It’s a platitude to say that Southern California is beautiful after a rain. What no one means, really, is “beautiful”; there’s some other word we all search for and never find. “Clear” or “lucid” are approximations; “sublime” perhaps overstates the...
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It’s a platitude to say that Southern California is beautiful after a rain. What no one means, really, is “beautiful”; there’s some other word we all search for and never find. “Clear” or “lucid” are approximations; “sublime” perhaps overstates the thing. The language can’t quite get to it because it’s not able to be summarized, this feeling of a lens that has been cleaned off to a degree that shocks you because you didn’t even know it had been smudged. 

Preparing to return to the classroom after having a baby for this, the third time in my working life, has felt like a fight to get back to that post-rain place. Not that having a baby is all rain. But it does something to the brain that approximates a heavy storm—floods it with waters muddied by run-off from high-up areas you forgot were holding debris, threatens it with unpredictable lightning strikes, makes it impossible to wade in there without some serious gear. Or perhaps the better approximation is an eclipse, the kind Annie Dillard writes about in her essay “Total Eclipse”: 

“The sky snapped over the sun like a lens cover. The hatch in the brain slammed. Abruptly it was dark night, on the land and in the sky. In the night sky was a tiny ring of light. The hole where the sun belongs is very small. A thin ring of light marked its place. There was no sound. The eyes dried, the arteries drained, the lungs hushed. There was no world. We were the world’s dead people rotating and orbiting around and around, embedded in the planet’s crust, while the earth rolled down. Our minds were light-years distant, forgetful of almost everything. Only an extraordinary act of will could recall to us our former, living selves and our contexts in matter and time. We had, it seems, loved the planet and loved our lives, but could no longer remember the way of them. We got the light wrong.“

Sometimes my older sons will steal my phone and take pictures with it. My five-year-old took about 20 versions of this picture, skewed, standing at the top of the stairs, looking down into some dark version of a first floor it seems you would only ever want to climb out of. I like to think he took the picture because he knew it was a moment to capture: leaving the place you dwell in most of the time and ascending to some new place of light and stature, some clear and clean place that smells like the air after the rain. 

ecantwell: “It always happens this way. The kids start lining up in front of the school bus again and you think about dressing up for Halloween and fail to dress up for Halloween and you take a slow shower without shampoo and it’s December. The...
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ecantwell:

It always happens this way. The kids start lining up in front of the school bus again and you think about dressing up for Halloween and fail to dress up for Halloween and you take a slow shower without shampoo and it’s December. The year-end lists start popping up everywhere and you don’t recognize half of the things on them. Your checking account looks sort of hungry and mopey but the screen(s) you’re sitting in front of are offering you hundreds of amazing deals on things you need to buy for all the people in your life who mean a lot to you. You haven’t read the book you wanted to read last summer, your feet are cold, you’ve forgotten to make a doctor’s appointment about that thing that’s been bugging you, you caught some sort of virus from an airplane trip, you’re eating too much but fuck it, you’ve gradually begun drinking two cups of coffee in the morning instead of one and now you get a headache if you try to go back. You had that one night full of soft lights and dancing and garlic toast and a coat that wasn’t yours. You have said “I love you” hundreds of times and actually meant it. There are songs in every car asking you to sing them and smile. You take a minute to sit down and it’s December. You remember how lucky you are. You realize it’s been a hard year. You think about all the things coming up next year that are going to make it an incredible one. You’ve stumbled over something full of grace. You’ve cried in different places every month of the last year. You think if you could collect all the tears in a big jar and pour them out over the balcony, yelling the whole time, yelling louder than you’ve ever yelled before, you might not have to do any of this again. You want to do all of this again. It’s December and the air is crisp and your arms smell like firewood. You’re tired. You’re still alive.

I posted this 9 years ago, while, most likely, my first baby was sleeping (rare). I am reblogging this while watching my third baby hug a soft stuffed dinosaur and after I’ve had a glass of wine and cried about how hard life is and also how the actor playing the general from White Christmas is such an underrated pitch perfect performance and before dinner and the attempt to get all three kids to bed intact begins. There is something comforting about knowing December has always felt this way and always will. Hi, Tumblr, I might be back?

