away from themselves.”
  • David R. Montgomery: King of Fish: The Thousand-Year Run of Salmon. A geologist examines the pressures on salmon, both in historic preservation efforts in Scotland, England, and continental Europe as well as those in New England, and in the Pacific Northwest today. Includes consideration of the dynamics of rivers and they ways various varieties of salmon have adapted to the specifics.
  • Michael Lerner: The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country From the Religious Right. A social activist rabbi argues that in removing religious values from public discourse, the left has left a vacuum for the political right to exploit. Rather than being value-free, the result has been value-less positions by the left – and the left is perceived as spineless and without beliefs. Lerner has some good insights on the American workplace and the tension people feel, blaming themselves for unhappiness in their employment while applying value systems that are diametrically opposed to their religious faith. Much of this volume is quite painful to read, addressing public issues in full candor and complicity.

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FROM THE WEATHER TO SUICIDE OR EVOLUTION

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Continuing this month’s survey of Books Read, here are a few more entries:

  • Dave Thurlow and C. Ralph Adler, eds: Soul of the Sky – Exploring the Human Side of the Weather. A Mount Washington Observatory publication presenting literary writing about weather.
  • Milan Kundera: The Art of the Novel. Seven essays in “a practitioner’s confession.” From a peculiar Central European perspective, he admittedly stands at odds, as he points out, with contemporary French fiction. After a first read, I find it difficult to place my work in relation to what he argues, except to acknowledge the ways my work does what only a novel can do. On the other hand, I like work that conveys solid reporting as well – history, geography, geology, theology, and the like – something Kundera clearly disdains, except in a most generalized or abstracted manner.
  • Albert Huffstickler: Poetry Motel memorial edition (No. 32). Work that stays too close to daily journaling for my taste. I’ve seen other pieces by him that seemed to take flight.
  • Maxine Kumin: Jack and Other New Poems. This volume doesn’t go far beyond observations of a New England horse farmer, of the genteel sort.
  • Jeff Clark: Music and Suicide (poems). A controversial and often sophomoric collection (from the Academy of American Poets), yet parts of it catch fire – get the juices going. Coming after Kumin, this is poetry.
  • Patricia Fargnoli: Duties of the Spirit (poems). Centering on a quotation from Thornton Wilder, Fargnoli argues for the duties of joy and serenity – all too easy, methinks, for an old lady living in rustic retirement. These are all pale garden pieces, of the white linen sort – dirty fingernails being for the hired help. Righteous anger, like the social justice verses of Isaiah, are also duties of the spirit – where the red blood flows through muscle.
  • Ntozake Shange: The Sweet Breath of Life. A marvelous collection of poems written in reflection to inner-city photographs by the Kamoinge Inc. collective (and edited by Frank Stewart). An incredible match-up.
  • Jon Tolaas: Evolution and Suicide. A thin freebie, this work turns into a fascinating consideration of the meaning of consciousness itself, using Darwin and Freud as its starting points, pro and con. At the core, perhaps, is the insight that the central question is not, What is the meaning of life, but rather: What have you done (are you doing) with your life.

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FROM MATING AND DATING TO THE GREAT NORTH WOODS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Continuing this month’s survey of Books Read, here are a few more entries from my scroll as I kept it:

  • Andrea Orr: Meeting, Mating (and Cheating) – Sex, Love, and the New World of Online Dating. One journalist’s argument that matchmaking is what kept Internet companies afloat during the dot-com bust. Also interesting vignettes of the changing nature of courtship in America.
  • Nathan Graziano: Frostbite. Fine short stories in a Bukowski vein, set mostly north of Concord. Pessimistic, young adult outlook. Is title a pun on Robert Frost, for a Granite State writer?
  • Ray Blackston: A Delirious Summer. Frothy romantic comedy set in South Carolina. But ultimately sexless enough for Southern Baptist readership.
  • W.D. Wetherell, ed: This American River – Five Centuries of Writing About the Connecticut. Good way to begin thinking more pointedly about living in northern New England, where I’ve now been nearly two decades. (Compare what I’ve done here so far to my reading about the Pacific Northwest back in the 70s and my Olympic Peninsula longpoem.) From where I live and work, the Connecticut seems to be the backdoor of the house, with my orientation toward Boston and Maine. Yet it also leads up to the crown of New Hampshire, which I need to explore sometime.
  • W.D. Wetherell: North of Now. Some personal thoughts about living in Lyme and the changing character of rural New Hampshire.
  • Simon Ortiz: Out There Somewhere. Poems and journal entries by a major Native American writer. Found the paperback in Kettering, Ohio, and shared portions on the Northwest Airlines flight from Detroit to Manchester with a lovely Sioux across the aisle. Still, the collection comes as something of a disappointment: I expect work of the level of the piece Rachel had for class discussion.
  • Iris Moulton: A Thin Time. First volume by a young Utah poet who seems to be instrumental in a revival in Salt Lake City.
  • Stephen Gorman: Northeastern Wilds. Full-color photos with essays exploring the Great North Woods sweeping from the Adirondacks eastward across Maine. Suspect I’ve seen many of these in Sierra Club calendars, and the writing often seems pitched to glossy magazines, with three or four not quite continuous sections pieced together to create a single chapter. Annoying, saved mostly by some decent reference material. An Appalachian Mountain Club volume.

