Cover Letters and Picking up Strangers

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Tuesday morning, I got an e-mail from our soon to be ex-mayor, urging me to vote for him. He opened with “I know I’m not a smooth politician,” and that’s pretty much when I lost hope for his re-election. Yes, I get that he was trying to go for “my opponent is a slick and sleazy politician,” but it flopped. It basically read more like “I know I suck at my chosen profession, but…”

But enough about politics. I want to talk about cover letters, and specifically, what your cover letter is supposed to do and why it might not be working.

So here’s the truth about cover letters. Editors read them. Not all the time, but often. And they matter. Here’s why.

Sometimes, I don’t have time to really sit and read submissions thoughtfully, but I’m still interested to see what’s coming in, so I scroll through the cover letters to see who’s sending us work. A great cover letter can make me stop and open the poems right then. A great cover letter gets you bumped to the top of the queue (you may still get a no, but you’ll get it faster).

A great cover letter predisposes me to like you. It does not necessarily mean I’ll like your work, but at the very least, it means I’ll feel shitty about sending you a decline, and isn’t that some small measure of satisfaction right there?

Sometimes, a cover letter puts your work in context. Maybe you’ve sent us a handful of poems out of a series. At least once, we’ve declined the poems sent but asked to see others in that series and accepted those.

Sometimes, your cover letter gives us a clue about how we should read your work, what it is that you’re trying to achieve. That doesn’t hurt.

Sometimes, your cover letter reminds us that we’ve actually met, and that in the context of our relationship, we should send you a personalized response if we’re not going to take the work.

Sometimes, your cover letter makes me take a second look at your work. The truth is, when we sit down to read submissions, we read a lot. At a certain point, we may have read too much. Sometimes, when I’ve been reading submissions for most of an afternoon, I’ve stopped thinking, “Do I like this poem?” What I’m thinking instead is, “If I see one more line about a goddamn moth…” and then yours has a moth. A good cover letter can let me know I’ve read past my limit. A good cover letter can tell me to get the hell out of the house and leave your work till next time. And when I come back to it a week later, your moth will be the first moth I see and in your poem, it will be absolutely lovely.

So, what goes into your cover letter? I could go through the whole “how to write a cover letter” spiel, but it’s really just simple flirting. You’ve picked up a stranger in a bar, right? (And if you haven’t, this cover letter thing is the least of your problems.) It’s flirting 101. Make yourself look as good as you can, say something flattering, tailor it to the person you’re actually talking to, and act confident. Probably the only significant difference is the list of publications. You don’t really want to bring up a list of previous work experience in the bar, but in the cover letter, it’s a good idea.

Approaches that rarely work in either scenario:

Bragging–She does not want to know how much money you make, and I do not want a list of 47 publications.

Overconfidence–Telling me that I’m going to love these poems is the cover letter equivalent of “your dress will look great on my floor” which is only ever going to work ironically, but that’s a really advanced move, and you’re probably not going to be able to pull it off.

Talking too much–Please don’t tell me when or why you started writing. Please don’t tell me every last thing about you. Really. I’m not even at a bar right now. I’m not even drinking.

Self-deprecation*–Again, this is an advanced move. You might think you can pull it off, but you probably can’t. This is very much like what our soon to be ex-mayor tried to pull. Would you walk up to a stranger in a bar and say “I know I’m not very attractive and I’m actually pretty lousy in bed, but…”? No, again, this only works ironically. You have to be ridiculously hot to pull this off.

*Please note, sincerity about your level of experience is totally fine: “I’ve been writing for several years, but only recently started sending my work out.” We love this. Sincerity is always good. Insecurity, no.

Assumed rejection**–Why would you mention the possibility that you might be turned down? Why would you even put this in our heads? Trust me, it’s already in our heads. We turn down 97% of the work that comes in.

**The really smooth, “loved your last issue, and I’m hoping something in this batch might be a fit for you, but in any case, I’m looking forward to the next issue,” is totally okay. Also fine is the joke that lets your good friend the editor know that you’ll be cool if they reject you: “If these poems aren’t a fit, no worries, but next time we hang out, the drinks will be on you.”

