September 12, 2013

Hello.

My name is S.D. Lishan, and I'm a writer. I write novels and poems, as well as short stories, both fictional and non-fictional. I've been writing for years, but this is my very first post. So, ta-dah!

I expect very few readers for the time being. That's okay, for now, as I get my feet wet in this bloggy world. I'm reminded of a character from Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Collins, a character whom I've inhabited in a series of poems. In my version of version of his story, Mr. Collins divorces his wife, Charlotte, or, rather, she divorces him, and he eventually decides to leave the book in which he has been dwelling for so long. Most of the poems in this series are sonnets, but the last one, the one in which he steps beyond the pages of Jane Austen's novel, is written in free verse. It's called "Sometimes Later: Mr. Collins Sleeping in the Woods." Here it is:

Sometime Later: Mr. Collins Sleeping in the Woods

 

something

            like singing

            calling out

 

something like dawn

                        spooling down

                        from the trees

                                                *         

           

            I know so little

 

            notes of rain mystify

 

 

                        if it is a calling 

                        I spurned their whispers

 

                                                *

                                    scent of remorse

                        like a violet

 

                                                *

                                                I tell you now I am joyful

 

                                                *

                                                night stirs the roots about me

 

                                    some nights I wish the stirring wasn't

                                               

                                                *

                                    dreams seem

                                    real for such

                                    a short time

 

            I can't paint the whispers

            that follow me

 

                                                *

                        I am here

                                                shouting

 

                                    love to you

 

                                    nonetheless

                                                *

 

            fire weeps for these urges.

 

            it is sorrow to me

                                    they ever end

 

 

The poem was published a few years back in a very nice online literary magazine called Ginosko, and it's currently in my poetry manuscript, The Archaeology of Light, which I've been sending out to poetry competitions lately, and which, while it hasn't been taken yet, has recieved some very nice comments. My favorite is a comment from Jeffrey Levine, the publisher of Tupelo Press, one of my favorite publishers of poetry. Writing about The Archaeology of Startled Light, which my poetry manuscript was called up until a couple of weeks ago, and which was a finalist in Tupelo Press' First/Second Book Award, he wrote these kind words:

 

I know that you must feel quite let down that "The Archeology of Startled Light" wasn't selected, but I hope you choose instead to take heart. We received a thousand manuscripts, and it's important for you to know that in my opinion and that of my top and most trusted reader, your book is smart as it is beautiful -- and entirely worthy of publication, or it would not have found its way to the top 15 or so.

I hope that if it's not taken before our Dorset Prize opens, you'll let us see your work again. You're a lavishly gifted poet, and this book will rise to the top again and again. We've hardly published anything that hasn't been submitted to us again and again. It's the way of the world. The manuscripts become friends.

Thanks so much for sharing your talent with us. Keep the faith.

My best,
Jeffrey Levine

 

So, I didn't win the prize; I failed in that. But I remember an interview a couple of weeks back on the August 24 edition of Fareed Zakaria's GPS show in which Fareed interviewed Sara Blakely, the entrepreneur who founded Spanx, which is now a five hundredi-million dollar undergarment company. When Fareed asked Sara how she kept on in the early going when she received so much rejection, she told a story of how when she was a girl and her father asked her each day if she had failed at something. He did this, Sara said, because, if you weren't failing, you weren't trying, and you'd be less likely to achieve your goals. I'm paraphrasing, of course, and you can see the whole interview here: http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2013/08/24/sara-blakely-spanx-and-the-american-dream/. So, I failed. And yet I didn't. I'm that much farther along to getting The Archeology of Light published! Dear writers, take heart in this tale!

 

Getting back to my poem about Mr. Collins, you'll notice that there's a lot of space in this poem, not just to let the lines "breathe," as it were, but to underscore the new world that Mr. Collins is experiencing beyond the pages of Pride and Prejudice.  So, like Mr. Collins, I, writer of many years, S.D. Lishan, am embarking on travelling through this new world of the blog. Like him, "I am here/ shouting/ love to you." And that seems a fitting way to end my first blog posting. Until next time then!

 

All best,

 

S.D. Lishan