Dream Punt

I've always been fascinated and perplexed by how to act. As in the "...don't know how to act", "how you gonna act".

I'm gonna go out on sort of a limb here and put forth the idea that whatever this "knowing how to act" is, that knowing how to act is a way to get your work published, whatever genre. Publishing in the Small Press world is essentially knowing how to move in within groups, how to connect and get one's work published is it not? So I've been thinking that getting the work placed is a social skill. So does that mean that whoever happens to have been influenced by Robert Creeley and was the Prom Queen in High School is bound to have the most chapbooks published?

There is a part of me that dismisses even the premise of that question, and another part of me that thinks that's an exaggeration but says Yes that's kind of the case. But what kind of a person carries around some supposed wounds from High School and applies them to poetry? What could that possibly be other then some kind of passive-aggressive projection.

I've figured out by this point that there are certain basic steps in getting the work published if you don't wanna go the Emily Dickinson route.

1. Correspondences: write to writers; saying what tho? omigodyourworkissoimportanttome? How did you write your books? How did your work get published? How is Bob Perelman?

2. Publishing in a number of literary magazines, thereby letting others get acquainted slowly at their speed with your work, letting them wade into the pool of You waistdeep. (But then is a person their work? Of course not. Goddamit... Fuckit...)

And yet I'm still kind of perplexed at how all this happens, but I'm actually not, I'm just angry at it. I don't know.