It’s not that I like rejection. I vacillate between responding well to it or ignoring it or putting it in the appropriate context and then sometimes taking it personally and deciding it’s a sign I’m the biggest loser. Or not even the biggest loser, just a pitiful loser, too pitiful to be the biggest loser.
But I keep putting myself and my writing out there, and that involves A LOT of rejection.
This Sunday, I’m presenting the amalgamation/transformation of rejection from a couple of places–a poetry book competition and a playwriting competition. Both were encouraging, but the answer was no.
I have this idea I’ve been working on since 2021. I write plays and poetry and want my plays to get produced and my poetry to get published. Somehow, in the month before I was set to have a hysterectomy (which coincided with a book competition deadline), I decided I should combine narrative poems written in the voices of particular characters into a play.
Wouldn’t that be cool? I thought and still think, to have a play that works well onstage and a book you could just open up and read the poems in order or randomly or whatever.
I got the manuscript done in time for the deadline, had the surgery, started attending a food behavior class from UW Eating Disorders Clinic, and went back to work, etc. etc. etc.
Since then, I’ve started and finished a lot of other projects (started way more than I’ve finished, if I’m honest). But the play-made-of-poems stayed in my head. It’s called Impelled. Here’s the news release I wrote & the poster I’ve been sharing on social media & putting up various places:
NEWS RELEASE:
There’s a lot of drama—and poetry—in an ordinary day.
Impelled, a new play by Marnie Bullock Dresser, premieres onstage in Spring Green on Sunday, April 27 at the Gard Theater from 2-4, with a staged reading and a talkback. Terry Kerr is the director for the one-act play set on the campus of a formerly-Baptist college. An administrator tries to help a student and a professor is sort of helpful, but under the surface of the everyday, these three characters express a huge range of thoughts and feelings and questions.
The actors for the staged reading are Melinda Van Slyke, Douglas Swenson, and Hannah Jo Anderson, all familiar to audiences in the River Valley and Madison theater scenes.
Marnie has published poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and journalism, and taught English at UW-Richland for more than 30 years.
Impelled is made up entirely of poems. But also jokes, sex, food, and God. By the end of the day, our characters are not just indulging in really good barbecue from a food truck on campus; it’s almost as if they have gathered together for communion.
A grant from River Valley Arts provided the opportunity for table reads, revision, editorial feedback, and the staged reading itself.
Note: due to adult themes and spicy language, the play is not recommended for those under 17.
I’ve been sucking it up and ignoring the awkwardness I always feel when I’m self-promoting. Yesterday I recorded a segment which I think will appear tomorrow morning on WRCO’s “Morning Show,” which you can listen to live or later.
All this is made possible by two things:
retirement means I can spend time not just on writing, but also on follow-through (the thing I struggle with the most, and the thing I found most impossible when I was working full-time).
I got an Artistic Development grant from River Valley Arts, a wonderful organization you should consider supporting.
It’s like growing carrots: on the surface it’s an ordinary day but below you may have giant carrots.
I’m hoping Sunday’s staged reading will lead to more good stuff for Impelled, but even if that’s somehow the end of the line, it’s been an amazing ride to get to work with the poet Rita Mae Reese on editorial feedback, and with Terry Kerr as my director, and three fabulous actors: Melinda Van Slyke, Douglas Swenson, and Hannah Jo Anderson. I asked my cast in an email if they had a word or a sentence they thought of when they thought of Impelled. Hannah said “rhapsody,” which honestly makes me feel rhapsodic, and Doug said “It’s like growing carrots: on the surface it’s an ordinary day but below you may have giant carrots.” And he included a picture, which I think is a good way to end this particular post:
We’re coming up on the one-year anniversary of when I wrote a poem every day in April to help raise money for Tupelo Press. I wrote about it here.
I’ve been slow about finishing the odes for some of the local businesses who were nice enough to host my poetry pop-up shop. It’s very much connected to how much interaction I got–on the days when people just kind of smiled nicely and didn’t stop to talk or donate or buy some coasters, I was able to write the ode while I was on site.
But several places people were super interested and talkative, and it was harder to get anything much written. That was good though!
But as always, it’s hard for me to avoid procrastinating. And then when I did sit down to write, I put all kinds of pressure on myself to write A REALLY GOOD ODE.
In any case, I’m getting them done. Here’s one I wrote for The Slowpoke Lounge in Spring Green.
Since it took me so long to finish it, I decided I should make a fabric collage/poetry frame (which was one of my giveaways for people who donated at a certain level last spring). I’d recently organized my fabric stash, so was very glad to find these pieces to use.
