Here is my April post, in which I wonder, “What if poetry’s value is greater than money? What if I respect my poems enough not to send them to journals that don’t meet my standards for quality or human decency, regardless of how much those journals pay for poems?”

I’ve joined Jessica Piazza’s Poetry Has Value project for 2016, meaning I’ll be keeping a public record of my poetry submissions, fees, acceptances, payment, and rejections. I’m excited (and somewhat terrified) to be part of this!

I’m realizing my dream of starting a new literary journal. Welcome, Whale Road Review!

Whale Road Review is a journal of poetry and short prose. It will contain short creative work (everything under 500 words) that lingers long after it’s read. It will also include short pedagogy papers and a range of reviews. It will be simply designed and mobile friendly. The first issue will be published in December 2015.

Please like WRR on Facebook and Twitter, and send some work!

It’s become clear to me that a poetry book is just a larger poem. The poems in it are lines, and sometimes I have to cut good ones because they don’t fit, and I have to create a sense of flow and keep people reading. Every poem I’ve ever loved doesn’t need to be in a book, or at least not right now in this book. This feels so obvious to me now, but it definitely wasn’t before.

For some reason, I had always thought about poetry books as a storage container for all of the poems that I like the best and want to keep together (or, even worse, that I wrote within the same time period). Maybe I’ve read too many Collected Poems. I’ve been working through a manuscript and going wild with cutting and adding and rearranging and revising. Creating a book was easier with my chapbook The Gospel of the Bleeding Woman because it has a clear narrative arc. It’s much harder with the collection I’m working on now that has a wide variety of poems swirling around a central theme.

And now back to work.

This sleepy mother writer made it to the Serra Retreat Center in Malibu this morning for the APU writers’ retreat (with a little help from Starbucks and Mika… I was sleepier than I’d like for that 3-hour drive after waking up with the baby at 4 a.m.).

I’ve been writing away since lunch: two new poems drafted and a few more ideas jotted down. I don’t have an ocean view like last year, but I do have a jacaranda tree right outside my window, and I get a lovely breeze. I’m ready for a few days of writing here.