PHV Blogger Elizabeth Cantwell’s December 2016 Update (+$180.50): THE END OF POETRY HAS VALUE

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Hello again!! Where have I been since October, you might ask? I know, I know. I didn’t get things together in time to write an October round-up, and now here I am staring down the barrel at a combined October-November-December round-up. How did 2016 end so quickly and so horribly slowly all at the same time? How did I forget that the late fall/early winter is a BRUTAL time for a high school teacher to try to submit, let alone write? How did I fail to factor in the HORRIBLE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION when I was thinking about how much writing I’d get done in November and December?

I don’t know how to answer any of these questions. The point is, the last few months have not been great for my writing life. I had goals and I didn’t meet them. But I’m not going to get bogged down in that. I’m looking at a Buddha ornament sitting at the top of our Christmas tree right now, and remembering how I quoted Walt Whitman to my son earlier today, in the car, when he asked If you’re not alive, are you dead? Is that it? and I said Well, when you die, you don’t really stop being. All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, and to die is different from what anyone supposed, and luckier. That’s what Whitman says. We talked about how your spirit becomes part of the universe, and how plants die but leave seeds behind to grow new plants, and about how everyone is the Buddha, even you, even Gram, even the dog, even a scorpion who bites you. Even the writer who didn’t write.

I did get a lot of rejections! Looking through my completed Poetry Has Value spreadsheet, it looks like I only have two submissions still outstanding from 2016. One of those I’m pretty sure is going to never receive a response (I submitted in January, I just have a feeling it’s gonna be one of those never-hear-back situations), and one is still in the running. The rest are either accepted (I did have a few this year, a very few!) or personally rejected (always nice) or form rejected. And even looking through the form rejections and trying to count them up, I’ve been encouraged. In most cases, I still really stand behind the poems. I tried this year to not submit poems until I really felt good about them, which is different than in the past, when I’d submit as SOON as I finished something just because I was excited about it. But this year, I don’t feel bad about the poems that haven’t found homes yet. I still think they will. They just need a little more time.

At the end of this year, I can confidently say that participating in the Poetry Has Value project has changed my outlook in a lot of really wonderful ways. And I know that I’ll continue to be much more conscious of how the journals I submit to treat their writers, how submission fees or contest fees are used, and how to continue to resist underselling myself when I talk about my writing. I’m so thankful for getting to know a little bit more about all the poets I’ve read on this blog, and for the chance to discover new journals and magazines and poetic outlets. And even though 2016 has been resoundingly shitty in a whole lot of ways, I feel like it’s been very, very good to poetry. Last night, gathered around the remains of Christmas dinner, I read my family (husband, son, parents, in-laws) a James Tate poem that I picked at random from the traditional Best American Poetry volume that my mother gives me every year. It’s called “Dome of the Hidden Temple” and, in true James Tate fashion, it’s funny and weird and surreal and then suddenly truthful. (“A man walked up to me and said, ‘Do / you know where the Dome of the Hidden Temple is?’ I said, ‘Yes, / but I can’t tell you. It’s a secret.’ 'But I’m supposed to meet / somebody there,’ he said. 'Then that person should have told / you how to get get there,’ I said.”) It felt like the right way to end the day and maybe to end the year.

I guess what I’m saying is: all goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, and poetry is perhaps the least collapsible thing of them all.

OCT/NOV/DEC STATS:

Submissions (to either paying or non-paying markets): 0

Rejections: 10 (The Kenyon Review, Fugue, Crazyhorse, Copper Nickel, Isthmus, BOAAT, Qu, Bat City Review, Ep;phany, FENCE)

Acceptances: 0

Money Spent in Oct/Nov/Dec: $0

Money Earned in Oct/Nov/Dec: $0

Total Money Spent in 2016: $33.50

Total Money Earned in 2016: $214.00

2016 FINAL TALLY: $180.50

Elizabeth Cantwell is a poet and high school teacher living in Claremont, CA. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of journals, including PANK, Epiphany, The Los Angeles Review, and The Literary Review. Her book of poems, Nights I Let The Tiger Get You (Black Lawrence Press, 2014), was a finalist for the 2012 Hudson Prize; she is also the author of a chapbook, Premonitions (Grey Book Press, 2014).

