mimsy and outgrabe

Welp, I'm not going to blog for long since I've been reduced to using my smart phone for almost all types of communication -- I'm rarely able to put the baby down for long enough to sit at the computer, and using the laptop when my lap is already occupied by a sleeping or nursing baby is impossible ... But I wanted to post, maybe by way of public resolution, that I'm going to at least READ a lot of poetry this month if I can't find time or space or the requisite quiet inside my head to WRITE it. So many people are participating in the poem-a-day exercise I started to feel a little out of the loop ... And then I looked down at my smushy kissable Vampire Baby (who, while adorable, is still sucking my life force from me, even if she's now outside the womb) and said ... Fuck NaPoWriMo or whatever the hell it's called, I have a BABY... And then I said to myself, since the baby was asleep and the dogs were outside and there was really no one else to talk to ......

I've spawned! Sunday, March 10, 10:56 p.m. To one super squirmy infant (7 lbs, 15 oz, 20 inches long -- for those who care about the stats) who has decided to be just like her older sister: a night owl. We're not sleeping much these days, but we forgive her. She's squishy and fun to cuddle. I'm not taking an official hiatus from the blog, since this blog isn't really an official, respectable piece of interweb fodder anyway, but it'll probably take a while before I can write often or with any regularity. I do intend to write, though -- this is, after all, a very cathartic exercise for me. And having to adjust to this new three-child system may call for a little bit of catharsis, methinks.

The past two weeks have been filled with grading, emails, web site updates for the festival, and other school business that has consumed my thoughts and my time constantly -- when I'm not panicking about giving labor birth, that is.  Last week I thought I might be going into labor, but it turned out that I just had a stomach bug. Strange, I know -- but apparently the signs of early labor can mimic those of the flu. That was fun! I had to cancel some classes and deplete my already-insufficient stock of sick leave, so now I'm in the process of pleading with HR to allow my office mate to donate sick time to me -- all so that I have enough days to finish out the semester.  Otherwise, I'm going to drag my postpartum ass back into the office in May for five days and grade final exams .  . . because fuck the system, that's why. They don't want to grant us maternity leave? Fine. I'll do what I think is unprofessional and pedagogically disastrous and return fo...

Brevity magazine publishes, besides "concise, literary nonfiction," a number of brief essays on the craft of writing. I liked what Terry Tempest Williams had to say in "On Writing as an Act of Living." I'll probably share this interview with my ENG 101 students, who have to complete a service learning project during the semester. Also, bits of it resonate with the part of me that's still determined to write the "Poetry of Witness" essay, like this: Story bypasses rhetoric and pierces the heart. To tell a story is to create an action in the mind of the listener or reader. It is the same with bearing witness — be it watching a community of prairie dogs or witnessing the miles and miles of swirling oil from the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. To bear witness is not a passive act, but an act of conscience and consequence that has the power to alter our collective consciousness. As writers, we are often changed by the story we...

The first snow of 2013 set me back a bit in the blog world, mostly because it set me back also in the writing-poems world. A. worked 16 hour days through the storm, and because I waited up for him to travel 40 miles back from the yard each night, I didn't stick to my morning writing schedule. It might be the pregnancy hormones overriding my innate impulse to stick-to-a-schedule-no-matter-what -- or I could just be worn out from carrying around all this extra weight -- but whatever the reason, I've been tired, tired, tired lately, and taking advantage of any chance to sleep. Yesterday, however,  I brushed up those three monologues from November, and shipped them off to A.P., who I'll meet with (eventually) and see what he thinks. Progress on this verse play creature is being made, even if it's in tiny, tiny increments. I managed to grade about 1/2 of the material I brought home with me this weekend. I consider this quite an accomplishment considering I was h...

Bernadette Geyer kindly tagged me to participate in this "Next Big Thing" meme that's been floating around the blogs of novelists and poets and short story writers for the past two months (I think it's been two months). While I suppose there's some argument (in my head, only) to write about my poetry manuscript as my "Next Big Thing," I think I'll answer the questions as they relate to my verse play project -- partly as a way of getting my head back into the project, and as a way to kind of organize my thoughts as I gear up to (once again) birth this beast. (To be clear: the verse play, not Vampire Baby. It's too early for Vampire Baby yet. I think. I hope!) **** What is your working title of your book (or story)?   The astoundingly creative and apt "Verse Play." For a while I tossed around the idea of "Thunder, Lightning, Rain." It comes from Mac b eth , specifically the first li...

Photo of me reading courtesy of A.P.  Due to the glare from the stage lights and my pregnancy roundness, other photos from his perspective made me look like an atomic blueberry. So, this pic of my boots will have to do. Bernadette Geyer graciously tagged me for the "Next Big Thing" Series/meme that's hit the interwebs, and I think that technically I was supposed to post my answers on Monday, but due to the rather frenetic week I'm going to save that post for Saturday, February 2. Instead, I thought I'd post about the loveliness of the Hyacinth Girl Press/"Boog City Presents" poetry reading on Tuesday.  As I told a friend over Facebook yesterday, there's something about delving into the writer-world for a few short hours for events such as this reading that leave me feeling really happy and content. I guess it doesn't take much to make me happy -- although there was a lot to be happy about on Tuesday evening, I must admit.  So...