mimsy and outgrabe

This week's acclimation to the new semester was interrupted by "The Blizzard!!" which was not so much a blizzard as it was a really healthy amount of snow . . . enough that we'll probably be seeing it still in March, until temperatures turn somewhat warmish.  This meant my children and I were trapped inside the house with each other for two full days. (A. was trapped at work for one night and two days, so we haven't seen him much this week.) Days home with my children are lovely in some ways (baking! board games! playing in snow!) and torturous in others (fighting! rough-housing! and noise! noise! noise!).  I've still been using my mornings to read, and some of it has been applicable not just to my writing but to my teaching as well. I'm teaching "Effective Thinking" this semester (horrible title, I know; and it doesn't sound like something *I* would be an expert in, does it?) and I found this passage from Marina Tsvetayeva to Boris...

This week marks the beginning of the new semester. It may, also, mark a return to actual writing on this blog. And perhaps that writing will be ABOUT writing and about reading, and maybe/hopefully slightly less about stress and overcommitment and whatever other nonsense makes me sound (and act) like a crazy person. We can hope, can't we? Of course, part of what helps me navigate stress and overcommitment is being able to write about those problems here on the blog: putting them out into the ether and hoping that, if someone reads them, they find in my ramblings some kind of solidarity or kinship, a kind of hey-I-go-through-that-too recognition. So, I'm working my way back into a regular early-morning reading/writing schedule, as well as a regular exercise/running schedule, both of which also go a long way toward making me more clear-headed and less, you know, anxious/obnoxious. Reading regularly always helps me find my way back into writing, even if it's som...

I need a personal assistant. Or a straight jacket. I woke up with a headache.  I'm in charge of a blog for our faculty union and I haven't posted to it since October. I'm teaching an online composition course and most of the students appear to have no idea how they're doing in the class -- and at this point, I can't tell if it's because they can't use Blackboard correctly or if I'm really THAT behind in grading.  I'm meeting my creative writing students in conferences this week because I AM that behind with grading. I'm writing here because I have the time because I feel like a little reflection and disclosure might help manage my guilt about how badly I mismanaged my responsibilities this semester, despite feeling, more times than not, like I was doing something that needed, absolutely, to be done. One more week. One more week. One more week. This is something I am looking forward to because it has to do with writing and the practi...

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...

I think I've posted about Kate Zambreno before -- she wrote the wonderful book Heroines , in which she writes about modernist women (wives, girlfriends, colleagues, friends of modernist males) and her complex relationship to them (how she idolizes them, empathizes with them, rejects them, lives like them and as a reaction to them) -- and now she's resurrected her blog to post an excerpt from an essay on Kathy Acker . I'm not sure how long it will remain up, because quite often she becomes exasperated with herself and the world and shuts down her blog -- which is frustrating for fans of her blog, but a really interesting exercise in, or exploration of, voice and the silencing of one's voice, a kind of editing or self-censorship. I'm writing this blog post rather guiltily, myself. I have so much to do. I should be using every waking moment that's not spent in service to my family in service to work. I'm really, really behind for the fourth week of the se...

I believe I've broken a record. After struggling all weekend with the demonic force that is Microsoft Office's PowerPoint, and failing to successfully record a sound track to my lectures -- the damn program keeps cutting off my narration abruptly on several slides --  I've taken a personal day. Two weeks in and taking a personal day! That's gotta be a record, right? But it's necessary. My face to face classes can survive having their schedule bumped a day, particularly because it's so early in the semester, and that will give me approximately six no-kids-or-husband-in-the-house hours to concentrate wholly and fully on fixing the technical problems and then, perhaps, getting some grading done. I spent so much time fooling around with PowerPoint this weekend that I neglected to grade the quizzes and small assignments that have already begun to accumulate. And I'm bone-tired, the result of staying up until 2 a.m. fiddling with my f*&*^%g files and...

One week of school completed, and I'm all sorts of in-the-weeds again. Not panicking especially yet, but that's because I'm deluding myself into thinking I have control by paying attention to my little list-making phone app (Wunderlist) and occasionally running (three times last week!) and then also kind-of sort-of staying on top of the laundry situation in my household. Yesterday I turned 38. I don't think this is especially significant except that it means I'm still eligible to have my manuscript rejected for the Yale Younger Poets Prize, because under 40 is still considered "younger," and I haven't had a book published yet. Also, they haven't published anything that looks or sounds remotely like my own work in  . . . maybe forever? . . . and yet I'll probably continue to send my MS in each year until I get the book published by someone else or I turn 40.  I really, really hope it's not the latter, but  . . . you know. OHMYG...