I never posted this! Also, I totally abandoned Tumblr sometime a couple years ago. Should I still be on Tumblr? Is anybody out there? Anyway, here’s how I ended the year, mentally and statistically.

PHV Blogger Elizabeth Cantwell September 2016 Stats / $180.50

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I can’t believe I’m nearing the end of this Poetry Has Value year. Maybe one reason it doesn’t feel like the home stretch is that September always feels like the “start” of the poetry year—I think because so many university-affiliated journals run on the academic year. Places re-open for submissions, editors get back on the sending-rejections train, the whole machine rouses itself from its summer peacefulness and feels less fun and more Official. But also feels like something just renewing itself for another round. And I sort of feel that way, too! I’m ready to get more poems out into the ether, write a few new ones, and maybe start putting together something resembling a new manuscript.

I dutifully submitted to some journals that I know I will get rejected from, but I do sort of feel the obligation to do that every year, you know? I think it’s a combination of “hey, I have gotten better at my craft, maybe this year it will stick” with “hey, should I just do the yearly reminder that my aesthetic probably won’t be right for these places?” with “WHATEVER, let’s just try this again and see!” Got a couple rejections, one of which was very encouraging.

AND, money-wise, I actually signed my Cincinnati Review contract for the poems that will be coming out this month (October) in the print journal! So now I feel good about officially adding that money to my stats, and it was also a small reminder of the ways in which we do value poetry monetarily.

Oh! And this happened in October, not September, but let’s throw the timeline out the window—my poems are up at Hobart’s website, so take a look at those if you want! (http://www.hobartpulp.com/web_features/five-poems–7).

Stats:

Paying Journals To Which I Submitted in September: 4 (Crazyhorse, Fugue, The Gettysburg Review, The Kenyon Review)

Non-Paying Journals To Which I Submitted in September: 1 (Copper Nickel)

Rejections: 2 (Witness, Outlook Springs)

Acceptances: 0

Money Spent in September: $9 ($3 submission fees to Crazyhorse, Fugue, and The Gettysburg Review)

Money Earned in September: $120

September TALLY: $111

Total Money Spent in 2016: $33.50

Total Money Earned in 2016: $214.00

2016 RUNNING TALLY: $180.50

Elizabeth Cantwell is a poet and high school teacher living in Claremont, CA. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of journals, including PANK, Epiphany, The Los Angeles Review, and The Literary Review. Her book of poems, Nights I Let The Tiger Get You (Black Lawrence Press, 2014), was a finalist for the 2012 Hudson Prize; she is also the author of a chapbook, Premonitions (Grey Book Press, 2014).

This was my September, poetry-wise! October has been DRY DRY DRY. But this is September. 

PHV Blogger Elizabeth Cantwell: August 2016 Stats / $69.50

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August was a slow month, as August should always be. Is there any way to live August that’s not slow?

As we had the briefest possible window of time between my husband’s work season ending and mine beginning, we abandoned responsibility, handed the kid over to his grandparents, and took off on a last-minute trip to Hawaii. I didn’t write much there, but I did read and think and sleep and eat fish, all of which are probably at least subconscious fuel for writing. And then, all too soon, I was back at work. Every year it takes me a little while to settle into a work/writing balance, especially because the boarding school I work throws a LOT of stuff at you in the first several weeks (lots of evening and weekend commitments, meetings, dinners with students, etc.) until it settles into a more acceptable rhythm. As I write this, mid-September, I’m finally getting to that “Oh yeah, this is going to work out just fine” place … but not a lot has happened for me, writing-wise, in the last month and a half.

The very boring stats:

Paying Journals To Which I Submitted in August: 0

Non-Paying Journals To Which I Submitted in August: 0

Rejections: 1 (Cosmonauts Avenue)

Acceptances: 0

Money Spent in August: $0

Money Earned in August: $0

August TALLY: $0

Total Money Spent in 2016: $24.50

Total Money Earned in 2016: $94.00

2016 RUNNING TALLY: $69.50

Elizabeth Cantwell is a poet and high school teacher living in Claremont, CA. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of journals, including PANK, Epiphany, The Los Angeles Review, and The Literary Review. Her book of poems, Nights I Let The Tiger Get You (Black Lawrence Press, 2014), was a finalist for the 2012 Hudson Prize; she is also the author of a chapbook, Premonitions (Grey Book Press, 2014).

