How to use this Page

While his note is geared to Palabra Pura poets, I would ask gente in the Chicago area and elsewhere to read this, give generously, and support what is a seminal Latino poetry venue. Palabra Pura Feed the soul, celebrates our luminaries, makes poetry accessible for our community in a way that no other literary institution does. For more info about who and what Palabra Pura is, read: http://labloga.blogspot.com/2007/07/conversation-with-francisco.html
and http://labloga.blogspot.com/2008/02/palabra-pura-news-new-latino-poetry-on.html.



October 16, 2008

Dear Lisa:

As a board member of the Guild Complex in Chicago, last year I had the privilege
of weighing in on the discussion that produced this re-vamped mission statement:

The Guild Complex, a community-based literary organization, presents and
supports diverse, divergent and emerging voices through innovative programs
including performances and readings. We look at literary culture and ask,
“What’s missing?”

In the Fall of 2005, then board member and current board president Mike Puican
answered that question (“What’s missing?”) in the following way: “There are no
poetry reading venues in Chicago that deliberately and systematically welcome
Latino and Latina poets.” So when Mike called me one morning and asked if I
would be interested in helping create a Latino poetry reading series, one of my
most enriching professional collaborations began. You know what I am talking
about because you are a PALABRA PURA alum. And I am writing to more than thirty
of you—our PALABRA PURA familia!

As the Guild Complex moves forward in planning season four (2009), we are faced,
as you can imagine, with growing challenges. We’ve received funding in the past
from the Illinois Council on the Humanities and the Joyce Foundation. In fact,
we have a grant proposal submitted to Joyce right now. We also recently
submitted a proposal to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) for PALABRA
PURA. And yet we have come to understand that in order for this series to have
long-term viability, we are going to have to tap individual giving, as well.

And it occurred to me: who better understands and, I hope, appreciates this
series than those poets who have read in it? Who better understands that
PALABRA PURA aims to promote community between poets, specifically through our
pre-reading salon dinners, in addition to providing a Chicago venue for Latino
and Latina poets to share their work?

We have ten readings per year where we invite a “visiting poet” from outside
Chicago. With me so far? We are asking you to look at it this way: We are
asking you to donate $5 to each of those ten visiting poets. If you can think
about this in terms of giving future Palabra Pura readers $5 each, it will go a
long way towards our being able to keep offering honoraria, in addition, of
course, to travel and lodging.

And here’s the part I like the most: it’s a model for increasing sustainability.
Next year, at the conclusion of season four, we’ll be joined by more PALABRA
PURA alums, so that each year your $50 donation will be increased (if we remain
faithful) by at least $500. It’s as if we were all forming a living and growing
endowment for the future of the series. But don’t get me wrong: the annual
budget for PALABRA PURA is much much larger than the $1500 or so I hope to
raise from all of you. But it is an excellent and meaningful start at being
more intentional about tapping individual giving. Also: future potential
funders will be impressed if we can say that former participants in the series
are among our most faithful supporters.

And finally: your $50 donation buys you an annual membership to the Guild
Complex. If you have any questions about what a Guild “membership” means, please ask
(this letter is already too long!) And it goes without saying that if the
spirit moves you to donate more than $50 please do so since I imagine and
understand that there may be personal economies who can’t give as much as $50.
It also goes without saying that any amount, however modest, would be greatly
appreciated.

In a nutshell: I am asking you to consider making a tax-deductible donation of
$50 towards a program you were a part of and, we trust, was a meaningful
experience for you. You can make your donation by writing a check to “The Guild
Complex.” Please write in the memo line “Palabra Pura.” Alternatively, you can
make the donation online through pay pal by going to the Guild website (
http://guildcomplex.org ). We only ask that you let us know if you have gone
this route as we would like to keep track of the number of PALABRA PURA alums
who have contributed. If you opt to send a check, the mailing address is:

Guild Complex
P.O. Box 478880
Chicago, IL 60647-9998

Again, please feel free to contact me, or Ellen Wadey, the Guild’s Executive
Director, if you have any questions.

Thank you so much,

Francisco

Francisco Aragón
Co-curator, PALABRA PURA
Board member, The Guild Complex

Rollo May proposes the theory that, "Creativity occurs in an act of encounter and is to be understood with this encounter as its center." The encounter is between the artist and the objective reality of what she is observing. The intensity of the encounter between artist and her world calls forth the creative act of bringing into being that which does not exist- the painting, the poem, etc.

