mimsy and outgrabe

Yesterday I returned to campus for the first time in months. It feels awesome to write that sentence. I mean, I like my job, but I really needed a good long break. The bad part about taking a big long break is that reentry can be kind of painful -- like when you realize that you have only a week left to prep for your classes. You know what's ALSO kind of painful? Reentry into your work pants after a summer of ice cream and cocktails. (Not necessarily together, but not always apart, either.) Nonetheless, despite these shocks to my system, I'm trying to be calm and collected and just keep plugging away at the course outlines, the lecture/activity prepping, the assignment-writing. As with every year, I'm trying to prep as much as I can before the semester begins so that I can grade during my non-teaching hours instead of frantically preparing notes for a lecture or activity right before class. Teaching some of the same texts from year to year helps, but sometimes you have to...

I've been trying to declutter my house for years, ever since we moved in here, really, but earnest work in this area was only really accomplished last summer and this summer. Despite these efforts, however, I've entered a new phase of hoarding: now my iCloud account is filled with clutter. Slug. This is because I compulsively take photos of just about everything, like my friend here, whom I tried to capture next to the leaf for scale and while he was stretched out fully, but only one of those two things was accomplished, clearly. This fucker was LONG. Like, I could have put a leash on him and raised him as a pet. But I didn't. Because slug. Ultimately my hoarding of pictures is really a symptom of severe Fear of Missing Out, like I can't possible remember something unless I document it with a picture and what if I can't remember it? What then am I made of? And if I'm a sum of my memories and experiences, does this mean I'm comprised of fluf...

Still working on that damn sonnet. I suspect I'm the last person who should be writing in the sonnet form, simply because I lose track of my arguments so damn quickly. Also, I stop caring about making the argument. That combination isn't great for someone working in a form that is, quite often, rhetorical. Nor is it good for someone who is about to teach rhetoric in the fall.  Anyway, as more proof that I'm the world's slowest writer, I've spent each of my mornings this week reworking the sonnet at a rate of two lines per day. It's not great nor is it extremely productive, but at least it's consistent writing practice.  I was very close to shutting everything down this summer -- no more blog, no more submissions, no more participation in the shit-show that is publishing in the U.S. (Not that I have any kind of international publication chances; it's just that publishing here seems fraught with more nonsense than in other countries.) I'm...

August is a month for slowing down and resting, or so a pop-up horoscope tells me. And we should all believe and be guided by our internet astrologers, ammaright? (Honestly, what did I click on for astrology ads to start appearing in my web browser?) These may be the only crop from my garden this year. I've spent my morning writing hours this week working on a poem (building and then destroying a sonnet, more or less . . . it's probably gonna take another week). And I reincarnated an old writing group for the month of August -- we'll met once or twice a week at different spots to escape our respective clutter-traps and care-taking responsibilities and concentrate on our work. I've picked up the play I began last summer, Accountability Partners , as my project to concentrate on for this last month of the break. I need to develop Act II of the verse play, too, but I wanted to work on something I have a good chance of actually finishing before school begins...

There's a man in this house your golden hair Margareta Last Friday's trip to the Cloisters was indeed restorative, although my small hour (or two) spent drinking red wine with C.C. in her apartment in the West Village was also soul-feeding (albeit a touch dehydrating). Then I flew to Bushwick in a cab and made it to the gallery just in time to see M.S.'s exhibit at Wayfarer's. Then she and her husband fed me tacos. (I didn't need to eat tacos probably but who turns down tacos?) The next day I was a little groggy from a lack of sleep, but I definitely felt like my psyche was well-rested, if that can be a thing. From the garden at The Cloisters Today I'm spending some one-on-one time with The Boy. I try to have "a day" with the kids each semester, a little time with each individually where I spoil them and treat us to a meal out where we can talk without their siblings interrupting or competing for attention. I've already done this with...

It's been a week of sleep and silence, more or less. I'm really tired lately. I've been using the mornings to rest instead of waking and writing, and not feeling too poorly about it because I'm having one of those do-I-really-have-much-to-say moments.  I've been doing more reading. I have a huge stack of books in my bedroom and a larger stack of chapbooks piled precariously in my living room that I need to read, and I'd all but taken a blood oath to refrain from book-buying until I'd made my way through these stacks -- and yet last week, before I attended the art crit in Brooklyn, M.S. and I ducked into Books are Magic and I bought -- because I have absolutely zero impulse control, apparently -- two books, one of which is Durga Chew-Bose's Too Much and Not the Mood . The title of the book comes from a diary entry of Virginia Woolf, who was also deep inside one of those do-I-really-have-much-to-say moments, and I suppose some feeling of solidarity w...

I've been feeling a little uncomfortable with my interview in the Hand of Wheel podcast this week. Not because of Maura and Haele, the hosts, or the fact of the interview itself, but in my relatively privileged response to some of their questions, primarily about the MFA. I feel a little douchey. Douchy. How does one make douche an adjective? Anyway. I feel alternately like a shit heel, and then defensive of my relatively low and insignificant place in the world of poetry, because it's a hard-won place even if it is cramped and spectacularly unremarkable. Also, listening to yourself laugh has got to be one of the most torturous exercises ever. But I'm getting sidetracked. I cringed inside whenever I heard myself say something on the podcast that I felt could, quite easily, be countered reasonably (and/or unreasonably attacked by internet trolls). A skilled rhetorician I am not, and it's quite evident here. And yet, part of me shrugs, too: nothing is accomplis...