Never reblogged my August stats, but here they are, in all their boringness.

PHV Blogger Elizabeth Cantwell: July 2016: ($69.50)

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July! July. What happened in July?

I took this faux-serious selfie, which I kept mostly because of my husband in the background. We were at a gas station, on our way to a work event because of which we’d roped my mom into coming over to babysit, and he was pumping gas, and I don’t know what he’s laughing at in the distance. The Sand Fire was raging, it was the day all the Southern California Instagram feeds were populated with pictures of the weird red purple burning sun in the middle of an apocalyptic haze of smoke, so maybe he is laughing at that, at the insanity of our living in this landscape that so clearly doesn’t want us in it, or maybe he is laughing at a text he got, or a joke he just remembered, or at nothing, maybe at nothing at all, at a nothingness we’d call absurd.

Usually I submit very little over the summer months because I pretend the poetry world still exists in that weird ancient space where barely any journals accepted summer submissions. Now, though, more and more journals are open for submissions year-round (probably because more and more journals are operating outside the traditional academic setting), so I found myself with plenty of places to send the poems I was generating in my precious 10 weeks off.

I continued to avoid submission fees, and prioritized that over finding paying markets this month - especially because it does seem pretty true that many of the paying markets close up shop at some point during the summer.

The really nice surprise in July was that I received a solicitation from a web editor at Hobart, a journal I really respect. My attitude towards solicitations has always been “send your best and don’t expect anything,” so I sent the editor five poems I was really proud of that I’d been submitting elsewhere, with the caveat that I’d totally understand if none of them was right for Hobart, and that I was mostly just grateful for the invitation to submit.

Solicitations always make me feel sort of weird and worried, like, oh no, now that an editor ASKED to see work from me, are they going to feel OBLIGATED to accept something even if they HATE EVERYTHING I send and then it’ll just be a PITY PUBLICATION and I’ll tell people about it while inside feeling sort of nauseous?

But to my genuine surprise, Hobart will be publishing all five of the poems online in the fall! I’m glad the poems will be running on the website, as it’ll make it that much easier for me to share them with friends and family.

This generous acceptance led to a rash of withdrawals—since I had submitted those poems to a good handful of other markets—and also created a new little void for me in my finished poem pile. Time to go back to the notebook and come up with some new stuff to send new places in August. Some absurd stuff, maybe. Or nothing at all.

STATS:

Paying Journals To Which I Submitted in July: 2 (Outlook Springs, Rattle: Poets Respond)

Non-Paying Journals To Which I Submitted in June: 8 (BOAAT, The Boiler, RHINO, Cosmonauts Avenue, Four Way Review, Rust + Moth, Isthmus, Hobart - Web)

Rejections: 2 (Rattle: Poets Respond, Rust + Moth)

Acceptances: 1 (Hobart - Web)

Withdrawals: A Lot (see above)

Money Spent in July: $0

Money Earned in July: $0

July TALLY: $0

Total Money Spent in 2016: $24.50

Total Money Earned in 2016: $94.00

2016 RUNNING TALLY: $69.50

Elizabeth Cantwell is a poet and high school teacher living in Claremont, CA. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of journals, including PANK, Epiphany, The Los Angeles Review, and The Literary Review. Her book of poems, Nights I Let The Tiger Get You (Black Lawrence Press, 2014), was a finalist for the 2012 Hudson Prize; she is also the author of a chapbook, Premonitions (Grey Book Press, 2014).

July.

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The beginning of June marked the end of my school year, and the end of my ability to continue living in the house we’d been renting that our landlords were moving back into, and the start of about three weeks of temporary-homelessness-induced traveling until we could move INTO our NEW house, which just happened last week, and did I mention my husband was in Atlanta for work while all of this was unfolding, and is it any wonder there’s not a whole lot to report in the world of poetry for me right now? A couple of submissions, but no movement on the money dial - like many of the poets participating in this project, I’ve become more aware of (and wary of) submission fees this year, and have tried to avoid them wherever possible. I’d rather support a journal through subscribing than paying a submission fee. So: zero in and zero out and I’m heading into July with a little less prescribed insanity and a little more home life stability.

