My pantoum, Meadow Vista appears in the current issue of Connecticut River Review. It’s a print publication, but you can see the cover at their website: http://ct-poetry-society.org/publication... .

That's great, Ruth. Congratulations. (Hmmm....I wonder what meadow you could mean.)

Actually, I don't mean the meadow you're probably thinking of, Sherry. Meadow Vista is the name of the town where my mother lived.

Thanks for sharing the good news, Ruth! Congratulations!

Thanks, Lynn.

Congratulations Ruth.

Congratulations, Ruth. I'm so glad to learn of your successes.

You can imagine why I thought of the beautiful meadow you can see from the deck of your cabin. It is indeed a vista worthy of poetry.

Thanks Gail and Ricky. I'd post here more often if I posted about my rejections, though!

Sherry, I was sure that's what you were thinking. Alas, this is another poem about my mother's dementia.

Super, Ruth! This is wonderful news.

Thank you, MAP.

When I first perused the table of contents I was surprised to find that not only did I know 2 of the other poets personally, but they are in my poetry workshop.

Great, Ruth! I'm waiting for you to publish the collection about your mother.

Thanks, Mina. I'm having second thoughts about the mother poems, though. They may be too much of a downer read together.

Ruth, congratulations!

Thank you, ME. I've been industrious these past few days and have sent out about a half a dozen submissions.
What takes me so long with each submission is:

1. Deciding where to submit. No point in wasting time and energy and stamps except on publications where there's a chance they'll like my work. This envolves a lot of internet reading.

2. Deciding which poems to send where. Indecision is the bane of my existence.

Ruth, I will be borrowing that line: Indecision is the bane of my existence. Perfect!

I can imagine the amount of thought it takes, figuring out which poem to send where. But, of course, there's always that "don't make the perfect the enemy of the good," fish-or-cut-bait moment. (Which I often dither my way past, in analogous decision-making contexts...)

Mary Ellen

Congratulations, Ruth.

Bridport will open for new submissions in January, I think.

I know I labor over which short story to send to a contest. While mastery of craft is necessary, so much is dependent on the subjective opinion of the judge. Some of the judges' reports from Bridport have said they didn't personally like the winning entry, but they did think it was the best and all are quick to point out that a different judge would have no doubt chosen a different set of winners. I do appreciate their objectivity.

I've learned that Zoetrope and especially Glimmer Train do not like my stories, which tend to be more old-fashioned. Those publications are really into the more modern stuff, which I just can't write.

I used to subscribe to Glimmer Train. Sent them a couple of the few short stories I've written--rejection. And no wonder, there really is a Glimmer Train style--a little too fey for me, I think. I wish them well, though. They do a good job.

I got Zoetrope for a while, when they first started and were handing out free subscriptions. Agree with you, they're stretching to be modern.

Glimmer Train rejected all 14 stories I sent them. Never entered their contest, though. Refuse to pay money for a "contest" because I feel it is a reading fee in sheep's clothing.

That said, I admit I've never read a damn thing in Glimmer Train (or Zoetrope or most any other). Just what the editors hate. A writer who wants to be published by them but doesn't want to read them. Guilty as charged....

I don't even read them any longer. I just don't care for their stories. But I hope they publish you anyway, Newengland.

Glimmer Train has also held a few poetry contests, which I've entered to no avail.

I think a person can be too good for Glimmer Train. I don't mean that in an arrogant way, but I do believe it's true. I'm not sure Glimmer Train is really looking for good material.

My writing partner is a PEN/Faulkner winner and Dean of the School or Arts and Humanities at the University of Arkansas and he's told me that short story writers and poets all have the most trouble placing their best work.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Carver, D.H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, all had their work overlook in favor of lesser writers in their day.

Fortunately, my many years as an exhibiting artist pretty well inoculated me against the pain of rejection. You learn it's just part of the game, it's not personal, it may not even be directly about your work, and just go on from there. It's the way the world works.

I think it's almost never personal, Ruth. The publishing world has its trends and foibles and what we write may not fit those trends and foibles but could still be better than something that does fit. Maybe, maybe not. I'm sure many good poems, short stories, and novels go unrecognized and unpublished every year.

Big magazines and literary agents also have commitments to their big name authors, and only so much time, money, and space.

I think people should only write to please themselves. I think they should master their craft, sure, but I don't think anyone should consciously attempt to change his or her writing style to "fit" the market. One's own satisfaction in a job well done is worth quite a lot. No, it doesn't pay the bills, but few writers make enough to pay the bills.

Both my writing partner and I considered writing something "more commercial," but we tried it and we didn't like it, so we went back to what we love. If we're lucky, we may be published again some day, and if not, we've enjoyed the writing immensely.

I agree, Gabrielle. You have to be who you are. Anything else rings false, and is ultimately unsatisfying. This doesn't mean you can't learn and change, though. Who wants to stagnate.

I entered grad school yearning to be the last of the Abstract Expressionists. The work I'm doing now is so far from them it's almost impossible to see how I got there without looking at the intervening work. The poems I write now, are not the poems I was writing 10 years ago.

Oh, I agree, Ruth. I started out, only ten years ago, with a strong desire to write comic crime caper novels, for which there's really no market now unless one has a big name. But it was what I loved to write, so I stuck with it and had fun doing it and learned a lot, too, though no one paid me a cent for what I wrote. I didn't really care. I was certain I wanted to be a novelist and I avoided short stories, which I hadn't particularly liked in school.

Then, I started reading Chekhov again and became very interested in the short story. That led me to William Trevor, someone I consider a master of the short story. I loved his understated bleakness and when I found he was a fan of Thomas Hardy, I reread all of Hardy's books. That led me to tragedy. The bleaker the better, but certainly not melodramatic. Jude the Obscure was a little much, even for me.

Today, I write a lot of short stories that are tragic, but, I hope, not at all melodramatic. I feel I've come far from the young girl who wrote those comic crime capers. And, I'm studying poetry now, which was my first love all along. I won a national poetry contest when I was a teenager for a group of sonnets I wrote. But over the years, my ability to write even adequate poetry slipped away due to lack of practice. It's such a demanding form of writing. I hope to become adequate once again, but even if I don't, I'm really enjoying the experience of studying.