A Writer's Notebook, Day Three-Hundred-And-Forty-Five

The new issue of South Florida Poetry Journal went live on their website, including my poem "I Heard They Broke Up" which is the first of my new poems to be published.  So Flo Po Jo, as it is often called, is a small local journal that has a lot of really great people working for it and they have published some amazing writers, both new, up and coming voices, and more established writers.  It really is a great pleasure to have this work appear there.

I would be thrilled, of course, about the work being published by this journal under any circumstances, but I discovered something today that makes it feel truly special for me.  That is the discovery that one of the other poets published in the current issue is Stuart Dischell, whom I have known since first studying with him back in the late nineties as an undergraduate.  At that time, I was a student at Sarah Lawrence College, and met Stuart while taking a summer writing program at SLC.  Stuart taught at UNC-Greensboro, and was the major reason that I applied to go their for my MFA.  He has been, in short, a major influence in my development as a writer, in terms of his own teaching, of course, but also as a presence in my life.  

As such, it may only be natural to feel that my poems appearing in the same journal as his is a positive sign. Of course, that is a rather silly thing, in objective reality, but I cannot help but feel that it is a meaningful bit of serendipity.  So, yes, it is a bit of a superstitious kind of thinking, but it is also a helpful for me to feel this way, as it does inspire me to think about this as a signal that my work is paying off.  It is like the universe giving me a little bonus nudge, a positive little cheer from serendipity. 

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