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THE NAYLER PRAYER FLAGS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

I’ve mentioned my love of Tibetan prayer flags, from long before they became so popular and easily purchased. One Christmas, though, I was given a kit for making my own, which left me wondering what to design. Early Quakers would have scoffed at the practice, mostly as vanity and superstition, but I do like the reminder to be more prayerful and attentive. So I turned to one of the early major voices of the movement, James Nayler, and began extracting a few words for each square.

Here’s what emerged:

To
ALL
HONEST
HEARTS

Stand still
in the Light
of Jesus.

Come to
SEE
the Life.

If the EYE
be single
NO
darkness.

One power
WORKS
in the
LIGHT.

Believe
and
WAIT.

HAVE
the
LIGHT
of
LIFE.

To
MAKE
MANIFEST

THIS
COVENANT
OF
LIGHT.

TRUTH
PEACE
RIGHTEOUSNESS

THE
FRUIT
YOU
BRING
FORTH

ONE
is the
POWER

Receive
the
LIGHT.

SHINE.

FOLLOW
the
LIGHT.

MORE ANCIENT HISTORY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As I said at the time, there I was, actually, admitting that about now, whenever that was, it would be nice to find a big chunk of time to work on some new poems. Hadn’t done diddly since my week in the Maine woods, back in October, years ago. Had a big project lined up, the first draft already keyboarded – but other projects intruded, including a book-length prose manuscript I tried launching with a holistic Certified Public Accountant. Most of that volume was already written, but getting her input sometimes felt like pulling teeth. Figured that one would occupy my “writing” space through May. And then it went nowhere.

Was also trying to master the new computer means that my reading time was spent mostly with those fat manuals – good thing they’re indexed! Wished I could get those damn AOL logos off the bottom of my screen, too. I shifted over to Mindspring – for now, at least. And one more thing to master, in time, this e-mail process! (Well, I was already doing my checks from the terminal, and had a lot of the genealogy input. Transferring old 5.25-inch floppies in WordPerfect 4.1 was now possible, thanks to a drive a friend installed a month ago, but very time-consuming – a lot of garbage had to be removed with S&R, a big job when you’re handling drafts of novels! I expected to be nibbling away at that well into the autumn.)

As I was telling a certain woman in the midst of all this:

OK, you do have me reading the celebratory Poppy Z., at least in snippets as I find time. A month or so ago, I turned to one of the Goths in our poetry circle and mentioned there was an author a ‘zine editor-friend of mine out in Chicago raves  about, and somehow one piped up, “Oh! Poppy Z. Brite!”- so there you have it! (My friend, by the way, is in N’Orleans for Fat Tuesday and some recovery time thereafter – but I sense it’s part of a much bigger story I shan’t touch on just now, except that it looks like all the nasty fallout.) What impresses me most with PZB right now is how masterfully she handles dialogue – especially with seemingly inarticulate people. How evocative it is! (Envy time.) Since you have been smitten by N’Orleans (as, somehow, has a colleague at the office – again, another story), I must recommend an astounding novel by John Gregory Brown, Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery, which kept me up most of one frigid night in that cabin in Maine – as logs roared and sizzled in the fireplace – a box of Kleenex by the finale is advised, too – a real vortex of history, place, and those realms of caring for others that sometimes can never be spoken directly. By the way, did you catch the Streetcar Named Desire opera telecast on Public Television? Andre Previn’s music somehow intensifies an already sizzling text, and the casting would do Hollywood great. Less than a week after it was aired, I found myself spending an afternoon with a Cajun welder and his wife, whom my companion for the day had told me was involved with another man. Talk about things that cannot be spoken directly!

