~ rice in the cupboard ~

How Sweet It Is

2012-02-06T10:42:00.000-08:00

The new issue of Sweet: A Literary Confection is live, lovely, and free online! And I am oh so honored to have two poems included, alongside work by other awesome people like Nin Andrews and Michael Martone. Seriously, how cool is it to appear in the same journal as people whose work you've long admired? Pretty freaking cool.

Anyway, go check it out!

A Selection of Random Links

2012-01-20T09:57:00.000-08:00

After Wednesday's blackout, it appears the interwebs are buzzing with interesting stories this morning. Or perhaps I should credit my friends' Friday procrastination instead; I've found all of these posted by my facebook and/or twitter colleagues. Regardless, because I've come across such a diverse array of interesting things this morning, I don't have a coherent idea to post about; instead, you get a smidgen of many different ideas.

So, in no particular order, I offer you:

A proposal to eliminate university tuition -- With all the crazy shit that's happened at the UC schools recently, this is actually positive information. From the article, "On Wednesday, a group of students at UC Riverside presented a proposal to UC President Mark Yudof that would abolish tuition - and he’s actually considering it." The best thing about it, at least from this short article, is that the plan actually makes sense.

An indicator that I truly am old -- Nothing says "you're not a kid anymore" like the news that your favorite childhood movie is being remade. And now, The Princess Bride is the victim. I'll grant that this cast/director could be a lot worse, but still, they're messing with perfection and I am not pleased.

Comedy, satire, and politics -- and the hazy borders between them. Some of my former Penn State colleagues and I recently had a long, involved discussion on facebook about Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart and political satire. It started with this article, and then this one, which I'd read a few days before, and the link I started with addresses some of the issues we'd been discussing. I will say that I'm not 100% sold on Colbert in many ways, that I prefer Stewart's approach; but I also acknowledge that Colbert's recent "long-form journalism" (as this article calls it) re: campaign finance, super PACs, etc is pretty effective in showing a non-expert audience exactly how fucked up the system is.

Another serious-comic piece -- which I relate to all too well. Maybe cracked.com is running out of ideas, but this one on "The 5 Stupidest Habits You Develop Growing Up Poor" is really on-point. I've had this conversation with a couple of friends of mine, one of whom grew up with less than I did (and I grew up firmly working class, if not "poor" exactly) and the other who grew up in a privileged suburb; the insidious effects of poverty are easy to under-estimate, especially for people who've never been there as well as those who've gotten past that income level. This piece, which is humorous in many places, does a great job of explaining some of them.

And a bit of bad news from India -- I adore Salman Rushdie. I first read him in high school, and my mother disapproved. I've read nearly all his books. I even used a quote from one of his essays as an epigraph for my MFA thesis. I follow him on Twitter. And I find it so ridiculous, and sad, that his life is still being threatened. This article is interesting as well in its discussion of literary festivals, and the question of what happens when these events (or any events) grow too big too fast. It also makes me both sad and relieved to be missing the AWP festival next month.

And I believe that's it for today. I need to get off the couch, run some errands, clean my apartment, and get ready to meet up with friends this evening where I get to hear about L's trip to Costa Rica. Yay! Have I mentioned how much I love my life?

Afterthought: in an effort to not be too "cheery," I'll also give you this morning's small stone:

the furnace works
for two solid hours
warming the morning rooms
enough to move
I don't get up until I can feel my nose

Feeling Privileged

2012-01-15T16:26:00.000-08:00

I went grocery shopping yesterday. I read labels, compared ingredients, did my best to choose healthy foods and beauty products that were not tested on animals. And I thought as I drove home that those kinds of consumer choices, as important as they may be, are not available to everyone, that being able to make those choices is a mark of economic privilege.

* * *

I feel lucky in so many ways these days. I love where I live. I love what I do. I have an amazing group of friends here in Columbus. I still have wonderful friends back in Pennsylvania. I have so much freedom in my schedule and in my life. I have time to write and to read and to work out and to cook.

* * *

I was out with friends the other night and I couldn't stop thinking how happy I am to be back in Columbus. I'd gone to a hockey game earlier (free tickets through a friend's boss), we walked from the arena up to the Short North, then went to a bar where we made friends with a bunch of girls dressed in 80's costumes for a birthday party. I was with a group of lesbians, some of whom were couples and being visibly affectionate; we were not at a gay bar, yet no one batted an eye.

Some Thoughts About the Drive Home

2012-01-11T19:39:00.000-08:00

This quarter, I have a much shorter commute, though sometimes more frustrating. I don't have to get on the highway. I begin by driving out Bryden Road, past all the lovely old houses (some in good repair, others much less so). I jog up Nelson and then turn right on East Broad, where I stay for the next 10 miles or so: past the ornate houses in Bexley at first, then through a wilderness of strip malls in Whitehall, past the outerbelt, more strip malls, and then I arrive at the college, housed in a building that looks to me like an old bank, but used to be an event center (the ballroom still has a removable dance floor).

* * *

I spend a lot of time on my way to campus sitting at traffic lights. On my way home, I catch the majority of them green.

* * *

I sometimes think as I'm driving that this stretch of road is what gives Ohio a bad name -- the strip malls, the presence of almost every type of fast food imaginable. There are the typical ones: Taco Bells, McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King. There are two Tim Horton's, an Arby's, a KFC, a White Castle, a Skyline Chili. There are the faux ethnic options: two Mark Pi's, one Panda Express, a Chipotle (which I do love, in all honesty). There is pizza of multiple varieties, Subway, Penn Station, as well as two Bob Evans, an Applebees, a Tumbleweed, and two different chicken wing joints. It's disgusting sometimes to think about just how much bad food is available on that journey.

Because I'm teaching evening classes, I'm generally hungry when I leave campus at night, but I've made it my goal NOT to stop for food on the way home. Instead, last night I came back, boiled some udon noodles and tossed them with kimchi, thawed frozen spinach, soy sauce, a smidge of sugar, and sesame oil. It was delicious! Tonight I opened a can of vegetarian baked beans and heated up some leftover mashed potatos. Can't win them all, I guess.

* * *

The first couple of times I drove back, I almost missed the turn onto Nelson Road. This week, I realized that as soon as I can see the lights of downtown Columbus appear ahead of me, I need to make the next left. It makes perfect sense, and it makes me smile to make that connection, to feel like I'm coming back through the suburbs to where I really live.

* * *

And, finally, today's #smallstone

the lights that seem white
as I drive past them
darken to yellow
up ahead
leaning in to each other
a bell ringing gold

Book Report

2012-01-06T08:43:00.001-08:00

Because I had a lot of free time over Winter Break, and because I've recently rediscovered the joys of my library card, I've been reading novels again. Being a grad student and then scrambling to teach three new classes this fall (well, two sections of one, and one section of another), I didn't get to read for pleasure a whole lot. But, I've read three novels recently, and I feel like discussing them.

The first one I read was Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates. The novel was published in 1962, and it's set in the 50's. I can't say that I loved this book, but it was very interesting to read in its historical context. It made me curious about the recent movie adaptation -- how would the tone differ in a movie made in the 2000's? I haven't watched it yet, but I'm curious. The main thing I didn't care for in this book is a problem I have with so much "great" literary fiction, and that is the almost complete lack of sympathetic characters. Yes, I know people are flawed and life is difficult, and I'm not asking for a fairy tale story or perfect hero, but it's hard for me to engage with a story if I can't like, sympathize with, admire, or understand the humanity of the characters.

In terms of character, the second book was by far the best, in my opinion. Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell focuses on a teenaged girl in Michigan, a strange, flawed, fascinating character from beginning to end of the novel. In spite of the title's tone, the story here is harshly real, involving violence, drugs, and sex for many different reasons; in a word, it's about survival, about a girl finding a way to survive and eventually to live in her world. Margo, the main character, is a sympathetic personality in spite of her crimes; she evolves, struggles, wavers, runs away, and while the ending is not exactly wrapped up in a neat bow, she eventually finds a way to live. The rivers and their surroundings also play a key role in the story, which is something I love in a story. I was sad when I got to the end of the novel, wishing it could have been longer, and though it might resonate more for people in this part of the country, I think it's a novel that most readers would appreciate.

The third book I read yesterday, in one day. When I was in Cleveland a few weeks ago, two of my friends recommended Daughters of the North by Sarah Hall, which I think they'd recently read in book club. The novel is generally described as feminist dystopian fiction in the tradition of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale or P.D. James' The Children of Men (both novels I admire and enjoyed), and those are useful comparisons. I'm still thinking about the larger themes of the book in regards to violence and when/if it is necessary or right. This is an uncomfortable book in a lot of ways; the near-future economic collapse and resulting police state in Britain feels all too possible (yes, it's a British novel, and the vocabulary is very British, particularly the vocabulary Hall uses in describing the natural world - while I got a good picture of the place, I'm sure a native would have gotten a better, more specific one) and the women's violence is difficult to admire. Like I said, I'm still thinking about the themes, but in terms of writing, I felt that the narrator was a bit lacking in personality, and the structure felt a bit gimmicky (the sections are presented as retrieved police interview/confession recordings, some with "data lost" in convenient places). The story moves slowly for the first hundred or so pages, but it's a slim book, about 200 pages in total, and I read it in one day. In short, I'm glad my friends recommended it, but I found aspects of the writing disappointing and I'm still processing the larger implications of the story.

Small Stones

2012-01-02T09:01:00.000-08:00

I decided yesterday to take part in the Small Stones challenge for January. You can read more about the idea here, but basically the challenge is to notice something and create a brief piece of writing that captures that moment of noticing, for each day in January. It's a way of being present and aware in our worlds, during a time of year in which I am inclined to hibernate in my apartment and bury myself in my faux fur-trimmed coat when I venture out. It's also a nice, low-pressure way to making myself writing something every day.

I'm doing mine on Twitter, as are many other people, using the hashtag #smallstone. I've also decided to tag a lot of mine #OTE (for Olde Towne East - my new neighborhood - which I'm still in the process of figuring out). If you want to follow me on Twitter, for this reason or any other, you can find me @emandermay. I like the Twitter form because it ensures brevity, but I'm setting my posts up with line breaks so I can add on to them later.

Anyway, enough explanation. Here are my first two small stones:

January 1st:

At 6am the new year
hangs quiet and soft,
last year's rain glimmering
like last night's sequins.

January 2nd:

The year's first snow
sifts down
light and tiny as sugar crystals
lining the roof's shingles
the alley's bricks.

I probably won't post all of them here since I'm doing them on Twitter. Now, back to the lesson planning. Classes start tomorrow.

A Delicious Start to the New Year

2012-01-01T17:12:00.000-08:00

Rather than any sort of in-depth reflection on the year that was or an overly-ambitious list of resolutions for the coming year, I’ve decided to post today about my favorite New Year’s Day tradition. For many people of certain cultural backgrounds, pork and sauerkraut is the traditional meal on January 1^st. My mother always made it, and I don’t remember if I ever liked it; but I don’t want to talk about pork and sauerkraut. Instead, I want to talk about Chinese food.

Yes, I said Chinese food. That’s my traditional New Year’s Day meal. It is, I think, the first holiday tradition I chose to follow as an adult, and one I’ve kept every year since January 2000.

For the infamous Y2K celebration, I was a senior in college. I was of course home for winter break but had decided to spend New Year’s Eve with friends in Columbus (this was a few years before I moved here myself). I have a very clear memory of eating a pre-party dinner at the Blue Danube (a dive bar around North Campus) and joking about how the world wasn’t ending as we watched the tvs above the bar show New Year’s celebrations in Europe where it was already the year 2000. We went to a party, or parties, and the world didn’t end in Ohio either.

The next day, New Year’s Day, my friend Laurynn and I woke up late and decided to go in search of lunch. We walked from her dingy campus area apartment on 11^th Avenue—this was before the Gateway cleaned up South Campus—and set off up High Street thinking we’d have lots of options. Unfortunately, nothing was open because of the holiday. It was bitterly cold, or we were underdressed; I don’t remember which, just that we were freezing and hungry and a bit hungover (we were 21, give us a break). We walked all the way up to Woodruff and finally found a restaurant that was open: the decidedly unglamorous No. 1 Chinese. It is exactly what one might imagine from the name, and exactly like many other hole-in-the-wall greasy cheap Chinese joints. However, that day it was delicious! It was warm inside, and the spicy salty greasy stir-fry and the mountains of rice were the perfect antidote to all of the previous night’s beer.

I had Broccoli with Garlic Sauce, I think, or maybe Szechuan Broccoli. I remember the leftovers sitting in my car taunting me as I drove home that afternoon, the burgundy Grand Am I drove in those days smelling of soy sauce and garlic and chili oil. I ate them for dinner that evening, while my parents and siblings ate pork and sauerkraut.

While I probably could, if I tried hard enough, remember where I ate every New Year’s Day Chinese meal since then, I won’t bother. I know that I’ve eaten them with friends, roommates, partners, with my sister I think, and by myself. Some have been delicious (three years ago, my girlfriend at the time and I ate at Yau’s Chinese Bistro, just down the street from Laurynn’s old apartment, and one of my favorite Chinese spots in Columbus), some have been disappointing (a friend and I ended up getting Mark Pi’s one year), but at this point, it’s the tradition that counts.

So today, after a productive day of taking down Christmas decorations, cleaning up, going for a run, and relaxing, I drove up to Fortune Chinese Restaurant and I got Eggplant with Garlic Sauce and some Hot and Sour Soup, and I came home to my windy attic apartment, and I opened up a nice pale ale, and I thoroughly enjoyed my meal. It was spicy and well-cooked and filling, but even more satisfying is the knowledge that I have this tradition that’s all my own, and that I’ve kept it for twelve years now, no matter where I was living, and that I can share it with others without losing it myself.

After Long Silence

2011-12-30T20:57:00.000-08:00

It's been a very long time since I've posted here, and that's okay.

I won't apologize for it.

We're approaching the New Year, and I am in a very good place to be starting over. I graduated with my MFA in May, stayed in Pennsylvania over the summer and taught one last class at Penn State, then moved back to Columbus in August. I am currently teaching as an adjunct instructor at a community college and doing some freelance proofreading. I stayed with friends for awhile but moved into a lovely, quirky apartment in Olde Towne East in November. I am also recently single, after attempting to get out of the relationship last spring and then falling back into it for awhile. In a way, it feels like I'm only now able to really start my life post-MFA.

Seeing as how I haven't posted lately

2010-11-26T19:26:00.000-08:00

perhaps I should take advantage of the fact that it's a holiday weekend and I have some downtime by posting something.

And yet... I'm having mixed feelings about even leaving this blog up, let alone continuing to post to it. And I don't have any idea what to say that might be interesting. The semester is going very well - busy, stressful, exhausting, etc, but good. And I've very much enjoyed having the week off to just chill out and get work done without other obligations. And I'm even more looking forward to winter break. But... I have no idea what I'm doing after May, nor what I want to do. There are so many variables, and for every option I think of, there are pros and cons.

So, instead of any sort of long, angsty, rambling about those decisions, or boring rambling about school, how about a list of some random things for which I'm thankful? It seems appropriate, given the time of year.

So, in no particular order, ten things I'm thankful for:
1. The cat curled up in my lap right now. She drives me nuts sometimes, but I still think she's the cutest thing on the planet, which balances out my ridiculous dog, for whom I'm also thankful.
2. The person for whom I cooked dinner yesterday.
3. The people I didn't eat dinner with yesterday - the friends and the family.
4. A very clean, festively-decorated apartment with no roommate for a couple days.
5. The fact that it hasn't snowed yet.
6. The new boots and the nice warm coat that I have for when it does snow.
7. My poetry workshop, and my Shakespeare class, and my eighteen undergraduate creative writing students.
8. The chance to be in an MFA program, to change direction in my 30s and try to do what I wanted to do all along.
9. The fabulous, beautiful, amazing life I left behind to come here, even though I miss it with a palpable ache some days, like today, when I put up my holiday decorations. I'm thankful that I had a life good enough to miss, that this weird place I am now is not the best place I've ever been.
10. Everything I have and everything I don't, the combination of gratefulness for what is and desire to make things better.

Back to School

2010-08-23T14:17:00.000-07:00

Year Two of my MFA program at Penn State started today. Poetry workshop bright and early at 9:05 Monday morning. We didn’t actually workshop today, but we discussed our ideas and goals in terms of “voice” (the general theme of the workshop this semester), we each read a poem we’d written over the summer, and we discussed the reading we’d done for today (selections from Frank Bidart’s collected poems). It’s a nice group of people, and the vibe is very positive. ‘Twas a perfect way to begin the semester!

I’m undecided right now on the other class I’ll be taking this semester. Since this is a two year program now, and I’ll be working on my thesis, I’m registered for thesis credits which means I only need two “real” classes. Right now I’m registered for both a lit seminar on Shakespearean tragedies and a lit course on the 1930s which promises to be heavily political/cultural studies-ish. I’m masochistically considering staying in both of them, but I think I’ll end up dropping one.

I’m teaching an Intro to Creative Writing class, which I’m thrilled about. We meet for the first time tomorrow at 8:00am. I won’t reiterate all my plans here, but it’s basically a mixture of instruction and practice in fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction (i.e. lecture/discussion, lots of writing exercises, one workshop per genre). We’re using this textbook as well as supplemental readings I’ve drawn from classes I’ve taken and generally just other work I like; I’m sort of nervous about teaching work I love because I’ve heard other people say that they feel personally affronted when their students don’t like, or don’t get, some of their favorite literature. We’ll see how it goes, I guess. In general though, I’m excited about the class!

