mimsy and outgrabe

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 ...

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. ...

As my daughter used to say to us when we'd have friends over and the adults became too raucous with their laughter: "Be good girls and be good boys. LISTEN!" ROBERT HASS: "Measure" HAYDEN CARRUTH: "Notes on Poverty" OLAG H. HAUGE: "Barley Field" ROBERT FROST: "The Star-Splitter" (These are some of latest from The Poetry Foundation's Audio Poem of the Day subscription. I'll share some of the finer work by women in a later post.)

I have a slight crush on Joshua Mehigan right now, partially from his book of formal poems titled The Optimist , which is -- yes, you guessed it -- sitting on my treadmill and being read during 5 minute warm ups and cool downs -- but mostly because of this article published in Poetry Magazine last year, which I just got around to reading. (Kids in bed, husband at work = interweb skulking). I'm ending the evening on a slightly depressed note, however. After reading Mehigan's essay, I made the mistake of scrolling through the 25 comments posted to the Poetry Foundation's website in response to it. It turns out that the same self-important assholes who troll the HuffPost and NYTimes and AOL sites also read and feel free to vomit all over the Poetry Foundation. Is nothing sacred? And of course, I know the answer to that. No, no, nothing is sacred. I can't forget this, after all -- I'm followed around the house most of the day by a three year old who refers to me a...