Really, it’s not that hard, and more importantly, it proves that all those years you spent hanging out in bars were totally not wasted. You were developing valuable life skills, skills that will serve you well in your chosen career, particularly if you’re going to be a writer because god knows, you’re still going to be surrounded by drunks.

 

Chain Smoking and Boys

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I flew into Austin Friday night to spend the weekend with my college roommate. I love her. She’s like a sister, particularly when you consider the defining characteristics of a sister to be knowing terrible things about you (and being cool with reminding you of them) and the ability to nearly always make you laugh. Saturday we wandered through campus and stopped at the steps of our old dorm where we spent much of our freshman year chain smoking and talking about boys. This is how everyone spends that year, right?

Unfortunately campus is smoke free these days, so we had to go elsewhere to chain smoke, but we felt like it was important to do, and so we did that. (Please note that I quit smoking thirteen years ago and don’t plan to restart, but it was kind of a special occasion.) Also, the boys we talk about now are actually our husbands, so the conversations are considerably less angst-filled. Which is surprising really, because of course we talked about all the old boys too, and those conversations all included the lines “what were you thinking?” and “that guy was such an asshole” and “it’s like you were trying to see just how much damage you could do to yourself” (please note that this last line was only actually ever said to me and the answer is, um, kind of a lot).

So yes, it’s a little surprising that the boys we talk about now are kind of great. It was sort of a long shot really.

Shall We Talk About How I’m Losing My Mind? Yes, Please, Let’s Talk About That

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Ever since the near completion of the witch manuscript, I’ve been searching for a project. I have not been writing, I’ve said. I’ve been stuck. This was both true and not. It was true because I have not been writing poetry. Not really. Maybe a few pieces here and there. (All of which are spectacularly good, because we all know I’m not going to waste the 20 minutes it takes to write a poem on something bad, right? I mean, come on.)  I haven’t been talking about the writing that I have been doing because the writing I’ve been doing is not actually the kind of writing that I do, so it’s not really writing is it when you wake up one day and discover that what you’re writing is fiction? Hence, identity crisis.

Now, I am a poet, and actually quite a good poet, and by this I don’t just mean that I write good poetry (but I totally do), but that I know how to be a poet. I understand the rhythms of writing and revising poetry. I can break it into steps: 1) be contemplative (this step never involves the actual making of words and may go on for months and months and months) 2) think of an amazing line 3) write it down 4) follow it with more amazing lines 5) read over and over, preferably aloud 6) change 3 words and 2 line breaks 7) repeat with more poems for as long as this stage lasts 8) return to step 1.

More importantly, I know what to do with a poem once I’ve written it, how to send it out, what to expect. I know the business of poetry. I know how to move in the world and live with myself and make sense of my identity and present myself to other people as a poet. I kind of rock it. And I love being a poet. I want to stay a poet. I really really do.

And yet…oh my god, fiction. How ridiculously fun are you? I mean, we all know I’m obsessive, but to have something that literally wakes you up at five in the morning because you just can’t be away from it any longer? I don’t know guys. I might be in love here.

More importantly though, I don’t know how to be a fiction writer. I don’t know anything about it. I don’t even know how to format this shit. Is it double-spaced? Single-spaced? Is there a preferred font? Title page? Seriously, people. I have no goddamn clue. I am the fiction equivalent of those jackasses who send me poems with all the lines centered, a little copyright symbol at the bottom next to the year they wrote the poem. (I’m sorry if it was you who sent me something that looked like that, but you know I didn’t actually read that shit, right?)

I feel like I need some help here people. And not just formatting help, but I mean if there’s a program for people who find themselves transitioning between forms, that would be awesome. I feel like I need to talk to them.

I Didn’t Want to Talk about James Franco, but Can We Talk about James Franco?

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So it’s been all over the news for months now (the poetry news, that is) that Graywolf Press (seriously, fucking Graywolf!) is going to publish James Franco’s book of poems. I’ll admit to having mixed feelings, but what I don’t have mixed feelings about is the amount of loathing that’s bubbling up across the poetry world in reaction to Mr. Franco’s success (If you haven’t seen the way we poets embrace our fellows yet, you can check out the comments here: http://www.akashicbooks.com/literary-lions-13-questions-with-james-franco/).Seriously friends, your bitterness is making us all look like assholes.

