sending out poems

from the diary: “Monday 9/5/88

“Last night I … typed up 4 poems for Sonoma Mandala. These prob’ won’t go in their precious literary annual any more than the stuff I’ve sent in the past cuz my poor poems do not fit their ‘little literary magazine’ type poetry. Green Fuse called the 2 poems I sent them ‘precious’ & ‘intellectual’. Intellectual as an insult again. Why is being smart considered not smart? I don’t write oh-so-awe-filled poems about brooks and babies and babble. My poetry is good. So much of what is published is so damn usual. Oh, I’ve read this before & before & before that. The poems that aren’t little concrete packaged images – in the ‘little’ magazine style – are abstractions of abstractions that make no sense and are praised lavishly becuz they are ‘difficult’. They appear in the big magazines. With everyone all over the country churning out words on paper, how can anyone’s work stand out? Just another tiny poem in some literary magazine fourteen people and the author will read – the same 14 who read the last poem. Yuck.”

Sonoma Mandala was the literary magazine of Sonoma State University.