Publication

I remember being in high school, when I thought that if my work were ever published, that would mean I'd made it. Period. That would mean that I was good. Well now, after one year (and almost a half) of college, I've had poems selected for three different online publications and my academic papers have been granted cash awards from my college. And I still am not sure that any of it is actually any good.
What does it mean that a poem is good? That it has significance to the poet? That it moves a reader/listener? Maybe I'm being too hard on myself. Did E.E. Cummings think "o sweet spontaneous" was good? Did he realize that it was possibly the perfectest combination of words and syntax to ever be so artfully arranged on a page? That's overstating the point, of course. Really, what I'm wondering is if I will ever be satisfied with my own work. Come to think of it, this might not even be desirable.

We had a conversation about art today in my Neuroscience of Consciousness class. We started with the famous quote by Louis Nizer, "A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist." Prodded by our professor, one girl was talking about her horseback riding. She said she was not an artist with the kind of obvious disdain with which one tells a group that they certainly did not sleep with that lech at that party, and they don't intend to. After yet more prodding, she admitted that someone may be amazed and dazzled by what she does, but that "I've been doing it for so long, it's just something I do. It's not like I'm astonished by it."
I wanted to ask her if she felt anything, at all, but I knew the answer would likely be too depressing. How can anyone have something they do without being astonished by it? Why keep doing it without the heart? She mentioned that her mom tended to think everything she did was amazing. Maybe she was a stage child. I wanted to tell her she could make her own decisions now, if she wanted to. I mean, I don't sing onstage anymore. Anyway.
I think my fear of my own poetry is related to this. Yes, I am astonished by anything that comes out of my pen, hell, I'm astonished that anything comes out of my pen. The fear is this: what the hell do I know? Of course I'm going to like my own work, these little ditties I've whipped up. I think they're pretty cool. But what is that beyond sheer narcissism if someone else doesn't get something from them? I don't know. Maybe it's art.

If nothing else, I learned from this conversation that the task of living artfully is to always be astonished. Go ahead and put that in your magazine.

Speaking of which, look for my piece "Ascapuon" to show up here November 15.