mimsy and outgrabe

We survived!  That's kind of how it felt to present, even though the woman who put together the panel was lovely and kind and relaxed and my fellow panelists were interesting and also kind and chill  . . . but the guidelines for writing our conference paper and the rules about presenting at SECAC were rigid and fairly antithetical to the spirit of the conference, which is celebratory and joyful and emphasizes fun in art.  My writing looks like a middle-schooler's M. and I read our paper last, after two presentations that were several degrees less formal, but I think it was received well and that we've come out of this experience with a paper we can submit for publication somewhere. That's a first for me -- I've published primarily poetry but no academic papers since being at Stuffolk, so this is a new adventure of sorts. An adventure for dorks, if you will -- but an adventure nonetheless. This morning I'm attending a panel on punk rock and how it...

Columbus is so much more glamorous than I could ever be, you guys. What is it with this place? So much art, beautiful streets with eclectic little stores, amazing food. Just amazing. Are you hungry? Get thee to Columbus. Also they have umpteen breweries around which is making A. very happy, but even he admits that the food trumps the beer in this magical little city. The line for this place was crazy long. I mean, have I left the conference strip? No. Do I have any real sense of the true Columbus, OH? Absolutely not. But these few city blocks have been really, really good to me. Oh yeah, and the art conference! SECAC is a pretty low-key, feel-good, celebratory event so far. Really cool panel topics and presenters, with very welcoming and friendly attendees, so my imposter syndrome is dissipating somewhat. It may rage back in full form when I enter the room where M. and I are presenting later this morning, but for now, I'm finding it a pretty cool experience to be ...

This week was chock full of incidents that have made me seethe with anger and defensiveness and resentment and then, ultimately, just kind of sink back into a weird sort of ambivalence about other people, because ultimately, there's not a damn thing I can do about the way they are going to act.  Also, anger and defensiveness and resentment is exhausting. Also, I do not have time for that shit.  The small-child's worth of grading has been (finally) organized and I'm slowly but surely turning it into the size of, oh, a smaller child. It's still pretty damn big. But at least I'm making progress, and there's the chance that by the end of the weekend I *might* have a small-child's worth of graded assignments to hand back.  That would be awesome, wouldn't it? Just let me dream, haters. Today I'm going to soccer games, the dentist, and a wedding. WHAT IS MY LIFE. Tomorrow I'm participating in a Making Strides walk at the college. ...

I wish I could say I have exciting news or profound thoughts about writing or teaching but I've hit that mid-semester wall of grading and deadlines for various things (sabbatical application, paper for conference) and it's just been a bit of a grind lately. I had to put my books and my writing aside for the moment because every morning I'm getting up early to do damage control. It's not great. Today I have two meetings in the morning and then I intend to divide my time between that Very Important For My Professional and Personal Sanity Sabbatical Application and the 30 lbs of grading I have stacked in a tote in my living room. That's right -- I have a small-child's worth of grading to do this weekend. The worst thing is that some of it IS graded but has to be entered into my online grade books in Blackboard, and everything is so jumbled together from being carted between classroom and office and home repeatedly that it will take at least an hour to make sen...

Well, I'm back. Sort of. I mean, I never really left -- my husband did, for storm work in Florida, and it sent me into a kind of only-the-essentials mode, so blogging was low on my list of priorities.  I've been trying to keep up with reading and writing in addition to my school duties, but all three took a hit during the month of September. I probably read the most -- it was easier to do when sitting in a car waiting for my daughter to emerge from soccer practice or at night when I was attempting to exercise my dog (he will only give me the ball and let me throw it if I pretend to ignore him -- if I ask for it or even demand it there's no way in hell he's giving it to me. We have an odd working relationship.) I've just finished Louise Glück's Faithful and Virtuous Night . I love returning to her voice -- I haven't read her work in years -- but I have to say that my heart still rests with The Wild Iris , which I love with that ...

The first week of the academic year went relatively smoothly, although when yesterday came around I was massively under-prepared and so didn't eat much all day OR have a dinner plan for the kids pre- or post- soccer practice. The result was that I was exhausted by 9 p.m., but for all of that chaos, it was still a good day. While it's still too early to confirm any first impressions, the students in my classes are really engaged this year and it's not been an uphill battle to get them to participate in discussion. (And that can really make all the difference. Talking "at" a silent crowd is really, like, the worst. Particularly if they're a silently hostile crowd.) The things that distract me at soccer practice. I teach three classes back to back on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and that makes for a day without much room for error. I just need to prepare more on Monday and Wednesday nights to make sure everything goes smoothly. The week was made a little...

"Be happy; you're writing from the privilege of all your wits about you in your old age, under the thorn acacias by the noon sea, the light on all the places you have painted and hope to paint with the strenuous accuracy of joy, the village houses, the streets untainted by any history, by any thought or shadow on the blank canvas except from the sky; be grateful that each craft stays hard to do. In what will be your last book make each place as if it had just been made, already old, but new again from naming it." -- from "The Prodigal" by Derek Walcott Sure, this little ars poetica at the end of "The Prodigal" is the poet speaking to himself at the end of an illustrious career, and there are few parallels I can draw between the speaker of these lines and myself, but the passage serves as this lovely reminder of the joy found in the act of creation. And that in the end, we fight death by giving birth, over and over again, with new poem...