More of last spring’s odes and new ones coming soon.
Should I do it again this April? Have pop-up shops & write local odes as thanks for my hosts?
for Ellyn
Sure sometimes Wisconsin gets cold in the summer, jacket-weather cold,
but almost always the end of August is muggy hot
and the machines we need to do our jobs so often stop.
They just stop. They take the pages we labored over,
every policy researched and thought through, assignments shaped
for permanent learning, an ongoing attempt to balance love
of students with love of subject, excellence and kindness weighted
the same. Those very pages—stuck together like hands in gloves.
Like makeup slathered on. Like sandwiches. Or shredded like potatoes.
Or torn like deckle edges. Or folded up like accordion pleats.
So just this once dear universe, benevolent being, ghosts,
please let the stupid printer simply print. Extra seals
of blessing might include collating and stapling. Thanks.
Honestly, this small thing would be enough for today.
(potential part 2--a prayer for actually staying alive during our 4th COVID semester)
________
Am not the productivity queen, though trying,
every bad habit I have is worse right now.
I’ve learned a new word—“recrudescence.” Wow
is that my life at 3 a.m. I keep thinking I’m dying
from the virus that makes my lips a little blue
but is not, not according to the test, the hot new sick.
You can learn a lot about a person in a pandemic,
but what you think you know might not be true.
I’ve been thinking about the shows I used to watch after school.
Who would and wouldn’t wear a mask because it was or wasn’t cool.
Leave it to Wally to be the most consistent.
The Beave would try but lose his in a minute.
The actor who played him just died—let’s take a second to grieve—
or really however long we need—but I think we can all agree
Eddie might wear his mask in front of June,
but he’d take it off the moment she left the room.
“Of course not dear,” Lovey says to her Mister
but she puts her mask back on when he looks away,
which is often, as unabsorbed as he is with her.
Dollar signs in his eyes and under his nails.
Who’s in Lovey’s eyes when she closes them?
She’s just smart enough to play dumb.
It’s not the rich man who sets her heart drumming.
It’s not her husband’s coconuts she’s rubbing.
Once more amusing myself takes an extra turn
as I’m sorting through what I’ve learned
in quarantine. It’s you I’m unhappy with, you
and your mask, or your lack of a mask, you make me rage, make me panic.
You can learn an awful lot about people in a pandemic,
but what you think you know might not be true.
Everything’s still crowded in my dreams, bathrooms the worst,
with people jammed in or lined up or knocking, “Can you hurry?
My little girl has really got to go.”
They’re chamber pots, implausible stalls, or holes
in the floor. I’m always just about to lose it
when I find a working toilet in a bank lobby.
So far, barely, at the last second, I make it.
I wake up relieved I haven’t soaked the sheets.
Last night: the closest one is full, the next
monitored by a woman I somehow know doesn’t like me.
I’m close to the parking lot. I just decide to leave.
I’m already late. Somehow this connects
to a storm brewing. It’s so dark all the streetlights
have come on. I get excited when I think of this lie:
“I’ll just tell them I thought it was already night.”
I dreamed I saw a Wooly dog descendant—
wiggle-butted, scruffy, ornery, clearly
one more in a long line of poodle-terrier mutts.
His owner said, “he’s a Rottweiler,” but
no way. Just too much Benji evident.
Black against the giant foxtail. Curly
in every way—tousled coat, bent tail,
wagging walk toward me when I called.
When I was little, we let our dogs run free
all day and shut them up at night. Also, we
got the girl dogs fixed, but not the boys.
Thus all the Wooly dogs in Southern Illinois.
Every single thing was looser then.
I was happy. My dogs were my best friends.
“Should we have stayed at home and thought of here?” Elizabeth Bishop
When I look at Real Estate in The New York Times,
I am charmed, absorbed by how small the spaces are
how much they cost, how light, how airy, how clever.
And oh! The things the owners say sometimes:
“It’s a modest little apartment but it’s so well done,”
(Barbara Barrie said) “It has brought me joy every day.”
But the odds for joy on the Upper West Side of Manhattan
are better than even, I’d guess. I really couldn’t say.
I am obsessed with other people’s homes.
I drive by houses and picture myself there.
Would I like it? Are the people inside happier
or sadder? Do they want to stay or go?
I think I could be happy anywhere.
I could be happy anywhere but here.
_______
I suppose it’s possible that last line is true, but more likely it’s the poet in me having that line occur to me and going NICE TWIST. In any case, my house in small-town Wisco is pretty sweet sometimes:
marniere 