mimsy and outgrabe

Waaaaaaaayyyyy back in September of last year, I wrote: OH. And I kinda-sorta have the best news in the world (for me, right now) but I can't post anything until I know more/confirm said best news in a legit way. Anyway, that's vague, but pretty accurate. When I can, I'll spill. And then it took another four months to actually confirm the best news. So THAT was pretty underwhelming. But now I finally feel more comfortable sharing the following: I signed a book contract, ya'll! In September, I was notified that my full-length manuscript, Fabulous Beast , was the runner-up for the X.J. Kennedy Prize and that it was selected for publication in the fall of 2019. The contract didn't arrive until January, but it's finally signed. (Yay!) And now we're moving into book cover stuff and that's making everything feel more real. Most of the first section of this manuscript was published as a chapbook by Hyacinth Girl Press in 2015, as Fabulous...

The reading at the end of September at Amos Eno went really, really well, which was a relief and a joy. Two friends from my grad school days attended and it was so, so good to see them after, christ, a decade, and to know that they're happy and healthy and doing amazing things of their own (traveling across the globe, training and running marathons, etc.). The Incomparable Ms. C, my former officemate but forever kindred spirit, also traveled into the wilds of Brooklyn to attend the reading, and I rarely get to see her (because she's one of those people usually traveling across the globe, and I'm a suburbanite soccer mom tethered to L.I.).  The reading itself was charming and fun (I can say that since, more or less, I had little to do with it). I mean, I knew when I asked Nicole Callahan and Jared Harel to read their poems (and some fiction) that they would bring good work; that's why I asked them in the first place. But I was pleasantly surprised at how well the r...

Two things, my lovelies, and then I have to take Vampire Toddler to the doctor for a Mystery Rash. AND find someone to cover for me at work today. My life is nothing if not exciting. ANYWAY: The fall 2015 issue of the online publication Menacing Hedge was released on Sunday, October 11. It includes five chapters of my fairy tale poem as well as three of the "conversation" poems that interrupt the narrative between chapters. Kelly Boyker is an amazingly generous editor and I'm thrilled that the staff gave my poem so much space in their magazine. It's really gratifying to see this work out in the world, too. I'm still making my way through the rest of the work in the issue, but I'm quite in love with the conversation between Sarah B. Boyle and Sonya Vatomsky right now. It reminds me of the "interviews" in BOMB magazine, which I've loved since my undergrad days: two artists speaking with one another, people who are more or less sympatico. (N...

A quick note to say, excitedly, that the online journal Menacing Hedge has accepted the first FIVE chapters in my fairy tale poem, "The Woman with the Frog Tongue," and as well as a handful of the in-between poems that enact a kind of conversation between a child reader and her mother.  I know. The whole thing, from title to conceit, just sounds weird, doesn't it? I hope the actual poems are better than they sound when I try to describe them. Also, I just finished reading this incredible poem by Monica Youn on the Poetry Foundation's web site. This thing is a fucking achievement and might even make me subscribe to Poetry again. I might use it in my Advanced Poetry class in the fall, too . . . if it runs. (Fingers crossed, please let it run!) I'm feeling schizophrenic again. There is SO MUCH TO DO and that I want to do that I can't quite figure out what to focus on next. I'm doing, piecemeal, little things for school, little things ...

Is this not the most apt phrase ever? Maybe Stevie Smith wrote the ultimate poem. I feel like this every time someone says hi to me in the hallway at this time of year . . .  Other Person: Hey, how's it going? Me: (Suuuper chipper) Oh, good! Fine! How are you? (Prolonged, tinny, nervous laughter) I might be on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Actually, I know that I'm not -- I don't think people who are about to have a nervous breakdown are conscious of the fact. I'm just in the weeds. Major f*****g weeds.  Anyway, I received an acceptance for a poem from the fairy tale part of my manuscript this week, which marks the first time ANY poem from that part of the book will see the light of day, so I thought it worth posting here (and it gave me the excuse to take a break from the months-long backlog of grading I'm doing). The poem will appear in So to Speak: A Feminist Journal of Language and Art , Spring 2015. Yay! I needed the good news. And I wa...

Finally, as of this past weekend, I am finished revising, and proofreading, the fairy tale. No more numbers to report, unless it's to say that this week I sent out copies of the final version of my complete manuscript to four different first-book contests, and submitted individual poems to three literary journals. There is such relief in having come this far, and real satisfaction, too. It feels strange to be the only one of my writer-friends who has gone through the process of writing and working towards a book manuscript at least three separate times, since my early twenties, and have nothing to show for it. I never managed to finish a collection. I didn't even have a complete manuscript that failed the contest circuit and had to be squirreled away and mourned over and forgotten -- I always lost faith in my work before I could reach that point. To have managed to come this far: to have completed the work, to have the final product, and to actually still like it -- th...