What else? Oh yeah, that whole thesis thing…. It is so strange to me that a year ago I hadn’t even begun my MFA program, and now I am halfway finished. While it would be nice to have a third year, I think the two year program is for the best (I don’t think I could take another year in Central Pennsylvania without serious detriment to my sanity). It’s crazy to think about having a book manuscript done by May, but it’s exciting as well. I turned in about 35 pages of poems to my thesis advisor at the end of spring semester, got her comments back over the summer, and then proceeded to not write very much at all…. In my defense, I did a lot of reading, and I did do some writing; but I traveled a fair amount (spent two wonderful weeks in California – half in San Francisco and half in Berkeley – and also spent a couple of long weekends back in Columbus), I also taught a summer class, and I took an intensive Spanish class, so for six weeks I was on campus eight hours a day, five days a week. Not too conducive to getting a lot of writing done. However, I feel like I have a solid idea for my manuscript and good direction for the revisions on what I’ve already given my advisor so I only need another 15 pages or so. Totally doable, right?

Overall, I’m a lot more comfortable here than I was a year ago, more confident of being able to be a successful grad student, but also feeling an increased pressure to “perform” outside of my classes, i.e. publish, get into a PhD program, get a job, or something.

And I still miss my Columbus people/my Columbus life to a ridiculous extent sometimes, in spite of the fact that I have wonderful friends here and an amazing partner I never expected to meet. Sigh! Anyway, who wants a poem? Yes? Someone out there said yes? Well, okay, here is a very early draft of something I wrote after coming back from California…..

Leaving San Francisco at Night

How many lights make up the body

of this place, it straight lines, its curves

tiny houses sprinkled like freckles

on the red-earth skin?

I entered in daylight, over water,

through clouds, struck by nothing

so much as fear of the bay

drawing closer and larger, green

and mottled, dotted with toy boats.

Since then I’ve walked the skeleton

of the city, miles and miles, hand

to hand at ground level, climbed to the top

and looked down from the tower,

but it’s only here in darkness, blinking

goodbye, that I see it as whole.

Two more things

2010-07-25T12:50:00.000-07:00

My students are blogging this summer too. I do weekly journals during the school year, but because the summer session is so squeezed in terms of time, I decided to do a blog instead. It also saves paper, and that's a good thing as well. They've done some good stuff here if you want to take a look. Some lazy stuff too, but mostly good :)

And I encourage you to check out Poets for Living Waters, an online collection of poetry motivated by the Gulf oil spill. There is some lovely stuff there, for example these two poems by Sarah Green. I just sent them two poems as well, and would encourage my poet friends to do the same.

After a long absence...

2010-07-25T12:28:00.000-07:00

I am finally posting on my blog again.

My summer has passed through a few distinct phases, which I'll try to summarize, and it is now winding to a close. A month from now, fall semester will have already begun.

Phase 1 was the one in which I last posted. I read a lot, relaxed a lot, hung out with friends, wrote, and ran.

Phase 2 was two glorious weeks away from this town. I spent ten days in California and didn't want to leave, then spent a long weekend in Columbus before returning to PA. San Francisco was fabulous, and Berkeley was beautiful, and M and I had a wonderful time. Columbus was also an excellent time in which I ate a lot of good food and hung out with a lot of old friends.

Phase 3 was rather unpleasant and unhappy, in that I had to adjust to being back here and get ready to teach class. I also decided in that time period to take Spanish this summer so there were logistics to be worked out with that. And I started thinking more about what to do after the MFA; my conclusion, subject to change as always, is that I'm going to apply to just a couple of PhD programs in creative writing, as well as apply for other types of things as well. Hence me taking Spanish; most of the PhD programs require a foreign language competency. Phase 3 ended with my pilgrimage to Comfest back in Columbus. A wonderful hot weekend and another which I did not want to leave.

Phase 4 began on June 30th when I started teaching and on July 1st when I started my Spanish class. What I've been doing since then is getting up at 6:00am every day (M-F), catching the bus at 7:30, spending 8:00-12:25 in Spanish class (it's a summer intensive course, which basically goes through a semester of Spanish every 2.5 weeks. I skipped part 1 since I took Spanish in the past, part 2 was the second elementary level, and part 3 which I'm doing now is intermediate), then going to my office to eat lunch, prep for class, have office hours, etc, then teaching 2:20-3:35 and then either walking or taking the bus home and getting back between 4:00 and 4:30. Then I do homework, grade papers, and maybe read or write. M moved in here last weekend, just temporarily, because his old lease ended before his new one began. It's going well.

I'm actually really loving my Spanish class and really wanting to go to Spain next summer. I also am enjoying my teaching assignment this summer, though the room is small and hot; the students are smart though and interested and mostly unjaded. I get to teach creative writing this fall. Definitely exciting, but I also need to plan a new course. If you have suggestions for readings or activities, let me know. Particularly in the realm of fiction because that is not my genre of choice. I'm more comfortable talking about poetry or nonfiction.

What have I read? I don't even remember. I read a lot during that third part of my summer: some memoirs, some poetry, some fiction. Outstanding things I remember reading were Audre Lorde's memoir "Zami: A New Spelling of My Name - A Biomythography" and the poetry collections "Late Psalm" by Betsy Sholl and "Bright Felon: Autobiography and Cities" by Kazim Ali.

So that is summer in a nutshell. Busy, mostly good, and going all too fast.

Summer Reading, etc.

2010-05-07T18:16:00.000-07:00

In some ways it's odd to think it's only May 7th and I'm already settling into my summer schedule. I went out with a couple friends on Wednesday (celebrating Cinco de Mayo and the end of the semester - they had both finished that day), but other than that, I've been cleaning, reading, and working on thesis poems. I realized yesterday that I have a lot more poems I would consider putting in my thesis than I'd previously been aware of; that's a good thing, but it makes me really start thinking about what I want it to be "about".....that crazy question: "what is this poem about?"

I also finished reading An American Childhood today, and I liked it. Annie Dillard's writing is intelligent and lovely, and the story has such wonderfully observed details. Most of it didn't really grab me emotionally, but there was one part I wanted to quote:

"As a child I read hoping to learn everything, so I could be like my father. I hoped to combine my father's grasp of information and reasoning with my mother's will and vitality. But the books were leading me away. They would propel me right out of Pittsburgh altogether, so I could fashion a life among books somewhere else. So the Midwest nourishes us (Pittsburgh is the Midwest's eastern edge) and presents us with the spectacle of a land and a people completed and certain. And so we run to our bedrooms and read in a fever, and love the big hardwood trees outside the windows, and the terrible Midwestern summers, and the terrible Midwestern winters, and the forested river valleys with the blue Appalachian Mountains to the east of us and the broad great plains to the west. And so we leave it sorrowfully, having grown strong and restless by opposing with all our will and mind and muscle its simple, loving will for us: that we stay, that we stay and find a place among its familiar possibilities." (pg 214)

That really resonated with me and my experiences as a child who read a lot. I also liked her matter-of-fact statement that Pittsburgh is the far eastern edge of the Midwest; I think I'd have to agree.

I feel like there are really two midwests: one that was defined by the industry on the Great Lakes and includes OH, MI, IN, IL, WI, and MN and might stretch down to also include states like WV and KY which are not usually considered part of the Midwest, but which have more in common with it than with any other area (western PA and western NY also fit here, culturally and economically, but the states as a whole aren't midwestern); and a second, more westerly, Midwest with which I'm less familiar, one which includes KS, NE, MO, IA, and the Dakotas. Yeah, so that was a tangent. Sorry. We debated this in my nonfiction class this spring, and I am kind of obsessed with mapping and places in my poems, so it's not utterly unrelated.

Hello, my poor abandoned blog

2010-05-05T12:04:00.000-07:00

I have survived my first year of graduate school, and although I have plenty of work to do this summer (reading for fun, reading for my thesis, writing and revising for my thesis, planning and later teaching a summer class, planning a fall class, etc.), I may also make more time for posting on my blog.

Last week I turned in my poetry revisions, and my seminar paper; I'd submitted my last nonfiction piece the week before. And I taught my last English 15 classes. I went to a party for my nonfiction class. I went to the MFA Variety Show, which was a fantastic time, and I went out afterward with some of my classmates, and we sat on the patio at Mad Mex and drank beer and enjoyed the nice weather and the knowledge that we'd made it through a year of grad school.

M. went back to California today - he's probably in flight right now - and I'll be flying out there in three weeks to see him. I'm greatly looking forward to that trip, to see him of course, but also to see San Francisco and Berkeley.

I've started my summer reading list. I'm still actively soliciting suggestions to add to it - poetry, especially, but any and all genres as well. The first thing I'm reading is Annie Dillard's An American Childhood. I love her writing so far, but I find myself wanting her to be conscious of, and reflective on, class and privilege; she does reflect a little on race, and her privileged position as a white child. I'll see how the rest of the book comes together and report back more in-depth then.

Also, in the arena of things on which I am to report: there is supposed to be a new Thai restaurant in the plaza near my apartment. I plan on stopping there on my walk back from campus today, and I promised M. I would issue a full report. Neither of us are holding our breaths, and we remain nearly as disappointed with State College's food as we were this past fall. We've discovered a few gems, but very few. Yet another reason to look forward to my SF trip, and the time I'll spend in Columbus.

Speaking of food, I am starting to get hungry, so I'm going to gather up my books and run a couple errands downtown, then head back toward home and pad thai. (On, and on the issue of walking, I've decided that I won't buy a bus pass for summer, just a roll of tokens. That will make me walk unless it's bad weather or unless I have a lot of stuff to carry. It's about 40 (hilly) minutes to get to Burrowes, perhaps less to where I'll be teaching this summer. Good exercise!)

Poem-A-Day Challenge, Day 6

2010-04-06T08:39:00.000-07:00

Make It Beautiful

Hair that was braided,
dirty, make shining and clean,
use the fan to blow it just right.
Feet that were calloused,
dark, thick-skinned, make
soft and clean, barely touch
the ground. A simple tunic
make couture. Weathered
skin make pristine. Deer
make fearless, leaf fall symbolic,
the boat in the background
unimportant, beauty the focus.

(After “Pocahontas” by Annie Leibovitz)

April Poem-A-Day Challenge

2010-04-04T08:44:00.000-07:00

I did this challenge last year and actually wrote thirty poems in thirty days. Most of them were no good, but I got a few I really liked that I've worked on since. I am not committed to doing all thirty this year, but I'm getting the prompts and have written one so far.

Yesterday's prompt for Day 3 was to write a poem with the title "Partly ____" (fill in the blank). Here's my attempt:

Partly Risen

The sun when I wake
to a cat’s claws tangling
my hair, the whole
wheat pita bread
I tried to make from scratch,
the shoots of asparagus
in my mother’s spring
garden, my heart
this morning when I walk
in the sunlight on this day
that celebrates a savior
I used to believe in.

Spring Break

2010-03-05T16:40:00.000-08:00

It may be evident by the fact that I haven't posted here since the very beginning of the semester that I've been busy. That is certainly true. It's been a difficult semester. The first four weeks or so, I felt quite often that the only thing that was going well was teaching and sometimes poetry workshop. I was just not comfortable in my other classes, and I felt out of my element. I eventually settled into them and feel pretty good about everything right now, but it was a process and made for a difficult eight weeks and made me very glad last night to leave my professor's reading and say "I am officially on Spring Break!"

I'm not going anywhere for break, and I have lots of work to do over the week, but it will be very nice not to have any scheduled obligations, to sleep in and stay up late and drink wine, to go running during the warmest part of the day. It's also supposed to be about 50 degrees for at least part of next week, which might finally melt all the snow, which is super exciting. I am really looking forward to warm weather!

Break has been good so far. Last night after the reading, five of us went to go see "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus" at the State Theatre downtown. It was a really quirky, lovely movie, and the theatre is nice - one of those old-fashioned single-screen theatres with a balcony and a stage so they can also host musical performances and other events. I got home around midnight last night, and stayed up for awhile. I woke up this morning with no alarm, walked the dog, drank coffee, ate a "penalty donut"*, worked on poems, submitted one set to an online journal, then did some lesson planning for the week after break. Went for a 3.5 mile run later and it was sunny but chilly, and windier than I'd realized so my eyes were watering like crazy. Ate leftover tofu curry and channa saag for dinner (M had stayed over on Wednesday and I'd cooked dinner), and I think I'm going to soon pour some wine and try to work on my next nonfiction submission.

I've been doing a lot of thinking this semester about what I want to do after the MFA. It's a two year program so once I got through the milestone of that first semester, I had to start realizing that I was already a quarter of the way through and should probably give some thought to what to do next. I'm still contemplating applying to Lit PhD programs, but now leaning more toward applying to PhD programs that offer a creative dissertation option OR just taking my MFA and trying to get a fixed term position at Penn State for the standard three years (or possibly four if I could swing it). The one thing I know for sure is that I want to teach. Like I said, my teaching was sometimes the only thing I felt good about earlier this semester, and I've been having a really good experience with this class. I actually had a really good day regarding teaching earlier this week. I'd applied to teach in the LEAP program this summer, and I got assigned to the section I'd requested. It's a section that's paired with a Photography class, so I'm really excited to work with some creative kids and plan cooperative lessons with the other instructor. Later that day, I also got my SRTE scores from fall (the quantified student evaluations) and they made me really happy. So I'm looking forward to an exciting, challenging, fun summer teaching assignment, and I should get to teach creative writing in the fall, and it's incredibly nice to know that at least this one thing consistently feels good and right to me.

*Oh, and to explain the "penalty donut" - a fellow instructor has a rule that if anyone's cell phone goes off in class, that person has to bring a snack for everyone on the next class. A student had to do this yesterday and brought in way too many donuts, so the instructor was giving them away afterward, and I took one home for this morning. I may institute that rule myself in the summer.

So, I am going to do some work now and hope to have a similar day tomorrow and most of the next week - sleep in, coffee, write, run, more work. Rendezvous with M at some point. Other social engagements as they occur. Yay, spring break!

A Long-Overdue Review

2010-01-12T20:33:00.000-08:00

A Walk Through the Memory Palace
by Pamela Johnson Parker

Winner of the 2009 Qarrtsiluni Chapbook Contest

My apologies, first and foremost, to the lovely folks at Qarrtsiluni that is has taken me so long to getting around to reviewing this chapbook on my blog. It appeared in my mailbox during the chaotic end of fall semester and was ignored during break, along with all other things that seemed like “work”.

However, reading Johnson’s poems is not work, or at least it’s not odious work. The chapbook opens with the poem “78 RPM”, a beautifully observed narrative about summer, desire, and music. This first poem sets itself up in short 3 line stanzas, and many of the proceeding poems follow the same format. The second piece is a two-part poem called “Tattoos” (Johnson utilizes multi-part poems throughout the book), and while the poem feels rather list-heavy to me, the images are enduring and vibrant. The chapbook takes up themes of art quite frequently, whether in “First Anniversary: Reading Russian Literature” or “Reading Keats in a Japanese Garden”, a Matisse painting in “Engendering: For Two Voices”, or the speaker’s own poetry in “Unreal Gardens Without Toads in Them, or, Last Year’s Journal, This Year’s Yard.”

For me,the greatest beauty of this book is not in the poet’s academic intelligence (though it gleams fiercely throughout and enhances each poem) but in the equally profound intelligence she demonstrates toward the human mind and heart. The final poem, the long six-part “Breasts”, demonstrates not only an understanding of the body, but also of the speaker; as a prepubescent girl, she thinks “Some day I’ll need a bra, some/ Day I’ll sag like Gran.// Not me. Not now” while as an adult, and a mother, when faced with her sister’s diagnosis of advanced breast cancer, she concludes “Neither/ Of us will say cancer,/ Neither of us// Mentions our mother./ Daughter, I hold you tighter/ to my breast.” And my favorite moment of the chapbook comes at the end of "First Anniversary: Reading Russian Literature" -- after describing the poor young couple celebrating their first anniversary on a swelteringly hot day, the poems ends "You wish, like/ A child at Christmas, for snow; I loved you/ Hopelessly is all I remember of Pushkin."

While certain images and themes recur throughout the book - art, water, fish, flowers and plants, desire and death and change – I didn’t always feel that the poems connected to each other or came together as a cohesive chapbook whole. “Some Yellow Tulips”, about a Holocaust survivor, and the final long poem about breast cancer, are both wonderful poems on technical and emotional levels, but did not fit the same mood as the rest of the book. Overall though, the poems are strong and this is a chapbook well worth your time and money. It is available online or in print form. Also, be sure to check out the other cool stuff going on at .

Semester #2, Day #1

2010-01-11T17:22:00.000-08:00

I taught my first class of the spring semester today. So far, so good.

I also have a grand total of 28 books on my coffee table which I had to purchase for my grad classes: 13 for poetry workshop, 3 for nonfiction workshop, and 12 for African American poetry. I have a LOT of reading and writing in my future!

I also have a very late schedule this semester. Both of my workshops run from 6:30-9:30pm, one on Tuesday, one of Thursday. My seminar runs from 12:20-3:20 on Wednesdays, and I'm teaching from 3:35-4:25 MWF. We're continuing our Writer in the Community group from fall, and that will be meeting from 11:00am-noon on Wednesdays, but that is the only thing on my schedule that falls before noon. I am pretty good at being a night owl, but it is going to be an interesting adjustment.

