mimsy and outgrabe

"Be happy; you're writing from the privilege of all your wits about you in your old age, under the thorn acacias by the noon sea, the light on all the places you have painted and hope to paint with the strenuous accuracy of joy, the village houses, the streets untainted by any history, by any thought or shadow on the blank canvas except from the sky; be grateful that each craft stays hard to do. In what will be your last book make each place as if it had just been made, already old, but new again from naming it." -- from "The Prodigal" by Derek Walcott Sure, this little ars poetica at the end of "The Prodigal" is the poet speaking to himself at the end of an illustrious career, and there are few parallels I can draw between the speaker of these lines and myself, but the passage serves as this lovely reminder of the joy found in the act of creation. And that in the end, we fight death by giving birth, over and over again, with new poem...

I'm now two weeks into the summer "vacation" and one week into teaching my summer literature course. Already I have little moments where I fear this precious, non-rat-race time is almost over, but overall I'm trying to stay level-headed and calm and be productive -- simply because if I can do good, earnest work over the next month -- prepping for fall classes and taking care of lose ends for the creative writing festival and the literary magazine I advise -- I'll be able to be present, and relaxed, during the entire months of July and August, and hopefully be more present, and more relaxed, than I ever have at the beginning of a fall semester.  I've said it before and I'll say it again: It's probably a pipe-dream, but it's my pipe-dream, man. Now that spring grading mania is over, I'm returning to things that I attempted to make regular practice but were elbowed out of the way when shit got real (and by "shit got real" I me...

It's amazing how a person can teach for 11 years and only JUST figure out in her 11th year that, maybe, she should figure out 1) EXACTLY how much time it takes her, on average, to grade the assignments that she grades and 2) schedule it into her work week just like she schedules class time and office hours and meeting times, so that the time is accounted for and protected and separate from all other things. (And by "a person" I mean me, and by "amazing" I mean kind of shameful and stunning in its obviousness.) Patti Smith talk about writing in Hartford last weekend. So good. I imagine there are people who are kind of horrified at the idea of scheduling your days in increments and appointments but that's the nature of this gig, I think -- at least, if you're going to do this gig well enough to keep your sanity and not get fired. (And by gig I mean teaching higher-ed. Sheesh. Constantly qualifying. This week has drained me. Brain not quite workin...

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...

Yesterday I received the coolest email from a couple in New Jersey, fellow participants in that Poetry Postcard Project Little Miss Talkalot and I participated in back in August 2013. They were on the receiving end of one of her postcards (you can see it and read the poem here ) and they wanted permission to reprint the poem along with a photo of a windmill from their backyard on their Christmas card this year. Also, they needed to know Little Miss Talkalot's actual name, because I don't believe she wrote a byline on this particular postcard. I was only able to talk about it with her last night right before she went to bed, after an entire evening of shuttling back and forth between our house and the middle of town -- first, violin lesson drop off and pick up, and then a late-night (7:30!) trip to the school offices where she gave a report from her Student Council to the PTA members. The little girl is turning into her mama -- meetings up the wazoo, involvement in absolute...

Yesterday I received a phone call from my one and only C.C., and she reminded me that I'm disappearing into work again and forgetting about other important facets of my life. (Oddly enough, though, yesterday morning -- well before the phone call -- I worked on a poem, and that was something I hadn't done for weeks. Yesterday something in the stars must have shifted and the universe was shouting, "Hey stupid! Wake up and do something else with your time!) Thanks, Fjords Review ! I mean, I *have* been doing something else with my time, but it's mainly involved the kiddies. Now that school is back in session for them, too, we're all sorts of busy as a family. There's a lot of negotiating between different activities and attempts to get small people to places without losing one of them or what's left of my mind. It hasn't been a bad couple of weeks, just very very active. I'm trying to stay on top of things, and remember that most of the ...

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 ...

It's been a week of recovery! And Plan-Making Lite, meaning that I'm beginning to think of the best way to tackle all of the things I'd like to do with these next few teaching-free months. My summer class was under-enrolled and didn't run, which is probably more good fortune for me than bad: I'll have less money, but now I can use the next month (the one where my children are still in school) to do prep for the fall at a leisurely pace, and to work on the things that I'm feeling starved for, like reading and writing. And exercise -- even the simplest kind, such as walking through my neighborhood or stretching. And sleep. Lots of sleep. I've begun reading this week, as a kind of segue between Disaster Semester and Disaster Semester Prevention Planning, Lynda Barry's Syllabus . It's really marvelous. Lynda Barry is one of my new favorites. I discovered her via my colleague D.W., who studied with her at University of Wisconsin-Madison (and is actu...

This week has been strange. I met with my Monday/Wednesday classes three days in a row, kind of. That is, I HELD class three days in a row, because on Tuesday we were supposed to make up a snow day, but only 6 students showed up to my creative writing class and a whopping 3 attended my intro to the novel class. Students must really like my classes! And then we were snowed out yesterday by another 4 or 8 inches. And I was really happy. Because lately, work is more and more a place where I'm continually behind and unable to complete the tasks for which I'm responsible. And that's fairly demoralizing and soul-sucking. On a more optimistic note, it's really gorgeous outside this morning: the wind is almost nonexistent, so all of yesterday's snowfall is still covering the tree branches and the sun is shining and the air is extremely fucking cold and crisp. It's lovely.  Other good news: Fabulous Beast was a semi-finalist for the Alice James Book Aw...