Jess asked all of us to take some time at this halfway point through the year to think about the impact this project has had on us, and I think one thing it’s helped me continue to come to terms with is that ebbs and flows are okay when it comes to writing and submitting. I used to feel like a really “bad poet” when I had a spurt in which I didn’t write every day, or submit every month, or read poems with any frequency. There are those writers whom I think of as real workhorses; who wake up every day and write for six hours, or eight hours, or do some sort of timed regimen that ensures they get words on the page with insane regularity. I have immense respect for these people and really often wish I were one of them. But as a working mother who often single-parents for swaths of time, it’s not my reality.

Remarkably, though, rather than making me feel worse about my writing lulls, this project has made me feel better about them. It’s reminded me, for one, that these lulls aren’t often as complete or as long as I imagine them to be. Most months, I do have SOMETHING to report - even if, as below, it’s just a handful of submissions and a handful of related writing days. And reading other poets’ posts has also reminded me that these little lulls happen to all of us. (I have not commented on everyone else’s posts as much as I would have liked to, but I do read them all every month, and they bring me serious comfort. Just knowing you’re not alone is fantastic.)

I guess that parenthetical brings me to the next observation I have about this project: it’s reminded me that there IS a “poetry community” out there. Like many writers, I really enjoyed my graduate work in creative writing because it gave me a built-in writing family. I had people who read my work, with frequency, over a period of years; people whose work I read in return; and professors whose writing I admired and who would constantly offer suggestions of new poets to read, new books to discover, new tactics to try. After grad school, my poetry community quickly dwindled to, uh, me and my dog? I miss sharing my work with others and getting inspiration from poets whose voices are very starkly different from mine; participating in Poetry Has Value has introduced me to new poets, new journals, and new ways of thinking about poetry. I’ve felt less alone this year. I’ve felt more tapped in. That’s been good.

Finally, this project has given me the necessary fuel to submit to journals I was always too afraid to submit to before, thinking I wasn’t “good enough” yet. And look, I’m still not really “good enough” for many of these outlets - I’m racking up rejections in lots of places. But the occasional acceptance and personal rejection have reminded me that poetry really is subjective, and I’ll never be “good enough” if I don’t take chances on submitting and take, likewise, the opportunity to stand behind my work and believe in it.

STATS:
Paying Journals To Which I Submitted in June: 3 (Bat City Review, Qu, The Adroit Journal)

Non-Paying Journals To Which I Submitted in June: 0

Rejections: 5 (The Collagist, The Rusty Toque, Willow Springs, New England Review, and The Adroit Journal)

Acceptances: 0

Money Spent in June: $0

Money Earned in June: $0

June TALLY: $0

Total Money Spent in 2016: $24.50

Total Money Earned in 2016: $94.00

2016 RUNNING TALLY: $69.50

Elizabeth Cantwell is a poet and high school teacher living in Claremont, CA. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of journals, including PANK, Epiphany, The Los Angeles Review, and The Literary Review. Her book of poems, Nights I Let The Tiger Get You (Black Lawrence Press, 2014), was a finalist for the 2012 Hudson Prize; she is also the author of a chapbook, Premonitions (Grey Book Press, 2014).

June, and a reflection on the year so far.

PHV Blogger Elizabeth Cantwell: May 2016 Stats / $69.50

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Okay. People. We are IN THE BLACK! We have ACHIEVED SOMETHING TANGIBLE! POETRY HAS VALUE!

If you’ve been following along, the past couple of months have beaten me down a little bit. March was ROUGH, April was completely unproductive, I was looking at a whole lot of rejections and not a single acceptance since I’d started sending things out in January. My mind was doing the usual spiral: Your writing isn’t good, you’re delusional, you’re a fraud, you got lucky with like ONE BOOK that was DECENT and now people think you’re a poet and you’re NOT, you’re just a sad nobody sending slush pile poetry to a bunch of interns who are looking at it and laughing and gently setting it on fire as they throw it out the window and cheers it with their spiked LaCroix, you should probably just give up and focus on things you know you do well.  

