mimsy and outgrabe

Today it's difficult to get out of bed. It's raining outside, and I'm exhausted (coming down with yet another cold), and the dog makes a good nappin' partner. But I shall get out of bed. There are children to be wrangled, assignments to be graded, and a class to be taught. Into the rain I shall go. I received an email yesterday that says the deadline for turning in our sabbatical reports is March 15. This is either a saving grace or a trap . . . I was prepared to have my report ready for March 5, but now I have ten extra days! I realize that the probability of using those 10 days to create a stronger, better written report and/or have more of my play written is very small, but I know I'll take them nonetheless. I'm not turning anything into the committee until I absolutely have to do so. I've written two poems this week and yesterday I sent out another submission, after having received a rejection that freed up some poems for sending-out. Those are good ...

The surest way to keep a project going is to make up your mind that the project is finished. At least, this is the way of things in MY world, which is a contrary world and a confusing one at that. Yesterday I resigned myself to certain facts: one, that poems for the fairy tale (those "interruptions") and the myth section of the manuscript were not coming as easily as they did a few weeks ago, and two, that the deadline for my sabbatical report was fast approaching and I needed to print out whatever I had so far and begin writing the report. These were fictions more than they were facts. Actually, "fact" number two is still pretty much true -- I DO need to start writing that report -- but I woke this morning thinking about beginning my revision of the first two scenes of the verse play, and ended up writing another interruption poem. I'm happy with the result, but I find the situation laughable. The verse play is never going to be written, at this rate. So...

The girl is, apparently and finally, disease-free. Today will be filled with grading, a club meeting, and a class! Woohoo! In between breaking up fights between Blondie and her pesky little brother, I cleaned a little (dishes are done, some of the laundry has been conquered) and ran a few errands. Also, I checked my work email and shuddered at the amount of committee meetings that are beginning to clog my calendar. Then, desperate for distraction, I read and mulled over the following: 1. This article in Beyond Margins on ignoring one's "life" in order to write. 2. This interview in TriQuarterly with fellow Hyacinth Girl Press author Brooklyn Copeland. 3. This article in the Washington Post that involves fake busking, Bach, and a violin prodigy named Joshua Bell -- all in the interest of social science. It's a good reminder that this week I should have -- in between shuttling between CVS and home for Children's Tylenol and Gatorade, swearing under my ...

Little Miss Talkalot is Little Miss Very Sad. Because she's caught some kind of virus replete with fever, she missed the Valentine's Day celebrations at school yesterday and she's missing today's 100th day of school celebrations. (Apparently, there's always something to celebrate in our elementary school, which really isn't a bad way to live life, is it?) A. stayed home with the girl yesterday, and today it's my turn. I'm missing two meetings and cancelling the same class I had to cancel on Friday when the boy was diagnosed with strep throat. This season of illness is kicking my butt. It's been a week since I assumed the new administrative role and yet I haven't really had a chance to fulfill its duties. But at the very least, I can say that I'm not falling behind in four classes, just one. Also, it's just really weird to see my daughter so sick. And it's not that she's near-death, but that we're just not used to seeing ...

I'm super-tired at the moment, but fairly content. This has been a rough week, with a lot of changes occurring during a very small time frame at work. I wasn't really expecting this to happen -- in fact, I was striving to have a calm, non-interesting semester in terms of teaching and commitments at the college, but once again I've completely abandoned my previous notions and expectations in order to thoroughly embrace something new and exciting but also potentially disastrous! 'Cause, apparently, that's how I roll. I took on a temporary administrative position at the college that will, hopefully, help out my department and also be a good fit for me in terms of easing back into teaching and working full-time. The colleagues I've asked for advice are evenly divided as to whether this will actually happen. Some think that the job will allow me to accomplish more when I'm physically at work, so that when I return home I can emotionally/mentally "be...

The Valentine's Day issue of Poetry Crush went live yesterday, and in it the Hyacinth Girl Press authors share their favorite erotic poems. I was kind of shocked to see my selection kick things off, but pleased, too -- Herbert's the shit! (Very eloquent, I know.) To be honest, I'd never really had a favorite erotic poem -- at least, I'd never called a poem one of my favorites because it was erotic, and I'm not sure many readers of poetry do, either. But this ended up being a fun exercise in memory and reading. I went back to my books -- opened up anthologies, searched my bookshelves for the authors and volumes I thought contained verse that might be termed "erotic" -- and eventually hit upon "Silk of a Soul" by Zbigniew Herbert. I almost chose "Rapture" by Galway Kinnell . In the end I didn't for two reasons. One, I suspected that someone else might choose a Kinnell poem (wrongly, it turns out, but someone did choose Sharon Ol...

This week, Bernadette Geyer and Molly Spencer both blogged about being a parent who writes . . . or being a writer who raises children . . . I'm sure we could get into a semantic argument about which designation is more appropriate, or should be more appropriate, but I don't have time . . . I have to write before the kids get up! (Har, har, har . . . crash of symbols/cricket chirps.) I've been wanting to post something here for a while, but life/children/school and yes, my writing got in the way, and that's something Spencer speaks to in her blog post , which is kind of an answer or addendum to what Geyer posted over at She Writes . I was really, really sick last week -- not deathly so (as my tired joke about the plague would have you think), but enough to make everything other than the most basic tasks seem terribly unimportant. Even still, because I'm neurotic whether or not I'm infected with some savage virus, I woke up early every morning to write and...