I have no idea what I'm getting into the with NF workshop, or the lit seminar, but I'm looking forward to figuring that out.

Done :)

2009-12-14T10:41:00.000-08:00

Posted an end of semester wrap-up post over at The MFA Chronicles last night, if you want a nice neat summary of the semester.

This morning, M and I went to campus, he printed off his paper, turned it in, then we went for a celebratory lunch of beer and nachos. It was quite a lovely end to the semester, although I already know I'll miss him a lot.

My ankle hurts (drunk me slipped on the ice Friday night), and I still have to turn in grades, then plan my departure from State College, but I'm pretty proud of surviving my first semester of grad school, and it was fun to celebrate it today before M leaves town.

The end of the semester

2009-12-11T08:30:00.001-08:00

It is hard to believe that the first semester of my MFA program is all but over. Right now, all I have left to do is teach one last class this afternoon, then grade papers and submit grades by next Wednesday, and then I’ll be free from school obligations until January 11th!

I started trying to reflect on the semester, and I still can’t make any sense. Maybe next week, after I’ve turned in grades, after I’ve gotten my celebratory haircut, after M has left.

Things I Cannot Say

2009-11-05T17:27:00.001-08:00

Some days I feel stupider than I can ever remember feeling, frustrated with my lack of knowledge, my lack of language, my inability to join the conversation. Sometimes I question what I'm doing here, and what I will do next. Do I want the PhD? Do I believe, at any level, that I'm capable of it? Is it taking the easy way out by not even trying to apply? Do I really want it? Or do I just want to write and teach? Is teaching my calling, even more than writing?

The questions only breed more questions.

But I don't have to know right now.

---

Sometimes I don't know how I got so lucky, to be where I am right now, to have found what I've found, against my will, against all my expectations. Some moments are too beautiful to experience with my eyes open; the only way to keep from crying is to close my eyes and rest my face against your neck. Sometimes I want to say it too.

Happy Halloween

2009-10-30T21:38:00.000-07:00

It's about 12:30am. I just cleaned the kitchen and I'm drinking decaf tea. I have so much I *should* be doing right now, but I'm mentally blocked.

It's been a busy week, and I have run into a couple of interesting teaching situations this week as well. Up until Wednesday, I had enjoyed a remarkably smooth teaching experience -- I like my students, they seem to like me, they do what I ask them to, they write well, etc. No drama, no problems, no complaints. I've heard from people in my teaching mentor group and in our larger teaching seminar about all sorts of issues that have come up in other classes, and I've felt really lucky. Well, Wednesday I had my first student try to argue a grade, and yesterday I got an email from one of my students with a whole lot of information about personal struggles. Just stressful things, added onto an already hectic week.

There are only five weeks left of the semester, plus the Thanksgiving Break. That's kind of terrifying, the thought of all I have yet to accomplish this semester! And I also made my Thanksgiving plans, which is always a stressful endeavor where my family is concerned. This year particularly so, as I will be attending my family dinner for the first time in three years. I've also been forced to make some tentative plans for the winter break as well; I say forced like it's a bad thing. Instead, it's a very good thing. I'm flying to San Francisco for New Years! But this did make me start thinking about the rest of break and mapping out the logistics of everything. More stress.

However, it is Halloween weekend, and that makes everything better! I got a fabulous 80s dress today and some hot pink tights to go with it. I need to get some jewelry and some lace gloves tomorrow and a tiara - I want a tiara - and I am really looking forward to the EGO party Saturday night! I've gotten a few things done tonight in terms of school work, but I have much more to do before the party.

Work hard, play hard, that's what MFAs do, right?

Creation, etc.

2009-10-19T16:33:00.000-07:00

Thinking about what art is, what power(s) we invest into the objects we create, how they become independent entities, about the ability of narration to create meaning, how experiences become real. About Nietzsche and Rushdie, significance and identity and language, about poetry, about the physical world, my physical body, the triumph of mind and community over physical weakness. About love, what it is, what it isn't, what it has been, what it should be. About gender, its irrelevance, its social construction, about the way life surprises me. About time, the sublime, and drinking wine.....

(Just threw that last one in because it rhymes, but it's also true.)

Let this suffice for an update: this is week 9, we got snow last Thursday in PA, I ran my half-marathon in Columbus on Sunday, I am busy, and I am happy in ways I never expected.

An exercise in procrastination

2009-10-13T16:57:00.000-07:00

Things I love (or strongly like) right now:
1) coffee
2) walking to McKinnon’s from Burrowes to get coffee (far enough that I feel like I’m getting a break, but close enough that it’s not too much of one)
3) a glass of red wine while writing
4) a neighbor and friend who always tells me when she’s going to buy wine so I can tag along and replenish my supply
5) Salman Rushdie’s essay “Imaginary Homelands”
6) my chapbook proposal
7) that my bedroom smells like flowers
8) that someone bought me flowers
9) the prospect of a weekend in Columbus
10) the prospect of a haircut in Columbus
11) the super warm sweater I’m wearing tonight
12) the super comfy boots I bought last weekend

Week 7 Update (WHAT?)

2009-10-07T18:20:00.000-07:00

Is it really Week 7 already? How the heck did time go so fast? The crazy paradox of grad school, for me at least, is that each day is incredibly long (remember that schedule I posted last week? yeah, being on campus for 10 hours is not uncommon for me, nor is staying up way too late reading and/or writing) but each week goes by so fast. I've been a bit unfocused for the past week or so but still managing to keep up. Over the next week, I have fourteen more papers to grade before Friday (ten are done), a draft of my chapbook proposal to get ready for conference with my prof tomorrow, lessons to plan for Friday, Monday, and Wednesday, a book on bibliographic and textual scholarship to read by Monday, a few articles to read and a reflection to write for Tuesday, two chapbooks to read, a final draft of the chapbook proposal, and a poem due for Wednesday. Plus a five mile run tomorrow, a short run Friday, at least ten miles on Sunday, then taper runs next week. And plans with friends and other social entities.

But, you know what, it's good. I like it. I'm busy, but I'm happier than I expected to be. And I'm going to Columbus a week from tomorrow - seeing friends, enjoying some good food and some city life, running a half-marathon, getting a haircut, and stocking up on wine!

Review of "Mom's Canoe" by Rebecca Foust

2009-10-04T13:10:00.000-07:00

I haven't been as diligent about posting my chapbook comments as I planned to be, but I'm right now procrastinating on doing other work, so I'm posting the most recent one. This book resonated profoundly with me; it's set in rural Pennsylvania and both the geography of the land and the issues raised are all so familiar to me from my own life.

Rebecca Foust’s chapbook Mom’s Canoe opens with the lines “You can turn round and round and round/ and always see mountains.” The Alleghenies hover over this collection, they “calve memory from twilight”, they come closer then recede, divide the false from the true, and eventually disappear and “efface into sky” (all quotes from the first poem, “Allegheny Mountain Bowl”). The natural beauty of the land mingles in these poems with post-industrial grit, economic depression, and social ills like alcoholism and domestic abuse. The title poem “Mom’s Canoe” addresses itself to the speaker’s mother and spins a string of achingly lovely images of the canoe itself, the mother’s hard work on land, her easy movement on the water, before ending elegiacally:

I still see you rising from water to sky,
paddle held high, river drops limning its edge.
Brown diamonds catch the light as you lift, then dip.
Parting the current, you slip
silently through the evening shadows.
You, birdsong, watersong, slanting light,
following the river bend, swallowed from sight.”

This blend of the beautiful and the sad, heightened in “Mom’s Canoe” by the fact that the canoe was mentioned in an earlier poem (“Backwoods”) which places the mother in an abusive relationship, typifies the tone of the collection. Foust utilizes rhyme in this and many of her poems, but never in an overbearing way. “Things Burn Down”, a rough-cut villanelle, repeating words rather than full lines, also epitomizes the style of the chapbook. Foust invokes specific family stories, broad socioeconomic commentary, and the physical atmosphere of her upbringing in this poem which questions what might bring her parents back. In this poem and throughout the collection, subject matter, form, and tone all seem to flow from the poet’s “hardscrabble” background and articulate a wry acceptance of both past and present. In “Altoona to Anywhere”, the speaker addresses herself: “Go ahead, aspire to transcend/ your hardscrabble roots…//But when you’ve left it behind you/ may find it still there” and ends the poem with a list of things she can not transcend, concluding beautifully with “the same siren nights pierced/ with stars seeping light, all that/ gorgeous, pitiless song.” The recognition of both beauty and ugliness, love and pain, lift the collection above either simple angst or romantic naturalism; the image left is one of reality with all its contradictions.

Collaboration, Coffee, and the Little Things

2009-09-30T21:57:00.000-07:00

That's what's getting me through grad school thus far. I had a really good experience collaborating this evening in the midst of the bad assignment in the class that I have a fundamental philosophical, pedagogical, issue with. We don't need to go into the issues I have with the class, but the important point here is that we have a ridiculous assignment due for next week, which almost no one in the class is equipped to handle. So, I met with three of my classmates this evening, and we worked through it together. I can't say that the assignment was fun, but we all worked very well together, and we all brought very different skills and backgrounds to the table, and I think we got a good handle on it. It was a rewarding experience of collaboration, and another reminder that I really do like the people in my cohort!

Coffee. Kind of self-explanatory. I drink a lot of coffee. I go get coffee with various people when I'm sitting in my office. I while away an afternoon drinking coffee in a bookstore and chatting with someone interesting. I have coffee at dinner time, and I stay up till 1:00am and post blogs ;)

The little things: trips to the wine shop, lunch with friends, kitty cat snuggles, random voicemails from friends, crushes that make life interesting.

MFA Schedule (a reality check)

2009-09-28T16:41:00.000-07:00

For anyone who's thinking of doing an MFA to have all sorts of "free time in which to write", allow me to explain how my day went today. This is not at all a complaint. I had a lovely, lovely day.

7:00am Wake up, followed by shower, breakfast, walking dog, etc.
8:34am Get on bus to go to campus
8:45am (approx.) Arrive at campus, drop books off in office, chitchat a little
9:05-12:05 Intro to Graduate Study seminar (with a short break around 10:30 during which I exchanged my coffee for water)
12:05-12:10 or so. Class drags on after it's supposed to be over while Prof. hands back abstracts after reiterating more than once how "charitably" he graded them. (Okay, so I am complaining about the condescension in that comment)
12:10-12:30 approx. Gather up a few people and walk into town for lunch.
12:30-1:30 approx. Try to get Indian food at two different places, one of which is closed Mondays, the other too crowded. Eventually end up eating at Pita Pit. It's delicious. Bitch about the class we just got out of and talk about teaching, and I get to tell the story of the creepy guy at the bar who I yelled at on Saturday night.
1:30-1:45 approx. Walk back to campus to my office.
1:45-3:25 approx. Print about 90 pages of reading off e-reserve, grade the last couple of freshman paper proposals, try to write a poem. Chat with a couple of people. Walk over to the library cafe to get coffee.
3:35-4:25 Observe Paul's teaching per the dictate of our teaching mentor group.
4:40-5:30 Teach my own freshman comp class while Paul observes. Hope he doesn't think worse of me because my students are rowdy.
5:30-5:40 approx. Walk to bus stop and chat with Danielle while waiting for the bus.
5:50 approx. Arrive home. Walk dog.
6:00-7:45 Eat leftover Chinese food, catch up on facebook and email, download an Editing Assignment from the class from this morning, write up my observations on teaching from today,try to make sense of Editing Assignment and get some of it done, before deciding to take a break to blog.
7:45-8:00 Post this blog
8:00-1:30 Foolishly drink coffee. Try to finish poem. Think about my plan for my chapbook. Waste time doing random stuff on line. Write in my journal. Look at poem again and decide it's as finished as it's getting for now. (Edited next day)

First MFA Reading Was Awesome!

2009-09-27T12:53:00.000-07:00

(Apologies in advance for any spelling and grammar errors, or a general lack of sense. I only slept for three hours.)

So I read last night, with Nick and Lauren. First MFA reading is under my belt. It was a lot of fun! I was nervous, but in a good way, and everyone was very supportive. There was a surprisingly good turnout considering that the weather was disgusting – cold and rainy – and the reading was held at the same time as the big Iowa game. A few of the 2nd and 3rd year MFAs went to the game instead of the reading, and I may never forgive them (joke), but a lot of MA/PhD students came out, especially our fellow first years, and I really appreciated that. I kept hugging people later and saying I was so glad they were there.

The readings here are very informal. Very not like they were at BG, for better or for worse, I’m not sure. They are organized by MFA students, held in a really cool campus building,
in this crazy basement room with red carpeted walls (couldn't find a good picture of the room), and there is beer. Rather a lot of beer actually. No faculty members attended last night – I don’t think they ever do for these types of readings, but I know there is a “works in progress” reading series with the students who are working on their theses, which is more formal. So, people drink and joke and make comments and the introductions are hilarious. Here’s the beginning of the intro my friend Daniel, a 2nd year MFA, wrote for me: “Various theories have been offered regarding the origins of Emily May Anderson. One story states that Dylan Thomas, king of the gods, awoke one morning with a splitting headache, and asked William Carlos Williams to strike him with a hammer. Williams did so, and Emily emerged from Thomas’s head, fully formed and carrying the notebook of wisdom and the pen of truth.” And it goes on in that vein.

The reading was great but nothing like the good old days in Prout Chapel, sneaking booze in soda bottles; here the beer is subsidized and right out in plain sight. Most of us went to a bar after the reading and then there was more socializing after that, hence my three hours of sleep, and my probable lack of sense here. It was a great experience though, and I look forward to the next reading.

Reading Saturday, and some random thoughts

2009-09-24T20:35:00.000-07:00

The first MFA reading of the school year is this Saturday, and guess what, I am one of the three readers! Yay! I am excited and nervous, but mostly looking forward to the social aspect of the night.

There may be something wrong at some level that I am more excited to see a large group of people in a social setting than I am about my first graduate reading, but I really am struggling with the lack of social interaction here. It's not that people aren't nice; everyone is very nice! And it's not that I don't do *anything* socially, but it is just a very different atmosphere for me. I miss my friends in Columbus, and I miss my easy, comfortable concept of myself. All of that is thrown into question here: am I smart enough? am I talented enough? do I work hard enough? along with other questions of sexual and class identity that I just didn't have to think about after establishing my life in Columbus. Starting over in a new place forces me to re-establish an identity here with a new group of people. It is very much an existential crisis, as someone phrased it yesterday.

Tragedy

2009-09-21T18:21:00.000-07:00

Posted a short blog at The MFA Chronicles tonight about a Penn State student who disappeared over the weekend and was found dead tonight. It appears to be an accident, rather than foul play, but it's really sad; and I know I'm going to have to talk about it with my students on Wednesday, and I don't really know what to say to them.

Even the sight of Scarlet and Grey makes me homesick and I don't care about OSU football

2009-09-13T15:47:00.000-07:00

A non-comprehensive list of things I miss about Columbus

- Giant Eagle a block from my apartment
- the ability to buy wine at the grocery store
- good, cheap, noodle places
- Greek food
- lots of Indian restaurants
- Northstar (or anything like it)
- good food in general
- gay bars
- a neighborhood where I would feel comfortable kissing a girl on the street
- The Short North in general
- specifically all the great independent shops
- even more specifically, Posh Pets, Substance, Karavan, Paul Robinett, etc.
- Goodale Park
- a skyline view
- the Olentangy bike trail
- flat places to run
- Clintonville
- The North Market
- the grimy parts of the OSU campus area
- Poetry Forum at Rumba
- Café Apropos
- MoJoe Lounge – specifically good iced coffee and a pretty patio
- and most importantly, my friends!!!!!!!!!

Consider this a prequel

2009-09-12T11:24:00.000-07:00

to my next chapbook review. We're reading Poems in Conversation and a Conversation this week; it's a collaborative chapbook written by Elizabeth Alexander and Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon. Alexander is reading at Penn State next week, and I've read some of her work before. I've been fairly lukewarm on it, and I remain so after reading the chapbook, but the poems by Van Clief are totally fascinating! Here is a link to an interesting little interview with her: http://es-la.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=130011494254

Oh, and she's a Penn State MFA grad :)

In Praise Of My Cubicle

2009-09-12T09:32:00.000-07:00

Cross-posted on the MFA Chronicles

When I visited Penn State in March, some of the MFAs gave us an unofficial tour of the Burrowes Building, home of the English Department. They showed us some of the seminar rooms where we’d have classes, the library of lit mags and previous student theses, the big poster listing all the student publications, and they showed us the GTA offices. All the MFAs have their offices in a large basement room divided into shared cubicles. It’s fluorescently lit, cluttered, and feels like…well, cubicles in a basement.

I was a little put off. My disappointment was probably because I had the good fortune to be an undergrad a couple of years after the English Department had moved into a brand new building and the grad students at BG had real offices – two (or maybe three) people might share a room, a real room with a door, and they’d each have a desk – on the 3rd or 4th floor, with windows. Those little basement cubes were just depressing!

At the beginning of this semester, it was a little bit annoying to have to schedule my time in the office in cooperation with my cube-mate; there’s only one desk and one computer so we can’t both be in there at the same time. And the temperature regulation in the basement is not the best; it tends to be hot, so people open windows, so then it gets cold. I’ve learned to leave a sweater in my cabinet.