But I sucked it up and went back to the drawing board and revised a bunch of stuff and cried at the dining room table while my husband tried to convince me I wasn’t the worst writer who’d ever lived. And I did get to participate in a great local reading series out here, for which I got paid (!) and sold some books (!) and remembered that, yes, I really am a poet.

And then, a few days after the reading, I got an email from The Cincinnati Review saying they wanted to take two of my poems! Two poems that I had, since submitting, re-worked in relatively major ways. Two poems that I’d become convinced were, in that original form, Not There Yet. As excited as I was, I actually emailed the editor, explaining that I’d since revised the poems, and had new versions, and was he interested in seeing them? No, he said, he was so happy with the versions he’d accepted that he’d rather not even see alternate versions; these were the poems he wanted to publish.

Talk about a much-needed injection of confidence. But one that also revives for me the question I can never seem to answer: When is a poem finished? I’d certainly FELT those poems were finished when I sent them out, and then, as rejections accumulated and anxiety grew and I started seeking more people’s advice, I convinced myself they weren’t worthy of publication after all. Do I think the revisions I did were good? Yes, I do. Am I also excited about and fully committed to the original versions of the poems that will be published in the fall? Yes, I am. Which version is the “finished” version? Which versions will go in my (hypothetical) second book? I don’t know. I honestly don’t.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about revision and whether a “final” poem is ever possible. HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN SOMETHING IS DONE? Help.

STATS:
Paying Journals To Which I Submitted in May: 6 (AGNI, Nashville Review, Epiphany, The Rusty Toque, Willow Springs, New England Review)

Non-Paying Journals To Which I Submitted in May: 0

Rejections: 2 (Colorado Review [personal rejection], The Idaho Review)

Acceptances: 1 (The Cincinnati Review accepted two poems)

Money Spent in May: $8 ($3 submission fee for Epiphany, $3 submission fee for Willow Springs, $2 submission fee for New England Review)

Money Earned in May: $94 ($50 - reading fee for the Fourth Sundays at the Claremont Library reading series; $44 - book sales); I’m not yet sure of the payment for The Cincinnati Review acceptance, so I’ll hold off on reporting that!

May TALLY: $86.00

Total Money Spent in 2016: $24.50

Total Money Earned in 2016: $94.00

2016 RUNNING TALLY: $69.50

Elizabeth Cantwell is a poet and high school teacher living in Claremont. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of journals, including PANK, Epiphany, The Los Angeles Review, and The Literary Review. Her book of poems, Nights I Let The Tiger Get You (Black Lawrence Press, 2014), was a finalist for the 2012 Hudson Prize; she is also the author of a chapbook, Premonitions (Grey Book Press, 2014).

i made some poetry money

PHV Blogger Elizabeth Cantwell: April 2016 Stats / $-16.50

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Okay. If March was a bad month, April was something I needed: a month of respite. This is going to sound sort of absent and apathetic and un-good, but: I didn’t write this month, and I didn’t submit this month, and I think that was actually a good thing.

Going into this project, I was worried that my stats would sometimes not “live up to” the other bloggers’ stats. I have a bad track record with submitting and with making writing a regular part of my daily routine, and although I knew joining Poetry Has Value would help me be more accountable for, well, valuing my own poetry, I’m also not a complete pie-in-the-sky idealist. I knew there would be times when the writing just didn’t happen, and when submitting was the furthest thing from my mind. I think, in retrospect, that March was tough because I really WANTED to be publishing, and I was TRYING SO HARD, and what I needed to do in April was step back.

When I say that I wasn’t writing or submitting, that doesn’t mean I wasn’t thinking, or feeling inspired. I had some intense conversations with artists I admire, I read some things that really blew the top of my head off, and I wrote down some goals for myself to stay in the game. I printed out some poems and re-read them and thought about how they might need to change. I reminded myself that part of being a writer is not writing.

After all, this reflective time, too, is something we as writers have to value. I know the produce-produce-produce, submit-submit-submit rhythm comes really naturally to some writers, and I know every writer has a different definition of “prolific” (something I constantly have to remind myself of when I see how much and how often and how easily my husband produces incredible writing)—and, for me, the “produce” and “submit” parts of the equation simply can’t come without some time in the shadows observing and thinking and processing.

