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Monday, March 6, 2017

TO THOSE OF US WHOSE DREAMS WILL NEVER BE VALUED

"Publication - is the auction of the Mind of Man.
~Emily Dickinson.
 

Meaning always comes after the fact ... 

Only now when Death has taken me 

does the meaning of my life and dreams

 whisper to me.

 I am the ghost of Emily Dickinson.

That fabulous scamp of a gentlemen, Samuel Clemens, 

asked me to write in this "computer newspaper," as he calls it.

The dear somehow knew this date was important to me.

“Success is counted sweetest” was published anonymously in an anthology titled 


A Masque of Poets on this day in 1878,

the last of the handful of my poems published in my lifetime.

Though I remained firm in my decision that “My Barefoot-Rank is better,” 


this poem does reflect my continued mixed feelings about publishing:

Success is counted sweetest By those who ne'er succeed. 


To comprehend a nectar Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple host Who took the flag to-day 


Can tell the definition, So clear, of victory!

As he, defeated, dying,


On whose forbidden ear

The distant strains of triumph

Burst agonized and clear!
**
I wonder, struggling souls, what would it mean to you if you were never published, 


your novels never valued?

To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie -
True Poems flee.


***
How long would you continue to write should publication elude you? 


Are the words burning within you to find life on the page?

For me, I never stopped writing:

HOPE is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.


Will you stop writing if the years pass, leaving you unpublished? 


Why? 

And if you would continue, why? 

This tender spirit would like to know.

Just walk out into the sable night, look up into the listening stars, and whisper your answer to the wayfaring winds. 


I am a ghost. I shall hear.

 

9 comments:

  1. Being published was a bonus for me.
    I might have written a little bit longer. Not sure. Fans wanted more is why I wrote me. That one story was all I wanted to finish.

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    1. Being valued as a published writer is important to me, and I think to a lot of us struggling writers out there. :-)

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  2. Well Roland, you are further along that road than I am, and I keep getting roadblocks in front of me. I'll keep on keeping on, anyway.

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    1. Further along the road into the dark. Sigh. I pray life gives you and your husband a break. And sorry about the neanderthal who followed your sweet comment. :-(

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  3. Oh my... I see you got a spammer who hates American women. Anyway, poetic post...I get a story all the time. Short and long ones. I write them. You never know where they'll go.

    Hugs and chocolate!

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    1. Yes, Spammers obviously have too much hate and too much free time in which to vent it. :-(

      I am currently working on two short stories now. Just in my head as Mardi Gras and health worries are consuming me.

      Thanks for visiting and caring. :-)

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  4. Please go back to the Stone Age from whence you obviously escaped.

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  5. When I got a big NYC agent, I thought my life was made. But, as time went on and I realized I had to cut ties with her, I was devastated. Admittedly, I hung on far too long because I didn't want to go back to being unagented. For years I wrote and re-wrote the same book while she came up with new and more creative excuses.

    Finally, I cut ties with her and rediscovered the joys of working on a new project. I write because I have to--if I were ever going to quit, it would have been in those dark days of self-doubt when I felt like it was NEVER going to happen for me.

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    Replies
    1. Sometimes I believe sadistic people are drawn to the job of agent. Sigh. I hate to hear that about your agent,

      Finding time to write now is getting harder. Rats!

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