i don’t get it, the poetry publishing thing, true, people definitely do read the new yorker, but does anyone really read radon journal? it’s a whole rigamarole, sending out poems with a bio, trying to figure out if the editors are interested, hoping for approval and acceptance, who cares? truly, many people know mary oliver or maya angelou, but do they know li-young lee? he’s an amazing poet, nobody knows him, nobody cares, the word obscure should follow almost anyone who names themself a poet, hi, i’m daniel, (obscure) poet, i watched a video posted in august with an inspiring poet from virginia, she read, she spoke about her life/work, it’s november, the video has like 17 views, obscure, anyway, the point, for me, is to write and self-publish, i need no approval, i think, this is an interesting piece, copy/paste/publish/done.
Tag: Mary Oliver
My Favorite Writers/Poets
mitch albom, jimmy santiago baca, sylvia boorstein, ray bradbury, raymond carver, pema chodron, ta-nehisi coates, pat conroy, e.e. cummings, emily dickinson, william faulkner, william finnegan, norman fischer, f. scott fitzgerald, nick flynn, natalie goldberg, richard grant, doris grumbach, thich nhat hahn, ernest hemingway, tony hoagland, zora neale hurston, jon kabat-zinn, mary karr, jane kenyon, ted kooser, stanley kunitz, anne lamont, li-young lee, philip levine, patrica lockwood, gabriel garcia marquez, peter matthiessen, frank mccourt, john mcphee, thomas merton, w.s. merwin, joseph millar, marianne moore, john muir, tim o’brien, sharon olds, mary oliver, pablo neruda, jd salinger, suzanne scanlon, shel silverstein, isaac bashevis singer, john steinbeck, wislawa szmborska, richard wilbur, c.k. williams, thomas wolfe, tobias wolff, richard wright
So I Keep On Writing
Mary Oliver writes of
flowers and she does it
very well, as I just stare
at words, wishing that
goldenrod could mean
as much to me, stuck in
this urban world, nature
on the fringe, everything
I cannot see, because in
the car I move too fast
to even smell the air,
but excuses will never
win, nor are they really
true, so I keep on writing,
this much I know to do
Daniel W. Polk 