the word cage

Two for [Tuesday, but not taken on Tuesday]

2009-12-22T20:42:00.004-05:00

See, this is what I get for relying too heavily on my BlackBerry camera. Technical difficulties, and on the verge of ripping my contacts out, so here's what I have for today, taken with the real deal.

Outside there was a sliver of moon up in the tree. It wasn't stuck there, though. It was just resting.

Whether or not you have had a Wonderfull Yeare of your own, you should check out the latest by Nate Pritts, with Cooper Dillon Books.

Today I cleaned. I mean, really cleaned. Purged like there was no tomorrow. It felt amazing. Or, rather, wonderfull.

Then there was the mother of all cakes.

Two for [Monday]

2009-12-21T19:22:00.003-05:00

I am officially on winter break (read: without childcare) until January. I am going to try to enjoy it. Today we went sledding and made homemade pizzas. With pizza, the messier it looks, the better. With sledding, the messier it gets, the more whining. But after a while, with both activities, there was less mess and more glee, which, I guess, is the point.

Work goes on, to some extent, and this made me really sad/annoyed/crestfallen today.

The other thing bringing me down is that I have a bunch of cuts on my hands again, so no orange peeling without assistance.

I seem to have permanently misplaced the version of my manuscript that I sequenced a while back, with photo evidence on facebook. Of course I kept no records of the order. So back to square one. I will be dedicating Sunday, December 27th to this task, including actually making it an electronic file. And sending it out, shortly thereafter. Enough excuses.

My kids are having a moment of peace right now. Those moments are rare.

I am going to aspire to post two pictures a day. Probably not so many words.

My mom is giving me a lot of clippings about simplifying and deep breathing. Little does she know that I'm already there.

Hold the bacon, please.

2009-12-18T08:49:00.003-05:00

I hope everyone has survived the Great BlackBerry Outage of 2009 yesterday. I thought it was just me. I blamed myself for going to Wadsworth. I couldn't get a signal there for a second, and I thought that made all of the email stop. I really believe, however, that it was just a funny bit of Saturnalia tomfoolery.

It wouldn't have been so funny if I had been actually working, of course.

My winter break is on the cusp of officially starting! I am making Mexican food for dinner tonight, to celebrate.

Maybe some time next week I can sneak over here to clean up this office. It's starting to look like a shithole again, and that's no way to begin the New Year.

Are you thinking about the New Year?

I AM!

(Now that's emphatic.)

I almost finished my Christmas shopping yesterday. For some bizarre reason, shopping was really fun, for the first time ever.

I was doing well writing a poem a day, but now things are getting busy, and I'll have the kids home from this weekend forward. At least I hit the goal, though. I am happy about that.

And sleep! No more 5:30 wake-ups for a while. Glorious.

Contortionists on parade.

2009-12-16T10:59:00.004-05:00

Just look at the ridiculous Bacchanal that I witnessed this morning upon entering Olin Hall. I don't think any of these positions are in the कामसूत्र. Well, maybe a few. But: oh desks! Do you have to execute these deeds en masse, and in the hall?

At least I don't have to clean the floors afterwards.

I just officially finished my last rec letters of the decade (I am still pretending that the decade is over, even if it really isn't...I'm not numbers smart enough to understand why). Celebration involved eating a pile of cherry Hershey kisses that Jana brought to work because she is awesome.

I have all of my out of town Christmas shopping done. It's a lot easier to do when you're broke and downsizing! Now I have the really fun shopping left to do.

Right about now I would typically begin having a nervous breakdown, knowing that I will be home with the kids for several weeks, but I'm not. I am already planning a full course of activities, both indoor and outdoor, to keep us amused indefinitely. None of these activities involve me locking myself in a closet and screaming, but there will be some messy art.

It just dawned on me how to put up mini-clotheslines in our new basement art space so that we can display a bunch of creations without having to tape them to the ugly paneling. And our art table seats TEN. So all the cats can participate as well.

I've had this intense nesting urge lately, which results in some positive behaviors such as wanting to clean, putting laundry on hangers immediately after removing from dryer, and scoping things out for future projects. If we get bored over break, we are planning to remove half of the roof and add two new rooms to the upstairs. I already have the blueprints--they're hanging in the basement!

In non-fluff news, I have now written four poems before 2010. I am writing a poem a day this week. One of the poems I really liked. I also need to find where I put my sequenced ms, and after that, to format it into a pdf and send it to one of the two places I am sending it this year.

Yesterday we had micro-snow, like the frozen version of drizzle. It was teensy. I couldn't photograph it, but believe me, it was there.

Closing time.

