I’ve been thinking a lot about genuine and earned emotions in poetry. I’ve noticed lately that my own poetry (my newer poems) has more intellectual content than perhaps I’d like. When I think about poems that I like the most, the poems usually have a good balance between emotional content and intellectual content. As I’m writing this, I’m also thinking about how many of my poems have peripheral spiritual concerns. I’m not sure I would lump spiritual content in with emotional content. Spiritual content seems separate.

I’m looking forward to the next few days because I will be off from work until Tuesday, so I should get a fair amount of writing and revision done. I also have some reading projects that I would like to launch. I also need to spend some time revising my artist colony application packet for the deadline in January.

I’ve contacted a couple of poets who have far more experience in the publishing world than I do. I want to get their take on this acceptance contract. I received an email back this morning from one of them saying that he found the contract to be odd and overdone. He said that they obviously received input from an attorney, but the terms are confusing. Overall the contract looks okay except for one section of it. He suggested that I might need to prepare myself to walk away from the acceptance contract depending on how things go once I hear back from the literary magazine. He also wondered if other contributors reacted to the acceptance contract the way I have. Perhaps they’ll revise their acceptance contracts across the board in response.