mimsy and outgrabe

This week has featured more reading than writing, but I'm okay with that. (Babysteps towards art-making, right?) I've vacillated between internet essays and the Bloodaxe Books' collection of Tsvetaeva essays, Art in the Light of Conscience , as well as Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva. And honestly, I'm disappointed in Dark Elderberry Branch . Its subtitle is "A Reading by Ilya Kaminsky and Jean Valentine," and I'd hoped for more by two such well known and fairly well respected writers. They've excerpted bits and pieces of Tsvetaeva's poems as well as bits and pieces of her nonfiction scribbling -- from essays to letters -- but the sole commentary on these bits and pieces comes at the end of the collection in an essay/afterword by Kaminsky.  I'm left frustrated with the feeling that there's too little substance here. I really don't want to say that, because I was excited about the book when I found it, but the...

It's been a week of recovery! And Plan-Making Lite, meaning that I'm beginning to think of the best way to tackle all of the things I'd like to do with these next few teaching-free months. My summer class was under-enrolled and didn't run, which is probably more good fortune for me than bad: I'll have less money, but now I can use the next month (the one where my children are still in school) to do prep for the fall at a leisurely pace, and to work on the things that I'm feeling starved for, like reading and writing. And exercise -- even the simplest kind, such as walking through my neighborhood or stretching. And sleep. Lots of sleep. I've begun reading this week, as a kind of segue between Disaster Semester and Disaster Semester Prevention Planning, Lynda Barry's Syllabus . It's really marvelous. Lynda Barry is one of my new favorites. I discovered her via my colleague D.W., who studied with her at University of Wisconsin-Madison (and is actu...

I went to sleep at two in the morning on Sunday night after grading until I was cross-eyed and when I got ready for bed I checked my email and I had a message from a student who said I have emailed you twice in the last month and have not received a response- please get back to me about my questions and so I stayed up another half hour because I felt the need to write her back and prove with a screen shot that yes, I'd forgotten to send her a reply to an email she sent that past Tuesday but I'd only received one email from her since early April, and I DID reply to the one from April, and I could tell that when I woke up two hours later with the alarm and the beginning of a migraine and the non-sleeping Vampire Toddler it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good very bad day. At breakfast Little Miss Talkalot decided she was too tired to eat breakfast and then The Boy decided that he was too tired to eat breakfast and then Vampire Toddler decided she wanted to eat Pir...

I held the drawing for the blog's Big Poetry Giveaway on Saturday, but because of life and children and grading and sunshine I wasn't able to get to the computer to post the results (and recap the excitement of the drawing!) until now. First, in preparation for the drawing, I attempted to gather all of the books I'll be mailing out tomorrow (or Tuesday or Wednesday, because let's be honest, the end of the semester never goes smoothly or as anticipated): As you might be able to tell, I wasn't successful with my gathering. Ooh, quick, let's play, "Which part of the Big Poetry Giveaway 2015 is missing?"  I'll wait.  . . . Yes, that's it! It's The Black Sea by Stephanos Papadopoulos. I left the copy I was giving away at the office (I've since picked it up), but for the sake of the photo I substituted with Papadopoulos' first book, "Lost Days," the cover of which -- fun fact -- features a fine painting by his ...

The week after AWP is always the worst, not only because you leave your friends and the Bookfair and the readings and general good cheer, but because -- when you are me -- you return to all of the things you neglected to do BEFORE you left, and a long list of items to complete NOW THAT YOU ARE BACK. And this year, because the conference took place during National Poetry Month and the month that our Creative Writing Festival takes place at SCCC, it's such a weird mix of annoying, world-of-academia bullshit and then also super-lovely celebration-and-good-things. Yesterday, in the early morning before my own children were even attending their own classes, A.P. and I met with local high school students. We read them poems, some of our own and some of others (Kinnell, Berryman, Sanabria, McDaniel), and then answered their questions. They were sweet and attentive and gracious and it was the best way to start a day. I wasn't expecting that experience -- I don't know what...

I'm going to participate in the National Poetry Month hullabaloo by joining this <<<< circus, The Sixth Annual Big Poetry Giveaway, because 1) contrary to the loner/cranky poet stereotype, I like joining things 2) I like attempts to get people to read more poetry and 3) I'm curious to see how this turns out. If you keep a blog and you're a poet and you'd like to participate, see Kelli Russell Agodon's Book of Kells post for the dirt on how to join in. If you'd like to participate in MY Big Poetry Giveaway, here's what you have to do: Leave a comment on this post with your name and email address (you should probably use the [at] format instead of the @ format so that spam-bots won't suck up your email address and overload your account with nonsense about discount handbags and/or sexual performance enhancers).  Hell, leave a comment on ANY of my posts during the month of April and I'll include you in the drawing.  What ...

This semester I think I've come as close to quitting my profession as I'm going to get.  I mean, I won't , because, first and foremost, I need a job that helps support my family, but ALSO because I've invested a LOT of freaking time and effort into doing this particular job, this career, and how does one just walk away from all of that? I suppose it would be one thing if I'd made Full Professor and I'd jumped through all the hoops I was supposed to jump through, but I haven't, and so: How do I leave behind all the hard work to get where I am, with just a tiny bit more to go? (I apply for Full Professor at the end of next year.) This feeling, this closeness-to-quitting, stems from more of the same, not enough hours in the day, but it differs from previous years because, perhaps for the first time, it's not really tinged with resentment. I mean, sure, did I grumble yesterday about my students obsessing over grades on papers but not really connect...