So, for now, more numbers. I am really trying to spend every spare moment in the morning on this poem -- ignoring email, Facebook, my treadmill, those dishes in the sink from last night, and the fact that I haven't made the girl's lunch yet -- in an attempt to do this right, and get this revision finished in the next two weeks.  Hopefully, once this is done, I can write some reflective posts for this blog that are a little more interesting and useful to a general reader. For now, here's the diary of my progress: RE: Fairy Tale Poem Stanzas revised Wednesday:1 Stanzas revised Thursday: 2 Stanzas revised Friday: 3 Stanzas revised Saturday-Sunday: 1 Stanzas revised Monday: 3 Stanzas revised Tuesday: 5 Stanzas revised Wednesday: 2 Stanzas revised Thursday: 3 Stanzas revised (total): 65 Stanzas that need revision: 26 (That's right. My counting skills -- you know, those skills my four year old is acquiring right now -- are not so good. There are 91 stanz...

RE: Fairy Tale Poem Stanzas revised Saturday: 1 Stanzas revised Sunday: 6 Stanzas revised Monday: 8 Stanzas revised (total): 44 Stanzas that need revision: 45 Submissions prepared this morning: 1 Loads of laundry folded and put away last night: A gazillion (I'm pretty sure that's accurate)

RE: FAIRY TALE REVISION Stanzas revised Tuesday: 1 Stanzas revised Wednesday: 1 Stanzas revised Thursday: 2 Stanzas revised Friday: 1 Stanzas revised (total): 29 Stanzas that need revision: 60 RE: CLASS PREP Classes met with this week: 4 Course outlines completed: 4 (finally) Courses agenda/plans that need completion: 4 Course web pages that need updating: 3 Course homework assignments that need updating: 4 RE: RUNNING Days this week I've managed to run (however small): 3 (not great, but at least it's something) Miles run: 6.7 RE: STATE OF AFFAIRS Two children, still breathing, eating well, torturing each other and the dogs: CHECK Two dogs, still breathing, eating well, torturing each other and the children: CHECK One husband, fairly confident that he has a wife somewhere, but not certain because he doesn't see her much: CHECK Brain cells remaining: 1.5  (poor little soldiers) Also, I like this poem by Mary Ruefle.  It reminds me of Ginsbu...

RE: FAIRY TALE REVISION Stanzas revised yesterday: .5-1 (It was slow-going and I was a little sleep-deprived.) Stanzas revised this morning: 2-3 (I finished the stanza I was battling yesterday. I'm a little behind schedule, but at least I've been working, right?) Stanzas revised (total): 24 (roughly a quarter of the way through the poem) Stanzas that need revision: 65 I'm off to a slow start for the first day of the fall semester. Because Mondays are my non-duty days (no classes to teach), I'm trying not to panic too much. Key word is trying -- I don't know if I'm being very successful. But in an attempt to quell some of my anxiety, I'm going to get on the treadmill now and wear myself out (last week I managed to run Sunday-Friday -- not that my fleshy self is showing any evidence of the work I did . . .) and then take the kiddos to school and then go to my office and try to avoid the first-week-of-school chit chat that always results in putting...

RE: FAIRY TALE REVISION Stanzas revised this morning: 1 (That's right, people. One measly stanza. Took me 2 1/2 hours and lots of breaks to get breakfast foods, various beverages, and stop the puppy from chewing on the children.) Stanzas revised (total): 21 Stanzas that need revision: 68 And, an update: dog sitter found! (And two houses down from me, too. I had no idea my neighbor was a pet sitter . . . Sometimes things work out so well it scares me. I'm definitely watching for pianos falling from the sky over the next few days . . .) RE: COURSE PREP Fall semester course outlines completed: 1 (Yup, you read that right! And why yes, the semester begins on Monday!) Fall semester course outlines that need completion: 3

RE: Fairy Tale Poem Revision Stanzas revised this morning: 2 (One of them was really ****ed up and needed lots of attention) Stanzas revised yesterday morning: 6 (because I didn't revise on Tuesday -- I prepared a submission instead) Stanzas revised (total): 17 Stanzas that need revision: 72 So there's some progress made.  Yesterday I spent a lot of time fighting with my scanner so that I could create handouts for my creative writing class; I wondered if I was being counter-productive around Hour Two of this battle, and then felt better when I realized that the time I spent reflecting on the pieces I was copying would serve me well in the classroom. It's not wasted time, it's just really slow class-prep. That's what I'm telling myself anyway.  I'm so far behind. I haven't found a puppy-sitter/dog walker yet, either, and it's getting down to the wire. Out of the two leads I received (I solicited our local pet store and my brot...

