“that idea of the shimmering moment”: A Conversation with Kelly Lenox, author of “After a Guided Meditation on Self-Confidence”

Brianna Hobson, one of BWR’s talented undergraduate interns, interviews the equally talented Kelly Lenox, author of “After a Guided Meditation on Self-Confidence,” published in issue 50.1. Read the entirety of “After a Guided Meditation on Self-Confidence” here. 

BRIANNA HOBSON: In what ways do you think that this struggle [the process of submitting] influences your writing?

KELLY LENOX: I started a Substack (Mama Ephemera’s Muddy Feet) partly as a way to connect straight with people and not have that editor in my head—but that’s only part of the story. We all have our own inner editor—our measuring stick, or the way we know if we’ve sculpted the piece to where it needs to be. It’s just an ongoing dynamic. I have friends who have hired people or collaborated with people to do submissions and that sort of thing, as a way for them to step out of their own heads. I think in the best of cases for me it’s been to try to find a balance, to think: Wait, how much time have I been spending on submissions, researching journals, and editors, versus creating and revising new things? So I think that my fallback is just to look for balance and not let to the business side take over.

BRIANNA: I feel like it’s something that once you find that balance, it’s still hard to maintain because every editor or every magazine has a different scope of what they’re looking for and what kind of parameters to kind of fall under.

KELLY: I don’t think it’s anything you ever fully finish. I think it’s a dynamic thing because sometimes you’re not in the headspace to write, and you can do this other work. Other times, you’re not in the headspace to deal with the outside world. And then, things happen in life, right? You get sick, you have family things. It’s a dynamic. I try to think about it on a weekly or monthly scale. Just take a step back and kind of reflect a little bit.

BRIANNA: It’s really impressive because you capture the struggle of writing in general very well. While you were writing this, how did you manage to bring those emotions out? Were they all intentional? Or was it more of a free-write?

KELLY: I’ll tell you the origin of this piece. It really started with the title. I really did a guided meditation on self-confidence and then I saw some email from a journal that just blew my lid off. I thought, Well, no wonder it’s so hard! It really started as a rant but I didn’t want to stop there because that’s just one side of the story. I aimed for a 360 degree view and for authenticity. Pretty much everything on there is more or less a personal experience.

BRIANNA: It was really interesting that this is classified as a nonfiction piece, but it could be considered like an experimental poem as well, but the topic is of poetry specifically. So  I like that, the undefinable in a little bit. It touches on various genres, so even though it’s specifically talking about poetry, you are in fact kind of bridging the gap between all of the struggles, whether it be nonfiction or creative, regular fiction or poetry in itself, but as far as the struggle of writing. Many say that writing isn’t just writing anymore. It’s also like social media presence and reaching out to editors and everything. So what kind of advice would you be able to give writers who were starting out in their journey of trying to get published?

KELLY: Well, first of all, I’d say don’t let it kill your soul. A friend of mine hired a publication service—she was well advanced in her professional career, so she had some disposable income—[and she] said to me, “It’s just a crapshoot. It’s a numbers game.” The more that was submitted, the more that was accepted. The service of course knew journals and knew what work was suitable for each. I think if you can band together with one or more like minded writers and encourage each other it helps. For one year I was in a listserv that came out of a workshop here [in the Northwest] called Poets on the Coast (for women writers). Every Friday, there was an email thread to which you submitted information about where you’d heard back from—rejections, acceptances—and/or where you’ve been published.  I submitted more and had more accepted than I ever had before or since. For me the need to submit started to take over because I wanted to have something to report on Fridays. At the same time, seeing people whose work I was in awe of get rejection after rejection served as a good reality check.

BRIANNA: For the structure of the piece overall, how did you come up with that? Was it born from the rant and trying to kind of itemize it a little bit, or was it more of like the step by step process of publishing? Could you walk me through that?

