Patience

In Northern Kentucky, my wife is sitting on a runway, having gone through the more stringent security measures just enacted by the TSA. In contrast, I'm sitting in my wrought-iron chair of choice as our two dogs wander through the tall grass of our backyard, small butterflies weave about the neighbor's yard, and cardinals twitter from the highest branches of the rose of Sharon that obscures our fenceline from passersby.

In mere moments, the airliner where she sits reading a recent literary novel will lift into the sky and veer east, out over the chopping waves of the Atlantic, before banking toward South Carolina. She'll land at the tiny airport in Charleston, search out colleagues, before taking a shuttle to an exclusive resort on the Barrier Islands where two days worth of business meetings await her.

Now, with solitude, broken only intermittently by the puppies, I can focus on crafting one or another works is into my own facsimile of a masterpiece. I can devote hours to the marketing of the online journal we're building together. Or, I could lounge about, unaccustomed to her absence, flicking through empty channels, until a meaningless football game finally begins.

***

A cool wind fills the morning air, rustling the sweet gum tree overhead. The mottled sky blocks out the sun, threatening rain. I slept diagonally in our bed last night, nestled between the two puppies, and surrounded by a wealth of pillows.

I chose to watch the football game. Yet, despite the comforting sounds of the crowd and the thudding hits from on the field (just a few miles away, perched on the banks of the Ohio), I recall little about the game. Instead, it was background as I surfed aimlessly around the Internet, searching for something, and waiting, I suppose, for a voice—mediated by technology—to filter through and, somehow, remain with me.

Eventually, I turned to a manuscript of my poems. I read through the work, looking for lines that could be improved and trying to discern which poems were the weakest and to correct them. The book was better than I thought it would be, despite myriad flaws.

***

The canines are cavorting about the yard, savoring the coolness of the summer morning mist. Archie is sniffing the dirt around the sweet gum tree that was once covered with hosta. Dixie is peering out at the yards behind our house, where a rabbit earlier dashed across the thick green grass. We are waiting.

I, personally, am anticipating a full day's worth of contract work. The puppies, I suppose, are awaiting the arrival of squirrels that they can attempt to corner.

As I think about that collection, I suspect that I could gather up the poems and send them all off to be read. If I chose the markets carefully, I imagine the majority of poems would be taken to be posted on the Internet or for a tiny print run in this or that literary journal.

Given, this may be an example of that necessary self-delusion a poet needs to keep writing through difficult years, but let's assume for a moment that I'm correct. Imagine that all 45 poems could be published in one venue or another by the end of the year. Sounds great, right?

So why am I so hesitant to send out a batch? I could argue that prestige is a factor or that I'd prefer to make the few thousand dollars that would be vaguely possible if the highest-paying markets would take those poems. More, I could admit, simply, that it's fear of rejection masquerading behind nobler ideas.

While I will admit that these factors are likely spicing the stew of my contemplation, they do not constitute the broth of this decision. Instead, I think the quality of the poems is my foremost concern. You see, poetry, to my mind, is a bit of a collaborative process. Each time I read a poem, regardless of who penned the initial incarnation, I must filter those combinations of phrases through my own experience, my own psyche, my own relationship with the world. Misreading—at least compared to the author's likely original intent—is a marvelous part of the process—two minds, straddling space and time with the sound of a few syllables. As a reader, I appreciate those poems, like Robert Frost's "Birches," that allow the reader's intellect to participate deeply in the formation of meaning, but don't necessarily require it. If you look at Birches (and much of Frost's work), you can easily read the poem as a folksy anecdote—and nothing more—but still enjoy the poem. If you care to, however, there are layers of meaning to traverse.

By contrast, a number of my poems seem to lack that invitation for further study. How does one make a poem that can offer a simple interpretation without the poem becoming so trite that it isn't worth more than one read? How does one make such a poem with enough clarity that an editor, with a cursory read, will move your poem out of the slush pile?

I don't think there are any easy answers for those questions. If I tried, I'd be offering formulaic nonsense—like someone selling a real estate course through an infomercial. Instead, each of those questions must be answered separately with each poem. And, if I answer each of those questions for each of the poems in my collection, perhaps they will be slightly easier to place, but more importantly, perhaps they will be read more widely and enjoyed by more people. And that, frankly, is all one can ask of their poems.