In spite of the fun that I’ve had here in State College, I’ve still felt pretty isolated, particularly during the week. My “previous life” in Columbus was very social: I had a lot of friends, I might go to trivia on a Monday, karaoke on a Wednesday, or just meet someone for coffee or a drink or dinner any day of the week. I seldom went more than a couple days without some sort of social interaction. And here it’s not like that. We are all buried in our work during the week (some people stay buried on weekends) and I might talk to the people in my classes, I might talk to my roommate for 5 minutes here and there, but then I go home and work.

Enter my cubicle. For a few different reasons, I ended up spending more time in my cube this week, and I realized that I would not want a separate office somewhere. I really like seeing people walk by; sometimes they just wave and say “Hi, how are you?” and a few times this week I actually had real conversations with some of my fellow students. It was nice! Just taking a few minutes out of the work day to chat with someone was surprisingly refreshing, and I realized that I love my cubicle. I would imagine the set-up was just designed because of the lack of available space, but it functions to foster community and to help people feel connected to each other.

And this week's reviews, just for the heck of it

2009-09-10T19:01:00.000-07:00

Two short reviews from class this week.

---

The poems in Martha Collins’ chapbook Gone So Far seem written specifically to break the heart and confuse the mind. The collection opens with a prayer about growing old which functions as a prologue, introducing the subject of the chapbook. The next poem, “A Little Life” blends images from a Dutch film with stories of war told by the speaker’s great-grandfather; ideas of being buried alive flicker between the broken lines of the poem and set up the mother’s request to “please make sure” that she is dead and then the assertion that “there’s life/ in the old a little yet”. The proceeding poems trace that “little life”, the final stages of the mother’s aging and increasing loss of control and connection with reality before the collection ends with “Her Poem”, a piece comprised of the actual words the poet’s mother spoke a few weeks before her death.

The poems in the chapbook dip into prayer, memory, and conversation, and often appear on the page in a scrambled, confused manner with short lines broken in the midst of phrases, or isolated individual lines, or alternating lines like a conversation where the two sides don’t match up. Images of the body and of breath appear throughout, as do light and dark, roads and travel, family members who’ve already died, and various nature images. Though the poems are difficult to make sense of on their own, as a whole they paint a picture of disconnection and of the impending loss of the relationship between mother and daughter.

---

The poems in Miriam Goodman’s chapbook Expense Report are unified by a focus on work. The collection opens with “The Interview” and ends with “Labor Day” -- interview implying a search for, a desire for, work, and Labor Day a break from it. Throughout the collection, Goodman represents many types of work: the corporate world, teaching, housework. None feel particularly rewarding; it is only in “Bed Time” when the speaker hangs the pressures of the day on a hanger and in “Labor Day” that a sense of peace emerges. Images of food and eating appear throughout the chapbook, beginning with brief mentions of wine and restaurants in “The Interview” to “Breakfast in Nashville with Loretta Lynn” to cooking spoiled vegetables and calves’ brains in “Shell”, to a sushi restaurant, drinking with the boss, a company picnic, a steak dinner, a story about rival bakers, snacks purchased at an airport, and in “Labor Day” the child who doesn’t want to break his food. Food and the desire for food appear throughout. “Forecasting/Sales Meeting” ends “I pull up vanquished, another prospect/ famished; eat everything in sight.” and “Labor Day” concludes the whole collection by describing photography, a holiday pastime, as “feeling displaced onto the object/ the famished glance, allowed.” I don’t know what I make of these images, but they do lend a sense of coherence, a continuing frame of reference. Sexual imagery also appears frequently through the book, in awkward conjunction with office supplies, dreams of Buddha, a much younger boss, a husband who almost strays. Stylistically, the poems mix prose with poetic line breaks, even in different sections of the same poem in “In Defense of Desire: Business Arguments”. The theme of work, and subthemes of food and sex, emphasize the daily life appeal of the poems.

Week 3 Is Winding Down

2009-09-10T18:52:00.000-07:00

and I am exhausted. And bewildered. In more ways than I can (or should) accurately enumerate here. But it's okay. In fact, it's good and more than good. I have written two poems this semester, and I can already see my understanding grow. I am reading some wonderful poetry and learning to be a more careful reader. I am teaching and loving it, learning from the days that work and the days that don't. I am challenged and rewarded in so many ways.

I am going to read the next chapter of the rhetoric text tonight, and work on poetry tomorrow, and then go teach class, and then I'll try to find a decent martini in a college town with some of the girls from the department. I am glad it's the weekend.

Update on first workshop, and a poem!

2009-09-05T20:07:00.000-07:00

I posted an update on my first workshop over at the MFA Chronicles tonight if anyone wants to read it.

And, since Enru asked, here is the first poem I workshopped. We had to respond to the chapbooks, as I've mentioned, and then take one poem from one of those chapbooks and use it as inspiration for our poem. I appreciated the use of form in Jeffrey Harrison's book, and so I wrote a villanelle 'in response' to his villanelle.

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

Although it feels empty, it’s never quiet here –
rustling leaves, cicadas, those critical crows.
I think maybe it is silence that I fear,

that I wouldn’t know what to do if all I could hear
was the beat of my heart, the way breath grows
to fill the emptiness. It’s never quiet here –

I fall asleep to the whine of insects beating near
my window screen, reaching toward the glow
of lamplight. I think it is silence that I fear,

even more than failure, no response, a deaf ear,
my mother’s refusal to hear her name even though she knows.
Although it feels empty it’s never quite here

that we meet. My mother will talk for a year
about our relatives, her garden, the climbing roses.
I think maybe it is silence that she fears,

or giving me a chance to tell her what she doesn’t want to hear.
Crows wake me early, my mother weeds beans in rows.
Although I feel the empty space between us it’s never quiet here
but I think maybe it is an inevitable silence that I fear.

Review of "At Night, the Dead" by Lisa Ciccarello

2009-09-02T20:54:00.000-07:00

Stop #3 on the Read Write Poem Virtual Book Tour. I know the admin folks at RWP are on Pacific time, so to them this might appear three hours early, but it's September 3rd here. Trust me ;)

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Lisa Ciccarello's chapbook At Night, the Dead haunts the mind of the reader just as the dead haunt the poems in the collection. There is a tight, almost claustrophobic quality to many of the poems; the reader is located immediately within, inside, while the dead seem to hover just outside. The first poem establishes this enclosure at the outset: “You lock the door. You lock the window. You dream of the dead. You salt the sills from the inside. You are going to dream.” The dead will appear in your dreams, regardless of the precautions you take.

The dead move slowly inside as the poems move forward. By the end of the collection “you” have disappeared and the dead have taken up residence. “The dead set up the house they remember, but it is not as they remember,” and even more disturbing, in the very last stanza, the first person has now joined the dead: “We reach for salt in the empty salt box. Missing from the kitchen what could keep us from the house…Our mouths draw close. The flame does not flicker.” All the salt, all the locks, have not kept the dead away.

The poems in this chapbook are short, some only a line or two long. Although I confess to not making much literal sense of the collection, the images are distinct and evocative. Unsettled dichotomies and conflicts of darkness and light, water and salt, dirt and diamonds, heat and home and love and paper and fruit fill the pages, but ultimately fail to make a concerted whole. This may have been the poet’s conscious intention; the mood is certainly constant throughout, but there is no recognizable narrative. Some other choices are hard to explain, such as the use of “yr” instead of “your” in some (but not all) of the poems. Another choice the author makes is that each poem is titled “At night, the dead” or some variation thereof. While this functions very well in terms of reinforcing a mood and a set of images, it makes it difficult to identify particular poems for commentary.

Overall, the chapbook is moody, dark, and haunting; the language is lovely and redolent with images (my favorites are “the sky smells like tea, the sky smells like timber and steam” and “the dark is a black bag where the eyes are kept”).* If you are looking for straightforward narrative poetry, you won’t find it here, but if you’re looking for a unique point of view and a quirky, creepy, set of poems, you will enjoy this chapbook immensely.

Get your handmade copy of At Night, the Dead

* from the second poem “At night, inside the house, the dead:” and the poem on page 16 called “At night, the dead:”

Charles Baxter on the importance of being still

2009-09-02T18:45:00.000-07:00

Interview with Charles Baxter

I am enjoying the irony of having read this tonight, after having had the link open on my computer for several days and never feeling that I had the time to sit down, be still, and "waste" time on reading an interview.

Review of "Investigations: The Mystery of the Girl Sleuth" by Kathleen Aguero

2009-09-01T17:48:00.000-07:00

When I first started reading Kathleen Aguero’s chapbook Investigations: The Mystery of the Girl Sleuth (dedicated “For Nancy Drew fans everywhere”) I felt like the type of audience the author intended: I grew up reading Nancy Drew and other girls’ mystery novels and am now at an age where I sometimes long for the simplicity of a formulaic plot and a crook to catch.

The collection opens with “To Nancy Drew on her 50th Birthday”, a poem which seems to me basically a mélange of titles and situations from many of the books. A note at the end of the volume calls this piece a found poem, but I felt that it was a bit boring, at least for an opening. However, the next several poems interestingly articulate Nancy’s problems (an unhappy marriage, a breast cancer scare) and discontent with her role in life; in “Competence”, she would “…like to change plots/ but she can’t figure out how.” The poems continue, following Nancy on a vacation where she can’t quite relax, peeking into the thoughts of her father and the housekeeper, then becoming more socially aware. “Stumped” reads like a real woman’s crisis with Nancy stuck between past and future with no way of growing older, nothing but a “stalled self”, and in “Unsolved Mysteries” Aguero points a finger at the selfish bourgeoisie world Nancy inhabits. And then, with “Mystery of the Tolling Bell”, the poems shift from a third person view of Nancy’s fictional world to a first person world in which teenagers do horrible things, friends commit suicide, and mothers develop dementia.

These poems, while couched in the terms of mystery, don’t fit with the rest of the collection. I found myself wondering if Aguero wanted to write two books: one about Nancy Drew, the other about the mysteries of her own life (or other ‘real’ lives). If she did intend to blend the two together, the balance is off in this chapbook; only five of the nineteen poems are in the third person. I feel like the chapbook would be stronger without those pages, particularly as it ends on a lovely note. After all of Nancy’s failures, fears, and stalling, the final piece “Zen Nancy” seems to show a girl sleuth who has somehow found a way to grow up, as she investigates bigger mysteries like “the sound/ of stone, the color of air,/ the vast and cloudless sky”.

The chapbook is available from Červená Barva Press

This has nothing to do with the MFA

2009-09-01T15:57:00.000-07:00

Just felt like writing out a celebration and a complaint that have nothing whatsoever to do with grad school, writing, or anything else beyond mere vanity and comfort.

1) On Sunday, after buying my books, I stopped in a shop in town that sells all sorts of outdoor gear, clothing, accessories, etc. (This is a big area for hiking) I was just browsing around at first and was immediately impressed by the cute clothing they had, much of it made from organic and/or sustainable and/or natural fabrics. That is not an essential criteria for my clothing, but it’s nice when I can get it. What I ended up getting instead were two pairs of shorts for running. People who have gone running with me, or know me in real life, know that I hate to wear shorts; I have been and remain to a degree self-conscious about my thighs and upper legs – I think they are chubby and pale and ugly – so I never wear shorts shorter than Bermudas in social settings, and I am constantly searching for running shorts with an inseam long enough to cover my thighs. This is difficult, because I’m also extremely long-legged. I’m only 5’7” but I have the legs of a person who is 6 feet tall. Literally. I’ve compared them. I’ve looked in running stores before, and one shop in Columbus carries a longer length women’s short (I forget which brand – Asics maybe, or Nike, a common athletic brand) but the one time I was there, all they had were small and extra large. I am neither! So, all this rambling to say that I discovered on Sunday that North Face makes at least two distinct styles of women’s shorts which are suitable for running and have a long enough inseam to make me happy; one was simply a longer styled short, the other was a tall/long version of a shorter style. AND both were on sale! I wore the black ones on my long run Sunday and they were super comfy and the blue ones on my 4 miler today and they are quite acceptable. Yay!

2) And now my rant. The water in State College sucks! I don’t mean the taste of it sucks, although it kind of does; I’ve had worse though. Tastewise, it’s somewhere on par with the heavily chlorinated water in certain Cleveland suburbs although more minerally and less chemically. What really sucks about the water is what it does to my skin and hair. My hair is like straw, my face and chest are broken out, my hands are peeling, and I got a nosebleed today; that’s how drying the water is! I invested in a deep conditioner for my hair and some super moisturizing hand cream and I’m trying to be religious about moisturizing face and body, but it is quite annoying.

So there you have it. Two totally random things I’ve discovered in or about State College, PA. Oh, and there ARE drag queens :) And I know one :) So that's happy too!

Review of "An Undertaking" by Jeffrey Harrison

2009-08-31T19:02:00.001-07:00

This is an expanded version of a grad school assignment - my review of Jeffrey Harrison's chapbook An Undertaking. (Have I mentioned my Poetry Workshop has a chapbook focus? It's really cool - each week we'll read 2 chapbooks (give or take) and write a one paragraph response to each, then choose one poem from either book and write a poem in response to, or in imitation of, or otherwise relating to, it. That's the first half of the semester; second half we'll continue reading chapbooks, start researching chapbook competitions, and put together our own chapbook type collections. Super cool, huh?) This is the first chapbook I've read and responded to for that class. I didn't love it, but I appreciate it. For more detail, read on....

Oh, and I may post reviews of all (or most) of the chapbooks I read for that class. I know I will post a review of Lisa Ciccarello's At Night, the Dead later this week, as part of the Read Write Poem Virtual Book Tour so stay tuned for more book-reviewing goodness :)

--- end babbling. begin review. ---

Jeffrey Harrison’s chapbook An Undertaking embodies its title in two ways. The word “undertaking” immediately conjures thoughts of a journey or a project, but once a reader sees that the chapbook is dedicated to someone who’s recently died “undertaking” seems to imply all things funereal. The collection opens with a poem called “Saint” in which the poet addresses a sculpted stone saint in a museum and asks for his prayers, and then the bulk of the chapbook contains a group of poems that focus on the suicide of the poet’s brother Andy at age 47 but also delve beneath the surface of his life and into the processes of grieving and healing. The collection closes with a poem titled “Visitation” in which the poet’s mother hears the song of white-throated sparrows and, in the song of these “family birds” she hears the memory of loved ones gone but also the knowledge that everything will be all right, and that the sparrows, like all people and things, “…will stay/ for only a few days before moving on.” In spite of the big subjects of suicide and death, Harrison’s poems are most memorable when they include concrete details like Andy’s seeming obsession with socks, discovered by his parents and brother only after his death, the rhyming scavenger hunt clues he wrote for his niece and nephew, and the silly songs he sang to a Newfoundland dog when the boys were younger.

Some poems like “The Investigation” and “Plea” use form, rhyme, and repetition to order the emotion while others explore different line lengths and stanza patterns. The poem “The Investigation” is particularly interesting to me because it makes use of the villanelle form to harness the emotion of the subject. The conversational diction and straightforward narrative style develop in the reader the same distance that the poet eventually achieves at the end of the piece. After struggling to understand his brother’s death, he realizes that he never really will, and that he has to “let it go”, a phrase that echoes throughout the poem. The structure of the poem and the enforced casualness of the language remind me of the way that many people deal with loss: we force ourselves to keep up with our habits and our schedules, to keep up appearances, and to speak and act as though things are fine. In life, as in the poem, the acting will eventually bring us to the reality.

Overall, the language in these poems is remarkably restrained, the opposite of the melodrama one might expect based on the subject matter. While I admire Harrison’s ability to process emotions rationally through words, I personally felt an almost-forced calmness in the poems and would have liked to see a bit more rawness emerge in this chapbook. The physical chapbook, from Haven Press, is a beautiful artifact: dark grey covers, letterpress printing on cover and title page, handsewn binding; and the poems contained inside tell a sad story in accessible language. An Undertaking is available on amazon.com.

One week down.....

2009-08-29T21:08:00.000-07:00

Week 1 summary is now posted on The MFA Chronicles. If you don't want all the details, here's the gist: it was a busy week. I’m only IN class for 12 hours a week, but there is a very definite balancing act I’m going to have to master of prepping to teach, reading/writing for my academic classes, reading/writing for workshop, AND still managing to run and have some sort of social life. I feel good about it though; I feel like I can do it, and I feel (after only a week) that I definitely belong here, I don’t doubt that for an instant, not even when I’m waiting for a bus in the pouring rain or sitting at my table glaring at an article about the Affective Fallacy.

I did however write a poem for workshop on Wednesday. I'd tried to write something and failed miserably on Thursday night, then after everyone left tonight (my roommate and I hosted four of the MA girls for dinner) I started from scratch and came up with something I'm much happier with.

I think I will like Tuesdays this semester

2009-08-25T15:22:00.000-07:00

Or at least I really like this one. I slept till 8:30, then a leisurely getting-ready, hopped on a bus at 10:13am and was in my office on campus by 10:30. I read through the very good student papers as I mentioned this morning, then did some random online stuff and chatted with people coming and going. Heated up my lunch, then went to my Writer in the Community class. Ooh, I am so excited about this class! It will be such fun, definitely a challenge, but in a good way. It's kind of a service learning course - in small groups (2 or 3 people) we will run a 10 week writing program in some community setting (nursing home, youth center, prison, etc). We have complete control over how we run the program, and we'll be comparing notes and sharing our experiences as we go, reading a lot of pedagogy, and writing about it. We'll be writing teaching journals AND posting some highlights on a class blog. And we'll be writing a paper at the end evaluating the whole experience, and we have the option of applying to present our papers at conferences and/or submit them for publication somewhere. Super, super cool! The class is also very self-directed; there are a few sites that have ongoing programs from previous years, but we also have the option of researching and setting up new ones. L and I are trying set something with a local women's center. If that doesn't pan out, we'll probably work with LGBT youth somewhere. I'd actually prefer the latter, but since someone in the course already made a contact at the women's center, it seemed easier to start there. So, yeah, super exciting!