The artist, by herself, does not conjure up the art, but rather is infused with the experience of relating to her outside world. It is in trying to bring meaning to this world and to the unconscious symbols and myths that she holds about her place in that world that compel her to create being from non-being. I would also argue there is also a connection that needs to be explored by the artist; between the world of the present and the living and the spirit world, the world of ancestry, the well of souls in which the heart of the collective unconscious resides. “Creative courage... is the discovering of new forms, new symbols, new patterns on which a new society can be built.”

It's May’s contention that creativity is a courageous act because an authentic act of creation takes an intensity of commitment and a deep quality of passion. This is because the artist is moving into uncharted territory in order to sit with the deeper recesses of the psyche, the realm of chaos and anxiety. “This is what the existentialists call the anxiety of nothingness."

I've frequently felt that anxiety, that 'dis-ease.' I spent many years trying to out that blot that feeling, along with a host of others via alcohol and other drugs. It's is no surprise to me that I could only fully actualize my creative self as a feature of sobriety. I think about the real lives of alcohol-ridden, doomed drug-addict, art world wunderkind, and wonder what wellsprings were sealed up in order to not feel a psychic pain to much to bear. Artists delve into the substance their own existence, but also the deeper collective unconscious of the society that they inhabit. Living, resonant art informs this collective unconscious and also shapes it in a new way and can be a touchstone for how a society views itself. Rigid societies afraid of hidden truths repress art; requiring artists to understand that courage is required, and not back away in the face of opposition.

I believe that art making is an act of survival and resistance. During the periods of my life when the creativity has waned and it's felt like the demands of the outside world have swallowed me up, I have definitely felt depressed.The act of creativity fights that depression and more importantly, transforms it into something else, something viable. In what I hope is my best work, that idea of Every/Mujer resisting outside control, outside definition is communicated as well.

For work of the deepest kind to to emerge, I have to look as clear-eyed as I can at losses on the personal level, as well as those with larger social causes. As uncomfortable as that may be, it's also becomes a motivator, a source of knowledge, a driving engine. Joy is as well, by it is joy that results from emergence, a flinty and hard-won joy. Looking at the scope of the themes that pull at me again and again, I can see the arc of trauma, its aftermath and reemergence. As I continue to think about this, imagery from forensic science and pathology come to mind. The initial part of the process is the point of entry, where the bullet entered. Mid process is all about ballistics and trajectory, and the last, is exit wound and the healing.

Sometimes we all feel like we are floating in space, and that no editor will ever pay attention to us again. Times like that, you have to buck up and re-think your pitching strategy. 

But don't take my word for it...

Listen to Claire Zulkey, a prolific writer and freelancing guru, as told us how to publish stories without spamming editors with a shotgun-style mass mailing:

"Of course it helps to write good things but a whole stack of great pieces isn't necessarily going to get you into the New Yorker.  My advice is to keep plugging away at submitting--WITHOUT seeming like you're going about a shotgun approach. 

"If, say, you really like author John Doe and see that he publishes a lot on McSweeney's, Google him and see where else he has published.  Perhaps he's also published at X literary journal and Y humor writing website."

Read her whole interview here. If you scroll down the archived posts on the right hand side of this blog, you'll see a stack of more practical interviews with writers--nearly two years of content, my friends. In the interests of saving that content from oblivion, I'm pointing backwards to some of my favorite peices.

You want to know the big, fat secret to pitching stories to magazines?  Embrace rejection.

Seriously, before embarking on a series of magazine pitches, prepare for the worst. For every story you manage to sell, another twenty editors will send you polite rejections, ignore you, or tell you to stop bothering them.

It doesn't matter who you are, you will be rejected this crazy economy where writers need to sell stories like door-to-door salespeople. Freelance pro Susannah Breslin has published in countless big magazines, but her blog post about rejection will blow your mind. 

Brace yourself, is what I'm saying. And when you are ready to pitch, read these helpful guides: Pat Marcello has a good guide to pitching magazines, Jed Hartman gives an editor's POV on magazine pitches, and finally, Miss Snark points us to a site dedicated to rejected pitches.

(Thanks, Ed Champion)