mimsy and outgrabe

More bad news from the college this week. Last-straw kind of bad news. We're in the midst of finals and I have so. many. papers. to grade so I'm pausing before making any grand, stress-driven decisions that can be read as emotional or knee-jerk. But I have a good idea of how I'm going to proceed. I came across this article by physicist Alan Lightman on the TED web site about quiet time/mindfulness. Here's a small sampling: Somehow, we need to create a new habit of mind, as individuals and as a society. We need a mental attitude that values and protects stillness, privacy, solitude, slowness, personal reflection; that honors the inner self; that allows each of us to wander about without schedule within our own minds. I have paid lip service to these values that Lightman writes about for years -- since becoming a mother just over thirteen years ago. They became values because I no longer had an easy way to incorporate them into my life. Infants and toddler...

ERMAHGERD, you guys. I am so so so excited about M.S.'s latest art for our sketchbook project. (Which, by the way, we're still working on, even though the deadline passed.) I wrote a poem (which is, in itself, kind of exciting  . . . to me and no one else . . . but whatever) and then M.S. took the book and made this gorgeous drawing in response this morning and LOOKIT ISN'T IT AWESOME? Text by Yours Truly, Art by Meredith Starr It makes me so happy. Welp, in other good news, after all of my griping and whinging and whining, the universe has thrown me a bone. I've been accepted into the Bread Loaf Sicily program for September 2018, which means that while I may not be doing a sabbatical or a true residency next semester, I will be granted five precious days at the end of the summer to concentrate on my writing. In Sicily. Thank you, Universe. Obviously, it's been uplifting to receive good news. On the other hand, I am seriously veering into burnout. ...

In both my Intro to Lit and Creative Writing classes I've been covering drama for the past two weeks, and it's been a light, bright breath of fresh air in a semester that's kind of stagnating. It means I get to show scenes from movies I love and respect (since scenes of stage plays are damn near impossible to get) and talk about how text and visual image intersect, how story is developed, how tension is created and dissipated, symbols, differences between direction and script, etc. I've been using Lucas Hnath's Red Speedo in creative writing, which is brilliant and darkly funny -- but only one of my students really commented on its humor. I thought that was strange. (Are we so far into the semester and the joylessness of deadlines that students can't pick up on jokes?) Always. Be. Closing. Anyway, Hnath's writing in that particular play has been compared to Mamet, another of my loves, and while I kinda see the comparison, I more or less used i...

This week delivered a wonderfully surprising sinus infection (yay spring! yay compromised immune system!) that made me feel as if my brain was trying to escape my head through my eye (we can't really blame my brain for wanting to leave, can we?) -- which did all sorts of inconvenient things to my productivity ... so I'm behind in almost everything: grading, festival prep, applications for conferences and grants, household/children maintenance, etc. I do try to be conservative when it comes to taking antibiotics but after 24-hours of a headache that made it difficult to see or think, I decided to go to the doctor and ask for something. Because who has time for this? And it turns out that -- sometimes -- a good ol' blast of antibiotics to your system is just what it needs. Sometimes.  I can think again! And now that I can, and I'm facing all of this. . .  stuff . . . that I'm supposed to finish by the end of the day/month/semester, I'm also thinking abou...

I don't know if anyone was holding their breath for it, but I took last week off from the blog. The college's spring recess was last week, and while I did attend to some grading and house-cleaning I also wanted to treat those few days like the period of rest they were supposed to be, so I gave myself this little reprieve. Mostly, I just wanted to sleep a little longer in the mornings. Because sleep is lovely. What's also lovely? Blocks of time to read. I had an amazing Sunday at the beginning of the break, so amazing it almost felt like a practical joke -- I kept waiting for something horrible to happen and undo all the good & happy of the afternoon. A. and I went to lunch sans children around noon (they were at their aunt's house hanging out with cousins)  and then -- you guys -- I sat on the couch under a blanket and read for three hours . No joke, I haven't done that in YEARS. That is not hyperbole. And it is not exaggeration to say it felt quite mirac...

"Much contemporary verse is colloquial, prosaic, apparently 'free,' going about its business without rhyme or meter or stanzaic pattern of any kind. But such poems, to survive, need two essential components: first, their makers need to have truly mastered line-break, which is simply to say that he or she can keenly feel the pressure of silence; second, the poem must act upon you in a way that resembles a human encounter. For alone, in your memory, you, you , what's the difference -- to the cells, to the synapses -- between a poem you remember and a person you recall? You want lamps to go on."  --from the essay/chapter "Black" in On Poetry by Glyn Maxwell On Poetry is one of the best books on prosody. It's more entertaining and far less technical than Robert B. Shaw's "Blank Verse," but both books together provide a fairly robust (and readable) education in poetry. This quote is another pulled from my last journal, part of my ...

"You have to simply love writing, and you have to remind yourself often that you love it."  -- Susan Orlean The last thing I want to do is turn this blog into a listicle repository of inspirational quotes written down in my journal, but this week I'm focusing on this little soundbite from Orlean, a New Yorker staff writer and book author, because it's something I've been wrestling with. In short, I've been trying to do the latter -- to remind myself that I love writing, and to focus on that.  Also: Accolades and publication are not writing. Accolades and publication are not writing. Accolades and publication are not writing. Another reminder that I need. The rejection from the residencies, coupled with the sabbatical debacle, have dealt a large blow to my ego, sure, but they've dealt the largest blow to my psyche, because they represent having less time for something that makes up a huge part of my identity (or at least, how I identi...