mimsy and outgrabe

This week I worked on the Prose Project even though I have my doubts and misgivings about the direction I've started on, I'm trying to be calm and just allow myself to write what may very well be nonsense. I'm trying to give myself space to try things, to fail, to start again, and to play. Particularly because -- other than reviews and this blog -- prose writing isn't usually my thing. I finished a fiction book this week and I'm still reading Poets at Work , which is wonderful and strangely ... well, comforting, for lack of a better word. I'll be sad and bereft when I finish it. The Lowell interview is my favorite thus far, although I also just began the Walcott review -- and I love reading it because it reminds me of being in his classes, and also the few precious times I had conversations with him outside of class. But it also might end up be my favorite because of what he says in the interview, and how it resonates alongside other things I've been engagin...

This is something that my lovely therapist M. (former, since I'm a chump and can't carve out time to see someone right now) used to say to me when I sat in her cozy office and threw up (metaphorically) all of the many many many things that stressed me out and caused me to be a frenetic ball of panic and catastrophe. She would wait for a pause in my litany of "blah blah blah stress blah blah blah work blah blah blah kids" and then say something to the effect of, "You just have too many good things vying for your attention right now."  She was really adept at reminding me, gently, to be appreciative of my good fortune. As I write that paragraph above, too, I'm conscious of the fact that to have anyone vying for my attention makes me lucky; I could be alone, really alone. Not in a comfortable, peaceful, solitary way of being alone -- like my mornings, when I write (or, unfortunately, as of late -- grade). But the aloneness that feels closed, without ...

The spring semester and the 2016-2017 academic year has ended. In some ways, I'm right where I've always been at this time of year -- dehydrated and riding down a steep wave of elevated cortisone. In other ways, I'm much different . . . or at least, I have the prospect of being much different before me.  My promotion to full professor from associate professor means I don't have to participate quite so avidly anymore in the various aspects of college service that I found too taxing, or ill-fitting, or uninspiring. It means that I can begin to shape my career at the college according to my own wishes, not the administration's, and as a result my writing career will begin to change shape, too. At least, that's my hope.  I'm looking forward to having more control over how I spend my time at my job; perhaps, you know, being a better teacher. It's exhausting and depressing to reach the end of a semester and feel as though you let down -- whether th...

You know what's awesome? I'm now eligible for old-lady poetry awards. That's right. Not that there are a ton of over-40 awards, but when they come around, I could totally throw my purple hat in the ring. * A quick internet search has corrected me. I would throw my RED hat in the ring. Also, I don't recommend doing that internet search. The results are so saccharine you'll have to bleach your eyes. I took one for the team, ya'll. * Anyway, I'm still working on submitting my full-length to lots of places (i.e. just throwing my hard-earned money at the universe, essentially) AND today is the last day of classes/office hours before Spring Break, so I'm looking forward to my micro-sabbatical next week. * If it happens. My dad's health is a little precarious at the moment, and we might have to take a quick trip south to help out. * I plan on working on "Accountability Partners" -- my play that is not my verse play ...

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...