2009-12-14T11:32:00.006-05:00

I'm not sure why I love this time of the semester so much, but I always seem to blog about it. It's always nicest when the grades are turned in, and the classrooms are vacant, and the parking is plentiful. But not because of those factors. I think that the end of the semester makes me even more excited for the next one. (Students taking my spring poetry workshop can attest to this, based on the 1,266 word email I just sent them).

On Saturday I represented my department at Fall Commencement. I love the ritual of it. The moment I got out of my car (dragging my regalia along the ground if I wasn't extra vigilant) and saw all of the students and their families, I began a three hour fight against bursting into tears. I never went to any of my graduations beyond high school, so maybe that's why it's always so moving. If there was ever a moment when I doubted my career choice, commencement would always serve as a reminder of why I love this job. I made it through without losing it, but next time will make absolutely sure to take a decongestant beforehand. UA is not stingy in the floral department.

Here's a picture of me looking like a dork, posing in the "Ladies Chorus" in the bowels of EJ Thomas Hall.

Finally, over the weekend I realized it's been a while since I posted a random picture taken out a car window, so here's a little industrial Cleveland sunset. I had an exciting weekend filled with electrical problems, random strangeness, and a visit from a mouse (which was thankfully liberated without serious bodily injury from our resident mouser, Henri). We also celebrated Hanukkah with some dear friends, and Gabi had her first experience lighting candles. Now it's just me and the to-do list, and some very empty halls.

National Holiday.

2009-12-11T09:46:00.003-05:00

In honor of this, I am hereby taking the rest of the day off. Sorry, work pile. See you on Monday.

A wrap.

2009-12-10T13:48:00.004-05:00

Moments ago I just finished entering my Fall 09 grades. Of course I still have rec letters to write, and almost all of my Christmas shopping left to do, and many other miscellaneous things, but I am very happy to be done with grading. Even with a mandate to make attendance policies more flexible this semester (due to swine flu) my students still came to class and participated like crazy and wrote riveting papers, and aced the final on top of it. I only taught one class this semester, and I am so happy it was a good one.

Here are some pictures of what's going on in Akron today. It's ultra cold. Good weather for hibernating. I just might try that.

I wrote a poem last night. Perhaps I'll try to exceed the "three before 2010" goal.

On goals.

2009-12-09T08:52:00.003-05:00

I am minutes away from beginning the third stretch of my Fall 09 Grading Challenge Extravaganza, wherein I behave like a logical person and divide my grading up and eschew past practices involving grading marathons (two papers, an exam, and a final grade all in one sitting? Bring it on!) and mass consumption of gummi worms to accomplish the latter. In a way, I'd rather do the marathon, both for the pain of charging through and the glory of reaching the finish line. However, this new way is probably best for all parties involved.

I am looking forward to a lighter work load next week, and some writing, at long last. I've been pretty much sequestered this week due to grading.

I've noticed that I haven't been setting too many goals for myself, aside from the 3 poems before 2010 and the Grading Challenge Extravaganza. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing. I wish I set some arbitrary (read: easy) goals once in a while. Maybe I will get to that when the grading is done.

Anyone out there particularly pro (or anti) goal-setting? I need to post this in order to meet my goal of beginning grading at 9 am. Thirty seconds left...

The abyss.

2009-12-04T08:38:00.004-05:00

What could be better than waiting for the exterminator, doing laundry, and grading final essays? Doing all of the above in a very cozy house, with snowflakes outside, and stuffed peppers for lunch. After a very fun but exhausting weekend with my kids, including cutting down our first live Christmas tree, sitting at home commenting on papers seems like a treat.

Or so I am telling myself. We'll see how I feel at 4 pm.

A lot of people are signing on for the 3 poems before 2010 challenge. Hooray! Maybe we can come up with some non-public way of sharing them.

I really want an English muffin, but I'm afraid that they are the official food of procrastination, so I may wait a little while.

A couple of new poems here.

This has not been a good semester for writing. I hope that all changes with 2010.

That's easy to type: 2010.

Perhaps it's an omen. A good one.

Get out of here.

2009-12-02T09:16:00.004-05:00

I'm almost ashamed to say this, but I didn't realize until reading some Time magazine teaser online that a decade is coming to an end in a few weeks. I used to spend a lot of time analyzing the relative "goodness" and "shitty-ness" of certain years. I believe at one point in my life I spent much of New Year's Eve cataloging the highlights of the prior year.

Obviously I had way too much time on my hands. I don't have way too much time on my hands now. But I am very excited about starting a new decade. Or, maybe I'm very excited about flushing the last decade down the crapper. Not really. That's too harsh. Some good things happened (some of them really good things) but I am ready.

