I received a rejection from Ploughshares yesterday. Later this month I will need to send out more submissions and send my chapbook to a couple of contests.

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The artist is the creator of beautiful things.

To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim.

The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.

The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.


--Oscar Wilde, from The Preface of The Picture of Dorian Gray