Also, because we'll be out in the community at least an hour a week throughout most of the semester, the actually classroom component of the course will be shorter than it is marked on our schedules. It will be about two hours instead of three, which is great, because that means I'll be done around 2:30 and can come home and go running.

Which I also did today. A sweaty, somewhat hilly, four miles. I have not hit a 5 miler yet since living in PA. I was supposed to do one over the weekend and ended up doing 3.5. The weekend before my 5 miles was about 4.5. I've just gotta get into a routine and commit to it, that's all there is to it. I keep promising people I'm coming to OH in October to run the half, so I've gotta get in shape! If I can do another good 4 miles Thursday (like I'm scheduled to) and a shorter run on Friday, then I feel confident about jumping back into my training schedule and going for the full 6 miles on Sunday. At least 5 though - gotta break that boundary!

Tonight, I have some reading/homework/prep for tomorrow's teaching. And I'm nervous about the workshop class; first class meeting is tomorrow. Oh, and my loan finally disbursed tonight, but they're telling me it'll be at least 3 days till it's in my account! Hopefully that means Friday so I can buy my freaking books! Ugh, money....

But this is a happy post. So happy Tuesday thoughts. The weather was great, the student writing was good, class was good, the run was good, it's all good :)

Prophecy (and some preliminary thoughts on grad school)

2009-08-25T07:51:00.000-07:00

I realized this morning when my mother sent me an email saying that my brother had moved to Georgia yesterday that I'd dreamed about that event the previous night. Thinking on it, I had also dreamed about another real event the night before that. I was talking with J online the other day about fall, about this time of year, and how it feels so complex and bittersweet. People, no matter where we live or what we believe, are connected to nature and to the seasons. Some of us more than others, or more consciously, but we all feel it; we feel the days lengthen or shorten. This time of year, we feel the year winding down, the winter (the death) that is coming. The equinox is coming, and Samhain/Halloween/Day of the Dead. The veils between worlds are thinner then than at any other time; past and present, living and dead, "reality" and "unreality" are closer and more entwined, and sometimes overlapping. Things change in the fall. Things end, but more often for me, they begin.

(I will expand that and make it more logical at some point, perhaps, but for now, moving on to an unrelated thought)

First grad class was yesterday morning. It's the Intro to Graduate Study. Intimidating and encouraging at the same time. I thought class went okay; I was afraid I would feel like everyone else was better prepared than I was, but it felt like most of us were a bit overwhelmed, which isn't really a good thing, but it was good not to feel I was the only one. The assigned reading for next week is going to be a chore... Some of it at least. Some should be fun (or fun-ish).

My first day of teaching went well yesterday, and I asked the students to write for ten minutes at the end of class about themselves as writers, their experiences with writing, strengths/weaknesses, likes/dislikes, etc. I just read their material this morning (during my office hour - how cool to be able to say that!) and I must say that I am impressed. I don't know if Penn State really does have higher standards than state schools in Ohio, or if PA high schools are better, or if I just have an unusually skilled section of students, or what, but their writing, even uncorrected, handwritten, in class, is at a higher level than I expected. I am happy! And challenged. Yay!

Ready As I'll Ever Be

2009-08-23T18:05:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow, at 9:05am, I will attend my first graduate class. Tomorrow at 4:40pm, I will teach my first English 15 class.

This is so exciting and scary!

Last week was very busy. I got on the bus at 8:36 every morning and orientation started at 9:00. We were mainly in one particular room; the location of the building was convenient but the desks/chairs in the room were horribly uncomfortable. Not just not comfortable, but truly painful. We had lectures about the Composition program and English department policy, we got course syllabi and rosters and schedules and lesson plans. We heard from faculty and current graduate teachers about how exactly they conduct the first week of classes. We graded some practice papers and spent a whole morning discussing them; by the far the most fun and helpful morning of the week. We had people come in and speak to us about diversity issues, sexual harassment, the Writing Center, the Counseling Center, the Women’s Center. We got a tour of the library and free lunch that day. We spent one morning and a separate afternoon in a computer lab learning about all sorts of technology issues. It was exhausting, mentally and physically.

But we socialized too. Except for the day the library gave us lunch, we were on our own for an hour to an hour and a half, so we got to eat with our classmates, or run errands with them, and just talk and get to know people. Thursday night, two of the other new MFAs and I walked over to the milk and cookie party. All the new MFAs were there and quite a few of the returning ones. We chatted and ate cookies and it was nice and relaxing. Friday night, my roommate and I and our neighbor drove out to a party at one of the faculty member’s houses; there was very good food, and I think all of the new students were there, along with a few returning students and a few other faculty people. Some wine was drunk by me, and much fun was had. Maybe 1/3 of us new folks convened at Mad Mex downtown after the party wound down and enjoyed some more laidback talking and drinking. Saturday was the EGO party. N cooked dinner for my roommate and I, then we went to the party. It was packed and hot and loud and crazy, but less so than the last time I’d been to that house (same house that hosted the first party of recruitment weekend). I got to talk with a few of the older students I’d either not met, or not spoken much with, before; and got to bond with a few of my fellow newbies. Some people got drunker than I had yet seen them, and I got drunker than I had been since moving here, but not too drunk. Four of us were singing along to Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” in the car on the way home though. Fun stuff!

Everyone really is ridiculously nice, and, for a group of academic people, remarkably social. A handful of folks skipped the party last night, but most attended, and I think everyone there had a good time.

Today, I finished prepping to teach for the first week – I have outlines for each day, and I wrote out a full script for Monday and Wednesday, though I may not even refer to them; it was just helpful to write it. And I cooked a big pot of soup so I can eat leftovers this week, and I picked out an outfit to wear for my first day of teaching. I am as ready as I’m gonna get, and I am excited to get started and see how it goes!

I was thinking yesterday that I feel a little bit like I have lost sight of being a student this past week and just thought about being a teacher, but since our orientation was for teaching, that makes sense. I also have not bought my books yet, because I don’t have any money; I’m hoping my financial aid refunds tomorrow, so I can do that. My class tomorrow is Intro to Graduate Study; it goes from 9:05-12:05. Then I’ll eat my lunch (which I’ll pack in the morning), then hopefully go buy books, put them in my office, print out copies of an assignment sheet, pick up the copies of the syllabus that should be in my mailbox, and then spend some time reading for class – I’m assuming that we’ll have a reading assignment from that morning – and/or working on the 1-2 page writing assignment I have due for Tuesday. At around 4:00, I will switch my focus to reviewing for English 15, then get a cup of coffee and head to class. I’ll teach from 4:40 till 5:30 (I’m guess I’ll keep them at least 40 minutes if not the whole 50), then head home.

Tuesday I’m supposed to be in my office from 10:30-11:30, then I have my Writer in the Community class from 12:20-3:20. Wednesday is Poetry Workshop from 12:20-3:20, then office hours, then English 15. Thursday I just have English 602 from 1:00-2:15; that’s our teaching seminar. Friday the only thing on my schedule is teaching in the evening. I like that my schedule is busier early in the week, and freer as it goes on. I need to work in lots of writing time (as I have not been doing much writing recently) and my running time as well.

So, that’s where I am right now, on the eve of my first day as a grad student. I am so nervous and excited for this week, and I just want to get started!

Brain Full, Please Sleep

2009-08-18T19:51:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to my post on The MFA Chronicles today: http://mfachronicles.blogspot.com/2009/08/on-getting-oriented.html

It's a pretty fair summation of the first two days of orientation. So. Much. Information. Really, just SO MUCH! But it's good info, and I do feel like I could go in and at least get through the first day right now. We'll tackle days 2 and 3 later this week, and talk about/practice grading papers, and so on and so forth.

Tired now though, and going to get everything ready for tomorrow.

The MFAs are having a milk and cookie party on Thursday evening. Friday evening is a party at Dr. Glenn and Dr. Olson's house for all of us who've survived orientation. And Saturday night is an EGO (English Graduate Organization) shindig. So there is fun to be had as well.

Goals

2009-08-15T09:27:00.000-07:00

Yet again, I am sitting on my balcony drinking coffee, with the laptop, doing nothing. This has been a very slow week: unpacking, getting settled, running a few errands, but not really *doing* much. Next week, all that will change. I'll be in Orientation from 9-5 every day, and then classes will start the next week, so I decided to take the time, while things are slow, to write out my goals for my MFA.

1. To write a lot! And to write the best poetry I can. To learn from my teachers and fellow students and from the new experiences I will have. To synthesize all of that in with my own existing voice.

2. To teach. To learn as much as I can about the theory and practice of teaching and to be the best instructor I can. To challenge and inspire and learn from my students. To be a force for good in their lives and their college careers.

3. To learn to network. I've never been good at this, but I'm hoping to learn and to make a lot of friends and professional connections. To contribute positively to workshops and classes and to the department. To join some sort of professional organization(s) and contribute to the larger community.

4. To take a non-fiction workshop, to develop a plan for the non-fiction book I want to write.

5. To put together a cohesive collection of poetry. To develop good writing and submission habits. To publish poems, and, ultimately, a collection.

6. To develop my voice and abilities as a critical reader and writer, to prepare and publish scholarly articles, to apply to (and get accepted into) the PhD program here at Penn State.

A Lovely Day (and a bunch of boring details)

2009-08-13T18:56:00.000-07:00

Well, I did walk to campus yesterday to get my student ID and set up my computer access and my email account. I actually liked the picture for my ID, which was a nice surprise, as I normally hate the way I photograph. Today I went and picked up the books I'll be using to teach freshman composition. Looked through them a bit this afternoon, and while it's kind of overwhelming, it's also very exciting. I am also desperately waiting for my tuition bill to post so that I can get my student loan money deposited into my checking account; it is this whole involved process where the bill doesn't actually post until after you activate you computer account, and then you have to submit it to the bursar, and then they can't "refund" your loan money until after the first day of classes. Even though I have a tuition waiver, I did request loans this first semester to help with the costs of moving and getting settled and leaving my old job and all of that stuff. I'm broker than I should be right now, but I have a very small paycheck coming next Wednesday (leftover from my job) and then hopefully, if all goes correctly, I'll have the loan disbursed the following week. I'm in no danger of starving in the meantime, but I can't afford to ride the bus, so I guess I'll be walking my first couple days of orientation; it should take about 35 minutes. I timed the walk to Burrowes today (the English building where I picked up my comp books) and it took 37 minutes; Willard, where orientation is being held, is slightly closer.

I actually had a very nice day today. We got our modem delivered this morning and now have real, reliable, internet that actually is intended for our use. I got back from campus around 1:00, I think, baked some sugar cookies, walked to the grocery and got a few things, read for awhile, then went running around 5:45. Had a nice run, for the first time; I don't know if I'm getting used to the hills, or if I just picked a better route this time. I also made a really yummy dinner: pasta with zucchini, chickpea, and tomato sauce. Yum, yum, yum. And lots of leftovers too.

First post from PA

2009-08-12T09:16:00.000-07:00

Well, I’m here. I moved in on Saturday with the help of my wonderful moving posse. They left on Sunday afternoon, and I started unpacking. Sunday and most of Monday were spent unpacking and organizing. I checked out the grocery store and the Goodwill Monday afternoon and went for my first run in this new neighborhood. At first it felt a bit like running in Dublin did, past the apartment complexes and the cul-de-sacs, but then I turned up Whitehall Road, and it suddenly felt like southern Ohio: I was running beside a black-topped road, with fields sloping down to my left, hills rising softly through the humid air, passing separate houses with gardens and fruit trees and falling-down barns. It was lovely and homey.

My roommate arrived on Tuesday. I must say it is odd to have a roommate again. I am old and set in my single ways, so having someone else in the apartment just seems strange. She is nice though, and seems really laidback, and I am sure we’ll get along fine.

I still have not done anything all that constructive, in terms of going to campus and getting my id or my books or anything, but that can wait I guess. I am desperately poor right now, and trying to hang in there. I did however, on the topic of constructiveness, write a poem on Monday while sitting on my balcony.

Pennsylvania Morning #1

Walking my dog this first morning
we follow a path behind the building
bordered by an overgrown tree line -
maples and elms, a dark-leafed shrubby thing
I can’t identify, and plenty of weeds.
I recognize many of these plants from Ohio,
Queen Anne’s Lace, tall purple thistles
that punctuate the verge with danger,
wild grape vines with pointed leaves
and dusty curling tendrils, and the yellow tongues
of touch-me-not that nevertheless invite
my touch. I remember the blossoms as orange
when my mother took me hiking
on the Cleveland Metropark trails
she’d known as a girl and taught me
how they work and why; I wonder if
these are a different species or if
my memory is wrong, but the striated
green pods are swollen just the same,
and when I close my finger and thumb
around the largest it bursts just like
I knew it would. The pod splits,
its sides curl open like streamers,
the inside is white, the seeds fly free.

Also, I am now participating in a collaborative blog called The MFA Chronicles; all the contributors are starting MFA programs this fall and we’ll be comparing notes and sharing our experiences with each other and with readers. If you’re interested in the MFA process, check it out. So far I have posted an introduction and a long post about how I chose the programs to which I applied and how I ended up at Penn State. Feel free to give them a read if you want, but I’ll probably cross-post a lot of things here, if I think they’d be of general interest.

Last day of work

2009-07-31T10:47:00.000-07:00

I'm reading (and loving) Lisa Ciccarello’s chapbook "At Night, The Dead" as part of the first Read Write Poem "virtual book tour". Several people will be reviewing the chapbook on their respective blogs; my review will appear here on September 3rd.

Also, just playing on the new fabulously redesigned Read Write Poem site today. Go check it out!

Grad School Preparations

2009-07-30T14:29:00.000-07:00

I have now packed the following:

Six boxes of books (then I ran out of boxes)

everything that was previously under my bed (well, ok, I threw out a good bit of it)

a box of small pictures frames, interspersed with scarves for cushioning

the contents of my desk so I can get rid of it

I’ve also gone through my front closet and thrown things out, given things away, and gotten the rest of it organized. I even put all my hats, gloves, etc in two little plastic tubs.

I’m making gradual progress. I am also increasingly nervous, about the physical details of the move, the prospect of living with a roommate for the first time in three years, and mostly about the program. I’m second-guessing my creative abilities, and my intellectual ones, and I am anxious to just get in there and challenge myself. Oddly, the one thing I’m not questioning is the one thing that everyone else seems to think I should be most nervous about, and that’s teaching; instead, I’m really looking forward to it. I hope I didn’t just jinx myself by saying that, but I’m really excited to teach!

Ghazal - "Nothing"

2009-07-21T10:00:00.000-07:00

You know I love ghazals, and there was a post on Poetic Asides about them the other day, so I wrote one off the cuff that evening and thought I'd toss it up here since I haven't posted much poetry recently. I changed one line from the version I posted here (You can read the post about the form and a few other people's submissions as well).

I loved her four years and took away nothing
but memories and photos that add up to nothing.

In Ohio, it is hard not to love summer, the bright green
of grass, the brightness of bodies wearing next to nothing.

We were both eighteen, bare-legged on a summer night,
sweet smell of cornsilk, so faint as to be almost nothing.

An apartment without air conditioning. Open windows
all night long. Two bodies sweating. I would change nothing.

Sun and moon love earth the way I loved her, the only way
they know how: offering themselves, asking nothing.

It has been ten years since she left. Still when I drink wine,
I wonder what I should have done differently. The answer: nothing.

With all this time to think, Emily has realized
that without both love and loss, life is worth nothing.

Documentary

2009-07-17T12:13:00.000-07:00

Possible beginning of a poem, or just a random bit of thought.

Documentary

Two shoeboxes full of photographs
a flip book of evolution, a novel
in glossy 3x5s and 4x6s, main characters
and minor, some who’ve died and some
who’ve disappeared, a poor white
station wagon and my baby sister
in a stained dress playing on a bare
floor, friendships and tourist attractions
and yellow fields and red brick,
dogs I remember and cats I’ve forgotten

Make it new

2009-07-14T20:33:00.001-07:00

Attended a really great open mic event tonight (at Urban Spirit coffeeshop, on Long Street, for any Columbus people reading - it's absolutely worth checking out! More slam-oriented than the Poetry Forum, but very supportive of all different voices, and filled with talent!) And I was noticing that a lot of poems dealt with similar themes and/or sounded similar to other poems I've heard or read before, so I was just thinking about how to make things new, and how hard that is. The easiest things to say are the ones that have already been said, but are they the only ones?