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...

Yup, still here. I know you were worried. The Creative Writing Festival went well. There were some problems: the usual SCCC facilities/bureaucracy nonsense but nothing insurmountable. Allison Seay's reading was so lovely. I really love To See the Queen , and her preface to the poems and her subsequent delivery of them was intimate and clear and kind of raw, in the best way. Kelly Daniels is awesome -- A. and I had him over for dinner the night before the festival and they traded stories about breweries and craft beer and he was assaulted by my dogs and my children and not only survived, but seemed to enjoy himself. Colum McCann, too, rock star author that he is, was charming -- extremely down to earth, endearing everyone with his sense of humor and his self-deprecation. It was a good day after all. I've been doing some writing, but none of it here (obviously) and little of it on my creative work, like poetry, like the verse play. One of my duties at the college is to wri...

Back in August, a self-described "reader of poetry" (and poet himself, although he didn't let me know that at first!) named Paul David Adkins contacted me through Facebook and said that he'd reviewed my chapbook for Luna Luna Magazine. I was totally flattered and very excited and checked the magazine quite frequently to see when the review would run . . . and, well, it didn't for quite a few months. I didn't totally forget about it, but I'd resigned myself to the thought that perhaps the editors of Luna Luna didn't find the review compelling enough (because of the subject matter, my little book) or that they didn't have room for it, etc. I came up with lots of reasons inside my crazy head. And then yesterday, quite out of the blue, I found this posted to my Facebook wall. It's a really thoughtful, generous review of my chapbook. I'm touched and flattered and happy to have my poems written about so well, and at such length. So,...

The REALLY good news? I managed to teach the first two parts of Anna Karenina to my Intro to the Novel class yesterday without having thoroughly re-read the material. And I don't think I screwed up my students! In Kermit the Frog fashion, can I get a big "YAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYY . . ." Hello? Anyone? ANYWAY. William Kelley Woolfitt generously published my verbose answers to his interview questions yesterday on his wonderful project, Speaking of Marvels . You can find my specific interview here , but I would recommend scrolling through the site and reading the interviews from all of the other chapbook authors. It's interesting to see inside other people's writing processes. Also, I like that he provides a sample of each poet (or fiction writer's) work at the end of each interview. ALSO, that he interviews authors of fiction chapbooks, and non-fiction chapbooks, which are a little more rare than poetry chaps.  So it was pleasant and exciting to see...

Yup -- still around. This semester's not quite the kick in the pants that last semester was . . . er, YET . . . but it's been keeping me busy. The elements have been conspiring to keep me from seeing my creative writing class. Since this semester began, I've seen them TWICE. And because I'll be away in Virginia this weekend for a reading Sunday night, traveling back on Monday, I'm not holding class until Wednesday. The last I saw them was LAST Wednesday. So when I DO finally meet with them, it will have been two weeks since our previous meeting. Crazy, huh? Of course, the college will cram a whole bunch of make up dates into the last week of school, which will make grading finals absolutely maddening unless I start moving things around on my assignment schedule drastically. Our phones and internet and intranet have been all sorts of compromised by the snow and ice, too, so I haven't had access to my computer files all week. I get to the office and I ...

Well, somehow I made it to the end of the week without completely losing my mind or my dignity. I say completely, because I'm fairly sure I lost a little of both. And that's pretty standard. I'm losing brain cells and pride the way a beach loses sand . . . a little bit at a time, imperceptibly, until one day, people'll be like, "Wow, she's nuts!" the way we go to the beach and say, "Wow, the water's right up to the dunes now." Or something like that. The beach losing sand is more impressive, really. I have a gajillion papers to finish grading this weekend. And myriad errands to run with the kiddos, who need clothes, diapers, birthday presents for friends . . . so I don't have high hopes for the grading. I do have good news to share, though. Verse Wisconsin Online published two of my poems (with audio -- a first for me!) and the issue was just released today. So that's happy-making. Even if I look like a sleep-deprived h...

This week has been a busy one.  First, I've been traveling with the kiddies, and we discovered that the newbie gets car sick. (Yay!)  Second, I had two different writing deadlines. The first was for a guest blog post over at Carly Pizzani's Fine Fit Day , which went live today. I haven't done this kind of expository writing in a long time, and it was fun to flex those muscles again. Of course, I had to rely on a ton of help from my mom, who walked the baby and distracted the older kiddies while I typed away to meet the Wednesday deadline. Third, I had to write a final, last report for that Leadership Academy I participated in last August. The rules were: write a final report, earn a Certificate of Completion. Miss the deadline for the final report, earn a Certificate of Participation. I decided I'd be damned if I was going to earn some lame Certificate of Participation after sacrificing two weeks (one last August, and one this upcoming August) to the Lea...

It's here! My little fable/collection of poems is now available as a chapbook from Hyacinth Girl Press .

One of my poems from the Summer 2012 issue of The Gettysburg Review appears on their website as a past selection! I'm not sure how long it will last there, but for now I'm kinda chuffed.

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...

I began revision of the fairy tale this morning. Slow going, but it feels good (and right) to be working on it again. Yesterday, this arrived in the mail: These two things make for a nice beginning to the week.