At any rate, much of your prose delves into matters that are generally not spoken directly – especially by a woman and by one who is still at an age when they are fresh! Matters of sexuality immediately stir up conflicts – lust versus love, power balances and reversals within relationship, passions/desires/dreams, promises and betrayals, egos, appetites, aging, vulnerabilities, layers of intimacy or distancing, pleasure/pain dimensions, possessiveness/freedom, giving/taking, nurturing/devouring. And that’s before we even touch on money, time, labor, wealth matters – the stuff that triggers most divorces – or questions of child-rearing or larger family interactions.

My, how much we had stirred up at the time! And how much lingers …

GETTING FREE OF GUILT EDGES

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

A renewed compulsion had me rethinking, reworking, pruning, and punching up much of my earlier writing – the dozen unpublished novels; the genealogy research and narrative; several hundred poems, many of which had been published in literary quarterlies; and varied essays and journal entries. It hit with a vengeance, and was given extra clout at New England Yearly Meeting one August when, in a prayer circle, it was made clear to me that these labors are an exercise of talent, a gift, rather than a self-indulgence that had too often before stirred feelings of guilt.

For the first time in my life, I felt free to undertake this labor, the writing that does not pay the bills but somehow keeps me intellectually and artistically alive. What a blessing! (Never underestimate the power of prayer!)

Again, cleaning up these works and seeing them published may be one more way of bringing some closure to what too often seems a honeycombed life! Writing pulls so many of these threads together.

I began trying to set aside one free day each week as a no-automobile day, a kind of sabbath for writing, reading, or reflection; even with my usual three days off at the time (Sunday News worked a double shift every Saturday), achieving this goal became surprisingly difficult – but wonderfully rewarding when it did.

In some rich ways, it became a kind of retirement, even while being employed elsewhere full-time.

STACKING FIREWOOD AS A METAPHOR

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Because we rely on a wood stove to heat part of our house, one of my annual rituals involves ordering and stacking timber. Living where we do in northern New England, there’s plenty of forest to draw on and we can anticipate suffering through an extended winter. With the advance of “renewable energy” sources, however, we’re also competing with the local electrical utility, which has begun using wood to fire some generators. Since we reside in a small city and have full-time occupations (though not always of the paying variety), we depend on the services of independent entrepreneurs who proclaim, as the saying goes, CUT – SPLIT – DELIVERED. Cordwood, for the stove, being a couple of inches shorter than fuel for the fireplace. It’s a crucial distinction.

This is not something I grew up with. Nobody we knew had a working fireplace, or if they did, it wasn’t used in our presence. My appreciation of wood fires originated in Boy Scout outings with a troop dedicated to backpacking and primitive camping – quite a feat, when you think of it, for a troop based in southwestern Ohio. My first-hand experience with working fireplaces came later, with my residency in an ashram in the Pocono mountains of Pennsylvania, in a single winter of living in town in Washington State, and in the house I owned for a couple of years in the Rust Belt – a half-dozen years, altogether. Thus, my sustained encounters have been largely in the past dozen years in New Hampshire, though I suspect the applications are fairly universal.

Ordering in itself is an act of faith. You find a phone number – perhaps in one of the weekly neighborhood newspapers or perhaps on a kiosk in a local store or perhaps by word of mouth, and eventually dial (one of my delays is making sure I could pay for the wood on delivery; the timing of our income-tax refund is often a factor); usually you wind up leaving a message on an answering machine and hoping for a reply. Even then, there’s no guarantee the woodcutter will reply or follow through on a promise to deliver. For the dealer, arranging for trees can be iffy – a warm, wet winter, for instance, may keep cutters out of the woods. One year, this meant our pile never arrived, and we were stonewalled on our inquiries. These days, our firewood comes from a man in his early seventies. How much longer he’ll continue, of course, is in question. In typical Yankee farmer tradition, he shows up when he’s ready – anywhere from a month to three or four months after he’s expected. We don’t need to dicker over price – he’s well in line with the going rate, and I’ve always been impressed with the quality he delivers.

