I received yesterday the premiere copy of the literary magazine that the faculty advisor sent to me. Wish my poem was in it. I can’t believe I have to wait until April 2007. I sent the email below to the faculty advisor this morning. I wanted to feel out if I need to continue worrying about this, or can I just forget about it and know that the poem will appear next year. I received a reply back from the faculty advisor this afternoon.

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Gerald,

As a fellow writer I understand your concern, but as I'm the faculty advisor, I can tell you it's going in.

I'm glad you received the inaugural issue. Keep in touch and we will be also.

XXXX

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XXXX,

I received the premiere issue of XXXX yesterday in the mail. Thank you.

How certain are you that my poem "Drive" will in fact be in issue # 2? With April 2007 being so far off, it seems like a lot could go wrong between now and then. I would be quite upset if something goes wrong, and my poem is not in issue # 2. That would be a loss of almost a year to send the poem around to other literary magazines. Do you recommend that I check in with the XXXX editors at some point later this year, or is this a done deal, and I can rest assured that my poem will appear in issue # 2?

I feel like I am being obsessive-compulsive about this whole issue, but when you are just starting to accumulate acceptances as a writer, every one of them is important.

Gerald

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Theodore Roethke (1908-1963)

Roethke’s father owned a sprawling series of greenhouses, and the young Theodore became intensely interested in the wonders of the natural world, including its harsh realities. His early poems reflect his awareness of an inherent terror in nature. The death of his father, his uncle’s suicide, and the loss of the greenhouse during a short time when he was 14 years old triggered several mental breakdowns and life-long battles with alcoholism and manic-depression. He became obsessed with the notion of loss, as seen in his work. Roethke was a romantic poet, influenced by Gerard Manley Hopkins and Dylan Thomas, Emerson, Whitman, and Dickinson. His innate love of nature was reflected in his admiration for Emerson and Thoreau. He was an equally skilled poet and teacher—his students included Carolyn Kizer, David Wagoner, and Richard Hugo. As a poet he won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize and two National Book Awards. Roethke said about identity, “The human problem is to find out what one really is: whether one exists, whether existence is possible.”

--From Poetry Speaks

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Beware of Things in Duplicate…

Beware of things in duplicate:
a set of knives, the cufflinks in a drawer,
the dice, the pair of Queens, the eyes
of someone sitting next to you.
Attend that empty minute in the evening
when looking at the clock, you see
its hands are fixed on the same hour
you noticed at your morning coffee.
These are the moments to beware
when there is nothing so familiar
or so close that it cannot betray you:
a twin, an extra key, an echo,
your own reflection in the glass.

--Dana Gioia