There simply isn't time enough to fill in the gap between these posts, but apparently making a list of things for which I'm thankful was a bit premature in some ways and then totally spot on in others.
I remain ridiculously grateful that recent poems (most of them new pieces from the second manuscript that I finished during this hell-winter in the cabin) are forthcoming or now appear in Crazyhorse, Gulf Coast, Best of the Net 2013, and Kenyon Review. These are a few of my dream journals, and that slew of acceptances was amazing, but after the carbon monoxide leaks (the wood stove rendered inoperable), the week of the frozen water pipes (during which we flushed the toilet with water I had to drive to procure), the news that my dad was quite ill and hospitalized again, the deck being torn from the house when tons of snow fell from the roof--after all of that--I was feeling pretty down, I have to say.
But post-AWP, after a lovely week of visits--a much needed week away from home--I landed in Milwaukee at 10:15pm, returning to a balmy -10 degrees, and turned on my cell phone to get a message from Jon Tribble from Crab Orchard Review, saying he had a question about my MS Errata. I looked at the line of people waiting to deplane. I laughed out loud. I couldn't stop smiling. I wanted to tell everyone--HEY! Jon Tribble called me!! Even if they didn't have any idea what the hell that meant. It felt like an eternity, waiting for all of those people to get their friggin carry-ons and shuffle off the plane. I went to the ladies room. I laughed. I washed my face. I breathed. I went into the more or less empty terminal and called Jon back. As he told me that Adrienne Su had chosen my book (my BOOK!) as one of the winners of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition, I just started laughing then crying then laughing then crying and trying to be as quiet and calm as I possibly could.
Thrilled doesn't describe it. I had been waiting a long damn time for that call--like a lot of writers do--and it came at a time when it actually did blindside me in the best possible way. I won't ever forget standing in the baggage claim area, looking at this handsome young man who could not stop smiling such a stupidly huge smile because he was watching me smiling and crying and laughing. When I finally hung up with Jon, the guy said, "I have no idea what just happened in your life, but I'm so glad that I was here to see it." I wanted to hug him, but I just kept smiling and walked out into the biting cold without caring at all that I had to scrape layers of ice from my car. In the parking lot I even frightened a few people with my Wooooo-ing. I really am a total spaz, I know.
But today marks nine years since my mother died, and Errata, my first full-length poetry collection, is as much for her as it is more me--for motherhood, for despair, for a sense of loss that I just keep wrestling with (just as she did and like everyone does but) in the only way I know how. I'm so grateful to Jon Tribble and Adrienne Su and the countless friends and mentors who have read the book and commented on it in some way and who have insisted that I believe when I was ready to stop believing. You know who you are, and I love you (and if you don't you'll certainly find your name in my long list of Acknowledgements next year... weeee!)!
I still can't really get my head around it, and I know it'll be a while before it actually feels like a reality, but I cannot wait to work with Southern Illinois University Press and see my book born. Thanks again, everyone. Amazing, this one, brilliant spot in such a cold, dark winter.
xoxo,
LF