After some irregularity in our annual pace, we’ve settled on ordering four cords a year, green wood we hope will arrive in time to lose much of its sap before late autumn. Since we’ve been burning about three-fourths of that amount, I’m hoping to get ahead enough to have enough well-seasoned wood, having had more than a year to turn from yellow to gray, to sustain us – a goal that still eludes me. Maybe we won’t have the creosote buildup this year that has afflicted our chimney by March the past two years, but I can’t convince my wife that the savings in purchasing green wood outweighs the cost of the chimney sweep, something she says we have to do anyway. Seasoned wood also burns hotter and catches more easily. Maybe this year will be different. I keep hoping.

The delivery comes in two parts, each one dumped in our driveway to produce a lovely, chaotic heap of timber that also releases a heavenly aroma, especially after a light rainfall. And then I typically set to work, between my required rounds at the office (who knows what will happen, now that I’m retired) and usual household activities. Let me admit, I don’t rest easily while the driveway is covered; I’m like a beaver when it hears running water. So stack I do, probably more than is healthy for a largely sedentary creature of my age and condition.

By now, I have something of a routine down – maybe that’s in the nature of a ritual, too. The location of the two firewood stacks has been determined, in part as a consequence of landscaping decisions by previous owners of the property and in part as a result of my own tinkering. Half of the wood will go on one side of the house, by the lilacs; the other half, on the other side of the house, well be behind the barn and our shed.

The ritual sets in as I fill my wheelbarrow and begin moving the wood, piece by piece. Immediately, I search out pieces that are squared off, having four sides rather than three; these are essential for constructing the corners. Some are flatter than others, and will be used for the lower levels of what has some resemblance to a filled box or brickwork – three pieces set at a right angle atop three more, alternating as high as needed. Eventually, the warped pieces begin fitting snuggly, and if there’s any lean to the line, I want it to slant toward the pile itself to let gravity add to the stability of the stack. At first, the task of reducing the pile appears overwhelming; there’s no visible progress at the source, and little on the other end. Here I must rely on previous experience, remembering that it’s something that is accomplished, one step at a time. The hard work has already been done – the cutting, moving, and splitting of the wood.

A rhythm sets in. I recognize that each piece has already been handled multiple times. Now I handle it at least twice – once to put it into the wheelbarrow, and again when I add it to the stack. There, it may be turned or jiggled for a secure fit in the emerging puzzle. It will be handled at least twice more, once to be carried to the kitchen and then to be placed in the stove. The ashes, of course, will be carried out and spread on the garden. For now, I regard the wood itself, trying to identify the species (maple, birch, oak, ash, beech, mostly) as well as the color and shape. No two pieces are exactly the same, and some that are gnarled or curved are placed aside, reserved for the top of the stack, where stability won’t be quite as essential.

A pattern emerges, or rather a fascinating movement of visual design. Not that visible harmony is on my mind as the pieces amass; instead, my concern is for engineering security and solidity against settling and the elements. I long learned that no matter how stable the stack feels now, it will slip in the months ahead; while one stack will begin dwindling by Christmas or my birthday, and its interlocking tensions need hold only so long, I am planning on the other stack staying in place a year beyond that, so its lines need to remain shipshape. If anything, I try to anticipate the many small shifts, so that the weight of one row will brace another. Still, there’s a degree of chance on how any of this will fare, no matter my care. A Zen Buddhist saying flits through my mind, “In nothingness, form; in form, nothingness,” though “chaos” or “chance” substitute well for “nothingness” here. In other words, look and see: things come together.

The labor also has me reflecting on how I write a poem – or many other works, for that matter. I usually start with a pile of debris – observations and scattered thoughts I’ve jotted down and collected. I’m not one for formal structures or invention; to my senses, that’s more like carpentry or cabinetry, and the related ritual would be stacking 2x4s from the lumberyard. No, I’m sticking closer to the grain, or the quest of exploring wilderness. The irregular spaces in the stack, resulting from half-moon ends and triangular thrusts and other geometric possibilities coming together fascinate me more. The negative gives dimension to positive, shadow plays into light, and small critters will likely find shelter somewhere in the heart of all this.

I can also see the woodpile as a metaphor for my faith community, though there the number of craggy pieces may be multiplied, and I keep hoping for more new greenwood – we seem to be seasoning a bit too much for a good mix, and I’m not alone in that observation.

Either way, you work with what you are given.