First of all, the man is smart and creative and he’s enrolled in top-notch creative writing programs (what, like 8 of them, right?). Now, I don’t think that creative writing programs can (or should) teach you to write, but I do think they can force you to engage with the history and contemporary landscape of your chosen genre. Having an MFA in poetry will not necessarily make you a poet, but it will mean that you’re fluent in the language. If nothing else, we can assume that Franco won’t be publishing a book of light verse, but something that at least resembles, or attempts to be, actual poetry.

Second, we’re talking about Graywolf Press, hands-down, one of the finest independent presses in the country. I can see them embracing a kind of wild opportunity, but I can’t see them throwing their reputation under the bus. I mean, the work has to have some redeeming qualities, right?

Third, this wild opportunity for Graywolf is an opportunity for poetry. He brings his own audience. Will most of them become avid readers of poetry? Probably not. Will they buy a lot of his books and will this hopefully mean that Graywolf is flush to publish more great work by the Catie Rosemurgys of the world. Probably. I’m cool with that. I’m also not of the opinion that there is only a finite amount of success to be had in the poetry world and that Franco has just usurped a big chunk of it.

And c’mon, the guy’s a movie star. He’s rich and famous and ridiculously handsome, and what he’s aspiring to now is to be a poet? That’s adorable. I love that.

That said, I’ll admit that I went looking for his work. There don’t appear to be any journals publishing him. Is he submitting to journals? Because if he’s not, that’s kind of not cool. (I’m assuming someone with his money and time constraints would hire a service. I don’t care if he does the depressing work of submitting, but I do care that he cares about getting published  in journals.) I did, however, find a chapbook on Amazon and I checked out some of the poems in the preview. I can’t say that I loved them. We would probably not publish these poems in burntdistrict. (Oh, who am I kidding? If James Franco sent us poems, we would publish the hell out of them, not because we lack integrity, but because, have you seen him? He is gorgeous. Just delicious. And Jen and I are kind of gross like that.)

Still, I can name, off the top of my head, dozens of successful poets who’s work I hate way more than Franco’s (actually, these poems of his didn’t inspire loathing in me, they just sort of didn’t inspire more than “eh,” which is, honestly, on par with at least 70% of the published work I come across). I wouldn’t name off these other poets though, because to call them out like that would prove nothing aside from the fact that I am obviously an asshole, and honestly, just because I’m not the audience for a certain person’s work doesn’t mean that they don’t deserve an audience.

Honestly, friends, we’re all fucking struggling here, and I get that none of us are getting the recognition we think we deserve, but to direct all of our collective anxiety and rage and crap at one poet, to try to strip him of whatever satisfaction he might otherwise have? It’s beyond shitty. It’s fucking cruel.

Sex, Power, Perspective

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In Boston, I barely went outside. There were these skybridges connecting the hotel to the mall to the convention center, and I can’t count the number of times we walked through it. On one of our first passes (kind of late in the evening), Jen and I stumbled into what we affectionately referred to the rest of the trip as “the rape escalator” which is in this sort of narrowing hallway where all of the lights suddenly seemed to be out, and though we hadn’t seen anyone in the tunnel behind us, these men appeared out of nowhere and stood  too close to us on the way down, and Jen and I laughed and laughed because that’s the kind of women we are. But later, when we’d had more sleep, we talked about why the presence of men in slightly dimmer lighting is threatening and whether men like this perceive their ability to cause fear, whether moving so close is an act of stupidity or an act of domination.

A few weeks ago, one of my students was explaining her vision for the kind of honest, informative sex education talks she’d like to have with her daughter someday. They hinged on the necessity of teaching her daughter about “not disrespecting her body,” and offered one of the metaphors she had found inspiring: purity is like a rose, and every time you let a boy touch you a petal falls off (I may be paraphrasing, the original likely lacked the acerbic tone). A few minutes later, another student made a joke about lust. Lust is what happens after you buy a girl dinner.

