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Born June 17th, 2010
8 pounds, 7 ounces

She’s so beautiful it makes blogging about poetry seem pretty pointless.  But I’ll try to get over it.  For Megan’s birth story, see the baby blog.

One of my few regrets is playing first base as a kid.  Back in T-ball, when no one could catch, I got it stuck in my head that first base was the most important position on the field — if the first baseman doesn’t catch the ball, you don’t win the game.  By the time you’re 10, everyone can catch, so it’s no big deal, but I stubbornly stayed at first base anyway, right through my sophomore year in high school.

In the back of my head I knew it was stupid not to move somewhere more important, but I couldn’t help myself — and I think that’s when I developed my nemesis complex.  Growing up, I always had to have a nemesis, someone I secretly loved to loath — or maybe lovingly loathed — not quite the Newman to my Seinfeld, because there was a wellspring of admiration beneath all the mean things I thought about them.

A nemesis had to follow a few simple criteria:

1. They had to be a direct rival.
2. They had to be plausibly better than me.
3. They had to be aware of — yet utterly indifferent to — my existence.

My first nemesis was Jason Collins — one of the cooler kids, a tall power-hitter who really did belong at first base.  Even his name sounded like a real ballplayer.  He was the starter on our town’s Little League All-Star team, and I was his back-up.  I only saw him once since then, when I faced him as a pitcher in high school, and struck him out looking at a 2-2 cutter on the inside corner.  I’m sure he doesn’t remember me or that at bat.  But I do.

Next was Ben Giesselman, a fellow-nerd and first baseman at a rival high school.  In 5th grade we were the only two kids in town to have perfect scores on some standardized test.  Then in 9th grade we were 2 of 4 to win scholarships based on our PSAT scores.  I just Googled him, and I’m not surprised to see that he’s as much a nemesis as ever — apparently he has a B.S. in Molecular Biology and does research on photodynamic therapy at my alma mater, the University of Rochester.  If I didn’t bail on science to become your lowly poetry editor, that could be me.  He even has a buzz-cut in the wedding photo he uses for his Facebook profile…

By the time I reached college I switched to short-stop and became an English major.  I thought I was done with nemesii, until I met Lean Forward Guy.  I can’t remember his name, but he always leaned forward in his chair in the lecture hall, like he wanted a head start on absorbing all that knowledge.  I hated it, so I always called him Lean Forward Guy.  I wasn’t sure why I secretly loathed him — he cared more about literature than creative writing, and really wasn’t much of a poet.  But he got A’s and we argued in class, and there was something about him that always got on my nerves.  Then one day I needed a substitute player for my softball team, and he offered to fill in, but only if he could play — you guessed it — first base.

Now I live in Movie City, USA.  My least favorite director in the entire world has to be Michael Bay.  Let’s just say, as a literary person, I like a plot.  I hate quick cuts.  Even the best Hollywood explosions look fake.  I sat through three hours of Pearl Harbor.  And so on.  Michael Bay might be the Bizarro-Tim.  He owns two houses to my none, and drives a Ferrari while I walk to work.  He majored in English, but his product is loud and shallow and popular.  What’s the polar opposite of American Fractal, if is isn’t Coyote Ugly?  But I can’t really hate him — he seems like a nice guy, and he’s an animal lover…apparently he donated his Bar Mitzvah money to a shelter. So what if he’s hell-bent on remaking every classic horror movie for no good reason?

So in my softball league last week, who do we play against?  Michael Bay.  And what position does he play?  Yup.

It got me thinking:  Maybe there is something to this first base thing.

If I had to pick a nemesis in poetry — and I have — it’s Ted Genoways at Virginia Quarterly Review.  He’s a friend of a friend, and a few years ago that friend forwarded me a glowing profile of Genoways, praising all he’d done “at the tender age of 31.” And of course I thought, “What about all I’ve done at the tender age of 27!?”  Ted earns twice my salary, works with a budget ten times as large, sends writers overseas on assignment, and does it all in an office on a hill with a bearskin rug, apparently.  He’s a frequent contributor to Mother Jones.  I hear his car runs on biodeisel.  He excels at magazine design, has an uncanny vision, and is the kind of literary insider who actually wins awards, from book prizes to Pushcarts, and now a damn Guggenheim Fellowship.  As a nemesis, he’s more than worthy.

So the only question is — what position does he play?  I’ve only met Genoways once, and very briefly, at the AWP Conference several years ago, but one thing stands out immediately.  He’s huge.  He must be 6-6 and 250 pounds.  His hand is a catcher’s mitt.  I don’t know if he ever plays baseball, but at that size, there are only two positions he could play — pitcher or first base.  So I ask, which is it, Genoways?

