Winteroot's Blog

Overall Experience

Rachel — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 16:10:42 +0000

After going through so many submissions and the process of choosing pieces, patience was a big key. My mood and personal taste in writing influenced most of what I put my “yes” vote on. A submission that was rejected by one group can be accepted by another group, and vice versa. It takes a lot of patience to submit a piece of writing to a publication and wait to hear if the editors deemed the work to be worth of being printed or not. It also takes perseverence to work past those rejection letters.
As far as trying to get published I think the same things are just as important as it is for writing. Patience and perseverence is a big part of working through problematic areas of writing and working in/with the publishing world. Editing the two anthologies this semester has been tedious and ultimately tested the nerves each time. Every step was necessary and worked closer towards a good edition of the publication, but it just takes time and effort.

Accident, Mass. Ave. by Jill McDonough

Rachel — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 16:56:04 +0000

I hear people all the time saying a poem isn’t a poem unless it tells a story with imagery. While I argue that point at times, this poem does just that – it has a story and imagery. McDonough puts together a picture of a street with the typical scenerio of being in a car accident. Two people yelling at each other and not needing to understand the language of the other to know what was being communicated. I’m not a fan of a lot of swear words in one piece. While it’s vulgar it’s also a part of reality, especially for car accidents. When the two people see that nothing is wrong with either vehicle the tone of the poem changes completely. The big change in mood and language is what made me like this poem. Instead of simply parting ways the two people hug and try to console one another. It’s something that catches a person off guard. It catches a person off guard in reality and in writing.

Being a part of the editorial board helps to keep an open mind while reading poems. I usually skim a piece to see if I’m interested enough to pay close attention while reading it. I did that with this piece and had to read it over a few times before I caught the big switch. It was those multiple readings that that made me appreciate the poem more than I would have otherwise.

New Voices Editorial Board

Rachel — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 01:03:41 +0000

The New Voices experience seemed different this year than last year. The submissions were focused around class prompts, but the content was different from last year. There was less violence and more ambiguity. The selection process is much faster than it is for Dust & Fire. The poems that are clearly class prompts become the same poem after reading them over and over again. But this makes other poems stand out. It was those poems that stood out that made it into the anthology. When it came to discussing the poems, my group was easily persuaded in either direction depending on who felt the strongest. If we were not completely sure how we felt about a piece we put it in the “yes” pile to go through the post-it-note process. Decision based on the school and teacher never occured to me until the “yes” submisions were layed out on the table. Looking at the voting process in that way made the final decisions much easier.

Reading poetry from high school students brought back a lot of memories of what I thought poetry should be. AB AB format drives me up the wall, but back then that’s what poetry “was”. The format was more important than the content and how the poem was put together. It was a flashback to the learning and growing process I went through in writing that some of these New Voices poets will probably go through themselves.

Editorial Boards

Rachel — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 02:42:33 +0000

I’ve noticed that the selection process can either go really quick or somewhat slow. Each packet is different from the next. It depends on the submissions and what the publication is keeping an eye open for. Some poems are an automatic Yes. Some poems are an automatic No. The three vote system seems to work pretty well. There’s no tie and it hasn’t taken my group very long yet to make a decision on a 2:1 vote. The process as a whole, going from the voting of big envelopes to the voting on large numbers of submissions turns into a fast paced process. I think having been through it once before last year helped a lot. It was enough of a learning curve to make this semester go a little more smoothly.

The submissions are very different this year compared to what we read through last year. Last year an overwhelming majority of the submissions revolved around death or sickness. Most were well written and told a story, but the grim theme gets old after reading poem after poem. The new anthology will stand on a different level from the others in the past, as does each edition. That’s the beauty of anthologies like Dust & Fire. It’s a good way to bring diversity not only to the editorial boards, but the other writers as well.

Stolpestad by William Lychack

Rachel — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 02:18:46 +0000

The dialogue took a little getting used to. The writing had a monotone feel that worked well with the content. It’s an average, boring day for a local cop that has to deal with putting a dog down. Usually that would be a grim subject to read about just by itself. The little boy that pokes and prods at the animal brings the piece to another level. There is a lot of time spent thinking on about the animal and what’s going on with the characters. I thought it was interesting how the author focused on the pattern of the grass that was pressed into a nest. The kinds of detail that were put into the story makes the story come to life. Even if the subject matter is depressing the author brought it together in a wonderful way.