I am currently consuming a mint that is so minty that I can feel it in my ears. Is that a good thing? I'm not sure.

Despite an annoying issue with small ants, I have been learning to really love my house all over again. Aside from going to work, I spend (almost) all of my time there. I am really into holiday decorating now, starting to enjoy that again. I have a profound desire to go sledding. This is a good thing, I am quite sure.

This semester has not been very fruitful in the writing department. I think I'll end up with about ten pages of new poetry. There have been multiple days in a row where I haven't done anything creative, aside from maybe making a stupid joke, or cutting up some celery on an angle, and neither of those things count. I hope that next semester, since I won't have any massive life changes, I will be able to start being prolific again, or at least prolificish. It's hard having just finished a manuscript and scrutinizing every incoming idea. Will it fit? Old book? New book? New book? Oh dear.

Maybe it's time to set a goal. Mine is going to be three new poems before the end of this decade. Who's in? Anybody?

The great figure.

2009-11-25T11:02:00.003-05:00

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I am sharing with you this photo of my shadow juxtaposed with a pile of spilled pickles on wet concrete. I hope it encourages you somehow to work pickles into your holiday festivities. Or, better yet, to find something ugly enough to be beautiful.

Book news:

The 2008 Akron Poetry Prize winner, The Wild Rose Asylum: Poems of the Magdalen Laundries of Ireland by Rachel Dilworth, is now available from the University of Akron Press and other retailers. Rita Dove made the selection, and the amazing Amy Freels designed the book. Please check it out!

The Nervous Filaments (Four Way Books, February 2010) by David Dodd Lee is now available for pre-order on Amazon. I can't wait to get my hands on a copy. I am also very excited to share the word that David's new book, Orphan, Indiana, is forthcoming from the Akron Series in Poetry, as one of my editor's choice selections from this year's reading period. Full details will appear soon on the UA Press website.

Non-book news:

I am currently eating a school of cheddar and pretzel goldfish crackers, which have been mixed together in a coffee filter (without coffee) for my enjoyment. I highly recommend this as a snack.

I wrote a new poem yesterday, and even though it's very much a draft, I'm so happy to be writing. I have a lot of reading to do over winter break, but I hope to spend a lot of time on new poems, and putting my manuscript together.

End-o-term just might be my favorite part of the semester, until the grading kicks in.

The piles of leaves have finally been removed from my devil strip, tree lawn, parkway, or whatever you call it, thanks to the City of Akron. My yard looks great. I hope the universe doesn't consider this an invitation to send snow.

Hungry for it.

2009-11-19T09:38:00.003-05:00

I risked lowering the temperature in my fridge yesterday to capture a photograph of this cliche. I also had to lay on the kitchen floor. But a good cliche is hard to find. So what if it was no cake walk? I'm annoyed by the fact that the accent mark on the e isn't working. O blogger. You have gotten better over the years, but you still aren't perfect.

I guess I could say the same for myself.

I was looking through my "Fall 09" poetry file, and I'm disappointed. Under ten pages of new work. I have done some revisions, though, and since I was all "on fire" over the summer it's not the end of the world. In a way, I'm lucky I was able to write at all, considering the massive upheavals that went down recently.

That said, I am very hungry for the following:

1. Writing new poems.

2. Looking over the ms pile I sequenced a while back, and writing the poems that seem to be missing from it.

3. Deciding which 2-3 presses I'll be sending it to.

4. Eating apples and oranges.

5. Generally decompressing.

Last night I found myself photographing a pile of spilled sliced pickles in the grocery store parking lot. They were downright luminous. At first it looked like a flattened stuffed animal soaked with rain. Then the slices began to distinguish themselves. I took the photo, pretending I was scrutinizing a text message rather than brandishing a camera. Then I got into the car and looked at the picture, which had morphed from a brilliant tragedy to what appeared to be a pile of green vomit.

I think I may need to work with the levels a little.

Now you see it.

2009-11-17T13:59:00.004-05:00

I know it's only Tuesday, but I have a sense that if I make it through this afternoon and evening I'll be entering the home stretch of home stretches. I guess that's rather optimistic thinking for someone with a boatload of grading on the horizon, but so what.

The university is making cutbacks in janitorial services. This became readily apparent about thirty minutes into the first day of the reduced services. It's especially bad timing because people keep dropping post-Halloween fun sized candy wrappers on the floor. I have been picking them up. I hate it when things are untidy (except for my closets, but nobody sees those). When I interviewed here, one of the things that impressed me about this school was how neat it was. I think I may have to engage in some vigilante cleaning.

