mimsy and outgrabe

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...

Not a lot of writing has been done, obviously, but there has been a lot of internet surfing. And reading. I'm not going to put all of it here, in one post, because it would go on forever. But here's a sampling what I found that I thought was kinda interesting: This article at The Poetry Foundation by Afaa Michael Weaver titled "My Walking Shoes." Clearly there is much in Weaver's experience that I cannot relate to, as he focuses on being an African American writer who went from being a part of the working class to attending an Ivy League university (none of which I've come close to), but something clicked when I read this line: "I realized travel as the interface with self, and in that space, I was able to turn my lyric eye onto myself in a way that I had previously dismissed as bourgeois." I never even thought of the "lyric eye" turned onto itself as being "bourgeois" (I actually thought of it, if I thought...

I can't stay here because I have to get away from internet blog reading and do some serious organizing for today's set of student conferences, but I wanted to put this link to my friend L.'s blog entry up here so that I could easily revisit it . . . her paragraph at the end about dementia and collapsing boundaries is something I want to meditate on more, particularly as I write my verse play, and think about ways of structuring it, and what "collapsing boundaries" and the "loss of the ability to impose culturally acceptable narratives" can and should mean to my characters.

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.

I wasn't going to post anything today (despite another posting dry spell) because I'm in the middle of mid-semester grading (papers, papers, and now exams to add to the pile) -- but Brooklyn Copeland has a poem on the New York Times site , and I thought I'd repost it for two reasons. First, I think this "Poetry Pairings" feature is really fucking cool, and thanks to Copeland, I've just discovered it. Second, I think her poem is really fucking cool, too.  Her bio, which serves as an introduction to the poem (I'm not sure how I feel about that , NYT) points out that she's one of the youngest contributors to the Poetry Magazine anthology, "The Open Door: One Hundred Poems, One Hundred Years of Poetry Magazine." Age really shouldn't play a part in whether we think a poem (or a poet) is remarkable or not, and I think that's what the bio sets us up for -- however, the poem is remarkable no matter the age of the poet. It's qu...

First, two poems by Ish Klein. I'm not entirely sure what to think of her work as a whole, but I like this poem, "Fairy Tales from the Web," its quiet humor and especially its ending, and this audio poem , for which I really wish the Poetry Foundation had also provided text. While reading Ish Klein I discovered this lovely formal poem by William Meredith: "Five Accounts of a Monogamous Man." And then, surprise, surprise -- after finding that Contemporary Poetry Review piece I mentioned in my last post, I came across this article in The Guardian (via the NewPages blog) that talks also, albeit very briefly, about criticism (and its impending death). And now, I shall put away the laptop and go grade like a good girl. p.s. Oh! And one more: Have I mentioned my huge writer crush on Paul Lisicky? Here's Ocelot . This and three other short fiction pieces are available at Cedars . p.p.s. Damn. I keep being distracted . . . or rather, I keep looking fo...

Well, there's this interview with Joan Houlihan in the Contemporary Poetry Review about criticism. Some highlights: ...I see my own criticism as that of an ideal reader if we think of that reader as someone who: 1. Loves the art of poetry itself, not just individual poems; 2. Is well-read (and not just in poetry); 3. Meets the poem on its own terms, that is, without prejudice as to its form, content, style and unfolding; 4. Enjoys being intellectually and emotionally challenged; 5. Is drawn to mystery but put off by obscurity; 6. Is thrilled by masterful writing of any kind, that is, by the way a line is constructed, how it moves, word choice, syntactical grace; 7. Likes to learn something new (in craft or content); 8. Wants to be at least as engaged in a poem as in a successful magic act... —there’s not enough vigorous weeding.  Ideally, the weeding should be done by the educated reader, the customer who buys and reads the books, and not the critics per se, but ...

The Valentine's Day issue of Poetry Crush went live yesterday, and in it the Hyacinth Girl Press authors share their favorite erotic poems. I was kind of shocked to see my selection kick things off, but pleased, too -- Herbert's the shit! (Very eloquent, I know.) To be honest, I'd never really had a favorite erotic poem -- at least, I'd never called a poem one of my favorites because it was erotic, and I'm not sure many readers of poetry do, either. But this ended up being a fun exercise in memory and reading. I went back to my books -- opened up anthologies, searched my bookshelves for the authors and volumes I thought contained verse that might be termed "erotic" -- and eventually hit upon "Silk of a Soul" by Zbigniew Herbert. I almost chose "Rapture" by Galway Kinnell . In the end I didn't for two reasons. One, I suspected that someone else might choose a Kinnell poem (wrongly, it turns out, but someone did choose Sharon Ol...

I met Danny Hamilton when I was a dweeby little undergrad. Now I'm a dweeby college professor, and he's still friends with me. Go figure. Sometime in the far-off or not-so-far-off future, we're going to collaborate. And it's going to blow your little minds. Water Source in the Sky (1 hour painting)

1. This excellent rumination on Roald Dahl by someone on the Silkworms Ink crew. 2. This article from Beyond The Margins by Jessica Francis Kane about writing while raising children. 3. This poem by Jane Kenyon. And since I'm on a Kenyon kick, this , too. WRITING UPDATE: I'm nearly finished with the first section of the last chapter (Chapter X.i.) of the fairy tale. I spent all day at the library yesterday and managed to tweak two stanzas and write another two. I believe there will be one more before the section's complete. So I'll not have, most likely, the poem finished before the beginning of school. But I'll finish it soon. It's going to take precedence over teaching during the first week, and luckily that's okay, because the first week of school is a pretty easy week. (The second week, especially if I'm preoccupied with the poem, will be the scary week.) Yesterday I received markups from The Southern Review of my poems. Yay! That wond...

1. Dare to Love by Eliana Osborn. This has a lousy title (it reminds me of an eighties rock ballad album), and I think that some of the writing feels . . . distrustful? . . . (the short, staccato sentences, namely, that infuse the writing with drama when the situation really doesn't need to be infused with drama). So why would I suggest you read it? There are also some beautiful, devastating, brave moments in this essay -- both in subject matter and in craft. 2. A Soft Wife by Ruvanee Pietersz Vilhauer. I'm totally jealous of people who are talented at both writing and some other completely different field, like quantum physics. Vilhauer is not a quantum physicist, but she's a mother and a wife who teaches psychology at a small college in New Jersey, so she still earns my envy, because she can write a story like this while doing all of that. 3. What to Eat, What to Drink, and What to Leave for Poison By Camille T. Dungy. Courtesy of the Poetry Foundation's Poem ...

I hate to be a Debbie Downer so early on a Monday morning, but this article by Ann Larson on contingent faculty and the money machine of academia is really fantastic, albeit grim. So . . . no writing done during "quiet time" this morning, but there's still the rest of the day left . . . although I do have a committee meeting this morning. (It's for the committee that's charged with developing and overseeing the creative writing curriculum and emphasis, so it's probably in my best interest to be there, if I want for the college to regard my field seriously and with some modicum of respect.)