The Omaha NightWriters Poetry Group met for the first time last Thursday, and we got off to a squirmingly good start. We guzzled coffee and gabbled quite a bit about our poems, which somehow led to William Stafford’s “Traveling through the Dark,” which we pulled off the Internet (www.poets.org & search). A fine read, the kind that turns your stomach and elevates you simultaneously.
Cheryl M. Kessell, one of the poets, named our group, half laughing, almost in passing. I thought NightCrawlers a fine name and have adopted it. We’re now formally: NightCrawlers, Omaha NightWriters’ Poetry Group.
What did I get out of the meeting? Feedback on three of my poems, two heavily scribbled with suggestions to think about later and the third, barely marked. I didn’t need to. The revision suggestion on that poem was so invigorating I rewrote lines as I drove home.
We’re meeting now on the second Thursday of each month at 7 p.m. at The Reading Ground (40th & Farnam, parking on street or in lot behind the bookstore). Do crawl in, if you’re so inclined.
“The Critic”
Got home from NightCrawlers, checked the mail, and found I’d sold a poem. Yes, sold it, for actual cash (or more likely a check). The poem is “The Critic,” a favorite poem in which a writer tells a critic where to go. It will be printed this December in a magazine for writers called ByLine.
About 135 of my poems have been published, but this is only the second poem I’ve sold (not counting, of course, payment in copies of magazines). The first time New American Review paid me $25 for “Wordlessly.” $25!!! This was 1968, so I could eat a whole lot of meals on that. “Wordlessly” was also the fourth poem I’d published, so I expected an easy get-rich-quick life full of poetry. Ha!
Posted Sunday, November 12, 2006
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