mimsy and outgrabe

So sayeth The Boy. I think he's trying to say, "Holy Guacamole," and I'm not quite sure where he heard this expression, but I share the sentiment. Being 32 weeks pregnant and teaching is tiring , yo. This has been a good but long and busy week. I have a list, already, of emails I need to send out, and tasks that I have to accomplish. I have quizzes to grade. Recommendations to finally, finally , write (my poor students). I have phone calls to return. I have that damn Leadership Academy report to write (yup, I missed the deadline). And I have an office submersed in about 2 tons of paper because I decided to clean out my filing cabinets. (And yes, this is a task that doesn't really scream out Important! Must be done now! unless, of course, you're me, and particularly sensitive about the fact that you've hoarded about eight years of paper scraps that you barely look at anymore. Everything must go ! scream the cells in my body. I think this is a preggo-...

I sat down to write and started reading instead, which is okay, I suppose: (I half-heartedly forgive myself for trolling the internet because I found these:) The Journey by Yvor Winters. This interview with Inaugural Poet Richard Blanco. (Can I just say how disappointed I am in both asshole journalists and even fellow poets in their reaction to Blanco's poem ? Writing occasional poetry is wretched work, and Blanco made good work of a wretched assignment.) Last week brought three rejections, two of my manuscript, and one from a literary journal. Two rejections even arrived on one day! ( Good day .) I think I need to steel myself for this -- all the stuff I sent out in the fall is going to come rushing back now as magazines begin their prep for spring issues, and those book contests have to choose winners. It would be nice to receive a little bit of good news, though. The new semester begins today. I have office hours before teaching my first class at 12:30 p.m., and ...

This weekend, writing was a struggle. A number of fits and starts, a lot of crossed out lines, deleted lines, revised lines, cut and pasting, etc. I jumped from drafting on the notepad with a pen to typing on the computer and back again. And in between the moments of inspiration and hair-pulling, I put away (finally) our Christmas tree, packed up decorations, did the dishes, and washed load after load of laundry and then had to fold the damn stuff. This is all to say that eventually Chapter IX of the fairy tale was completed (woohoo!) along with one of those mother/daughter conversation poems that are supposed to interrupt the narrative. I'm not sure how successful either is (again, I'll wait for A.P.'s thumbs up or thumbs down, and my own distanced judgment after a few days have passed between the writing of the draft and my rereading it), but it felt really good to have been productive . . . at least, once I felt like I had been productive, and not just spinning my tire...

Yesterday I worked myself into a frenetic, worried mess. I spent my writing hour(s) doing more reading than writing, which in itself was okay -- I was reading critical essays about fairytales, and taking notes and thinking about how my own fairytale poem should be shaped. But then, after the quiet period of the morning was up -- the boy and the girl having decided between themselves at some point that this would be The Day of Fighting and Not Listening -- I attempted to write out a schedule for my sabbatical. The results were rather disastrous. That is, to my apparently fragile psyche they were disastrous. If you look at it from the standpoint of my house and the kitchen cabinets I gutted and cleaned throughout the entire afternoon, the results were fabulous! (More overwhelming stress, please! I'll have this house whipped into shape in no time!) I went kind of bat-shit crazy on the inside. This sabbatical scares me. I think I've voiced that as a joke before, but I'm jus...