“This Dream the World is Having About Itself” by Carolyne Wright

Rachel — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 01:10:00 +0000

I stopped reading this poem half way through. I read it aloud from the beginning and read it again. The line breaks didn’t make sense when I looked at it, but they didn’t matter when I heard the words. The first thing I have to comment on is the imagery. I love nature poems and this one takes the cake for the year so far. Wright brought together her emotions with the different seasons that were memorable throughout her life. She worded them as a part of a chronological history that she could still trace. It’s decorated with her mother and sister and the prairies where she grew up. I’ve lived most of my life on the edge of the prairie region of Minnesota and could picture Wright as a child standing in those open spaces through each decade. Besides personal memories there is also the historical memories like the war and the mentioning of the Oregon Trail. The other thing that grabbed my attention was how she described each decade. They were written in a casual manner but still managed to stand out from the rest of the poem.I was surprised at how well this poem flowed compared to the other pieces that have been read recently in class. It has imagery, emotion, personal connections, historical points, and it’s relatable to some degree for me.

“How to Succeed in Po Biz” by Kim Addonizio

Rachel — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 03:55:46 +0000

The dry humor at the beginning is what pulled me in to the reading. I’m a sarcastic person most of the time and enjoy reading it. The writer puts bits of advice for becoming successful that sound like the typical speeches that are heard at book readings. The dark twist surprised me. It’s the depressing tones that get to be so strong that made the story different from all those speeches. It plays through a scenerio of what the writer imagines the writing world to be like. Most people envision a glorious life of being published and noted as an accomplished person. As depressing as the pages were it was refreshing to have a piece that has a sense of reality to it. I’m not sure if the dry humor was the best tactic but it definitely got the message across.

Our Pointy Boots by Brock Clarke

Rachel — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 03:55:43 +0000

I had a difficult time reading this short story. There are a lot of anti-war and anti-individualism references that don’t fully come into shape until the end. The idea of identity as a group became more interesting the more I thought about it. “We” was always used instead of I. It replaced any names, except Saunders, and placed all the emphasis on the group that went to highschool together, enlisted for war together, and returned from Iraq together. Pointy toed boots are the physical thing that brings them all together, oddly enough, with a good feeling that takes them away from the bad memories. As a story alone this was hard to pull together. But the smaller things combined are what made the story good. It had the overall notions of what should be gathered from reading the different types of people and the odd views from the ”we” group. The more we discussed it in class the more I could understand some of the points that were almost on the surface of the writing.

Midsummer by Louise Gluck

Rachel — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 17:12:15 +0000

This poem seemed to jump out at me compared to the other two choices. Gluck used images I could picture. She talks about the summer of “new bodies” and how it affects the other kids that gather at night. It reminded me a lot of sitting at breakfast in middle school waiting for class to start and hearing my classmates whisper about the nights. They were the kids that lived on the edge of town by swamps and pot holes and could go swimming. It’s an age group that discovers something every time they open their eyes and realize things are different. Living out in the country had its own sort of discovery amongst the kids that worked on the family farms. They were the ones that snuck out to smoke in the fields and run like crazy if they set the field on fire from the cigarette butts. Phones would ring along the chunk of highway that edged those fields and everyone could get an idea of who had snuck out. Gluck wrote a couple lines that sum it up - ”And the next day, we were kids again, sitting on the front steps in the morning, eating a peach. Just that, but it seemed an honor to have a mouth.” Even the unspoken pregnancy is something that everyone is aware of. A girl in my grade was pregnant as soon as she let everyone know how her body had changed, but no one said it out loud. “And for those two, it was terrible, as terrible as being along. The game was over.” I’m a sucker for well written nature poems, and the last three stanzas captured the hot nights that Gluck was remembering, the fireflies, and the home that has that special something. Gluck puts a reflective spin at the very end of the poem that I love because it remindes me of the father/daughter words of wisdom my dad tries to drill into my head when I go home to visit. I’ve read this poem multiple times in the last couple days and love how much was put into it. It has the unspoken parts of life that don’t need words to be understood, and there’s a tension that seems to go hand in hand with coming of age.

A Little Intro

Rachel — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 03:54:31 +0000

I’m a senior in the creative writing department. I chose BSU origionally because it was close to home. Now I’ve fallen in love with the school and the program. I grew up spending a lot of time outdoors and reading to pass the time.

In the past I was always a reader of fiction only. It was more interesting to read about Harry Potter instead of reading National Geographic profiles. Things didn’t have to make sense to be a good read. In the last couple of years college has replaced any joy reading with text books and required classics. Books of poetry have nestled their way into my bag and I’ve fallen in love with them. Poems are usually short and concise. If a piece is well written, or long enough I suppose, a reader can read a poem over and over again and get a story, personality, images, and emotions that can change with the next read. A book of poetry is the perfect thing to have between classes or when the Union is empty.

Words can be more effective when they’re short and to the point. First drafts are good because they have everything that the writer wanted to say. It always seems like the revisions loose something that was supposed to be in the piece. Almost like blurting something out in a coversation without thinking. It gets everything out in the open right away. When there is time to think about what needs to be said a person has a chance to filter the words and put them in the right order.