WHEN HEMINGWAY WAS A BEATNIK

More semi-success with poetry. The respected journal Plainsongs has forwarded "one or more" of my  poems from my cancer ms to final judges. I won't know final results until April.

Not much else to report except that I'm currently reading Hemingway's A Moveable Feast with great interest. I find my approach to short stories somewhat match his approach as it existed when he was a youth in Paris. 

Very shortly I will have reworked all my most recent short tales and built a ms for entering into contests. Maybe about 250 pages of fiction there. Still, no one has bitten on one of them to place in a journal. One story is still at the magazine that asked me specifically to send another piece of fiction.

BARBECUE AND BEATNIK THOUGHTS

I just ate a pulled pork barbecue sandwich at the Van Mall. Delicious. Could have used a bit more of the delicious sauce. Will ask for it next time. A local company, the Backyard Barbecue.

Now to business. Has been suggested by several websites that these entries ought to occur every other day or so. To keep readers titillated. But I figure, why write if news is sparse? Just finished rework of poetry ms about cancer treatments YOU WAKE ONE MORNING, REMEMBERING and submitted it to BKMK Press contest at University of Missouri. Cost thirty dollars to enter. Administrative costs, they say. Well, a bit too much I figure. But, the contest is prestigious and those who enter do so anonymously. Fair and square.

Next task is to put together another short fiction ms and enter it in contests too. The one I have already put together contains too many stories that modern editors will reject. Their style probably sounds out of date to a youthful editor. I imagine they don't get the charge out of those that I do. I hope another surge of short stories arises in my psyche.

Last task on list is to put together a poetry ms from my lifetime of work, the published and the unpublished — the very best I have written and circulate the ms in contests.  

PS: The prostate cancer news is so so. Need more talk with urologist, I think.

BEATNICKING ALONG THE BEAT ROAD

Thirty stories now completed. Have been working today on my ms You Wake One Morning, Remembering. Rearranging the contents. I want to enter it into contests. Nearly 50 poems based on my dance with prostate cancer—it's discovery, treatment with radiation and hormone therapy and semi-recovery. The cancer's still there. Much reduced. My urologist says I'll die of something other than prostate cancer. Only time will tell. He's the one who likes to say, "Everyone's got to die someday."

Lately my rejections have been accompanied by requests to resubmit. Either editors are becoming kinder with their rejection letters, or I'm getting closer. I'm reading Hemingway's short stories recently, having finished Raymond Carver's. It's been a half year since a poem of mine was included in Washington State Poet Laureate Claudia Castro's project, Washington Poetry Map. It's there near Huckleberry Mountain just north of Interstate 90. My record is pretty consistent—one or two publications a year. Nothing spectacular. Not bad for a writer who is a stranger to most, if not all, editors of literary magazines, internet as well as hard copy.

The recent photo reveals the fact I'm letting my hair grow long on the top. On top that is.

LOTS OF WORK, LOTS AND LOTS

Jeez, Louise, 82 people looked in this morning. Thank you folks. Been awhile, I know, but I've been hard at work. Spent three days straightening out the file cards I keep on all my poetry. Things were in a mess, and I found I was sending out poems I'd self-published in my two poetry books, Gray House By Cold Mountain and Tenderfoot [available Amazon or AuthorHouse]. That's a no-no in the publishing world, even though the readership of those books is extremely small.

Just finished a few minutes ago writing another short story I love to pieces called "Lennie". I'm also rewriting the poetry ms about my prostate cancer, You Wake One Morning, Remembering. I'm altering it from second person singular to first person and it will have a new undecided title. The reason I began it second person was some sort of shame or shyness about using first person. Don't ask me why. I don't understand it myself. After all, it's my cancer, my dealing with it, the humor I find in my dealing with it. In fact, I wonder if it's not too humorous in places while in other places showing too much self-pity. It's a complicated book, unlike any other cancer poetry I've read. Lot's of references to movies and personalities in the news of my days.

BEATNIK SILENTLY STUMBLES INTO ALGEBRA

As of November 30, 2018, I've stopped writing and returned to working on intermediate algebra problems. It's fun to sit in coffee shops and work problems and learn new things. When I retired in 2003 at age 66, I began working at algebra. I monitored courses at the community college in Spokane. I had the goal of learning calculus. My father was a tool designer and, of course, as a CNC machinist, I used lots of math to perform my duties. Math is in my genes so to speak.

I did not win the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize at the University of Pittsburg Press where I had submitted my ms based on my prostate cancer. The poetry was authentic and pretty decent, actually, but the competition is stiff. All the most recognized and ambitious poets submit to it, so it's no disgrace not to win. The same ms is still at the Iowa Review, and Ghoul World is still at DAW which says it will take at least 3 mos. to respond. I've still got several poetry submissions out at various literary magazines, and I do have a piece of prose history that's to be published by Geoff Peterson's in his Archipelago.

The reason I've stopped writing to be honest is that I tried to write a poem the other day. If writing is going well, the writer gets hits of emotion as he works. They reward writing. When those emotional jolts disappear, there's no impulse to continue writing. Writing is its own reward, and when one isn't being self-rewarded, it's time to take a break.