Not Rejected, But Declined

All poets who send their work out into the publishing world know about rejection. As I sort through the September submissions to our writing prompt, I'm thinking about rejection. It's hard to get a poem rejected, but it is also difficult to reject a poem.

As I have written here before, some submissions are very easy to reject because they do not address the writing prompt. Poets Online is no different from many other journals and online journals; you need to read the submission guidelines and get a sense of what kinds of poems have been accepted.

Poets Online only accepts one poem submitted that was written to the prompt, so when I get a Word document with 10 poems (none of which address the current prompt), it's easy to move it to the rejection folder. We also sometimes get poems written to previous prompts and though we love that people use prompts in the archive, we only accept submissions to the current prompt.

We ask you to format your poem using TEXT format, rather than HTML, and put the TITLE of the poem at the top in all capital letters. All our submission guidelines are on the website.

Have you submitted poems using Submittable? Many major journals use this service and I like that I can find many of my submissions all in one place. I also like that they don't say in the status for your account that your submission was "rejected." It was "declined." I know it's the same result but it is a better word choice.

Of course, getting an ACCEPTED is an even better word choice.

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50 years of David Harrison's poetry!

This week I'm featuring poet David L. Harrison in celebration of his FIFTY YEARS of poetry publishing! How about that? 50 years is quite a milestone! David writes about his beginnings and some milestones along the way-- all with is dry, wry sense of humor. Enjoy! David writes:

My Journey So Far

David L. Harrison

Waving goodbye as I leave for my first day of school in Ajo,
Arizona at age six.

I meant to become an astronomer. But I was only six and it didn’t pan out. When I was older, seven, I meant to become an artist, but there again, it never happened. What I didn’t mean to become was a writer. But I had an accident when I was a 21-year-old science major at Drury College (now University) in 1959. I’d accidently taken so many science classes that the dean made me enroll in something else my last semester, and I chose a writing course. My professor liked my efforts and said he hoped I would continue writing. A lot happened during the next decade. I became a musician, athlete, husband, father, parasitologist, pharmacologist, and greeting card editor. But not a published author even after ten years of trying and 67 rejections. 

On October 1, 1969 that changed. I held my first book, a picture book called The Boy with a Drum, and knew what I wanted to do with my life. 2019 marks my 50^th anniversary since the moment that changed everything. My 97^th, 98^th, 99^th, and 100^th books are due out next year. Sometimes I sit in my office looking at my books on the shelf above me and think back over the years at all the wonderful things that have happened to me as a children’s author, and I am grateful. In my heart I’ve been celebrating my good fortune all this year.

Midway through my career, twenty-six years ago, I surrendered to a long-felt desire to develop as a poet. (Back when I was six and carting home astronomy books from the library, I was also making up my first poems.) For three years I read about and wrote only poetry. I wrote about what I observed, heard, felt, lived. I wrote about school and family, diets and hairless bears, a boy who spent his life counting all the stars in heaven and started over. I discovered that the music in my background was influencing how my rhythms evolved. I learned that sometimes syncopation is a good thing; sometimes it worries editors.

Turned out my Midwestern voice, sense of humor, love and respect for nature, and response to the world around me provided me a spot in our nation’s choir of children’s poets. Next year’s titles, After Dark and The Dirt Book, will be my 20th and 21^st books of poetry. I work seven hours every weekday. Each year I attend conferences, participate in children’s literature festivals, do book store signings, and visit schools. I’ve learned who I am, what I know, what I want to say, and how I want to say it. I have a wonderful wife, daughter, son, and family. What’s not to love about that? I probably would have been a lousy astronomer anyway.

Okay, this and I’ll stop. My last three books of poetry are summarized here.

A PLACE TO START A FAMILY: Charlesbridge, January 2018

• One of ten books for K-2 chosen by teachers across the country for this year’s International Literacy Association (ILA) Teachers’ Choice List
• Chosen by Bank Street College for its Best Children’s Books of the Year 2019
• National Science Teachers’ Outstanding Science Trade Books
• Pennsylvania’s Young Reader’s Choice, Awards Program Master List, 2019 – 2020

CRAWLY SCHOOL FOR BUGS: Boyds Mills Press, March 2018

• Selected by Missouri Center for the Book to represent Missouri at the National Book Fair in Washington D.C., 2018
• Named by NCTE as a Notable Book of Children’s Poetry, 2019

NOW YOU SEE THEM, NOW YOU DON’T: Charlesbridge, 2016

• Starred Kirkus review, 12/1/15
• Chosen by Society of Midland Authors as best children’s nonfiction book published in 2016
• NCTE Notable Poetry Book
• Red Poppy Award nominee, Georgetown, Texas, 2017

Thank you, David, for sharing a few nuggets from an amazing career of 50 years of creating poetry for young people! Now head on over to Library Matters for more Poetry Friday fun!

Trying To Do the Danse Russe with William Carlos Williams

Caricature of William Carlos Williams, 1920, by William Saphier

A reader sent me a poem that she thought was a nice combination response to our nude prompt and the current prompt on imagism with Pound and Williams.  It is "Danse Russe" by William Carlos Williams which I hadn't read for many years.

