Travis Mossotti: “When I was in high school, I worked as a telemarketer for exactly one night. I’ve painted houses for fifteen years or so and still pick up side jobs in the summer. I’ve bagged groceries, worked at a fast-food joint, waited tables, bartended, landscaped, managed document databases at a law firm, taught at universities, valeted at country clubs, and so on and so forth. I’ve had dozens of occupations in my life, but poetry has been my only preoccupation.” (website)
Travis Mossotti: “When I was nineteen years old, I sent out my first few batches of poems to some Missouri journals. Boulevard, River Styx, Pleiades, and a few local contests. Of course, the rejections were swift and mighty, and each one forced me to recognize: ‘I will be no prodigy. I will be no Keats.’ Oh bless the stars for those early rejections; they made me more diligent than a thousand publications.” (web)