I’m going to be published in Ithaca College’s Stillwater.
And it feels damn good.
What is ironic, however, is that I am having a poem published when I don’t really consider myself a poet. This led to my reassessment of what I have had published in the past — only to realize the bulk of my published work is in poetry.
I aspire to be a fiction writer, and yet my greatest successes have come from poetry. Is this merely a logistical truth[1], or some sort of hilarious irony by the cosmos?
I promise I’m not complaining — but I am reevaluating my past work and my future. I don’t think of myself as a poet; hell, I rarely even write poetry for my personal enjoyment. But when I do write that one, good poem…it feels good. Real good.
And it feels even better to have others recognize that it is good.
For anyone in the New York Tompkins County area, this evening there will be a release party for Stillwater, as well as the winners of the Writing Department’s Writing Contest here on the Ithaca College campus! It will be at 6pm in the Handwerker Gallery, and I am told there will be refreshments. Who isn’t excited about the possibility of free food and drink?
1. Poetry has more opportunities for publications because literary magazines can put ten or fifteen poems whereas can only hold two or three pieces of prose.
Kurious Krawford 