mimsy and outgrabe

This is the last weekend of freedom before the new school year begins. I went into the office yesterday to clean it out -- there was so much junk stashed everywhere from last year's drop-and-run. I would come into the office with one pile of folders and books, place them on a desk or a table, and then pick up another pile of folders and books, and run off again. When I did work in the office it was often between columns of stacked files and assignments and general clutter.  I don't really want to do that again, if I can avoid it -- so I had a "purge day" wherein I went through all of the stacks and sorted through what needed to be filed and what needed to be recycled. When I left yesterday I had three or four boxes/bags of material to be recycled (which I'm doing at home because I don't trust that the school genuinely recycles -- I've watched our janitorial staff combine trash and recycling in the same cart and that's just suspicious  . . . I mea...

Friday I received news that yet another of my spring semester classes wasn't going to run because of low enrollment. So for the second time this month I had to change my planned office hours and email the bookstore about textbook orders and do some kind of triage with the little bit of class prep I had managed to do before this point. I suppose the one good thing about being drastically behind in terms of class prep is that you haven't wasted *too* much time when those classes are canceled.  It's generally brighter and less cave-like during the day. In some ways my new teaching schedule is far more simple -- I'm teaching two sections of Intro to Lit, which is usually one of my favorite classes. However, I've always been wary of teaching two sections of anything -- everything feels a little more stale by the second time around. Also, I have to teach three classes back to back on Tuesdays and Thursdays now, which is exhausting and laborious and generally so...

Today I'm coming off that glow that arrives during, and just after, working on something you're obsessing over for about 24 hours straight. It's amazing how empty I can feel of ideas and music and language for so long and then, thankfully, they all come back in a flood and I create something that makes me excited, happy, and that I read and feel like, "yeah, that's a poem ."  In one of my graduate classes, back when I was a fucking baby with stars in my eyes, Derek Walcott said that most of what we write, if we're lucky, is just good verse. Every once in a while (for him), or once in a lifetime (me), we write a poem. So currently I feel like I wrote a poem, but knowing myself fairly well at this point, I'm conscious of the fact that a few months from now I'll probably look back at the piece and regard it as merely good verse. And that's okay. Because there are fewer stars in my eyes and I'm not quite so young (although maybe I act...