[Confession au sujet de fun sized candy.] Although I am not usually a candy fan, I have been eating my way through my kids' Halloween loot in an attempt to prevent disappearance. Now that I am no longer cooking large, bland meals every night, I have found it surprisingly difficult not to lose five-ish pounds every two weeks. People have started asking if I am ill. Hopefully candy will help. I am trying all kinds of candy that I never imagined existed. I guess I should be eating something more wholesome, but I have to get rid of the candy somehow, and my kids certainly don't need it. When the candy is all gone I will begin baking loaves of whole wheat bread. As long as you can bake them in the crevices of a laptop computer.

A mess.

2009-11-16T09:04:00.004-05:00

Don't you love it when you clean something over and over and over and over again, and it never looks any better, and then you clean it over and over and over again, and then miraculously it's 155% better than before? And as an unexpected bonus, you now have awe-inspiring biceps?

That's the story of my basement.

**Literal** It was a mess. Filthy, desecrated by cats, filled with cobwebs and dust on both finished and unfinished sides, barely-lit thanks to electrical problems and blown fluorescent bulbs, and just generally nasty. I'd lie awake in my bed disturbed at what was looming downstairs. I'd sprint to the washing machine and back. If I dropped something on the floor I'd wash it again.

**Figurative**My basement was a hideous, looming metaphor. There were other metaphors inside the metaphor. I hired a guy and his wife to come remove several of the metaphors. They put those metaphors on a truck and I will never see them again. I hired an exterminator (this is literal, fyi) to inspect the basement and put an end to the cobwebs. I used a shop vac on the metaphor. I used a shop vac for hours at a time. Then, finally, I used my upstairs vacuum on the metaphor. I started washing the floors of my metaphor over and over again. I scrubbed my metaphor's floors on my hands and knees. Some days when I'd already washed the floors of the metaphor I snuck downstairs and washed them again. I got rid of some detritus in the metaphor. We fixed the lights and the metaphor was illuminated. I let my children start playing in the metaphor. I woke up one morning and walked right through my metaphor, and marveled at its brilliance.

In non-basement news, we had an amazing time with Matthew Guenette. I did not want him to leave. I want him to come back. I am kind of impressed that I was able to put his poem on youtube.

I am entering the final weeks of the semester. It's glorious. Or, rather, it will be soon. Much like a heavily-rehabilitated basement.

Matthew Guenette live at The University of Akron

2009-11-13T12:21:00.002-05:00

Why I love my job.

2009-11-13T08:33:00.001-05:00

(Guenette, Biddinger, Wasserman, Dumanis)

Detritus or not.

2009-11-11T14:00:00.001-05:00

DETRITUS:

The bag above. The germs that keep getting everybody sick (o universe, thank you and knock very softly and kindly on wood, for keeping my family relatively healthy). The economy. Grumblings. Trees that somehow make more dead leaves even though they're completely bare. Fights over nothing, conducted by children who don't really care who gets to sit on the right side of the couch anyway. Being cold all of the time, even when it's not cold out and students are running around in flipflops and no coats. Grading, and its avoidance. Whiners. Unloading the dishwasher, then realizing that it's stupid to gripe over unloading a dishwasher, since having a dishwasher is a true luxury. Emails without answers. Administrative inheritances of in-kind non-blessings. Updating the calendar, printing it, then having to update it again. Soggy back yard lawns. Ultra-loud music when put on hold, followed by ultra-quiet customer service representative. Knowing it's going to snow some time in the future. Waning supplies of Halloween candy. The lingering reek left when a car in a parking lot turns into a great conflagration.

NOT DETRITUS:

This week we're welcoming visiting writer Matthew Guenette to Akron. He's going to visit several classes, conference with UA NEOMFA students, and read on Thursday night. Photos will be forthcoming. Here are the details:

The University of Akron English Department’s Literary Arts Series presents a poetry reading with Matthew Guenette and Michael Dumanis on November 12, 2009 at 6 pm in The Martin Center Library Room 105 Fir Hill Street Akron, OH 44325

Matthew Guenette's first book, Sudden Anthem, won the 2007 American Poetry Journal Book Prize from Dream Horse Press. He is also the author of a chapbook, Hush of Something Endless, from Ropewalk Press. Sudden Anthem was named a 2008 Outstanding Achievement in Poetry by the Wisconsin Library Association. In 2009, Matthew was named the Writer-in-Residence of the Hessen-Wisconsin Literary Exchange, where he spent three months in Wiesbaden, Germany, giving workshops, readings, and working with prisoners. He lives and works in Madison, WI.

Michael Dumanis is the author of the poetry collection My Soviet Union (University of Massachusetts Press, 2007) and the coeditor of the anthology Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century (Sarabande, 2006). He is currently an assistant professor at Cleveland State University, where he also directs the CSU Poetry Center.