Is there an end of newness, a limit to the number of new things a poet can say, a finite number of new ways to say them? Is it like a relationship, where it loses the excitement after awhile? Or is there a way to keep the spark going, to make a commitment, to marry the work. I, Emily Anderson, take you, poetry, to be my partner….. I feel a bit like that’s the commitment I’m making by going into an MFA program; I’m saying “yes, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. This is the career I want to have. For richer and for poorer…” (mostly poorer – poets, even with university jobs, aren’t known to be wealthy). That’s scary, that commitment. And we all know I don’t do well with commitment. But maybe I can change. Maybe I'm ready.

perfect (from this weekend)

2009-07-13T15:57:00.000-07:00

(I wasn't online at home at the time I wrote this, Saturday afternoon, but thought I'd post it now)

it’s raining today, a steady, cooling, soaking rain, with some light thunder, the day after I noticed how low the river was and how sad the mudflats looked in the center of it. I felt a little guilty for wanting nothing but sunshine this summer, and now we’re getting rain on a day when I had no outdoor activities at all planned. again, it is perfect. perfect, perfect, perfect. overwhelmingly so, and scarily so, and I just want to live up to it all.

Yay, COTA

2009-07-09T11:03:00.000-07:00

Reasons I like riding the bus:

1) seeing the pregnant mom with three young children and being glad it's not me

2) accidentally eavesdropping on a cell phone conversation and realizing that I still understand more Spanish than I thought I did

3) not having to drive, or think, or pay attention to anything for a little while. feeling like i'm "supposed" to be just reading or daydreaming or playing games on my cell phone.

4) no parking hassles

5) no parking tickets

6) relinquishing control and my obsession with being on time

Summer Reading Part 3

2009-07-07T11:23:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a deliciously book-filled day. After work, I walked up to the library. I returned Autobiography of Red; I'd meant to re-read it carefully, but after re-reading a few sections, I decided not to. While I appreciate that it's a very smart, very unique book, and while the story did stick with me, the poetry of it, the language of it, didn't really connect with me. So I returned one book and picked up four more, including Czeslaw Milosz's Selected Poems which I absolutely love, then I took the bus up to Clintonville to spend my gift certificate at Areopagitica Book Store. Oh, I love that place! It's a used bookstore, in all the best ways: it smells of old books, it's usually empty, you can stumble across all kinds of hidden gems, and the proprietors lurk quietly and can tell you where anything in the store is. I got there right around 6:00, only to see on the sign that they are supposed to close at 6:00 on Mondays. The door was still open and the shelf of clearance books still on the sidewalk, so I walked in and asked if they closed at 6:00 and the man behind the desk said he'd decided to stay open that evening. So I wandered a bit, picked up Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet (which I've read before but need to own) and The Delicacy and Strength of Lace, letters between James Wright and Leslie Marmon Silko, and I ordered a copy of A Wild Perfection (the collection of James Wright's letter that I have from the library right now). I've always enjoyed James Wright's poetry, but reading the letters is just so interesting; I'm maybe a third of the way through the book and there are so many things I'd like to go back to read again and think about.

Then I had a nice coffee break with Sam, then went home, had a veggie chili dog and a spinach salad for dinner, then read and read some more. I am so in love with Milosz! If there is one critique I could make of my assigned reading in college, it is the almost complete lack of poetry in translation. I never read Neruda or Paz or Akhmatova in college; I've discovered all of them later, through friends or my own reading. I did read and fall in love with Rilke (thank you, John Wylam, for including one of the Elegies in the English 205 course packet), but his is the only translated poetry I remember reading in college. Anyway, Milosz is wonderful: poignant and smart and visual and just altogether lovely. So I read a bit of that, then I finished the novel I started last week: The Shadow Lines, by Amitav Ghosh. The second half was better than the first. The whole novel jumps around frequently in time, all through the childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood of the narrator; it can be confusing, especially early on until the reader gets a handle on the basics of what happened when and where. By the second section, one plot point has been resolved and the reader has a decent grasp on the overall arc of the story, so the second half reads easier than the first. I enjoyed the book, and it's a worthwhile read, but not super-outstanding.

I need to write. I want to write. I get ideas for poems, but I am embroiled in some strange sort of conflict with myself over actually sitting down to write them. I think on one hand, I want to save my writing for once I get to grad school, as though I'm afraid if I write a lot this summer, I won't have anything to say in the fall. On the other, I feel like I really should get into the habit of writing, but I'm dragging my feet against that obligation; I don't respond well to pressure or obligations, and telling me I "should" or "have to" do something is one of the best ways to keep me from doing it.

Summer reading Part 2, and etc.

2009-06-30T10:44:00.000-07:00

So, I think last night's post may have been my first drunken blog update. Fun. I had taken the day off yesterday, to recover from the weekend, so I slept late, walked the dog, then spent a couple hours at a coffee shop. After dinner, I decided to drink some wine that was left at my apartment a couple weeks ago and read poetry, which is what I was doing when I got the text inviting me out on a Monday. If I hadn't already been drinking, and/or if I wasn't still in weekend mode, I would not have gone, but as it was, I did, and it was fun.

Anyway, on the reading update I meant to give... I read The Unbearable Lightness of Being last week. Read Autobiography of Red yesterday, and will re-read it soon. As I was reading, I didn't love it; much of it really did not read as poetry for me, more like chopped up lines of prose. But the images and story have stuck with me, and I am looking forward to re-reading it. What else? I finished Late Wife and loved it. Still working on the James Wright letters. Oh, and I read Mirror Mirror by Gregory Maguire (of Wicked fame) - I'd read his Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister and found it lacking, and this wasn't as good as Wicked either, but better than the other.

Thinking a lot about this summer and these three holiday weekends in a row and how different they are. Pride is a celebration of community, a defiant assertion of identity, and (for many of us) a cathartic, Dionysian, revel where we can drink and dance and kiss and fuck our sorrows and issues away in a safe place. Comfest is a "party with a purpose" as the slogan goes; it is idealistic and rejuvenating, an escape into an idyllic mindset for a weekend which can inform and inspire and anchor us as we go back out into reality. And now this coming weekend is the dichotomy of Red White & Boom on Friday (the patriotic, mass-culture, traditional display of fireworks downtown) and the DooDah parade on Saturday (complete anarchy and irreverence).

Next week, I'll start planning my move. And my going away party.

The tail end of a long weekend

2009-06-29T22:39:00.001-07:00

(or the most perfect summer)

It it late, but I can not motivate myself to go to bed. I only have a three-day work week, so it's a little hard to care about a lack of sleep. I, against my better judgement, accepted an invitation to meet J for drinks tonight, on a Monday, and am now, slightly tipsily, taking advantage of the miracle that is internet access at home.

Comfest was last weekend. It was perfect. It was hot and sunny and sweaty and dirty and crazy and drunk and sad and amazing. I love my life here, I love it so much and am so very grateful for it and for everyone who makes it what it is, and it is so very very hard to think about voluntarily leaving all of this, BUT I am still so excited to be going to school and to be doing an MFA and I KNOW it is the right decision.

The weekend before was Pride, which was also perfect, in all the same hot, sunny, drunk, friends-I-adore ways.

It's hard to be so happy. It's hard to see someone I was happy with be with someone else. It's hard to be disappointed but not heartbroken, to know things work the way they're meant to work. It's hard to feel so lucky to have been with her, and to have the people in my life that I do. But I'm lucky that these are my difficulties.

I am lucky. I am happy. This truly is the summer I wanted. The most perfect summer I can conjur. I am like the child whose world revolves around her; I wanted a perfect summer to say goodbye to Ohio, and I am getting it.

a snippet

2009-06-25T12:28:00.001-07:00

Where is the line between
sun and shade? It moves
you know as an afternoon
flows on. We start in the sun
and end in shadow, pinked
and chilled in the evening.

Lit survey (from a facebook friend)

2009-06-19T10:47:00.000-07:00

1) What author do you own the most books by?
Without looking at my bookshelf, I can't be sure, but I think it's probably Anne Rice. I know, that's embarrassing. I went though a vampire phase when I was younger, what can I say?

2) What book do you own the most copies of?
I don't own more than one copy of any book. There are plenty of short stories and poems that appear in more than one anthology I own, but no single book appears more than once in my collection.

3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
I didn't notice it, but now that you mention it......

4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
hmmm, I guess I'm pretty good at separating fiction from reality ;)

5) What book have you read the most times in your life (excluding picture books read to children; i.e., Goodnight Moon does not count)?
I'm not sure. The Vampire Lestat, by Anne Rice. Or Tolkein's LOTR trilogy (since I read it the first time at a young age). I go back to escapist favorites like that, with their associated memories of the past, when I'm bored or depressed.

6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?
Probably something by Betsy Byers.

7) What is the worst book you've read in the past year?
hmmm.... Probably a scifi novel I picked up at the library solely for it's title: Till Human Voices Wake Us. I loved the Eliot reference, but the book did not interest me at all.

8) What is the best book you've read in the past year?
I am loving Claudia Emerson's poems in Late Wife!

9) If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?
That's not my style. Read what you love.

10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?
uhm, I feel like I should probably have an intelligent suggestion here, but I don't.

11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
Nothing comes to mind. I generally don't like book to move adaptations.

12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
Anything by Dan Brown. Keep him away from me and next to airport toilets! Gracias! (Lol! I'm keeping this answer directly from Tory, because it's funny, and I agree!)

13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
hmmm..... none come to mind.

14) What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult?
I read plenty of fantasy and scifi, "genre fiction" if you will. Can't say just one book. I did read the Harry Potter series, but I have however NOT read Twilight. I grew out of my vampire phase when I was about 19.

15) What is the most difficult book you've ever read?
oooh, good question. Uhm, The Sound and the Fury, or Vanity Fair? Those are the first that come to mind.

16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you've seen?
hmmm, I've never seen anything too obscure. Maybe Much Ado About Nothing?

17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
French.

18) Roth or Updike?
Roth, definitely.

19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?
That is a toss-up. I've really not read much of either.

20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?
Shakespeare, of course!

21) Austen or Eliot?
Eliot. Go ahead and take away my chick card. It's okay. I admit it: I don't love Jane Austen.

22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
Probably Medieval/Renaissance. And nonfiction. And my complete lack of a background in theory. I fear this will haunt me in the coming years.

23) What is your favorite novel?
The God of Small Things, by Arundahti Roy. If I have to pick just one.

24) Play?
A Doll's House, by Ibsen. Maybe. Or, this isn't a play per se, but Twilight Los Angeles, by Anna Deveare Smith, is absolutely brilliant, and a crazy-important historical document about race and class and violence in the 90s.

25) Poem?
How about book of poetry? Rilke's Duino Elegies (David Young's translation). Hands down. Going back to question 9, if I could tell everyone to read one book, this might be it. It speaks so beautifully about life and death and what it really means to be human and to be an artist.

26) Essay?
"A Room of One's Own" by Virginia Woolf, if I have to pick one. That's a classic. I read a lot of contemporary essays on politics, culture, gender issues, gay issues, globalization, environment, etc.

27) Short story?
I haven't read much short fiction lately, so I'm not sure I can answer this. I will say though that I read "Brokeback Mountain" years before it was made into a movie and found it a wonderful, moving story. This is an improper comment for a writer, but short stories are perhaps my least favorite genre. I much prefer my fiction at novel length.

28) Work of nonfiction?
Kurt Vonnegut, Man Without a Country

29) Who is your favorite writer?
Oh, goodness.... Most anyone I've mentioned here already. Plus Whitman, Yeats, Edith Wharton, Michael Chabon, Salman Rushdie, Richard Hugo, James Wright, Carolyn Forche, uhm, etc, etc, etc.....

30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today?
Meh, everyone sees value in different things.

31) What is your desert island book?
The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry. Plenty of variety, and thousands of pages, to keep me busy.

32) And... what are you reading right now?
Late Wife: Poems, by Claudia Emerson (wonderful)
A Wild Perfection: The Selected Letters of James Wright (wonderful)
American Sublime, by Elizabeth Alexander (meh)

and this

2009-06-18T09:41:00.000-07:00

read this!

if you don't read anything else i ever link to, read this.

Thursday, Thursday (sung to the tune of "Monday, Monday")

2009-06-18T08:44:00.000-07:00

Let's see, what to say today? I am excited for the weekend, but having a good week already. Tuesday was my first carless day. I took the bus to and from work, walked over to the rental office to put money on my laundry card, and then did 4 loads of laundry (can you tell I've been procrastinating?). I also got a lot done on the jigsaw puzzle I'm determined to finish before Saturday. When my friend L moved to Arizona a couple years ago, she gave me three big 1000 piece jigsaw puzzles. They've been sitting around my apartments since then, and I finally decided to start one last week. It's probably 1/3 of the way done now. I am hosting brunch before the Pride parade on Saturday so it has to be off the table before then, and I would hate hate hate to have to put it away without finishing it. Yesterday, I bought some groceries after work, then walked my dog up to the bank with me and deposited some money, then I brushed him, clipped his nails, and gave him a bath. And then I went swimming! First time this year! It was a little cold, but nice to be in the water. Tonight I want to stop by the North Market after work and get some produce, then I have volunteer training from 6-8, and then I want to bake at least one batch of muffins, if not two. And I want to go out tonight to kick off Pride weekend. Tomorrow, I will drag myself through work, and then the weekend will commence. I've gotta get everything ready for brunch and get my apartment vacuumed again (damn that dog hair!) before the lovely irresponsible spirit takes over completely, but I will do it.

Oh, and I like this poem by Wislawa Szymborska. And I read a couple more of the James Wright letters last night. The ones where he talks about the Korean War are very interesting. If I had the book with me now, I'd quote a few passages which read as quite contemporary and relevant even now.

Simplify

2009-06-16T08:32:00.001-07:00

Within the space of less than a week, I have gone televisionless and carless. I think I like it. I will definitely do more walking, and more reading, and hopefully more writing as well.

I also started reading the poems in Late Wife by Claudia Emerson last night, and I love them. And started reading James Wright's letters in A Wild Perfection. Good stuff, good stuff! Just thinking about how I will never get past being a country girl. No matter how long I live in cities or how much I appreciate them, there is part of me that will always recognize and attach to the seasons and what they mean to the land and to those who farm it.

2009-06-15T07:52:00.000-07:00

Just read this: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20615

Interesting article

2009-06-08T10:56:00.000-07:00

An interesting article by Louis Menand about teaching creative writing - whether it is possible, what workshops accomplish (or don't), the ramifications of an "anti-system" like writing being part of a system like the university, etc. It's a pretty interesting read, although it focuses much more on fiction than on poetry, and I agree completely with his assessment of the value of CW workshops at the end of the article:

"Did I engage in self-observation and other acts of modernist reflexivity? Not much. Was I concerned about belonging to an outside contained on the inside? I don’t think it ever occurred to me. I just thought that this stuff mattered more than anything else, and being around other people who felt the same way, in a setting where all we were required to do was to talk about each other’s poems, seemed like a great place to be. I don’t think the workshops taught me too much about craft, but they did teach me about the importance of making things, not just reading things. You care about things that you make, and that makes it easier to care about things that other people make.

And if students, however inexperienced and ignorant they may be, care about the same things, they do learn from each other."

Those are my italics, but that is very much how I remember my undergraduate workshops.

The Letter Project

2009-06-05T11:37:00.001-07:00

I discovered The Letter Project today. I too have always loved writing and receiving letters, and reading what is posted so far on the site has been inspiring. I just requested from the library the book of James Wright's letters that Theresa mentions. This is exciting.

Summer Reading, part 1

2009-06-05T09:23:00.000-07:00

I'm intermittently reading The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser and Charles Simic's The World Doesn't End. Both of which I want to love, but don't quite. They both have moments I love, but I'm curiously unmoved by much of what I read. Maybe it's just me. I'm waiting for something to really grab me!

And I'm also reading Zelda: A Biography (about Zelda Fitzgerald). I confess to finding it pathetic more than anything else. Both she and Scott come across as shallow, self-obsessed, and irresponsible to such an extent that it's just sad.

Sigh! Can anyone recommend something that will knock me on my butt?

Thought and Memory

2009-05-29T11:20:00.000-07:00

and a total first draft of something.....

Thought and Memory

Their wings beat
beside my ears, ruffling
my hair but never tangling it.

Knowledge comes
unlooked for - I knew you
before you arrived, saw your soul
in silence as we lay on the bare floor.

Cold painted walls
disco ball above, tiny mirrors
tiny stars dancing on the wood floor
on your wide-open eyes, your dark-lashed
glowing eyes, your brown eyes, your sad eyes.

I remember your name
from somewhere I've never been.
I remember the smell of your hair,
Raven-dark and shining, smoky and shining
and surrounding me suddenly. I don't remember
you moving, beside me, above me, your hair like birds
delicate and quick, hollow bones, breakable, but still

still

defying gravity.

I feel like a real grad student

2009-05-29T11:05:00.000-07:00

I am registered for classes now! Yeehaw!

Intro to Graduate Study
Poetry Workshop
Writer in the Community

plus a 1 hour Teaching Colloquium, and my freshman comp teaching assignment.

Super cool!

Neurotheology

2009-05-28T09:31:00.000-07:00

Neurotheology

There are paths in the brain
we tread every day: time, space,
self, but there are ways to step
off the well-worn track. Wilderness
awaits, a terrifying mystery,
a disconnection, a connection.

God is present in the space
between your reality and mine.

The universe is made of stories, not of atoms

2009-05-22T10:34:00.000-07:00

That's a quote by Muriel Rukeyser. I've run across it before, and liked the lines, but read it again recently and it's stuck in my head. I enjoy her poems quite a bit.

Just a couplet

2009-05-20T08:52:00.000-07:00

You are the smell of lighter fluid and charcoal and charring beef.
You are nostalgia, not desire: I have been a vegetarian for ten years.

