mimsy and outgrabe

Writing here last week about "weird blotches of language" prompted me, this week, to revisit those pieces and shape them into something looking more like poetry. Next step: have them sounding more like poetry.  It's good to have some drafts of poems building, albeit slowly. It's been too long a time since I've done this, really. Exhibit A: How I torment my teenager I've been looking a little bit at submitting, too, but just the MS because I don't really have enough individual poems to send out (and I'm trying not to simultaneously submit -- for some reason I can't exactly remember, I made that decision a few months ago . . . ).  Of course, for the past two years, I've more or less thought, "this is the last year I send out Fabulous Beast," and then I come across some publisher or contest and think, "hey, it's worth a try." But I'm doubting more and more that it's worth a try. I have a good num...

This past spring, while working on the sketchbook with M.S., the bulk of my writing came out initially like prose -- not like I would normally write my prose, but more prose-like. Not lineated. Not metric, or at least, not intentionally so. And now that we've moved on, M.S. and I, and finished the sketchbook and begun working on ostensibly different projects, the writing is still "coming" out in these strange blocks: without lines, often without much punctuation. Not stream of consciousness but definitely speedier, less deliberate thought. I don't know if that's interesting. I'm just kind of logging this observation here, in the off chance it turns out to be a useful reflection later on.  I've also been gathering my feet under me and looking ahead to these next eight weeks of "down-time" before the new semester begins. M.S. and I have begun tooling around with a new collaboration, something I'm working on during my morning writing s...

At the beginning of last week I sent a letter to some vice presidents, deans, and committee chairs at the college and also to the officers of the union, officially withdrawing from service at the college for the upcoming academic year. It's not a formal requirement, but it was one that I felt was necessary. I wanted to be as professional as possible, and let them know about my absence from their various committees and initiatives so that they might find a replacement for me, but I also wanted to be as clear as possible about my reasons for withdrawing from these positions. The reaction to my letter was as I expected. I received some emailed support from the committee chairs, and a long, good phone call from one of the deans, but mostly radio silence and static from the people who I'd hoped would read the letter and understand its implications, which are larger than my particular and personal set of circumstances and point to larger problems at the college. And that silenc...

Last week was our last week of spring semester classes at the college, and in lieu of writing a blog post I was grading.  THIS week has entailed more busyness than you'd think possible for a week without classes -- I was actually in a three and a half hour meeting on Wednesday -- but I've reclaimed my mornings and I've been reading and writing again. M.S. and I are finishing our Sketchbook Project and turning it into digital files that we can submit to galleries for group exhibitions -- although really when I write "we" I mean "M.S." because I don't know the first thing about submitting to art shows, but I'm along for the ride. It's interesting and something outside of my comfort zone, so in the long run probably a good thing.  I'm running triage on my household, which as per usual fell apart during the last month of the semester and needs some serious decluttering and cleaning. How can five people accumulate so much junk? Als...