RE: Fairy Tale Poem Revision Stanzas revised this morning:  3 Stanzas revised (total): 9 Stanzas that need revision: 80 That's not daunting, is it?

Well. My family and I survived the week of the Leadership Academy conference, but it feels like we did so just barely. It ended on Friday at noon -- and Friday around 8 a.m., just as I was sitting down to begin our final day, a migraine hit. Those visual disturbances called "floaters" arrived first, so I scrounged up 2 Tylenol and 2 Advil from colleagues at my table, shoved them into my face, and hoped for the best. It turns out the best did happen, and I had a minor and manageable headache for about an hour, and then I felt better. It was a huge stroke of luck -- I was afraid I'd be laid up in my car, unable to drive anywhere, unable to get my kids, unable to finish the conference  . . . but luckily, none of that happened. Crisis averted. The Leadership Academy was long and required a lot of attention and energy, but I guess I can admit that it was not without some worth. I can't totally buy into every facet of what they preached, but if anything I came away fr...

As you may gather from this post's title, I've not made much progress since I finished scanning the fairy tale. I've revised a few lines from the first chapter only. And I'm not the most cheerful of persons today. Yet somehow -- between puppy wrangling, child rearing, and fighting off fatigue and morning sickness -- I managed to revise two lines of my fairy tale poem today. That's right -- a whopping two lines in two hours. (Probably more like four hours, since I've been up since 5 a.m. with Sir New Guy.) Also, in a fit of attention deficit, I turned the "Minor Gods" section of my full-length manuscript into a chapbook manuscript and prepared it for submission to a chapbook contest . . . even though the contest doesn't open until October and I have more pressing things to do . . . like phone calls to return and a house to clean . . .  In fact, everything feels out of focus right now. I do some task and then become overwhelmed with the...

I finally finished scanning the fairy tale. Now the real work begins. I'm going to do a little overly obsessive logging of the "stats" and come back to post more later. What an effin' mess.

Woohoo! Today marks Day Three of actually raising my butt up outta bed when A. leaves for work! He's leaving close to 5:40 a.m. these days, which is later than my starting time this past spring, but who cares! The fact that I'm conscious and don't feel totally hungover when I wake up AND that I want to write -- I wrote both yesterday and the day before, people -- speaks volumes. Take THAT, hormones! I guess my body is finally beginning to adjust to this pregnancy thing, which is sooooo cool. I'm not one of those women who loves being pregnant. I like the squishy adorable baby part at the end, but I cannot stand being ruled by hormones. It totally sucks that you can be conscious of being a raving lunatic and yet somehow unable to cease being that raving lunatic when you're riding a hormone surge. Or to be aware that, in some parallel universe, you'd stop the words coming out of your mouth, but that you're stuck in this universe and in this universe y...

Oh, hello again! This morning I actually woke up early. Well, sort of early. Around 7 a.m., which is not the same as 5 a.m., but is at least before my children have stirred, so I have a few minutes to start (and perhaps finish) a blog post. Lately I've been thinking about what's been going on in my family/home life and wondering if I should post anything about it, and then I argued (with myself, of course, because I'm crazy) that this blog is, after all, about the intersection of kid-raising and poem-writing and teaching . . . so perhaps I should offer up an explanation to my readers (all 2.5 of you!) about why I've been silent throughout much of June and July. Actually, I already explained June -- we were traveling a lot, and there wasn't much time for writing or reflecting or reflective writing and so, you know    . . . but I haven't explained July. The few (2?) posts for this month have been chock-full of oh-I'm so tired and oh-this-is-so- unu...

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,...

Writing and anything related to writing crawls to a standstill during the last days of school. I'm still getting up early, but unfortunately the quiet time by myself has been spent doing other things, so I haven't made much progress.  Or actually, I guess I've made some . Somewhere in the madness of the week-long events of the SCCC Creative Writing Festival , I found time to revise one or two lines a day of the fairy tale. And I read the first six scenes of Walcott's The Ghost Dance (very good, and I think better than Walker , the first play in the book, which feels -- dare I say it -- a little clunky compared to Ghost Dance .) Also I gave up (for now) losing more precious minutes searching the stacks of paper around my house for the pages A. kindly wrote feedback on, the first half of the fairytale, up to Chapter Five, and instead I printed out the entire fairy tale in a double-spaced format (47 pages like that! That shit is long !) so that I can methodicall...