KNOW NOW
Missive #54 - Transcribed Poetic Dictation
[September is always a very fertile month. How is it that harvest is synonymous with fertility? Fall is when everything must happen before Winter. September and October are a race to finish, to surrender, to submit. And I too am in one of the great submission months of my life. After counciling with a number of poets, elder and younger, central and fringe, I have come to the position of submitting my ODES FOR A GOLDEN AGE manuscript (would you believe my second manuscript is already about half complete?) to poetry press Contests. A few are particularly compelling to me. All of them exclusively for debut poetry collections. Copper Canyon Press, of course, is at the top of my list. The contest complex is very rich — I have won competitions before with my poetry, but many years ago now. Since then I have always had my work requested, and have delivered my words straight into desiring hands. This is a return to the beginning for me, to “If you’re not first, you’re last” style com-petitions. Is my work better than everyone else’s? Is mine more necessary now? How do my Missive-Odes compare? How is a judge to decide? Of course, I have no doubt that the ODES can win any contest it designs to win, and to not win any that it is not designed to win. What a bizarre feeling space to be in. There is anxiety, and also excitement, and also unworthiness, and also confidence, strength.
Many presses/contests and magazines have a fall submission period opening around now — if you know of any which might be a good fit for my beloved work, please do let me know! I am happy to cast a wider net than just those I’ve come upon myself. And it is quite a wide, wide world~ ] Received 9/11/24 | 5:05-5:24pm
Listen to the Recitation:
KNOW NOW
A now unburdened by the present
Gift given, unreceived into the arms
Of a cur, snarling Saint insipid
At peace with the sailing sun
The know~now to accomplish accomplice
Acquiesce and ascertain the sumptuous
Sibilance, sinuous and slitherous at the curling
Tip or tail of tone. Indebted to the dead and
Incredulous to the tune of a tip tip tapping
At the door, on the floorboards before bed
Thump thump thump from the well, deep
In the dullaries of anomalies; I am anomalous
Without name, nameless, a lie
On the cussipice of charlatannery, stretched
Out taut on the surface of a scowl's
Maiden teetering on a bucket's pallid pail
Thin skinning her way to a new sewn seer
Flipping the skillet on the head of the babe
Who sits, lotus position, completely still
A model for the sage, who is no sage
As there is no sage for the moment, at the
Moment's notice too late to seem
But to know — to know!
There is only left to know
To know now what was known then
To know better now
To know a better now
To know what can only be known now
Which is that now can only be known
And is all that can be known
And to know now is to lose all.
So know and know and know and know
All that can be known in the knownness
Of now.