So here I am, pleased to have two woodpiles in place by early July. One measures roughly six by six by six, the other 3½ by ten by six – each about 210 cubic feet, in other words, short of the purchased measure (a cord being 128 cubic feet), but fitting the normal practice. I’m not complaining. Besides, I pack tight in my stacking, unlike the typical woodcutter. With the promise of winter comfort, of caring for my family, of coming home from the office (as I often did) around midnight and loading the stove for the remainder of the night, I stand back for a moment, admiring my sculpture. Yes, Jesus did warn against the man who built a huge barn, expecting to hoard forever, so my regard of my woodpiles is tempered. Still, I know the arrangement will go too quickly, and the process will happen all over again next year, if I’m blessed.

SINGING WHERE WE LIVE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Like all of the arts, poetry has a long tradition of speaking for the marginalized and disenfranchised. Just look at a lot of the Psalms (even those attributed to David the King!) or Isaiah, for starters. That, as well as the court poets throughout antiquity. Or Wallace Stevens, the insurance executive. We sing where we live.

As for the review, remember: being a writer requires a thick skin when it comes to criticism – and, as Gertie Stein said, every writer wants to be told how good he is, how good he is, how good he is. Now, let’s look at the depth of this “criticism”: adjectives like dumbest, dumb, dumb … how many times? To say “I didn’t like this” is not criticism, O Wondrous Publisher, but the lowest form of consumerism.

Much of the most powerful art we find unlikable in our initial encounters – only through repeated exposure and exploration do we finally begin to see it open in its fullness and awe, and to appreciate its scope. (Not that everything that’s unlikable is great art, or even art, mind you – just that candy in and of itself can leave one seriously malnourished.) So don’t invite this cad to the opera, Shakespeare or Shaw, the symphony, art museum, jazz, a wine-tasting or brewpub, wilderness camping/backpacking, or your next edition. I once counseled a photographer I know in the Pacific Northwest to go beyond the obvious, superficial beauty there and to instead capture the real nature of the landscape.

Last time we talked, he said his work had taken on a breathtaking intensity, but that none of the galleries would touch it – because they didn’t believe it was real! It isn’t what the owners and collectors think they see in the outdoors – it’s the reality, in its naked majesty, instead. That’s what art is about! Or should be.

Or, as Gary Snyder once argued, all poetry is nature poetry – even if the closest the poet comes to nature is his old lady’s queynt.

Another thing to remember when it comes to publishing: not everyone will like everything. Back when Doonesbury was the “hot” comic strip, one newspaper was astonished to find in a survey that the strip was both its most popular – and the most hated! Please the latter subscribers and you might not be selling copies to the former; but please the former, and the latter will still be onboard, to get whatever it is that they like. Or. if a restaurant removed every item that any of its clientele found objectionable, there would be no menu. Even McDonald’s has detractors.

Of course you’re going to tinker with each edition! Every poem is different, too – or should be. (I could name some writers who are repeating the same formula they struck upon ten or twenty years ago, but that’s not for me – Eskimo artists, I’ve heard, will do a subject only once and then move on to another. Good model, methinks, although the “once” might mean a work within a series of sixty to a hundred poems – kind of like a novel, I guess.)

Maybe you’ll even have a stretch where the personal life and upheaval and discovery and adventures quiet down, and you feel it’s time to do a mostly-poetry issue – go for that, too!

Right now, what’s singing where I live is the mockingbird. Ever so gloriously, with a song that’s rarely the same.

SHIFT IN SUBMISSIONS STRATEGY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

For decades – perhaps generations – writers would send their works off to magazines as exclusive submissions. Only one journal at a time would get to look at a piece, usually taking six months to reject it. And with rejection rates running 95 percent and higher, a writer could spend a lifetime trying to see a piece published.

More recently, many editors have turned to allowing simultaneous submissions, something I’ve avoided simply because of the difficulties of keeping track of what I have out where. But I don’t call mine exclusive submissions; if I don’t hear back in six months, I assume the work was lost, the periodical’s gone kaput, or the piece has been rejected – and then I put it back into circulation.

The Postal Service submissions also meant including an SASE – self-addressed, stamped envelope – for return of the work and the typical rejection slip or scrawl or, happy day, the rare acceptance note.

When I returned to submitting after a five- or six-year hiatus, much of the field had changed. Many of the journals now took submissions only electronically, especially through one of several formatted services. For a while I tried to maintain two separate sets of files, one for submissions I was sending off in envelopes and another for the online offerings.

And then, one day, I looked at the odds. All of my acceptances were coming from the online submissions. More impressively, some came within six hours rather than six months.

A few editors still limit themselves to entries on paper. But they’re not seeing my work. At the moment, I don’t even have easy access to a printer. (But that’s another story.)