Today, it was like the postcard senders knew me

I received my fifth and sixth postcards today as part of the Poetry Postcard Festival.  The first one I looked at featured a lovely illustration of a girl blowing the fluff off a giant dandelion: really pretty!  And then the second one was a flower fairy postcard!  I'm not sure how well-known of a fact this is, but I absolutely adore flowers and fairies, and I have a deeply entrenched childhood love of Cicely Mary Barker's "Flower Fairy" books and illustrations.  Alas, the postcard was not one of her images, but it was one of Amy Brown's, which I also like.  The poem on the second card was also really lovely.  And, by a nice conjunction of her card being late and me still trying to send mine early, the sender was on my list to send postcards to today, so I got to include a little note saying I loved her postcard.  That's the kind of thing I was looking forward to when I signed up for this whole poetry postcard exchange. 

1 out of 4

That's how many poetry postcards I've received so far: one out of the four days of August.  I don't expect to get one every day or to get them all on time, but I'm a little disappointed not to have more to respond to.  I did write one of my new postcards in response to the one I received (about the recent derecho storms). 

I'll be dropping three more postcards in a mailbox this weekend and hoping to get some more poems next week.

Poetry + Postcards

So much for being a more regular blogger this year . . .

Regardless of my recent blog slacking, I'm participating in a new poetry project and planning to blog about it.  I've decided to join the August Poetry Postcard Fest this year.  The idea is simple; poets sign up in advance and then each receives a list of names and addresses.  Every day in August, participants should write an original poem on a postcard and mail it to the next name on the list.  Theoretically, they should also be receiving a poem postcard every day as well. 

I love poems, and I love postcards, and I love collaborative projects, so this sounded right up my alley.  It reminds me in a vague way of a project we did in an art class in college, where each student began making a collage postcard and then passed it on to another classmate who add on to the image, and so on.  I remember my final postcard has a row of mismatched shoes along a beach.  It was pretty cool.

Now I confess I'm cheating a bit.  I actually wrote my first five postcards this past weekend and sent them out yesterday in the hope that one or more will arrive on the right day.  I used postcards I had at home already: a vintage vacation postcard, two vintage postcards of downtown Columbus, a free pug postcard I received from an Etsy artist when I ordered a batch of holiday cards, and a Penn State postcard featuring the Lion Shrine.  That last one yielded the most interesting poem, I think, given the clusterf*&% that's been consuming Penn State recently.

I have a few most postcards sitting around, waiting for poems, and I ordered a batch of vintage architectural postcards on ebay to round out the month's worth.  I am looking forward to receiving my first postcard(s), and hoping that they will inspire my next batch of poems.  I will probably post pictures of some of the cards I receive and possibly images of some of my poems as well.

How Sweet It Is

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...

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.

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

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

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

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

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!