mimsy and outgrabe

Welp, June is almost over and I've blogged twice (now, three times). That's considered a massive failure in terms of blogging, isn't it? Or should I have written, "that's a massive FAIL"? ( "I'm with it! I'm hip! Tucka tucka tucka tucka tucka . . . ." ) *Sigh* Anyway, I've been doing a lot of little things but I feel like I have a lot of nothing to show for it. I've been reading . . . a back issue of American Poetry Review here, a back issue of Poets & Writers there. Some more Glyn Maxwell. And I sent out a submission. Also, I've been "revising" -- scanning that fairy tale poem a few pages at a time (I'll say it again: that thing is long ), and occasionally rewriting a line on the spot, but not often. (I'm going to have a lot of work to do once I finish scanning. I feel like there are a lot of lines early in the manuscript that could/should be stronger metrically). I wrote that one poem last week (la...

June is a slow month for blogging, I guess. Actually, it's a slow month for everything. My house is still disaster-ish. My article research is underway, as is the revision of the fairy tale poem, but I'm making progress very slowly. And this week has featured a special hiccup in the form of pink eye (both the boy and I contracted it). It's kind of amazing when and where inspiration hits and a poem demands to be written. Take, for instance, yesterday. The boy was supposed to go to daycare -- his last full week -- and I was going to go into the office for a meeting and to take care of a slew of little tasks that need attention before the end of the month. But then the boy woke up with goopy-eye, which prevents him from going to school, and I woke up with . . . a poem forming.  I began the poem after my husband left for work and while I still had a silent house to myself. I finished drafting about 12 lines, the first strophe of the poem, when the house awoke -- girl,...

This audio recording from Sylvia Plath is awesome for a couple of reasons.  One -- listen to Natasha Trethewey read her poems before you listen to this. Just for a moment, which is what I did. I like Trethewey's poems on the page -- but she begins reading in that sing-songy poet voice and I have to click off the recording. I just can't listen to it. The poem stops making sense and all I can hear is that infernal rise and dip of the Poet Voice. (Boo!) In "Fever, 103" Plath reads her poem like she's auditioning for the part of Malificent in Disney's Sleeping Beauty -- her voice is domineering and full of that faux-British radio/movie speech that Americans adopted in the 30s and 40s and gave up, I don't know, maybe 5 or so years after this was recorded. (It sounds a little antiquated even for the 60s.) Even still, her performance of the piece is fiery and powerful and puts so many contemporary poets and their readings to shame. Two -- The dra...