I can say confidently that subjecting my work to peer review is the best thing I have done in the last 10 years.
I can say confidently that subjecting my work to peer review is the best thing I have done in the last 10 years.
“My work won’t be finished until I’m dead and buried, and I hope it’s a long, long time,” John Lennon says to an interviewer. Five hours and four bullets later, his work is finished. Exactly 30 years later, the loss is still painful to me. An act of a single distorted individual – and a perfect metaphor for how crudely dysfunctional the humankind really is. A brilliant, contradictory, outspoken voice – extinguished. But there is more to this than the crudeness and the loss. The music remains. The story remains. We’ve learned something. What’s the lesson? The old and true “live your life as if every day is your last”? Is it really possible? Perhaps another way to put it is: live your life so you make enough of a difference. Just enough so some distorted individual might want to kill you. I don’t want anyone to be killed. But may we learn how to take more risks for the good cause, in our work and in our life. And may John Lennon sing and think and talk and imagine in peace, because I don’t think he’s ready to rest.
A year and a half ago I barely left my house. I shared my time between my work and my art. No one in Portland knew me, and I didn’t know anyone. Laurie, my partner, gets the credit for pushing me out into the world. In September 2008, she stated that my life didn’t have enough context, that there was nothing to discuss. I was offended at first, but after thinking about it, I saw that she was right. I applied with the Guttery and joined Portland’s Poems and Coffee group. Being accepted by the Guttery took over 3 months. By contrast, Poems and Coffee are open to anyone. They are a wonderful free-flowing group for poets and those interested in poetry. This is where I ran into Shawn Austin, a local poet whose work immediately appealed to me. Eventually, Shawn and I decided to form a new group, The Moonlit Poetry Caravan, with a narrower focus and operating by acceptance only, to ensure a responsible participation. In a matter of three or four months, I had made a dozen new friends, all wonderful writers and thinkers. I couldn’t believe I had been missing this experience for most of my
