Greetings from hot and sunny Brooklyn! It’s a pleasure to be
invited to join the distinguished group of guest bloggers here at Best American Poetry—thanks, Stacey.
First, if you’ll indulge me, a little throat-clearing: Not
having published much aside from what appears in AJN, I was feeling a bit uncertain about how to present myself. I
thought that in lieu of a biographical note, I might offer this caption from a
recent New Yorker cartoon. (It shows two men
sitting in an office on either side of a large desk: “I’m fifty-three, but I
have the résumé of a much younger man.” A tip of this season’s must-have—but in
my case, not-yet-acquired—woven-straw fedora to cartoonist Barbara Smaller.)
The truth is, aside from the semi-annual workplace
performance self-evaluation, I find no writing assignment so daunting as the
brief biographical note (no Pulitzer, no MacArthur, and I still haven’t cleaned
up that mess in the Middle East, so what’s really to brag about?). And at first
blush, that caption really seems to sum up my career very succinctly. (Meditation
on the biographical note also called to mind Stacey’s hilarious poem,
“Contributors’ Notes,” which really nails the absurdity of thumbnail
biographical sketches and perhaps, by implication, the horrors of composing
them. Some readers of this blog may recall that her reading of it got a lot of laughs at the marathon Best
American Poetry reading at the New School several years ago. It seemed as if it
struck a chord with many people in
the audience that night.)
Then, upon further reflection, it occurred to me that it
would be much more accurate to say that I have the résumés—if not the
strength—of several younger men!
(Fortunately for you, patient reader, an explanation of that will have to wait
for another day…) So I tried my hand at a few unamusing lines about my day job,
and I thought, “OK, at least I sound like a productive member of society, if
not the world of letters (or high-level international diplomacy). I can live
with that.”
So that’s the end of my throat-clearing for today. Now, on
to what I really want to tell you about that day job!
The first thing you will want to know about AJN is that we publish poetry and visual art (we even consider short—very
short—fiction).
It’s true: every month, on our Art of Nursing page, AJN publishes a poem or a piece of
visual art. And we desperately need good poets and artists to submit their work
to us last month right away!
You don’t have to be a nurse to publish your poetry or
artwork in AJN. We’re looking for
work that has something to do with healthcare, broadly construed. As long as it
deals with physical, mental, spiritual health and/or illness, or with caring
for the sick, it will be considered. (One other
limitation: we don’t publish work that’s been previously published in print or
online.)
My friend and colleague Sylvia Foley coordinates the Art of
Nursing page and wrote a blog post about submitting work to it here: http://bit.ly/fzcIu.
(Sylvia, by the way, is the author of Life
in the Air Ocean, a prize-winning book of linked short stories published by
Knopf.)
Submission guidelines for Art of Nursing are
available on our Editorial Manager Web page (under Files & Resources, Author
Guidelines, Art of Nursing) here.
Art of Nursing is always free on our Web site. Go
to www.ajnonline.com,
click on the Previous Issues button at the top of the homepage, and scroll
through the tables of contents for Art of Nursing. (Admittedly, our Web site
can be a little tricky to navigate. Once you select a given issue, click on the
Table of Contents Outline link, click Feature in the pop-up window, and then
scroll down to Art of Nursing.) Recent poems, read by the authors, are also
available as podcasts on our podcast page. Click on the Podcasts button at the
top of the homepage and then scroll down to Art of Nursing.
That’s all for
today—have a great Sunday!