The Good We Oft Might Win

Thoughts on doubt, relevance, and setting realistic goals

‘Tis the season, the time of year when almost every poet I know has just finished wrestling with the NEA application (National Endowment for the Arts, for those who are not aware.) For the record, I did not apply. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which are the very long odds and the notoriously difficult website navigation. Wait a minute, you might say, earlier this year, weren’t you writing about putting yourself out there more, submitting to more journals, more residencies, etc.? Why not apply for this opportunity?

You could call it practicality. Looking at the list of other writers applying—writers who are poet laureates in their states, writers who have multiple prestigious publications, writers who have MFAs or Doctorates in Creative Writing, writers who regularly teach sold-out workshops and win awards and speak at book festivals—I do not have the CV to compete.

I am fairly active in the land of poetry. I write a lot of reviews for small press poets, and I run a reading series online. I’ve published three full-length collections and eight chapbooks, and my own poems are published regularly. Though I am proud of all of these accomplishments, they aren’t the kind of poems that people share or that go viral. And that’s fine.

Writing is something I do because I love it, because it’s my way of processing the world, both the external world and the one in my head. But sometimes (to be honest, lots of times) doubt creeps in. About whether it’s worth it to keep putting parts of myself out into the world and continue to go relatively unnoticed. After all, I could always write and keep it to myself or self-publish my work here, and I wouldn’t have to spend money on submission fees and wait for the rejections that inevitably come. Sometimes I feel like this:

Curriculum Vitae

i am poet laureate of 
my pajamas	

my poems have been featured
on my desktop daily	

i have been the keynote speaker at the convocation 	
of bluejays in the backyard elm

my thoughts are eagerly devoured by 	
the trash can icon on my laptop 	

my themes debated in 
the upstairs bathroom mirror

i have been granted fellowships 		
from my son’s old bedroom	
from the backyard deck	

i am currently artist in residence 
at the forest preserve

i am widely praised for
not much of anything at all

But then I remember that doubt is also relative. In Measure for Measure, Shakespeare writes, “Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win, By fearing to attempt.” I don’t want to be a person who “fears to attempt.” But it never hurts to be realistic.

So good luck to everyone who applied for the NEA this year—I hope that good things come your way. I’ll set other goals for myself while I cheer for you. And I’ll tell the bluejays you said hello.

Prompts:

1. Write yourself a CV in couplets that realistically portrays a portion of your life. Teaching, parenting, exercising, cooking—anything! Use phrases that would normally be followed by an accolade to start each couplet.

2. Do 5 minutes of freewriting about your doubts. Doubt always indicates a smidgen of belief - you can’t doubt something that isn’t presented as at least a possibility. Your list can be personal, like the doubt mentioned in the post, or they can be random, like “I doubt that Bigfoot is real” or “I doubt that I could skydive.” Use that list as the starting point for a poem.