mimsy and outgrabe

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...

These: A poem by Ryan Black in AGNI Online. Another poem, by Anya Silver, in my inbox thanks to Poem-A-Day through Poets.org. Still laying out the student magazine, barely keeping up with class prep and committee work, totally and thoroughly NOT keeping up with grading, and writing scraps here and there. I did, however, come up with an idea yesterday for having our Eastern Campus journalism students contribute to and edit the East End Elements (student magazine) blog, which is good because I REALLY NEED ANOTHER PROJECT RIGHT ABOUT NOW. Also, my house is a shameful depository of laundry and dog hair. Everyone's fed and at least 60% clean, though. That's something, right?

Hello. I have been a frenetic ball of stress this week, bouncing between my computer and my children in an attempt to keep the my course outlines clothed and fed and the children ready for my first day back at school next week.  Wait, that doesn't sound right. Between little sleep and little time to prep for classes I've been marvelously bitchy. It's poems like this one , which arrived in my email inbox this morning, that help me laugh a little and take a deep breath and realize I might be able to pull this thing off. This thing being, you know, adulthood. (Consequently, I like Jordan Davis' little note that accompanies his poem as well.) It's also a good reminder that I need to interact with my kids more, instead of trying to distract them with TV while I get shit done. I am one massive parenting #fail this month. Little Miss Talkalot and I are going to be writing our August Poetry Postcard Projects into September. But we'll finish the task! I...

I did a lot of interweb reading over the month of April. As I read, I'd cut and paste each and every link I liked, or wanted to comment on, into a draft blog post on my smartphone. I'm finally getting to the point where I have a few moments to spare/type unencumbered on a real keyboard (I'm probably jinxing myself by even thinking I have a few moments to spare), and I decided I'd better get to this post before it became completely unwieldy and/or boring. April, National Poetry Month, brought with it a slew of "poem-a-day" posts to my email inbox, because I belong to two listservs, the Poem-A-Day from the poets.org (the Academy of American Poets web site) and Audio Poem of the Day from the Poetry Foundation. Generally, I find that I like the taste of whoever manages the Poetry Foundation's listserv more than I like the taste of whoever manages the Academy of American Poets listserv.  For instance, early in the month, I received this through Poem-A-Day. ...