“One breath taken completely; one poem, fully written, fully read – in such a moment, anything can happen.”
― Jane Hirshfield, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry

I sorted the magazine basket over the weekend. There’s that glamorous “writer’s life.”  Who even has a magazine basket anymore? Apparently I do, and it’s been slowly overfilling itself, whispering, “Hello?” every time I walk by.

Toni Morrison, my beloved author (see what I did there?), stared out from the front of a recent P & W, so I definitely wasn’t getting rid of that one.

The rest, I went through and pulled out articles I want to read or pass along.

I found a copy of a Poets & Writers with the paid ad for my second novel, Southern-Fried Woolf lurking in the basket. It’s still exciting to see it there. (A reader wrote me a sweet message about that novel just today.) 

Nowadays, I’m actually paying attention to the poetry section of the, get this P & W, magazine. For the longest time I didn’t even consider the “Poets” in the title. 

I discovered a piece in one by Jane Hirshfield, whose book Nine Gates I’ve been reading lately. The overlap made me smile, because to be honest, I wouldn’t have recognized her name before this. 

Though I’ve subscribed to it for years now, initially I found the magazine intimidating. I was still figuring out what it meant to be a writer, to be in an MFA program. 

At one point someone mentioned in passing that I was earning a terminal degree, and I froze. Terminal? It sounded like an illness. But that was followed by relief. Why had no one told me this at the beginning? That was incredibly reassuring, that I was on THE PATH for writing, yet it took someone not in my program to tell me. Hmmm…

And here’s the truth: I didn’t even want to publish, not at first. I just wanted to write. I even went to school thinking I was simply going to learn how to be a better writer, period. 

When my first story was accepted, I cried the night I agreed to let it be published. My apologies to those I contacted that night, freaking out, wondering if I’d just sold my soul, if I was going to end up with a portrait of myself in some attic that aged while I did not. 

And yet I also knew it was an honor, and people around me kept saying This is the writing circle completing itself. You write, someone reads.

It wasn’t so much others reading it as the feeling that I was asking art to have an audience, as if it weren’t enough by itself.

It felt like asking my bestie to hand wash my dishes when I hadn’t seen them in months. (Too vivid? Dear Reader, I should give you the password to my blog so you can edit it to taste. LOL.)

WR is peering over her sunglasses, reminding me that’s the opposite of what we do with our writing. She’s about to begin yelling at Herbert when he’s not even here.

Wait, is she calling me Herbert, our very own literary curmudgeon? Oh god.

When I began really paying attention to the literary magazines, I was shocked by the depth of thought in these articles. I was mesmerized by this contemporary reckoning with language: people who revere it as much as I do while also teasing apart, on the page, how the magic happens, and somehow not diluting it. That’s a minor miracle.

But the question that surfaced most as I sorted those magazines on Sunday: Do I keep subscribing? 

In the past, I’ve tossed them in a bag and read them at the beach to circle and dissect. This has not been a very “beachy” summer, what with the heat and everything that happened at the beginning of the season, hence the piling up. 

(Christ! What a summer. In bad ways, yes, but also good, very good.) 

Now, I’m able to read most of the magazines I’m interested in for free through our library’s Libby app. That makes it harder to justify subscribing when you’re on a budget. (Writers are always on a budget, Love, am I right?)

Word Raccoon, of course, had opinions about the whole thing. She perched on the rim of the basket like a judgmental aunt, paws crossed, muttering about how even she can’t keep up with all the contest deadlines and fees. 

She squeaked at me until I tore out the Hirshfield article as well as all the writing prompts. Since when, WR? We HATE being told what to write, but I listened to her, and then she tried to drag the entire basket under the couch like it was a shiny treasure hoard.

(Side note: poetry prompts are different. They carry a higher charge and I think because the time investment is so minimal, I’ll sometimes give them a whirl. Or, more likely, I’ll get an idea from their idea which springs an idea and off I go.) 

But sorting forced me to decide. What to keep. What to pass along. Isn’t that the writer’s job in miniature? To curate. To revise. To make peace with what remains.

The magazines I kept are stacked neatly now, waiting. They’re the ones I can’t let go of, the pieces that feel less like issues and more like treasures. The rest I can release, but these? These stay, because some things are too woven into me. 

Word Raccoon says it’s just paper. She knows she’s wrong. Some paper hums.

And every so often, I think that maybe I’ve only been sorting words the way I sorted that basket, keeping what sings, letting go of the rest. The things that stay? They don’t just stay. They belong.

And if you’re very lucky, they look back at you as if to say: you belong too.

Today’s writerly activities (as of lunchtime): When the storms cleared, I sat on the porch wrapped in my flowered robe and wrote three poems: “Spoiling Squirrels,” “OK, Flowers,” and “Patchwork,” the last written while I watched men patch the neighbor’s roof. One of them slipped but caught himself. Whew. That was a scary moment.

I also submitted two sets of poems to journals.

Update: I have now written three poems, one inspired by Hirshfield. That book!

Not that the poem is about this, but who knew “pillow words” were a thing! Not me. Now there’s a ready-made writing prompt. I’ll prepare my red pencil for any drafts sent my way. (Who are we kidding, Word Raccoon has a glitter pen and she puts hearts around everything instead of underlining it.)

I wasn’t feeling the video poem submission today (rough start to the morning, but the porch, the robe, and a surprise gift certificate for coffee slipped into the mail slot by a friend all brightened the day; WR is, after all, affected by the weather). 

Tomorrow will bring another chance, and I think she’ll drag me to the mic whether I like it or not.