This past week has been a bit of a revelation to me. Nothing much bothers me, and I don’t haul around a lot of baggage. I’d always figured I wasn’t the sort of person who held a grudge. When it comes to my writing, it seems, that has not been the case.
Many years ago, when my writing first started to appear in print, it seemed like something happened to my copy. An editor would see a word or expression that didn’t seem right, and so would “correct” it, at least once to devastating effect and always altering the meaning of what I originally had written. I think that I was angry that these things had happened, but didn’t realize it. It didn’t take long for me to quit sending my work off to magazines.
My first move away from that avoidance came last August when, on the last day of a poetry contest, I wrote and sent off three poems for consideration. As I think I’ve mentioned elsewhere, one of the poems will be appearing in the contest chapbook when it’s published.
This past week, 30-some years after I had last submitted a poem to an editor for possible publication, I wrote a poem and e-mailed it to the editor of a magazine that prints the sorts of poetry that I write. The editor wants to use my poem for an issue later this year.
At this point in my life, I actually don’t care if my copy gets mangled occasionally. My poems are not me, and I am not my poems. It really doesn’t matter, as long as everyone tries to do their best, both myself and the editor.
I’m not angry, anymore. I’ve changed. I’m surprised that I’d been holding onto those years in my past with bitterness, and that when it came to light, it was so easy to let go.
If today is any indication, the new year should be bright and bracing, with just a touch of blustering. I never did get out into it after this morning’s venture onto the front steps (in housecoat and slippers) to take photographs.