KELLY: It did start with a title, and I really thought it was going to be this short two line poem that would just stand against the title, that the juxtaposition would resonate. But not everybody knows what po-biz means. A lot of prose writers I’ve talked to don’t know the term, so I thought, well, how would I define this? I was concerned it [the definition] would derail the piece. But like I said, I was in the mood for a rant and so I just started writing it and defining it. I did rearrange it to take it in a kind of logical sequence. And I didn’t want it to just hit the same note over and over again. While working on it, the ranting became a gateway into what was under the rant— what and where I needed to really pay attention. So in that sense it was extremely cathartic.

BRIANNA: Absolutely. I can feel the emotional rollercoaster it takes you on. As far as writing the piece for this one, how does that differ from your other poems? Since this is kind of a hybrid, we’ll refer to it as like a nonfiction piece.

KELLY: Yeah, I had to figure out what category to use on Submittable, right?

BRIANNA: We’ve had so many experimental poems—we’ve had one that looked like a prescription warning on a bottle among others.

KELLY: I love the variety of forms you’re putting out there!

BRIANNA: Compared to this piece, how do you tackle your poetry? Is it in the same kind of scope, or is it a little bit more of just a free write?

KELLY: It’s very different. Most of my poetry, and now I’m doing prose as well, is very nature-oriented. It’s not just inspired by the natural world, but there are metaphors, wisdom, and instruction in the natural world, and I really resonate on the landscape level with wherever I go. With being in place. Place is something I’m really interested in. A lot of my work goes in that direction. So this was a real departure in many ways.  When I was starting to define po-biz and that little inner editor was going, “No, no, no, this isn’t verse! This isn’t paragraphs! What are you doing?” I was able to break away from that yardstick and structure. It was freeing. I could be true to myself by breaking out of the form. I had to reach a certain level of exasperation to be able to do that. Not just because of what other people think, but that’s where my familiarity is. I’m familiar with stanzas and those sorts of things.

BRIANNA: How do you handle feedback and criticism about your work?

KELLY: I’m very used to it, both from workshops and classes, and then getting an MFA, and then more workshops and classes. I’ve been in a critique group for many years, and I have a friend, we do one-on-one critiques together. To me it’s an integral part of the process. I would say the challenge is to make sure I adhere to my own aesthetic and don’t start writing a Person X poem, a “their poem, not my poem” kind of thing. I’ve been lucky. I’ve never had the nightmare workshop where the teacher destroys everybody. I’ve always been in pretty supportive environments, but sometimes it’s easy to start doubting yourself and to think, well, they know so I should listen to them. The reason the feedback is so important to me — I think [this] is something most writers struggle with — is that I can’t get outside of my own head enough. To see how it looks to a stranger, to their mind, who doesn’t have the image or experience that is in my mind. The only way I can approximate it is to put it away for a year or six months. For that reason, for me it’s crucial to get that kind of feedback.

BRIANNA: I love workshopping other people’s stories because I love asking like, what made you choose this or what made you go down this route. With my own, I often find that it’s really hard to explain why I did certain things. So it just kind of is intrinsically what I decided to do because at the moment it felt right and then later on when it doesn’t seem to fit, I ask—Why not?

KELLY: I don’t want to ever answer “Why?” I don’t want to answer that question unless somebody is saying “I really don’t get what you’re doing here, which way are you trying to go?” Or, “Where is this supposed to come down, because I’m getting five different hits?” I find it very instructive and often people will see something in a piece I’ve written that rings true but it isn’t something that was ever in my conscious mind. I’m more intuitive that way and just kind of go with my gut and it fits together.

BRIANNA: On this piece specifically, what do you hope that readers take away from it?

KELLY: I would hope that readers who are writers would know that they’re not alone, and take some encouragement from that. That is another part of why I was aiming for that 360 degree view; to show all the sides. It is rewarding, and it is frustrating as all get out. At the same time, I kind of hope that maybe writers will consider how to play the game on their own terms and not just be part of the machine.

BRIANNA: After so many submissions and so many new attempts, it definitely starts to feel like you’re just cranking them out and like a cog in the wheel. So I love the idea of breaking out of that and writing on your own terms.

