[stylist] Bill, Some resources for you, and all poets

Fri Nov 14 18:17:44 UTC 2014

Bill,
I am almost overcome by your poetry, and also that there is someone on this
list that seems to feel politically as strongly as I do. In the present
atmosphere, I am not quite sure where you would send this essay.
As far as your poetry Lynda has done such a remarkable analysis of all, that
I will not attempt my own critique. The first, Alien, was surely good, but
just because I have been all  used up with aliens and science fiction, I
prefer the ones on Death and Paper Minds. The one on Paper Minds truly
provoked a great deal of thought, and wanting to write about the concept
myself. It is wonderful.
You have asked about getting published, and again, I think that Lynda's
response is right one, however, you need actual names and guidelines to
specific places to carry on.
A few cautionary tips if you decide to submit to contests. I have scanned
the 2015 categories and guidelines for the National Federation of State
Poetry Societies. This was not easy to do, so I encourage all of those
interested to print these. I have been entering this for over ten years.
With fifty categories, varying in subject, form, and line length, you can
usually find several to enter.
Keep in mind that you really have to know your forms in all detail, and
follow all directions exactly. The chairman and judges will look for any
technical reason to cut down on the number of poems, so don't think your
poem is so exceptional that a judge will bend the rules. The number of poems
submitted per category can vary from 60 to over 200 on the higher paying
ones. I feel very successful if I get even two awards per year with either
places or honorable mentions, and I keep track of how many others entered so
I can feel even better.
My one nightmare experience was in 2007 when I actually entered 47 poems,
but being newly blind,  when I deleted my name and other information on the
upper right hand corner, I was unaware that it also deleted the number and
category on the left hand corner. The chairman of the contest could have
easily noted that, and not knowing I was newly blind (I have never made any
judge aware of this)sent them on. But they were all disqualified.
Somehow, I see you as a more free spirit than to submit to what might seem
as unfairness. And I think, perhaps that individual contests, such as the
Naugatuck River Review, (check spelling) might be better for you. Bigger
money, and the last contest had 700 entries, but I truly think your poetry
might have a bigger chance in the individual magazine contests.   
Either way, you might have to join the NFSPS, or subscribe to Poets and
Writers on the web to get all of their poetry contest announcements.
With Lynda's roadmap to establish your own, the effort might make sense.
There is no doubt in my mind that you have the talent to become known for
your poetry. 

Jackie 

Time is the school in which we learn.
Time is the fire in which we burn.
Elmore Schwartz	 

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of William L
Houts via stylist
Sent: Saturday, November 08, 2014 12:28 AM
To: Writer's Division Mailing List
Subject: [stylist] Big Weepy Slob" - an Essay

Here's a little essay I wrote some time ago.  Just found it languishing 
in my hard drive's jumble.  Presented here for your delectation or scorn.

--Bill

---

I saw David Lynch's movie, "The Elephant Man", when I was in sixth 
grade, during its first theatrical release. Being a weepy sensitive 
liberal even then,

I was deeply affected by the film. I hated Joseph Merrick's sadistic 
exhibitor, played by the wonderful character actor Freddie Jones. I felt 
anguish as

Dr. Frederick Treves (Anthony Hopkins) wrestled with his conscience. Was 
the good doctor only exploiting the deformed man more gently than the 
freak show

boss had done? I cried when the evil side show people broke into 
Merrick's comfortable hospital apartments and spirited him away, back to 
the side show

misery from which he had been rescued. And of course I cried at the end, 
when Merrick dies, having laid his deformed heavy head down to sleep 
like an undeformed

child.

I was so moved that I wrote a passionately phrased poem the next day, in 
the journal I kept for Mr. Zeigler's sixth grade class. The poem wasn't 
very good,

but it was deeply felt by the author. It was full of phrases like "I am 
human! I am alive!" --echoing, of course, John Hurt's famous 
declaration: "I am

not an animal! I am a human being!" Although I don't remember his exact 
comments, I do remember their general timbre and the fact that they were 
written

in lucid green ink. Mr. Zeigler knew he had a live one, and he nurtured 
the sensitivity of that kid with gentle praise, and a wish that 
everybody could

be so free with such urgent calls for compassion.

Today, many years later, I'm still affected by movies like "The Elephant 
Man" and am in fact a big weepy slob, as the poet Howard Nemerov once 
described

himself. I am grateful to Mr. Zeigler for helping me to grow into one, 
when the world could so clearly use more of them, instead of fat racist 
blowhards

like Rush limbnaugh, self-serving propagandists like Bill O'Riley or 
evil harpies like Ann Colter. And I am proud to say that I was THAT kind 
of kid, the

little queer boy who railed mightily against the hardness of the world 
in a passionate loopy blue hand.

Today, after wars and wicked presidents, poverty and disease, after 
twenty years of watching lovers die and blindness descend like an iron 
curtain, I am

still a poet and a gleaner of noble things. You don't have to get hard, 
you don't have to despair. Remember that boy, that girl who wept and 
remember why.

Honor that weird little kid in you, the the weeper, that loopy kid, the 
poet.

-- 

"Oh, Sophie!  Whyfore have you eated all de cheeldren?"

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