Let me guess…

In the last couple months I’ve gotten five solicitations from very good journals, asking me to send them new work.  I never thought that would happen.  But I haven’t even replied — I’ve got nothing to send them.  And I never thought that would happen, either.

As I’ve explained before, the subtitle to this blog has nothing to do with a “struggle” to find success as a poet.  It was only ten years ago — maybe to the day — that I decided that I liked poetry enough to read or write a poem that wasn’t part of my homework assignment.  In the decade since I’ve already reached the likely pinnacle of my career.  I published a book I’m proud of, with one of the best small presses in the country, and I have one of the few full-time jobs in the business.  I’m already Editor of Rattle; I’m 29 years old and can never get another promotion.  There are a few editorships that would bring more pay or prestige, but I wouldn’t trade them for the autonomy I have here, or the many hats I get to wear, or the fun of working with my wife every day.  Who knows what the future holds, but when it comes to making a career in poetry, there’s really nowhere to go from here.

Despite all that “success,” I’m more of a struggling poet than ever — struggling for time and the right kind of attentiveness.  I spend all day, usually 7 days a week writing (mostly emails) and reading poetry.  When I get home, writing a new poem of my own is the last thing I want to do.  Since becoming an editor, I’ve slipped from writing two or three poems a week to writing two or three a year.  And when I do get around to writing, I’m so rusty and self-conscious that nothing worthwhile comes of it.

This has been going on for a long time now, and I’m past the point of calling it just a phase.  I’ve thought hard about all the possible contributing factors — for a while I thought it was that my obsessions shifted from philosophy to political history — a much more challenging subject to put into verse.   Then I thought it was a lack of discontent — too happy with my job and my marriage and the weather in LA to chronicle my complaints into poetry.  Or maybe it was the MFA or running out of things to say.

But it’s not any of those things.  I’m not sitting on my hands for lack of material to write about — I have three separate book projects ready to go, and I’m enthusiastic about each of them.  I’m not too content — who am I kidding?  I probably hate the world more now than at any other time in my life, as happy as I am with my little corner of it.

It’s finally time to admit that my only problem is this job.  This job opens doors but stifles creativity.  All the garbage from all the bad poems clogging up the system, all the mental energy spent juggling the myriad components that keep this machine running.  I feel like one of those goofy one-man-bands — and the music never stops.

There’s little solace in the fact that I’m not alone.  Megan writes less than she used to since becoming assistant editor.  Stellasue Lee wrote a book before she became poetry editor, and wrote virtually nothing during her stint on the job — and now that she’s retired has a new manuscript she’s ready to publish.

Looking through the history of literary magazines editors, how many have had the time to support a prolific writing career on top of it?  Contemporaries like Meghan O’Rourke and C. Dale Young come to mind, but I don’t think the editing is their primary work.  Christian Wiman, editor of Poetry and commenter a couple posts back, hasn’t published a book of poetry in five years, meaning the last poems he’s published in a book are seven years old, at least.  I have no idea what he’s working on now, but I haven’t seen new poetry from him in any other magazines in a long time — though now that I google him I see that he had one in The New Yorker last summer, so maybe he’s writing prolifically for all I know.

I don’t even know what my point is, I’m just rambling.  Maybe I want you to point out some editor who writes volumes of books that you love to make me feel better.  Or maybe that would make me feel worse.  What I really want to do is find a way to get back on the horse of writing into the wee hours of the night again, rather than lounging brain-dead on the couch watching Jon Stewart.

Megan’s halfway through a healthy pregnancy, and it’s a girl. I’m not going to talk about it much, if at all, on here, because this isn’t a personal blog, it’s a personal literary blog, and there’s a big difference between the two. If anyone actually cares what I have to say (and that’s debatable), they care what I have to say about baby poems more than baby humans. Baby-talk will be limited to the effect the baby has on literary things — I’ve heard that having a child rejuvenates the creative spark; we’ll see. It’s also, obviously, a radical shift in time and attention and priority. So maybe I’ll write about those things. But even though I’m not focusing on it here, we’re both thrilled, and busy with all those exciting and anxiety-filled tasks that come with trying to bring a beautiful new life into the world. If you want to read about baby things, Megan’s keeping a weekly blog about our Green Bean here: http://greenestbean.blogspot.com/

Several people have commented recently on the subtitle of this blog: “Poetry Editor and Struggling Poet.”  Tim, they say, how can you possibly be a struggling poet when you have a book that’s just been published by a good press and a full-time job in the poetry industry?  Or as G. Tod Slone puts it, “Why would you be a ‘struggling poet’? Hell, the machine is paying you a salary, isn’t it?”

