Midweek Notes from a Practicing Writer
Collection-in-Progress
I am working hard to prepare my poetry-collection manuscript for submission.
Which means that I am spending a lot of time sequencing (and re-sequencing) the poems.
Here’s a photo which might best be titled: “Batches (Or, After All of the Poems Were Set Out on the Floor but Before They’ve Been Assembled into a Single Contiguous Group).”
And Speaking of Poems
I had two poems published on the Jewcy website last week.
The first poem, “Birthright,” connects with last week’s Torah portion (Toldot). The other one, “Sabbath Rest 2.0,” examines what I have elsewhere referred to as my weekly social-media detox.
Fun fact: “Birthright,began as an acrostic (spelling out the name “Isaac”). But it just didn’t work that way. I’m grateful to Kathleen Graber for making me see that during our post-workshop tête-à-tête at last summer’s Vermont College of Fine Arts Postgraduate Writers Conference. Kathleen predicted that the poem would find a home in its new form, and she was right!
One More Byline
Last week also brought the publication of a feature I wrote for the Forward about the remarkable Rachela Krinsky (1910-2002). I could tell you more about her here, but I’d rather that you click over and read the 1000-word piece.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING WISHES TO ALL WHO WILL BE CELEBRATING IT TOMORROW!