I thought I remembered the poem, and I thought I knew what it was all about - until I started searching for it online.

The poem is shown below but I recommend that you try this link of Williams reading the poem too.

DANSE RUSSE

If when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,-
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
"I am lonely, lonely,
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!"
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades,-

Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?

A poem about a happy genius dancing naked in front of the mirror. Right?

Well,  I found several pages (http://poetryinc.net and http://plagiarist.com) of the poem with reader comments and interpretations.

One says it is "one of the best confessional poems ever written: self-deprecating while grandiose -- a paradox of humility and self-aggrandizement" but another says that he never thought of it as a confessional poem.

"It never occurred to me that the man actually did this naked dance anymore than I assumed the sun was a flame-white disc in silken mists. I assumed he was a poet trying out imagery, not dancing, and that the man was the happy genius of his household because he could actually write poetry!"

A teacher's comments that she got a student interpretation that the poem is about "a mass murderer who has just killed his 'sleeping' family and now is exulting in his 'loneliness.'"

The teacher bemoans the "any interpretation is as good as any other" school of literary criticism and offers that this is possibly "promulgated by poor instruction in high school concerning poetry and the poet's intent."

As far-fetched as that interpretation sounds, commenter Tomm thinks it just might be about "a madman ("genius") who has just murdered his family? They're "asleep" as the sun burns bright? Part of the dancer's grotesquerie could very well be his bloody hands, limbs, and blood-soaked shirt. "Russe" - after all - is cognate with "red." This could have been called a "Danse Macabre."

And I just thought it was a happy, naked guy dancing in New Jersey while his wife and baby sneak a midday nap.

Go figure.


Danse Russe by William Carlos Williams from School for Advanced Studies on Vimeo.




The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, Vol. 1: 1909-1939
The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, Vol. 2: 1939-1962
Paterson

Benjamin Lee Whorf Quick Facts

Benjamin Lee Whorf was a notable American linguist.

Profile

• Birth Name: Benjamin Lee Whorf
• AKA: Benjamin Whorf
• Date of Birth: April 24, 1897
• Place of Birth: Winthrop, Massachusetts, United States
• Zodiac Sign: Taurus
• Date of Death: July 26, 1941
• Died at Age: 44
• Place of Death: Hartford, Connecticut, United States
• Place of Burial: Winthrop Cemetery, Winthrop, Suffolk County, Massachusetts, United States
• Cause of Death: Cancer
• Ethnicity: White
• Nationality: American
• Father: Harry Church Whorf (1874-1934)
• Mother: Sarah Edna (née Lee) Whorf (1871-1962)
• Siblings:

1. Brother: John Calderwood Whorf (1903-1959), married Vivienne Isabelle Wing (1903-1972) in 1925.
2. Brother: Richard Baker Whorf (1906-1966), married Margaret Harriet Smith (1908-1998) in 1929.

• Spouse: Celia Inez Peckham (M. 1920) (b.1901-d.1997)

• Children:

1. Son- Raymond Ben Whorf (b.1922)
2. Son- Robert Peckham Whorf (b.1924)
3. Daughter- Celia Lee Whorf (b.1930)

• Alma Mater: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Benjamin Whorf is known for: Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, Nahuatl linguistics, allophone, cryptotype,  and Maya script
• Benjamin Lee Whorfis criticized for: NA
• Benjamin Lee Whorf was influenced by: Fabre d'Olivet, Edward Sapir, Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, C. K. Ogden, Madame Blavatsky
• Benjamin Lee Whorf’s Works Inspired: George Lakoff, John A. Lucy, Michael Silverstein, Linguistic Anthropology, M.A.K. Halliday, Dell Hymes
• Fields: Linguistics, Anthropology, Fire Prevention

Quotes

"Thinking is most mysterious, and by far the greatest light upon it that we have is thrown by the study of language. This study shows that the forms of a person's thoughts are controlled by inexorable laws of pattern of which he is unconscious. These patterns are the unperceived intricate systematizations of his own language—shown readily enough by a candid comparison and contrast with other languages, especially those of a different linguistic family. His thinking itself is in a language—in English, in Sanskrit, in Chinese. And every language is a vast pattern-system, different from others, in which are culturally ordained the forms and categories by which the personality not only communicates, but also analyzes nature, notices or neglects types of relationship and phenomena, channels his reasoning, and builds the house of his consciousness.”

Benjamin Lee Whorf, Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings

Major Works

Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings (1956)

Did You Know?

