Throughout the process of seeking publication for both poetry and fiction, I’ve learned there is no gentle way to fulfill that often illusive dream. In my case, it has required relentless diligence, insane idealism, and a penchant for perseverance while submitting time and time again.
But alas, the title poem of my first full collection, “The Half-Life of Lying,” will be published by littledeathlit in their Fall 2019 issue! I can’t wait to share the words held in this poem with you, dear reader. Until that time, however, I thought I might tread back to September 15, 2017 when I first completed this poem. Many things have changed since then. I have changed in that time. And most importantly, this poem has transitioned into something new.
Looking back, I suppose this title was always there when thinking of collecting the poems I’d started writing during that summer. I’m not sure why I was so drawn to the idea, but it became an obsession. Throughout that summer, I wasn’t sure I wanted a title poem in the collection. But then I wrote the lines one by one. I finished that poem, knowing it must be “The Half-Life of Lying.”
As I worked to organize and complete the collection this summer, I had a moment in which renaming that original title poem seemed absolutely necessary. That poem has since found publication. And yet, I clung to the idea of a title poem, hidden somewhere in the middle of the collection instead of at the beginning or end. It would need to be a poem to encompass the themes of the collection as a whole without being written for that explicit reason. I longed for the right poem to bestow with this title, but it remained out of reach for too many months.
Upon returning from San Francisco this April, there was another poem I knew I needed to write. From the moment I wandered through the ruins of the Sutro Baths, I knew that place needed to be memorialized forever in the lines of a poem.
But when once back home, I didn’t know how to capture all that I felt walking along the edges of those crumbling pools, climbing the rocks to find the thunderous waves of the ocean. The memory lived in my bones, and I carried it with me for months, adding a line here, recalling the curvature of the cave, which reminded me so much of the one from the shore of England, just below Tintagel Castle. And yet, I found the task fruitless. I knew I was forcing the words when I didn’t have them yet.
Strangely, the words found me August 15, 2019, almost two years to the day when the first incarnation of the “The Half-Life of Lying” materialized. I wrote about standing in those ruins, wishing the best friend were with me, because I knew, even then, that he would appreciate it for the same reasons. We’ve always been too similar. I recalled everything I so loved about that morning when the fog burned off to reveal blue skies, where I stood alone, but feeling the ghosts of the glory days nipping at my heels. Even in that poem, I needed him to help me remember, too scared I would forget. The fear fueled the new poem. The remembering of a different time filled in the spaces between the person I once was and the poet fulfilling a promise to recollect into something immortal.
And so, “The Half-Life of Lying” was born all over again. I sent it out again and again and again. It faced countless rejections, 23 throughout its lifetime. But now, publication awaits this beloved poem. Much might’ve changed, but my adoration for this piece remains ever fervent.
There may be no gentle way to traverse the process of publication. And sure, the journey may not be comfortable. But with endless belief and an unwillingness to walk away, it will never be impossible. So whether you’re fighting your own written battles, dear reader, or just exploring them in my poem, “The Half-Life of Lying,” I hope you’ll remember. Sometimes the memory is all it takes to find your way through.