Obviously that tag isn’t referring to money — anyone who’s seen my gut lately knows I’m not struggling to eat.  If I cared about material wealth I wouldn’t be here — I graduated at the top of my class and could easily be a molecular biologist at some pharmaceutical company pulling down six figures right now — but that doesn’t mean I’m starving.

I’m not struggling at my career, either.  American Fractal is doing as well as a first book of poetry can be expected to (sold three copies this week, wow!), and Rattle is growing fast and furious.  The age of 30 is breathing down my neck, but it isn’t here yet, and already I’m feeling pretty cozy in this niche.

What I’m struggling with is poetry itself.  I haven’t written a poem in three months.  In the last 18 months I might have written a half dozen.  It’s been two years since my book was accepted for publication.  It’s been two years since I’ve submitted work to another magazine.  It’s been two years since I’ve cared to.

I still love good poetry, and I still love the meditative process through which good poetry is composed.  I still think poetry is an incredibly meaningful part of the human experience — I think it’s endemic to the way our minds work, as important an evolutionary tool as the opposable thumb.  It’s poetry that not only helps us communicate new ideas, but lets us form new ideas in the first place; it’s through poetry that we experience the nuances of the world.  Simple language produces simple thoughts.  Poetry is banned in 1984 for a reason.  Poetry is a garden for reflection, contemplation, awareness, empathy — all the things that are missing or deficient in this modern life.

And yet poetry as an industry is just as ridiculous as any other industry.  Just as much a game: CVs, MFAs, bios, blogs, open mics, cover letters, conferences, colonies, grants, awards, networking, politicking, policing…  I don’t care if you’re an academic poet, a street poet, or an underground poet.  I don’t care if you’re the Poet Laureate or the Poet Lariat or the poet Harriet, who has a 160 poems in four different themes in a three-ring binder on her desk.  It’s all a joke.  It’s an egotistical, megalomaniacal, self-aggrandizing, back scratching, crotch-stroking, fist pumping joke.  When I see a bio listing 104 “credits,” including Poetry and Triquarterly and the New England Review, I don’t think, Wow, that’s a real poet.  I think, Wow, that’s a lot of postage.  When I see the same poet reading the same poem over and over again to the same audience at every open mic in town, there’s no room to wonder about the transaction — the only one gaining something is you, gaining a captive audience for content that wouldn’t hold up through a dinner conversation.

You want fame, you want attention, you want respect.  That’s all the game is about.  It’s 28,000 submitters and 2,800 subscribers.  It’s an audience of 30 at a poetry reading, and 20 of them thinking only about the poem they’ll read when the host calls their name.  It’s a new book every four years because that’s what tenure calls for.  And every faction, from the most amateur to the most erudite, thinks they’re the one that’s doing it right.  It’s all the same silly enterprise.

Yes, you’re all poets.  But only because we’re all poets — every human being is a poet from birth.  We live in language, we enjoy language, we use language in interesting ways.  Only 10% of us are writing poetry, but 100% of us should be.  That’s what really matters.  Good poetry isn’t about linebreaks or imagery or avoiding cliches.  It’s not about books or applause or MFAs.  It’s about having a genuine fucking experience within language.  If you have an actual experience writing the poem, I will have an actual experience reading the poem, and we’ll all be better off for it.  If you aren’t doing that, then I don’t want anything to do with you.  We might as well be talking about the weather, or sports, or Dancing with the Stars.

And if you want to learn how to write poetry, if you want to teach it, then teach how to have a meditative experience within language.  Don’t workshop me, don’t writers’ group me, don’t line-edit the vapid into mediocrity.  If it’s not a genuine experience, it’s a waste of everyone’s time.  I’ve had a handful of teachers who have taught poetry the right way, sometimes without even knowing it, but so many others who are nothing more than foremen at a plastic factory.  I’ll love the former forever, but I’m done with the latter and all the empty molds they spawn.

When I call myself a struggling poet, it’s because I’m struggling with how poetry is treated, how poetry acts.  But I had a revelation last night:  I’m done with it.  I’m done with taking this industry so seriously just because everyone else does.  I’m done pretending Best American Poetry matters.  I’m done pretending 200 people reading my poem in some journal is better than the 200 people who would read it if I posted it on this blog.  I’m done with trying to be successful.

All that matters is the actual poetry.  All that matters are the real poets, who actually exist as real poets for the hour or two that they’re living within a real poem.  All that matters are the actual people, who actually enjoy reading real poems. All that matters is the joy of creating them.

That’s how I felt five years ago.  And five years ago I didn’t consider myself a “struggling poet.”