I went for a fairly long stretch in 2024 when I wasn’t getting any poetry published. I have several dozen out for review right now, and most of the time I get rejections.

This, by the way, is just a part of a writer’s life. Rejection, and a lot of it. When I was a lot younger, I wasn’t used to the rejection, and it stung. You build up a sort of psychological callous over time. Or at least learn to justify it. Well, it’s just that they’re not used to my style! But the truth is, your stuff wasn’t good enough for them. And the best you can do — indeed, the only thing you can do if you want to keep writing — is just move on.

I took on poetry a couple of years ago as something of an experiment. The idea was to help express emotion I was experiencing in a new way. And it seems to be working. I have something close to 15 poems out in the world now, published in one place or another.

Does this mean I think I’m a good poet? Not even close. In fact, the more poetry I read — and I’ve now read a considerable amount — the worse a poet I think I am.

But like rejection emails, that’s not going to stop me, either.

I go where the words lead me.

And in the last month they led me to Sarasota’s Magazine1, which is publishing my poem “Journey.” I love this poem because it was a sort of experimental thing (experimental even for me, conducting a sort of emotional experiment with poetry in the first place). It is a three-part poem that is sort of about my children, but kind of reflected in the experience of being outdoors with them.

There is also a poem of mine at the Wildsound Poetry Festival. It is called “In the Before Time,” and this is an intensely personal poem about something than happened a long, long time ago. I won’t go too much deeper into it — explaining poems feels a little wrong, for some reason — except to say that I am so glad it found a home, and I hope you enjoy it.

If you’re curious — and if you’ve read this far — I still am working on stories. Short stories, as well as novel-length stuff. I’m doing a re-write of CANEBRAKE right now. And I still hope to find a home for THE WEAPON AND THE WORD.

So thanks, as always, for reading. More to come soon.