KELLY: I find that outlets, journals, and websites seem to be inviting hybrid works a lot these days. For me now that I’m doing more prose (which I think of as lyric essay, but maybe it’s just essay, or is it memoir?) I am not interested in what it needs to be called. I’m more interested in something that hangs together and works. So, yeah, let’s just let go of genre until it comes time to submit. You still have to pick a genre.

BRIANNA: Since acknowledging the cyclic nature of the battle between the love of writing and the woes of publishing, has it made the process somewhat easier, or did it complicate your love and of writing and the process of publishing even more?

KELLY: Well, catharsis is always good but I did write this after I started shifting more to prose. So far the prose writing has been very rewarding. I hesitate to say it’s because of the form or the genre itself because I’m a person who always thrives on the next new thing. So poetry for thirty years, prose for a year and a half.

BRIANNA: You mentioned earlier you put something away for six months and you’ll come back and look at it. When you revisit your past work and reinterpret it did anything change? Does your outlook change? And if so, what do those changes typically look like for you?

KELLY: This is an interesting question. A lot of my work has its origin in a moment. The late North Carolina poet, Betty Adcock (at least her later life was in North Carolina; I really don’t know where she started out) said, “Pay attention in the world for the moments when things seem to shimmer.” That would be the thing to grab and delve into. That idea of the shimmering moment… when I go back and read something from earlier, or years ago, it will often take me back into the moment that was the origin of it, which isn’t the same as what ended up on paper. So once again, I can lose what’s on paper and go back in memory to that moment. But there are those times I’ll feel gratitude for  the insight that the moment offered me. Sometimes that insight comes through grappling with the moment and trying to articulate aspects of it—what is it that’s resonating here?—trying to dig in. When I go back and see that I got there, I’m very grateful.

I have a poem called Into The Blank about my now-husband (we got married during the pandemic). I met him in North Carolina, and I grew up mostly in Virginia. After college I moved to California with my first husband and then to Oregon. When I moved “back” to North Carolina in 2011, although I’d never lived there, in some ways it felt like going home because of the landscape. The mountains are a place I come alive, and we went up to the mountains a lot. This particular poem, Into The Blank, is about a sort of forceful reconnection with my young adult self, or my teenage self, and at the same time as the beginning of this new relationship where we still had everything to learn about each other. When I read that one now, after we’ve been together 10 and a half years, I think how many ways it could have gone from that moment forward. So there’s that gratitude as well, seeing what has become of my life.

BRIANNA: Can you describe your publishing journey between this piece and your poetry from the beginning to where you are now?

KELLY: I have to say, with respect to this piece, it was accepted very quickly. Just about maybe as quickly as anything I’ve ever submitted. That was exciting. But what I loved about all that is that after I wrote it, I thought journals were never going to touch this piece, because of the form, and because it’s from the other side of submission fees and delays and rejections and all of that stuff. But when I got the Black Warrior Review newsletter that said you wanted works that question boundaries, are transgressive, that rethink perspectives on the form of the essay, I thought, Okay, you asked for it!  When you took it so quickly, I was like, well, they really meant it. That’s cool.

BRIANNA: What were some of the initial obstacles you faced when you began your journey as a poet slash writer and how did you overcome them?

KELLY: That was before there was much of an internet or email. So poetry was in print and that meant the library or what I could afford to buy. Luckily there were a couple of resources here in Portland at the time. From where I lived, I could ride my bike to Reed College and I would just go into their library and sit in their literary journal section and read. There was the center called Mountain Writers Center that had a huge library just full of back issues of all kinds of journals. So one way was finding the print resources because you just can’t afford to buy, buy, buy. Another challenge I’ve dealt with is I’m more of an intuitive writer and reader than an intellectual one. So finding a way to fit into the Academic Journals world has been challenging as well.

BRIANNA: What are some ways you deal with periods of low inspiration or creativity?

KELLY: One way is to just write. The idea of morning pages (or daily pages if you’re not a morning person, like I’m not), just to keep the pen moving. I have certain writers and certain music that get my creative juices flowing. Certain places for me—to go for a walk in the woods is a way to get back into my soul breathing. I would just say to find your own set of inspirations and keep them close and then keep faith that this too shall pass.