Woodpeckers

Did you know that most woodpeckers are monogamous & stay together over the course of many seasons? Some stay together their entire short lives.

Most woodpecker courtships begin in deep winter. How glad it makes me that something can begin in winter & endure.

1 Year, 100 Rejections

My good friend Tanya Jarrett had this idea, not me. But a great idea anyway: to try and get 100 rejections within the span of one year. We started on September 1st, and the idea is to send out good poems (not crappy limericks I wrote in college), and continue to write poems during the year.

I can say that submitting is a huge pain for me, even electronic submissions. I have to sit down and commit a few hours to actually creating documents for each place I'm submitting, refamiliarize myself with submission guidelines, and then fill out forms or write emails and cover letters.

I usually have more fun doing this if I know I ought to be doing something else, like being at work.

As of today, I have 46 rejections so far this year. Zero acceptances. But here's hoping at least one will come this year. If not, I can always print out my rejections and papier-mâché the kitchen table, or a small hut.

National Poetry Writing Month

April is approaching. This means I should stop being lazy and start writing some poems. Will you be taking part in National Poetry Writing Month? Let me know. This crap requires a support group.

I'm approaching 100 poems so far for the year. Most of them are garbage, but I figure I have to get the garbage poems out of the way so I can write some good ones.

Also, I got a personal rejection letter from the New Yorker. Not a stunning one, but it did have the word "admirable" in it, so I'm considering listing this on my resume.

A Jenkins-Braun Production

I'm really bad at blogging

I'm really bad at blogging, but you love me for other reasons.

The same things, over and over.

Write poem, throw out poem. Write poem, cross out most of poem, throw out poem. Write poem, keep poem. Throw out poem later.

But this year I will write and keep 365 poems until the end of the year, at which point I can throw out any desired number of them.

Write poem, keep poem. Write poem, keep poem.

In Case You Missed It

If you missed me on 88.1 FM Electric Poetry last month, Olive has put the link up here:

http://www.archive.org/details/ElectricPoetry-BrettElizabethJenkins

I still listen to my own voice and cringe. But maybe it sounds normal to you.

Things I Enjoy...

Things I enjoy...

* Disc golf
* Diet Coke
* Grammatically correct rejection letters


Let's take a look at this one:

"Hi Bret: Thanx for the poems but we cant use them."


1. My name is plastered all over my submission. At least have the courtesy of spelling it right in the rejection letter.

2. "Thanx" for using internet slang in a letter sent from a company that is, I assume, in the business of keeping the English language alive and respectable.

3. Proper apostrophe usage is not too difficult. I assume (and this might be where I make a wrong turn) that you know how to use them. It's like people who don't use turn signals. How difficult is it to take a second to move your pinky an inch and a half and let me know if you are going to turn in front of me? That being said, I know you are an "important" guy and you only accept about 1% of all submissions you receive, but you can't take a fraction of a second to include an apostrophe in the appropriate place in my rejection letter? I guess for important guys, those fractions of seconds really do add up. Regular peons like me are stuck wasting precious milliseconds putting in little marks before S's and T's.