This month looks boring, but it was a lot of little tiny ripples just beneath the surface.

STATS:

Paying Journals To Which I Submitted in April: 0

Non-Paying Journals To Which I Submitted in April: 0

Rejections: (2) Gulf Coast, Ninth Letter

Acceptances: 0

Money Spent in April: $0

Money Earned in April: $0.00

April TALLY: $0.00

Total Money Spent in 2016: $16.50

Total Money Earned in 2016: $0.00

2016 RUNNING TALLY: -$16.50

Elizabeth Cantwell is a poet and teacher living in Los Angeles. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of journals, including PANK, Anti-, The Los Angeles Review, and The Literary Review. Her book of poems, Nights I Let The Tiger Get You (Black Lawrence Press, 2014), was a finalist for the 2012 Hudson Prize; she is also the author of a chapbook, Premonitions (Grey Book Press, 2014).

April was boring but that’s okay sometimes. Writing: it is not always that thrilling.

PHV Blogger Elizabeth Cantwell: March 2016 Stats / $-16.50

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March was a bad month. A month in which I told my husband I thought I was no longer a good writer, contemplated quitting poetry altogether, and had to cancel the two-week stay at the Vermont Studio Center I’d arranged for this summer—hoping to give myself some much-needed space to write and revise and think—thanks to conflicts in my personal life. I received maybe the most rejections I’ve ever gotten in a month (which, I know, goes hand-in-hand with submitting more!), including a three-day rejection that made me cry.

(I don’t know if any of you have watched the STELLAR American Crime Story: The People Vs. O.J. Simpson, but I am at least comforting myself with the fact that my rejections this month took longer than the four-hour jury deliberation at the end of that trial.)

But I suppose there’s a sort-of silver lining. The last rejection I received was a really nice one—a personal rejection from a poet and a journal I really admire, detailing poems they deliberated about and some thoughts about why they weren’t selected for publication—and that rejection restored a little of my faith in myself and my work. That said, I haven’t written or submitted anything since the last week of March, so now I realize I have some work to do: the work of revisiting some of the poems I was sending out to see how and where I can hone them and shape them into their best selves, of adding new journals to my list of places to submit, of generating new material, of refusing to get discouraged.

STATS:

Paying Journals To Which I Submitted in March: (3) West Branch, New Ohio Review, Ryga

Non-Paying Journals To Which I Submitted in March: (2) The Collagist, Tinderbox Poetry Journal

Rejections: (5) Indiana Review, The Malahat Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, West Branch, New Ohio Review

Acceptances: 0

Money Spent in March: $3 (New Ohio Review - $3 submission fee)

Money Earned in March: $0.00

March TALLY: -$3.00

Total Money Spent in 2016: $16.50

Total Money Earned in 2016: $0.00

2016 RUNNING TALLY: -$16.50

Elizabeth Cantwell is a poet and teacher living in Los Angeles. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of journals, including PANK, Anti-, The Los Angeles Review, and The Literary Review. Her book of poems, Nights I Let The Tiger Get You (Black Lawrence Press, 2014), was a finalist for the 2012 Hudson Prize; she is also the author of a chapbook, Premonitions (Grey Book Press, 2014).

Welcome to my really bad writing month! I don’t think I’m going to earn money this year, guys.

PHV Blogger Elizabeth Cantwell: February 2016 Stats (-$13.50)

poetryhasvalue:

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One thing I’m really enjoying out of this project is the chance to read other poets’ statistics, musings, failures, and successes. The variety of poets submitting to this blog right now is incredible, and it gives me hope and energy to see the way very different personalities are pouring themselves into the same mission. Last month, I realized that not all the poets on this blog are strictly tracking submission fees and payments—in fact, there are some who are not reporting monetary losses or gains at all—which is really wonderful, and reminds me of the multiple ways we all define the word “value.”

All of this is to say that I’m hesitant to count this month as a loss (despite its on-paper status as a loss), since I am writing and submitting with more regularity than I have in years, and that, to me, is a pure and unquestionable win.

