I knew I had to be standing on the corner of Coliseum and Coldwater waving a “Going Out of Business” sign and that X, the cell-group leader, would drive by, look me in the eye, and send the Intuitor my next assignment.
This is the first sentence of my speedily written novel. I spent some time wrestling over it, knowing how important the first sentence is, not so much for the reader (as I was thinking about this on the walk home) but as for the agent and editor. The reader isn't the gatekeeper to publication, agents and editors are. Without publication who will read it? Yes, I could go down to my local Office Depot and have them run off and bind copies which I could then hand out on the streets but to what avail? Self publishing boosts the ego, I know I self published a chapbook of poetry in my courageous youth (Songs of the Lonely Heart, by Derfla Publishing-- Derfla being Alfred, my middle name, spelled in reverse). Not a copy remains, as far as I know which may be a blessing to the poetry world. For whom is the all important first sentence? The gatekeepers who lay such heavy judgment on the first collection of words, on the first subject and predicate. Such a weight for such a small thing to bear, but bear it it must for such is the world.
Poetry always matters. It matters that you tried.
ReplyDeleteI recently gave over to the burn barrel several old poems that I wrote in my adolescent days. I had once treasured them. I let the flames eat the one and only copies. I wasn't sorry to part with the bad poems, but I wasn't sorry I had written them, either.
Every good thing comes by slow birth.