I have not posted anything in weeks.... I had a good visit to PA, but then things fell through with the apartment I thought I had, and I was very annoyed about that. It feels like one has to be heterosexual and without pets in order to find a roommate and apartment in that damn town. I think I've found another roommate, but we're still hunting for a pet-friendly place. So, yeah, it's an ongoing process....

I've not done much writing recently. I'm trying. I keep coming up with ideas when I'm out running, or walking, or driving, or in some other way unable to write them down, and then failing to remember them or lacking the motivation to sit down and write them when I am able to do so. I've been reading a bit - mostly fiction but some poetry. Thinking about brain chemistry, concepts of self and identity, society and individuality, ingroups and outgroups. Typical stuff ;)

Goodbye, Poetry Forum! I will remember you fondly!

2009-05-06T08:40:00.000-07:00

So I read on Monday, probably for the last time at the Poetry Forum, or at least the last time as a regular. I promised to come back and visit, but a Monday night event is not the easiest thing. It was a really fun night; Nathan's reading was wonderful, and everything seemed to go very well. I had probably one glass of wine too many, but hey, it was a special occasion.

I'm going to PA on Friday, to find an apartment and hang out. Supposed to bring poems to show one of my future fellow students. Nervous about everything having to do with grad school, but excited. I now have a nice bookstore gift certificate to spend and need to make a list of stuff I want to buy. Yay books! And yay roadtrips! And yay poetry! (and to balance that out - boo to annoying coworkers, rainy days, and people leaving without saying goodbye!)

What I Fear

2009-05-01T08:32:00.000-07:00

One of the last PAD prompts was to write a sestina, so I did. The themes come from two places - one a very old prompt I took from Stacey, which is just to take all your fears or anxieties and write them into a poem - and one taking off on the theme of a poem I read Monday night.

What I Fear

These are the things I fear:
both success and failure, love
and never finding love, being
trapped in a house that’s burning,
cars stopped on a bridge,
growing old or dying young.

I no longer feel young
in the winter, and I fear
the ice on each bridge,
want only warmth and love,
your face above a book, fireplace burning
beside our two chairs, the simple act of being

with you. Each human being
can be happy but only the young
see it as a right. This ends with the burning
of a hand on a stove, the lessons to fear
what you do not know, that love
sometimes punishes, that not all bridges

can or should be crossed. A bridge
just outside of town where we went to be
alone, threw our bras in the creek and made love
in the car for the first time. We were young
enough to be reckless, old enough to fear
judgment. My mother told us we would burn

in hell, her knuckles white, her arms a burning
cross over her chest. She can not bridge
the gap between God and love. Her fear
is for my soul, her guilt for not being
able to avert this crisis when I was young.
There are so many kinds of love

and so many feelings that are not love:
to be trapped, to be forced, to burn
inside with shame. When I was young
I learned to fear escalators and bridges
and strange men and drugs. I learned to be
good is to be safe, and this is what I truly fear:

that I will let fear keep me from love,
that nothing will be enough to burn
away the bridges sunk deep when I was young.

To The One I've Not Yet Met

2009-04-27T10:20:00.001-07:00

To The One I've Not Yet Met

Speak to me in your own language,
your own voice and vocabulary. Do not try
to impress me or assume you know
my language. Speak to me as to yourself.
If I understand, we'll know this is love.

from Sunday's PAD prompt to write about miscommunication, after thinking about how sometimes i feel so few people, even among my friends, really speak the same language as me.

A promised, a bit of backstory

2009-04-27T07:47:00.000-07:00

So, here is the story about that poem I posted last week....

I have been wanting to write a ghazal for a long time, but never really made myself try one. A pretty good explanation of the form is here if you want to read up, but the basic rules, as I understand them, are that a ghazal is composed of 5-15 couplets, and it utilizes a repeated word called a radif which appears at the end of both lines of the first couplet and then at the end of the last line of each succeeding couplet. Each couplet should stand alone, although a loose theme or feeling is generally developed throughout the poem. Traditional ghazals often evoke themes of the romantic, erotic, and/or spiritual, and have a melancholy tone. It is also tradition for the poet to "sign" the poem by including his or herself in the final couplet, often in 3rd person, though I chose to use 1st person.

The ghazal was popularized in English in the U.S. by a Kashmiri-American poet named Agha Shahid Ali. I met him in the fall of 1999; he read at Bowling Green as part of an Asian-American Writers' Conference. I also got to hang out and drink with him afterward, and he was a wonderful man. He died two years later. Before he died, he put together a book of ghazals which are absolutely beautiful and heartbreaking and amazing, especially knowing that he wrote many of them when he knew that he was dying.

The PAD prompt was to write a poem about regret, and for some reason the word just struck me as the perfect word to use in a ghazal. I wrote the 5 couplets posted here that day and then another three over the weekend that I think I will add in.

Shahid's book is called Call Me Ishmael Tonight: A Book of Ghazals. He also edited a book called Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English which includes work by Maxine Kumin, William S. Merwin, Ann Townsend, and many others.

Regret

2009-04-23T09:59:00.000-07:00

no time to talk about this right now, but wanted to post it.....

Regret: A Ghazal for Agha Shahid Ali

The poet approached his death without regret.
His loves, his words, all pure and true. No regret.

Sunshine in April warms the panes of windows
composed of broken sand. Does the ocean regret?

The room is brilliant and empty, bed made,
window open, curtains billowing in gusts of regret.

Lovers frolic in the new grass, hands hot and waiting.
Their eyes meet. Everything is possible but regret.

I met the poet the year before he died. We talked
of everything but death. I still carry that regret.

The Art of Work (and some news)

2009-04-22T11:28:00.000-07:00

Still keeping up with the PAD challenge, though I haven't written anything super exciting the past few days. This whole experience has been very good for me though. Not only have I really gotten into the habit of writing every day, but it's been good for me to write on some different subjects and to write without feeling like the end result has to be perfect or even good. Going into the Poem a Day challenge, I gave myself permission to write some really bad poems. As long as I wrote something every day, that was okay; I've been trying not to overthink the prompts and just go with whatever comes to mind. Some of the poems have come easily, others I've struggled with. Some I've known were complete crap, but others have surprised me in good ways.

I read two more of these newbies on Monday at the Poetry Forum: "Easter Morning" (the prose poem I referenced but didn't post in its entirety last week) and "White, Through Four Seasons" which I linked to. Got good responses, but they could both use some edits I think.

But here's the big news: I found out on Monday that I won 3rd place in the William Redding Memorial Poetry Competition! It's an annual contest sponsored by the Poetry Forum and Pudding House Publishing. My friend Nathan actually won first place - go Nathan!!! He gets a featured reading at the Poetry Forum in 2 weeks. The 2nd and 3rd place winners also get to read that night in shorter spots, so that'll be exciting!

Anyway, here's today's PAD poem. The prompt was to write a work-related poem.

The Art of Work

When I was young, to be called lazy
was the greatest insult. Like robots
my parents valued efficiency and hard work
at the expense of anything else.
Creativity was unnecessary unless it meant
a new way of cooking dinner or a faster method
of clearing brush or harvesting corn. The arts
were luxuries we could hardly afford.

A working writer is an oxymoron
in my father's eyes. There is no sweat
involved, no dirt, he sees no danger.
I can not explain that art is a blade
turned inward, two-edged and shining,
an artificial intelligence that cuts to the truth
leaving the artist in tatters, sweating
and exhausted after a hard day's work.

A New Relationship

2009-04-19T13:29:00.000-07:00

A New Relationship

I believe I have finally made peace
with sweet potatoes. For years
I would tell anyone who cared
that I just don’t like them, even go
so far as to say hate. And I do
still hate, or strongly dislike,
and refuse to eat, sweet potato pie
or any concoction that involves
brown sugar, butter, or, heaven forbid,
marshmallows. I credit Northstar burritos
and my last two ex-girlfriends
for inspiring me to renegotiate
my relationship with a vegetable
I’ve always felt I really should like.

We got off on the wrong foot, sweet
potatoes and I, that gooey, too sweet
winter vegetable “eat your dinner
or go hungry” foot of childhood,
and I confess, I held a grudge. I just
wouldn’t see that they could be more
than orange mush masquerading
as dessert. We just needed some spice -
salt and pepper, cumin, chili powder –
and some mutual friends – black beans,
onions, tofu, tortillas, olive oil
instead of butter, and never, ever,
sugar of any kind. If we both follow
those rules, I think we can have
a great, long-lasting relationship.

Just an interesting quote

2009-04-19T12:09:00.000-07:00

from today's Poem of the Day email. It's from "User's Guide to Physical Debilitation" by Paul Guest. I can't say I love the poem, but this section made me laugh awkwardly...oh sex.....

When not an outright impossibility
or form of neurological science fiction,
sexual congress will either be with
tourists in the kingdom of your tragedy,
performing an act of sadistic charity;
with the curious, for whom you will be beguilingly blank canvas;
or with someone blindly feeling their way
through an extended power outage
caused by summer storms you once thought romantic.

Colors and Ideas and Possibilities, Oh My

2009-04-16T11:44:00.000-07:00

(alternately titled: It's Finally Looking and Feeling Like Spring!)

http://appalachianphoto.org/members/mary-tortorici

I am fascinated by these photos of topiary in front of a small Applachian house with laundry drying on a clothesline. There is a poem in this, for sure. Actually, the entire photo project is really cool.

Today's PAD challenge was to take a color, make it the title of your poem, and then just write something. Very open-ended, but not a bad prompt. Here's a link to all today's responses. You can find mine by searching for my name, or the title "White, Through Four Seasons".

13 Ways of Looking at a Cat

2009-04-15T09:52:00.000-07:00

Wonderful PAD prompt today!!! Take the title of a famous poem, alter it in some way, and then write your own. You don't have to follow the form of the original, but I chose to. This was actually a lot of fun, and the responses today are really good.

13 Ways of Looking at a Cat
(after Wallace Stevens' "13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" with my apologies)

I
Throughout my entire apartment
the only moving thing
is the tan striped tail twitching.

II
I am of three minds,
like the cat
who can not decide which bird to chase.

III
The cat dances in the window at night.
She is a small part of the ballet.

IV
A woman and a woman
are one.
A woman and a woman and a cat
are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
the beauty of accomplishment
or the beauty of anticipation,
the cat purring
or just before.

VI
Raindrops streak the wide window
with sad saltless tears.
The shadow of the cat
crosses it, back and forth.
The desire
traced behind the blinds
an unfillable need.

VII
O thin women of this city,
why do you imagine small dogs?
Do you not see how the cat
rubs against the legs
and nestles in the laps
of those you desire?

VIII
I know secret languages
and liquid, indescribable rhythms,
but I know too
that the cat in not involved
in what I know.

IX
When the cat darted behind your couch
she marked the end
of one of many relationships.

X
At the sight of a cat
sleeping in a patch of sunlight,
even the most industrious
would wish to nap beside her.

XI
You walked from downtown
in an old pair of flip flops.
Once, a dog followed you,
thinking the squeak
of your sandals
was the mewing of a kitten.

XII
The curtains are moving.
The cat must be playing.

XIII
It was morning all day.
It was raining
and it was going to rain.
The cat lay curled
on top of my pillow.

And if you need a refresher on the original, it's here.

Finally caught up

2009-04-14T11:49:00.000-07:00

I couldn't come up with a good poem for Friday's prompt (which was to write a poem about Fridays - blah, sorry, dude, but that was a sucky prompt), then my internet was not working at home and I didn't go to work yesterday so I had to catch up with several days' worth of poems today, but I did it. I am now caught up. 14 poems in 14 days. Almost halfway there.

I ended up just doing a silly little haiku for the Friday prompt. Saturday's was to write about an object, and I wrote the following little piece because I've been shopping obsessively for shoes recently:

New Shoes

In the store, you are temptation,
possibility, elusive beauty,
impossible comfort. You are
quarry, I stalk you across town
through a maze of aisles.
When I find you, I am the hunter
victorious. In my closet
you are guilt, disappointment,
blisters and an empty wallet.

Sunday's prompt was to write a poem titled "So we decided to...." Mine was "So We Decided To Get Coffee", but it didn't turn out that great. Monday's prompt was to write about a hobby, and I used a poem I've been wanting to write this month about running. It's a prose poem, and I really really like it. Here's the beginning; it's about running on Easter morning (hence the title):

Easter 2009

The morning is all green and white and the dark wet brown of tree bark and mulch, drenched and glistening like kittens just born, sexless, blind, licked clean and new by an exhausted mother cat, each tiny mouth finding a nipple. There is no consciousness to this impulse.

It goes on from there. I actually have a long-standing habit of writing poems on or about Easter. The images of death and resurrection are potent for me and resonate in different ways at different times, and there is always the pull of religion or my fight against it, plus this is a time of year that always inspires me. I actually like that piece a lot. Today's prompt was either to write a love poem or an anti-love poem. Mine is kind of both, and it's not that good, so not posting it either.

The Perfect Scent (and other random info)

2009-04-08T09:46:00.000-07:00

Haiku from yesterdays Poem-A-Day prompt. It was to write a "clean" poem. I am kind of obsessed with spring right now, so that's why this is the direction I went.

The Perfect Scent

April air is clean
all green and white, the wet browns
of bark, mulch, background

to daffodil notes
hyacinth, dogwood, nameless
sweetness, breathable

refreshing, never
too heavy, only beauty
overpowering.

Monday's prompt was to write about something missing. Mine ended up being about my ex, so I'm not posting it. And today's prompt was to write about routine. I am knowingly bad at routine, and could not come up with anything decent. I put something together, but it's one of those poems this month that I knew would be terrible.

I read on Monday at Poetry Forum Open Mic, after our featured reader Mary Weems. She was really fabulous, a Cleveland lady who came down to read and hang out on a Monday night. Love that! I read two of the new April poems - "Genesis" and the one about Longaberger. Got good responses on both, and had a nice chat afterward with Connie and Steve and Mary. I stuck around the bar after poetry because Stacey convinced me that the music would be good, and it was.

Also, I got my last rejection letter this week, so now all the results are in. They are, in order of the date I remember receiving them....

Penn State - Accepted
Alabama - Rejected
Michigan - Rejected
Minnesota - Waitlisted
Wisconsin - Rejected
Colorado State - Rejected
West Virginia - Accepted
NEOMFA/Cleveland State - Accepted
Columbia College Chicago - Rejected

The Longaberger Basket Corporate Headquarters

2009-04-06T08:20:00.000-07:00

From Sunday's Poem-A-Day prompt..... (the prompt was to write about a landmark, and this is one I drive past whenever I come from my parents' house back to Columbus)

The Longaberger Basket Corporate Headquarters

It rises above the trees
arched handles all you see
and you assume bridge
from a distance. You assume
it is rational but as you approach
its bulk appears south of the road
woven, windowed, a giant basket
shaped building complete
with outstretched handles
raised upward in supplication,
waiting for god to reach down
and carry it away and place it on a shelf
in his modern country home.

(if anyone is wondering what on earth I'm actually talking about, here is a link with a picture: http://www.longaberger.com/homeOffice.aspx)

Isn't everything ordinary if you think about it?

2009-04-05T06:31:00.000-07:00

I liked this, for reasons that may be obvious. It's from from the Academy of American Poetry's "Poem of the Day" email today.

Goldfish Are Ordinary
by Stacie Cassarino

At the pet store on Court Street,
I search for the perfect fish.
The black moor, the blue damsel,
cichlids and neons. Something
to distract your sadness, something
you don't need to love you back.
Maybe a goldfish, the flaring tail,
orange, red-capped, pearled body,
the darting translucence? Goldfish
are ordinary, the boy selling fish
says to me. I turn back to the tank,
all of this grace and brilliance,
such simplicity the self could fail
to see. In three months I'll leave
this city. Today, a chill in the air,
you're reading Beckett fifty blocks
away, I'm looking at the orphaned
bodies of fish, undulant and gold fervor.
Do you want to see aggression?
the boy asks, holding a purple beta fish
to the light while dropping handfuls
of minnows into the bowl. He says,
I know you're a girl and all
but sometimes it's good to see.
Outside, in the rain, we love
with our hands tied,
while things tear away at us.

A Robin Speaks on Global Warming

2009-04-02T07:07:00.000-07:00

Today's prompt was to write an outsider poem. This came from a story on NPR about how global warming has changed the migratory patterns of birds and other animals. It's kind of heavy-handed and tree-hugger-ish.

A Robin Speaks on Global Warming

It was warm in the wintering lands,
sun had melted the snow, green
burst from the tips of every tree, through
the dark soil, the first tiny flowers
were smiling, telling us to go home.

We flew north. Wind, clouds, snow
in the air. The spring mating grounds
are still snow-covered. There is nothing
to eat. We scratch through snow,
scavenge for shriveled berries. We
build nests, huddle together and wait
for warmth while we curse those
who've changed the rules we've followed
since our ancestors first sprouted feathers
and made their way to these mountains
in the springtime of a cooler planet.

Genesis

2009-04-01T06:44:00.000-07:00

I don't think I've mentioned it before, but I am going to try to do the April Poem-A-Day Challenge. I tried awhile back to write a poem a day for a month, but I picked a really busy month, and I was attempting it on my own, with no prompts, or challengers, so I'm hoping this will work better. I am sure some of them will be truly awful, but I'll post some that are less awful. The first prompt was to write a poem about origins. My mind went straight to the creation story in Genesis because the very talented Scott Woods mentioned on Monday that he's writing a series of haiku that are like a summary of the Bible.