• Benjamin Lee Whorf was the eldest of the three sons born to Harry Church Whorf and Sarah Lee Whorf.
• His father had a predilection for different fields of works, who first worked as a commercial artist and then tended towards playwriting, acting, and theatrical production.
• His younger brother John was an internationally renowned painter and illustrator.
• Whorf’s youngest brother Richard Whorf was an American actor, author, director, and designer.
• Most of his works were published posthumously.
• Although Benjamin Whorf exerted a significant influence in linguistics, he had never pursued career in that field.
• Whorf refused countless research positions and opted to hold on to his career in chemical engineering.
• Since childhood Whorf was an avid reader and he used to read books written on almost any subject.
• Despite he always enjoyed studying language, Whorf finally attained a degree in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1918.
• In the year 1919, he secured the position of an engineer at the Hartford Fire Insurance Company, where he served until his demise in 1941.
• During the 1920s his interest in linguistics was revived and he corresponded with many renowned scholars of the time to share his ideas.
• In 1931, Whorf enrolled at the Yale University as a part-time, non-degree graduate student and studied under the influential American linguist and anthropologist Edward Sapir.
• Later on, his study with Sapir paved the way for formulating the concept of the equation of culture and language which is known as Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis.
• In 1937, Whorf started his career as lecturer in Anthropology at University of Yale; however, he left Yale just after a year owing to severe health issues.
• After ending his teaching career at Yale, he continued writing and researching until the last day of his life.

A Fall of Leaves

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang…
     ~ William Shakespeare, Sonnet 73

The words "autumn" and "fall" meaning the season that begins today in the Northern Hemisphere both originated in Britain, but one is more commonly used there while the other is more common in America. By the mid-1800s, "fall" was considered to be the  American season by lexicographers.

Autumn is the older word, coming into English in the 1300s from the Latin word autumnus.

At one time there was an intermediary season preceding our autumn that was called "harvest." It seems that autumn came into usage to distinguish between the time when one harvests crops and the actual crop harvest itself.

"To Autumn" by John KeatsSeason of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells...

Writers, especially poets, wrote about the dazzling seasonal colors of this time and the phrase "the fall of the leaves" came into more common usage. That phrase was shortened sometime in the 1600s to "fall." This coincides with English moving across the ocean with explorers and settlers to the New World. But both words must have been used in the New World as they were in Britain because "fall" for the season doesn't appear until 1755 when Samuel Johnson added it to his Dictionary of the English Language.

"The Falling of the Leaves" by W.B. Yeats  Autumn is over the long leaves that love us,
And over the mice in the barley sheaves;
Yellow the leaves of the rowan above us,
And yellow the wet wild-strawberry leaves.
The hour of the waning of love has beset us,
And weary and worn are our sad souls now;
Let us part, ere the season of passion forget us,
With a kiss and a tear on thy drooping brow.

Fall is still occasionally used in countries where British English is spoken, but more likely in phrases, like "spring and fall." American though I may be, I prefer autumn, since it is used by astronomers to mark the Autumnal Equinox.

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EXTRA! EXTRA! Liz Steinglass and SOCCERVERSE

It's time for another installment of my "EXTRA! EXTRA!" series. I love this "extra" glimpse into books of poetry that I've enjoyed. It's like the "Director's Cut" of a movie with "behind-the-scenes" nuggets that just extend the experience even further. 'Cause I always want MORE of any book I like! 

This time, it's Elizabeth (Liz) Steinglass who is giving us this glimpse. Her Soccerverse is a big hit this year and I hope you've checked it out. It's so timely with the USA women's soccer team emerging as world champions and with children everywhere playing more and more soccer. Plus, even if you're not a big fan of soccer, her poems really capture the authentic feelings of childhood. The backstory she shares with us below is really insightful. Check it out!

Liz writes:

Soccerverse: Poems about Soccer (Boyds Mills & Kane, 2019) includes 22 poems about all things soccer—the ball, the field, the goal, uniforms, red cards, positions, fans, coaches, etc. Still, there were a few poems in the draft I first sent editor Rebecca Davis that didn’t make it into the final version. Here’s one:   

WINNING AND LOSING

Winning

Is like the second someone hands you

An ice cream cone

And you’re just about to take

Your first

Bite.

Losing

Is like dropping your ice cream

In the dirt

And all you can do

Is watch it

Melt.

I still like this poem, and Rebecca did too, but in her feedback she said she wanted the collection to focus less on winning and losing and more on the emotional complexity of playing and being on a team. So while this poem came out, new poems about teammates, the coach, and opponents went in. One of my favorite quotes about Soccerversewas from a friend who said, “This is a book about social-emotional learning disguised as a book about soccer.” She had no idea how good that made me feel. I’m not sure about the word disguised, but yes! This is a book about soccer and about feelings.

Thank you, Liz. I feel like I'm in on a secret! And I love that your "sports poetry" is not only about sports after all! 

Now, gather around for the Poetry Friday happenings at Teacher Dance where Linda is hosting us all. 

Kissing Poetry in Urdu with Pictures

Today I am sharing Kissing Poetry in Urdu which You can also use as lips poetry in urdu for sending to your girlfriend or wife on whatsapp or simple text message.

Romantic Kiss Sms for Girlfriend

کیا ہوا اگر میرے لب تیرے لب سے لگ گئے

ناراض ہو رہی ہو تو بدل ہی لے لو تم

Kya Hua Agar Mere Lab Tere Lab Se Lag Gaye

Naraz Ho Rahi Ho To Badla Hi Ley Lo

So, today we just shared Kissing Poetry in Urdu which also includes lips poetry in urdu and I hope You guys will love this poetry. Don't forget to share it with your friends and family and stay tuned with Urdu Poetry Nagar for more romantic sms in urdu for girlfriend & poetry on beautiful lips in urdu.