And the last night in Boston, there was a conversation about how we as mothers will have to come to terms with our children’s sexuality at some point. Much of it revolved around discouraging sex, which obviously, in the teen years, I get, though my kids are still young enough that this is largely an intellectual exercise for me. Still, even in this group of smart, strong women there was a tendency to frame sex as something done to women. Something violating, something damaging. The “what if someone wanted to do that to your sister” school of educating boys. My friends tell me I would feel differently if I had daughters instead of sons.

All this to say that I’ve been thinking about rape culture. And I’ve been thinking about it both in my work and, stepping back a bit, considering how it informs my work. I think it’s an interesting dynamic, to be both intellectually aware of the dangers of invalidating a woman’s consent and yet enculturated to the point that the handsome Turk scene from Downton Abbey is undeniably hot.

Because of course it is, and it is because we’ve been brought up on the fantasy of the (attractive) man who is demanding and even physically overpowering (but in a gentle way). In the real world, it’s not so much sexy as it is assault. And yet the fantasy is pervasive, and I think in part because if a woman’s consent is shameful and damaging to her self-worth and certainly to the commodity that she still very much is, then she needs someone to carry the burden of it for her.

It just seems very sad, and terribly, terribly dangerous.

AWP, Day 1

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At one point, it looked like there might never be a day one in Boston. I lost track of the number of flights I was booked on then cancelled. I did not fly out of Omaha at 5:58 am as planned. By 7 pm, I was just grateful to be in Chicago, where I had a long conversation with a very nice man who was also just trying to get to Boston, but he was heading home. He was talking about the difference between personal and professional fulfillment, how he thought he might go back to graduate school. I can’t honestly relate. I get to talk about writing and thinking everyday, and so far, my students seem willing to put up with me even though I am, for Fremont Nebraska, ridiculously liberal. And then here I am in  Chicago with a suitcase full of books,  and my phone is filling up with texts from writers and friends and they all say the same thing: you here yet? So no, no difference for me. My life is all tied up together and if I could just get to Boston, it’d be fucking amazing.

Anyway, I did get to Boston sometime around 1 am, and to the hotel around 2, but of course it’s hard to sleep after a day of anxiety and adrenaline.

Jen and I made it to the bookfair first thing and somehow I got through the day on 3 hours of sleep, a lot of caffeine and just a ridiculous number of buttermints that we’re supposed to be giving away at the table. And of course, there were panels and writers and great friends and editors and more conversations than I can remember or process and I’ve already spent too much money. Really, how many Rumpus mugs does a girl need? (2, obviously, because they’re 1 for 10 or 2 for 20 and everyone knows I can’t do math).

If you’re in Boston, you should come see us, table O11, though to be honest, I probably won’t be there much today. There are a lot of panels I plan to go to. You can find me tonight at LIR, where we have just amazing people reading. I have not met Vikas Menon yet, but his poems in the first issue of burntdistrict were some of the first we took and they are just phenomenal. I’m super excited.

Stirring

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This week, we’re expecting snow, but it doesn’t bother me. I love this time of year when you can feel spring stirring just below the surface of the earth and the air is still fighting it. It feels like anything could happen, like everything is about to.

Last night, I spent the evening at Morningside College. I was there for a reading and to watch the kids slam. And they’re in that same season inside their lives when everything is dangerous and hopeful and raw. And of course I see this in my own students too. It’s one of the things I love about teaching, how it forces you to look back on that time in your own life, at all the damages you’ve inflicted or endured and think of course. Of course. Of course. Of course. Because if we don’t come out of those years with plenty of scars, we’re probably doing it wrong.

And there is stirring in my writing too, which is both wonderful and awful as it always is at the start of something new. And this new project has me thinking about control and our desire for it, and how that need expresses itself differently across genders and individuals. This theme, now that I think of it, may transcend all of my work.

It struck me this morning, how this plays out in my own life, how sometimes my marriage is like this epic battle between good and evil, and how inside it, I play the role of evil (this should not surprise you), but that it is mostly about control. For David, this control looks like order, it looks like lists, and for me, it looks like chaos, like spinning out. It may look like a lack of control, but it’s intentional, informed. It is mostly about resistance.  And in the end, I feel like I will probably win. I think I will probably be the death of him, at least that’s the intention. I think it may be part of the vows? I’m not sure. I was a little drunk. I don’t think I was listening.