David Joseph Passey and Dr. Lance Larsen, Philosophy

The finished manuscript, entitled Coming Up, is nearly fifty pages long, consisting of the standard front material, and thirty-three poems, some several pages long. Of the poems, roughly half were written since the receipt of the grant. The remainder is previously written poems that were revised and polished for inclusion in the final manuscript. Due to its size, this manuscript is a substantial collection of poetry, bordering on a small volume rather than a chapbook, and may need to be pared down before publication.

The work began by selecting the best and most coherent group of poems from those I had already written. These all went through a serious joint editing process between myself and my faculty mentor, Lance Larsen. At the same time, I also created new work which was also jointly edited by Lance and myself, although due to a move across the country, on some of the new poems, the final editing choices were done alone. The fact that I edited old and new poems together added a continuity to the manuscript. As the manuscript neared completion, I encountered difficulties researching contests and presses.

Much of the research was done using the standard sources of Poet’s Market and Poets and Writers Magazine. But as I looked deeper, I found the number of literary press was staggering. Choosing the right presses and contests seemed like guess work. I didn’t want to choose blindly and risk submitting to presses that would publish the manuscript, but do little to further my work. I also wanted to avoid irrelevant presses, or submit to presses that rarely or never publish new poets. In short, I wanted to find the best possible presses for my work. Finally, I went to the poets themselves. I looked at chapbooks and poems published by poets whom I have read and enjoyed and found the presses where they published earlier in their careers. Among these were James Dickey, John Updike, Maxine Kumin, William Stafford, and others.

I ran into a second hang up during the research phase also, namely, that the small press doesn’t work the way I thought it worked. First, few presses accept manuscripts “cold turkey.” They want to see a small selection of the poet’s work from which, if the work is suitable, they request the entire manuscript for possible publication. This process is called a query, and is similar to a screening interview. Second, most contests sponsored by the small press have dead lines early in the year, with the intent to select and publish a winner by the completion of the year. Nearly all chapbook contests deadlines had passed before I completed my manuscript. I was forced to revise my project.

Instead of submitting to a few contents and presses, I have queried nineteen presses that seem good possible publishers of my work. The manuscript will be submitted to a number of contests early in 1997, if potential publication has not resulted from the query process. At the same time, I am also working to publish the new and unpublished poems from the manuscript. Due to the difficulties related to simultaneously submitting individual poems for publication, I am only able to keep poems submitted at eight to ten presses. The prospective publication of these individual poems can bolster my credentials and increase the likelihood that the manuscript itself will be published. Ironically, the query process appears to be working in my favor, as it allows me to send my work to a large number of presses, thereby increasing the chances of actual publication.

Through the course of the project, I have developed new skills as a writer. First, I have become better at frankly evaluating my own work. In conjunction with this, I have developed an eye for what is good in my own work. This focus gives me a new direction and approach to working as a writer. Second, I learned the value of a mentor, or a second person, in the editing processes. Lance pointed out aspects of my work of which I was unaware. We discussed at length a technique we came to call “implicating the narrator.” You might say previous to my time with Lance, the narrative voice I had chosen for my poetry was passive as opposed to actively involved and affected by the subject matter of the poem. The total amount of revision needed to “implicate the narrator” in previously written poems often involve nothing more than a conscious tinkering with words. For example, “one boy” became “me,” and “the woman” became “my woman.”

Simple changes such as these have made my poetry more accessible and human. In poetry written since my meetings with Lance, an effort to implicate the narrator has forced me to plan in advance the task I want a poem to accomplish. Then I am able to see the proper relationship between narrator and subject matter. Also, Lance’s background and his own work influenced my poetry immensely. He helped me see what I am trying to do as a poet, and with that in view, my poetry has become more direct, more crafted. Third, I learned about working toward deadlines. I found that this enhanced my work rather than cramping it. The deadline gave me direction and energy, a really good excuse to buckle down and write. All in all, I find myself in a new position as a poet for having gone through this process; I have a completed manuscript; I am in the process of finding a publisher; I am involved in publishing individual poems; I feel I can say that I am a working poet.