Genesis

I was never thrilled with the creation story.
There is no time I can not remember
knowing that God created the earth
in six short days, and I always thought:
where's the fun in that? How could He
appreciate what He'd done if the distance
between void and verdant paradise
was less than a week? I always thought
God must be like my father, a hard worker,
with no time for fun. My father builds
everything as quickly as possible, he could
miss entire phyla of creatures, never noticing
the arthropods or the nematodes until Adam,
the darling, the only boy, asked him
Why are there so many worms?

Poem Idea

2009-03-27T10:03:00.000-07:00

(based on misreading Michael's facebook status update)

I wonder if denial is in the office today.....

A super-rough draft of something that occurred to me while driving

2009-03-24T18:02:00.000-07:00

My father and mother always told me
to stand up straight, to follow
the right path, when the going
got tough and the load got heavy
to square my shoulders and carry
whatever was piled upon me.

I am not lazy, father.

I can not square my shoulders.
One is higher than the other,
trapezoidal, shoulder blade to
shoulder blade, invisible line
straight down to one hip bone,
a right angle to the other hip, and back
up to the shoulder. I am not square,
nor even, I do not fit into any box.

I am not evil, mother.

I can not choose one side, one sex,
one lover. I move through life
from one right angled street corner
to another, to the streets that meet
at angles, the ones that wind
like snakes, serpents of wisdom,
the pain of the knowledge that is good
and evil, separation and truth.

A very long story of my visit to Penn State

2009-03-24T12:43:00.000-07:00

I got on the road at 8:40am on Friday. That's early for me, especially considering that I'd been up since 6:30 to shower, breakfast, finish packing, take the dog for a long walk, and then drive 20 minutes to my friend's house whose car I was borrowing for the drive. It was cold in Columbus, about 35 degrees, but sunny. I was wearing my purple wool coat over jeans, a paisley print knit top and a cardigan, flat shoes, sunglasses. I drove the familiar northeastern path of Interstate 71 for somewhat less than a hundred miles, then took 76 east around Akron and toward the Pennsylvania border. I was listening to P. J. Harvey and thinking of my ex-girlfriend when I stopped for gas. I bought a six pack of bottled water and a Special K bar for a snack. I switched to I-80 before leaving Ohio and stayed on that lovely road for 177 miles. I realized I had not driven that highway since my trip to New York City with my then-fiance in 2002. Stopped for lunch around 12:30 in Clarion, took a nice half-hour break from driving, wrote a bit of a poem. Back on the road around 1:00. It was sunny, it was warm enough that my coat lay across the backseat, I listened to The Refreshments, thinking of college, relished the novelty of cruise control as the car sailed easily up and down hills that turned slowly into mountains, I switched to Tori Amos as I watched the mile markers count up to where I knew I needed to exit. When I turned off the exit for State College, I realized I was really going to be there soon. It was scary. I followed a big blue truck for the 11 miles or so until I turned onto College Avenue, and I drove through town amazed at the number of students around and at the number of businesses catering to them. That strip of College Ave was a lot longer than I'd expected it to be. I turned left on Atherton and followed the signs through the alley to get into the hotels parking garage. It was 2:45pm, so the trip took just over six hours, with a short stop for gas and half-hour lunch. Checked into the hotel and went up to my room, impressed at the niceness of everything. I exchanged the purple coat for my khaki jacket and went out for a walk since I had time before our first event. I walked the streets for an hour or so but didn't venture into campus because I was afraid of getting lost. It felt like any other college town - a combination of Bowing Green (my much-loved undergraduate alma mater), Athens (home of Ohio University), Ann Arbor, the part of Columbus around Ohio State, but bigger than any of them. The density of businesses not only on the main street, but in the sidestreets and back alleys, was more than I had expected. I wandered through a couple of shops, but mostly just walked, getting a feel for the landmarks, and stretching my legs after the drive. I got a cup of coffee and sat and wrote down my impressions for a little while, then headed back to the hotel a little after 4:00. Took a shower, then got dressed. I decided to wear the outfit I'd initially planned for Saturday night because it was a little dressier: black pants with a subtle grey pinstripe, and a jade green ruffled blouse, black boots. The hotel room had two double beds, so I kept expecting a roommate to walk in, but I showered alone and dried my hair alone and put on my makeup alone, and then sat on the bed and watched basketball alone until it was five minutes till 6:00. I took the elevator downstairs; I never did find the stairs all weekend. There were some people in the bar when I walked in, but I didn't know who I was looking for so I stood awkwardly just inside for a few moments, then a girl walked in and asked if I was there for the English department. We talked for a few minutes, and then the director came over and we met him, he gave us our folders with itinerary, nametag, map, etc. The assistant director gave us beer. I met a lot of people in a short period of time. The four of the MFAs who were there managed to find each other quickly, which was nice. The fifth had her plane delayed in Texas and hadn't arrived yet, and the sixth was unable to attend the weekend. There were about around 12-15 MA/PhD students as well, so we were outnumbered but not hugely. After 45 minutes or so there, a couple of current graduate students arrived and walked us over to a house where a couple of current grad students live. We all trooped in, someone took our coats and told us pizza was back in the kitchen. The party is a blur of names and faces and crowds and noise. The house was packed, and it grew hotter and louder as the evening progressed. I met several of the current MFAs in poetry, talked to a fiction writer, a nonfiction writer, some lit and rhetoric students. I had wine spilled on my boots. I ate pizza and some veggies and some pineapple. I answered the same questions about myself a million times, asked different ones of everyone. Everyone was nice, and they seemed genuinely happy with the program. Around 9:00, we started wandering in groups over to campus to an MFA reading. It was in this large impressive building I'd noticed on my walk earlier called the University Club. The room was great, and it was pretty crowded when we got there. Not everyone came to the reading, but all of us MFAs were there, and I think at least a few of the new MA/PhDs. I don't truly remember. It was really cool to see the camaraderie among the students, and their readings were good. The reading ended pretty late, and even though some of the current students invited us out with them afterward, I was so tired that I just went back to the hotel. I don't know if anyone took them up on that offer because it had been a long day for all of us. Got back around 11:30 I think, texted a few people, and watched some more basketball, and went to sleep around 12:30.

On Saturday I got up with the alarm at 8:30 and got dressed more casually for the daytime in nice jeans and v-neck sweater over a lacy top, black flats, ponytail. Breakfast didn't start till 9:30 which made me happy as I am not an early riser. It was held in a very pretty meeting room in the hotel and the food was typical breakfast fare. I ate scrambled eggs, potatoes, and toast, drank orange juice and plenty of very good coffee. We were arrayed around two large tables. I got to sit by the MFA program director and the other prospective poetry MFA (her name is Rachel). Everyone talked around mouthfuls of breakfast, about where we're from, what we do, about Penn State and the surrounding area, about basketball and running and weather and other random things. After everyone had eaten, Dr. Edwards (the Graduate Director we'd met the night before) talked extensively about the program, specifically the PhD. He was both intimidating and encouraging. Then Julia (the MFA Director) talked about that program, and then the assistant director talked a bit about the MA. Some of us had lunches scheduled, so we had to rush out at the end, not sure what, if anything, we missed. Rachel and I met a couple of the current poetry MFAs in the lobby and walked to an Indian restaurant for lunch. All but one of the other current poetry students were there and we had a nice lunch. They are a good group, and we had some decent food and great conversation, then a few of them walked to campus with us, took us through the English building and we got to see the TA offices, then they walked us to our next scheduled event. I think 10 or 12 of the department faculty members were there, and they spoke about their classes and areas of interest, research they were doing, or projects they were involved with. It was fascinating, and again, a little intimidating, and just a dizzying amount of information. Chatted with the fiction professor for a bit afterward, then the four of us MFAs (one wasn't feeling well and had not made it to the session) walked back and talked, and didn't even get lost! Kara and Nick went straight to the hotel, Rachel and I grabbed a cup of coffee and then followed. We'd thought of trying to meet up with the poetry students again but I felt like I'd rather have the downtime than any more information. Got back to the hotel around 4:30 I think, took a shower, then just sat on the bed and watched tv and let my brain rest for awhile, drank my coffee and some water, and then got ready for the faculty party that evening. I wore my tan pants and a pretty black blouse, same black boots. We met our current student guides downstairs around 6:45 and walked to Dr. West's house. It's a beautiful house above the golf course, and it was a lovely night to walk. Commence another blur of faces, names, and conversations. I finally met the other poetry professor (fantastic! loved her!), met someone who once read in Columbus at the poetry series I attend every week, met so many brilliant people, finally got to really talk with the other new MFA whose name is also Emily (she's NF Emily, I'm Poetry Emily). The time went fast, and before I knew it people were getting their coats and leaving. We (the recruits) left in a couple of groups. I was in the last group with Kara and Nick and NF Emily and some MA/PhD recruits. Though we had the option of going out with some current students, I didn't quite feel up to that, but 7 of us decided to get a drink at the hotel bar instead, and ended up staying there until about 1:30. It was a great way to wind down a little after the hectic pace of everything else. I really felt like I connected with a couple people I'd not had the chance to talk with much before, and we had a few beers, and quoted poems and Shakespeare and talked about our pasts and our passions and it was just really great.

Asleep around 2:00, and up for no good reason at 7:00am on Sunday. Laid in bed, trying to go back to sleep, and ended up getting up at 8:00, packed up, drank coffee, and checked out around 9:00. It was another beautiful day for a drive, and the highways there feel like the highways of my childhood trips down to West Virginia, winding through mountains, up and down hills that occasionally pop ones ears, the evidence of their creation scored into the rock that rises above the side of the road... There were a few times on that drive home that I felt like crying, from tiredness mostly I think, but I was also just overwhelmed by the step I was taking. I stopped to visit an old friend for a couple hours on the way home, then chatted with some people once I got back into town, and had to walk down the street to pick up my dog, so it was 7:00pm by the time I was home on my couch relaxing. My brain was so full that I couldn't even put a sentence together on paper for awhile. I got online a bit later, but couldn't compose any sort of narrative of my trip at that point. I've been working on it intermittently at work the past couple days.

The amazing thing is that I feel very strongly that this is absolutely the perfect program for me, and quite uniquely so. The way they are transitioning over to an MFA that really does lead easily to a PhD is so perfect for who I am as a writer and student; not all writers want that or are suited for that, but I am, and the fact that I applied basically at random to a program that is so perfectly set up for that gives me a huge sense that it is meant to be. I didn't know it when I applied, but the more I think about, and the more I heard this weekend, the more I really feel it is what I want. I feel in some ways that the selection committee knew me better than I knew myself when they chose me; they saw things I didn't see, and knew that I would be a good fit. All the reservations I had about the program were very handily put to rest this weekend, although of course I have new worries now. The logistics and finances of moving, and also intellectual insecurity. At 31, I am the oldest of all the recruits( though Kara and NF Emily are 29 and 28 respectively) and I fear that I will come in at a disadvantage, not having the academic things fresh in my mind like the kids who are coming straight from undergrad, but I plan on reading over the summer and trying get myself up to speed. Rationally though, like I told J last night, I can make up for the deficits in my learning much easier than these young brilliant students from Dartmouth and Georgetown and etc can make up for their lack of life experiences.

I officially accepted my offer after letting my brain settle (emailed Julia yesterday, and signed and mailed my offer today), and I declined my other two acceptances. That is the other interesting thing; I got another acceptance on Friday, from the NEOMFA. I didn't feel too bad turning them down right away, but it broke my heart a little bit to tell the director at WVU that I was going elsewhere. I may have even found a place to live out there already, but that's not for sure yet. But I'm really going, and I am so happy to have made my decision.

Go Nittany Lions!

(and now I really should learn what a Nittany Lion is.....)

April is National Poetry Month

2009-03-19T07:53:00.001-07:00

I'm not sure I'll do this, but I like the idea of writing a poem a day during the month of April. Anyone interested, check out the link below!

Read Write Poem - NaPoWriMo

Poetry and Pinkie Swears

2009-03-18T19:21:00.001-07:00

Poetry Forum fundraiser on Monday was fabulous. Brought a new friend, who seemed to enjoy the craziness, or maybe she just enjoyed getting me a little tipsy ;) Regardless, it was a good time. Lots of good poets!

I've also been emailing a lot this week with one of the other prospective MFAs at Penn State. She is so freaking cool, I can't wait to meet her! There has been a flurry of emails from the department, and from some current students, trying to organize stuff for this weekend. It is exciting, and I really can't wait to meet everyone. I've got a car lined up (thanks, Jes) and a dog sitter (thanks, LeeAnna) and someone to check in on my kitty (thanks, Laura), and I've started packing. I am trying to figure out what I want to wear.

I finally got the letter from WV that got lost in the mail. Turns out no funding yet, but a "strong possibility" that it will become available. Not sure what that means, or how much it will be if it does become available, but I'm gonna hang in there and try to schedule a visit after they get back from spring break and just check things out.

Columbia started calling people yesterday, and I've not heard anything. Will see about that, I suppose, even though I'm not convinced it would be a good fit anyway. No word from the NEOMFA.

I've done a little writing this week, just short things, nothing finished. And trying to work on this collaborative piece with Stacey and Nathan.

That's about it.

A bit of a poem for Sam (but not really)

2009-03-12T18:59:00.000-07:00

It's actually for Nathan and Stacey - for our collaboration - but it's based off something Sam told me that Sharona had said in class, that the Italian word "stanza" means room.

If stanza is just another word for room,
I want to know what goes on behind
the closed doors. Does dust collect
on the words you never write?

Also, I got a letter today saying I'm accepted at West Virginia :)

The Light in Ordinary Things

2009-03-10T13:51:00.001-07:00

Poetry Forum last night was good. Two glasses of red wine, read the Minnesota poem, and that little one about Ohio being shaped like a heart, and then read one of Julia Kasdorf’s poems from her book Eve’s Striptease (what a great title!). Stacey and Nathan and I agreed to collaborate on a poem. Still working out a theme and structure, or maybe we already have the structure? Should be fun.

I’ve realized a few things recently. Realized why I’m so low on motivation lately; it’s like I feel somehow that by not doing anything, I can make time stand still, or slow down. I am afraid to be involved in my own life because I am not ready to leave it, the life I know. It’s weird, and it makes no sense, but I’ve been indulging this laziness, this lethargy, and I need to stop. I need to accomplish things, and I need to be present in my life. It’s impossible to stop time; hello, it’s mid-March already, the sun is out, and this is the time of year I love and have been waiting for. The only thing I can do is to be aware of the moments, to keep them in my memory, and my consciousness. I’ve also realized just how much ego I have as a writer, and, conversely, how much insecurity. I am so *offended* that I was rejected by all these schools, my ego thinks I’m better than that, but then it makes me question my acceptance, gives me that imposter syndrome. Such an insane process really, and I will be glad when it’s over. Only three more responses to go, but I’m about 90% sure I’ll choose Penn State, even if I have other options.

So, here is the updated list…..

Penn State - ACCEPTED
Alabama - REJECTED
Wisconsin - REJECTED (got the letter recently, but already knew from the website)
Minnesota – WAITLISTED, and declined (I realized it just couldn’t trump Penn State, and left my waitlist spot to someone who might really choose MN in the end)
Michigan – REJECTED (got the letter last week, as mentioned)
Colorado State – REJECTED (got the letter yesterday, and this is one where my ego is really offended. It’s like “Dude, I got into Penn State, and Colorado is rejecting me? WTF?”)
West Virginia
Columbia College
Cleveland State/NEOMFA

I wrote a poem this afternoon about doing laundry. I read a call for submissions for the Fearless Books anthology called The Light in Ordinary Things today, and I’m doing laundry now, so yeah, that’s the inspiration. I’m not posting it here because it’s kind of about someone who I think might lurk here occasionally.

I stole this quote

2009-03-05T12:38:00.000-08:00

from Mutating the Signature, a wonderful collaborative blog that belongs to two of my poet friends.

Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all the others were making ships. — Charles Simic

just a great quote about writing poetry! love it!

After winter must come spring

2009-03-05T09:58:00.000-08:00

Let's see... Monday was Poetry Forum. No comment on the featured reader, but the open mic was interesting. One new person, I think, and some of the regulars, and some peripheral drama from another reading series. I read "Polygon" and "A February Lament". Both read okay though not outstanding. Came home fully intending to do some writing, but couldn't come up with anything.

Also on Monday, I got my rejection letter from Michigan. I actually came home to three envelopes from schools in my mailbox. The Michigan one I'd expected, but then I also had a form letter from the Financial Aid office at Alabama, saying they had received my FAFSA information, but that I was "not yet admitted". Thanks for the slap in the face; I already got rejected once, and didn't need the reminder. And I had a little envelope from Cleveland State that caused my heart to pound and my brain to think in disbelief "They can't have rejected me already, can they?" When I opened it, it was just an updated notification that they had received the transcripts and letters of recommendation that were outstanding. Phew, heart attack averted! Since then, no news.

I'm starting to have doubts about a couple of the programs I've yet to hear from, and starting to think Penn State is just where I'm meant to be, but I'm holding on to possibility and am determined to wait and see all my options before making a decision.

I haven't done any real writing this week - a smidge in my journal, but nothing complete. It's okay though. I'm in more of a reading mode at the moment, and that is okay. The weather is warming up today, and I had a healthy lunch, so I am looking forward to running tonight. I feel pretty even-keeled today, and hoping to keep that for awhile.