But, yeah, okay, I’m not making money yet. I’m getting some rejections, and while I think I’m successfully using that crappy “I Got Rejected” feeling to fuel more writing and submitting, my statistics don’t look fantastic yet! Here’s what I’ve got as of the end of February: 

Paying Journals To Which I Submitted in February: (7) Ninth Letter, The Idaho Review, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, The Cincinnati Review, The Malahat Review, Witness

Non-Paying Journals To Which I Submitted in February: (0)

Rejections: 2 — Black Warrior Review, Sycamore Review 

Acceptances: 0

Money Spent in February: $7.50 (The Idaho Review - $3 submission fee; Gulf Coast - $2.50 submission fee; Witness - $2 submission fee)

Money Earned in February: $0.00

February TALLY: -$7.50

Total Money Spent in 2016: $13.50

Total Money Earned in 2016: $0.00

2016 RUNNING TALLY: -$13.50

Elizabeth Cantwell is a poet and teacher living in Los Angeles. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of journals, including PANK, Anti-, The Los Angeles Review, and The Literary Review. Her book of poems, Nights I Let The Tiger Get You (Black Lawrence Press, 2014), was a finalist for the 2012 Hudson Prize; she is also the author of a chapbook, Premonitions (Grey Book Press, 2014).

Still in the red, but it’s okay.

PHV Blogger Elizabeth Cantwell / January 2016 / (-$6): Slow Going

poetryhasvalue:

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(I know this isn’t a proper poet photo (and don’t worry, I was at a stoplight!) but it feels to me like the beginning of this year has felt so far, as a writer: side-lit, sneaky, with something alive over my shoulder.)

And yes, as the title of this post indicates: I don’t have much to show for my efforts yet! But it’s no surprise to me that I haven’t earned any money at this point - after all, as I’m sure all the other bloggers here will be noting, poetry journals tend not to have the fastest responses. So, while I haven’t received any acceptances yet, I also haven’t received any rejections! Silver lining?

I used this month to start writing some new stuff, and I also polished up some older poems that I’d written over the summer, decided were bad, and never submitted anywhere. Those babies all have new paint jobs and are OUT THERE doing their thing.

I didn’t submit to a ton of journals this month, mostly because I wanted to make sure that my submissions felt good to me and were in the tone of the journals I was aiming at. But I’m happy about the ones I did submit to! As you’ll see below, I made one submission to a non-paying market, simply because I really like the journal and just felt like a few poems I had right now could maybe successfully fit their vibe. We’ll see.

Date: January 2016

Paying Journals To Which I Submitted in January: (3) Black Warrior Review, Colorado Review, Sycamore Review,

Non-Paying Journals To Which I Submitted in January: (1) Fence

Rejections: 0

Acceptances: 0

Money Spent in January: $6.00 (Black Warrior Review - $3 submission fee; Colorado Review - $3 submission fee)

Money Earned in January: $0.00

January TALLY: -$6.00

Total Money Spent in 2016: $6.00

Total Money Earned in 2016: $0.00

2016 RUNNING TALLY: -$6.00

Elizabeth Cantwell is a poet and teacher living in Los Angeles. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of journals, including PANK, Anti-, The Los Angeles Review, and The Literary Review. Her book of poems, Nights I Let The Tiger Get You (Black Lawrence Press, 2014), was a finalist for the 2012 Hudson Prize; she is also the author of a chapbook, Premonitions (Grey Book Press, 2014).

Here’s where I’m at as of last month in poetry world … So far, pretty much as expected? I’ve already submitted to more journals and written some new things this month, and am hoping to have a little bit more to show for my February stats!

brightwalldarkroom: “ Our brand new February issue (“The Unloved”) is now available! This month, we’re looking lovingly at unloved and overlooked things, with new words & artwork on “the transfixing stillness” of Keanu Reeves, Cameron Crowe’s...
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brightwalldarkroom:

Our brand new February issue (“The Unloved”) is now available!

This month, we’re looking lovingly at unloved and overlooked things, with new words & artwork on “the transfixing stillness” of Keanu Reeves, Cameron Crowe’s infamously bad Elizabethtown, Jill Solway’s criminally under seen Afternoon Delight, a defense of The Hobbit trilogy, Bill Murray’s The Man Who Knew Too Little and many more.

Plus, the debut of a brand new regular column (“Now Playing”) from Fran Hoepfner!

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(via brightwalldarkroom)