There will be a complimentary buffet following the reading.

How to defibrillate a poem (before it's too late).

2009-11-05T09:45:00.005-05:00

1. Fold the poem in half. Put it in your underwear drawer. Not in your drawers; in a drawer. Close the drawer. Go for a walk. Choose someplace ugly, filled with sorrow. Extra points for a locale that includes profuse multi-sensory information (ripe, overflowing Dumpsters, putrid crab apples piled on a lawn). While on the walk, feel sorry for yourself until you become distracted by the above. Upon returning home, wash your hands, then finish the poem.

2. Select a very sharp pair of scissors. Put those scissors back where you found them. Select the dullest pair of scissors that you can find. Cut your stalled poem into strips. Invite some outside source (clothes dryer, pet hamster, favorite lover) to mix up the strips for you. Dump the strips on the floor. Blink three times. Reconstruct poem from the strips.

3. Why is your poem worth defibrillating? Can't answer this question? Then perhaps you should put it in cold storage instead.

4. Read the poem aloud three times, in different voices. One of these voices must be Scottish (do your best). Then, throw the poem away. Take the garbage out. Salute the sanitation workers as they dump your trash onto the truck. Return to your desk and recreate the poem from whatever you remember. Finally, eliminate any mention of haggis that might have seeped in during the process.

5. Journey to your favorite office supply store. Do not purchase any Hello Kitty stickers. Instead, select a package of highlighter pens. Five colors will suffice. Ponder the poem. Consider its various elements and/or techniques. Give each element / technique a name. One technique must be named "Just Me Being a Shithead." Highlight the various elements / techniques in their own colors. Then rewrite the poem using only one of those elements / techniques. Feel free to color the entire poem orange upon completion, if that satisfies you.

How to kill a poem (before it even starts).

2009-11-04T09:10:00.004-05:00

1. Write in close proximity to the dull, everyday tasks that you need to do. Example: poise yourself with notebook in the middle of a pile of dirty laundry. Turn on several fans so that tumbleweeds of pet hair cartwheel across the floor. Refresh your email inbox every five minutes and reply to even the most inane messages, even spam about the Ebay account you don't have.

2. Get a great idea, or even a promising idea, and then lose your nerve. Scan your memory (google works, too!) for other poems about the same thing, and convince yourself that they are all much better than your own poem.

3. Begin pondering the following questions. What is poetry, really? If I put a stack of poems on a scale opposite a bunch of bananas, which would weigh more, and therefore be more valuable? What else could I be doing right now?

4. Complain on your blog about not writing. Whine to your friends. Clip coupons. Berate yourself over all of the contests you didn't win, and the grants you didn't receive, even if you never applied in the first place.

5. Situate yourself in a public place. Make small talk (of the non-flirty variety). Tell people that you are a polymer scientist. Tell people that you make ships in a bottle for a living. Tell people that you invented the pylon cone. Run away screaming. Do not consider writing a poem about the experience.

My cat is on Prozac, but I am not.

2009-11-03T11:13:00.003-05:00

What I do not need:

1. A diary. I think I had one as an adolescent. Even then I didn't need one the way some people do.

2. Distractions. Perhaps this is because I am naturally distracted by things that shouldn't be distracting. I don't think television could ever fit into my life again, aside from watching football occasionally.

3. Tea. I wish I needed or wanted tea. I grew up drinking tea all of the time, but that's because my mom made it for me. I'd like to be a tea drinker. I'm just not.

4. Reading for pleasure. Don't hit me. I just don't get to elect to read something because it's enjoyable. Often, however, I do find myself liking the things I have to read.

5. More than 5.5 hours of sleep per night. I hear you're supposed to get more than that.

What I do need:

1. At least one instance of unexpected beauty every day. Today I viewed some ominous clouds in the distance, and they were exactly what I needed to see at that moment.

2. Typos, and other language mistakes that remind me how playful words can be.

3. The uncanny. I need this even more than coffee.

4. Something small and furry that sneaks around my house, yet ultimately ignores me. I have four of these at present. That's not counting the ones I'm just imagining are there.

5. A wee bit of competitiveness. I am not proud of this. Sometimes I need to intimidate myself in order to get inspired.

Cavalier

2009-10-29T08:30:00.005-04:00

What happens when you have a bunch of poems that you believed in (and believed) at one point, but no longer believe in (or believe)? I'm talking about a change of heart; not just outgrowing the poems, but no longer meaning them. No longer caring about what they have to say.

Is a poet obligated to mean the poems he or she sends out into the world, or reads to the public?

I never faced this dilemma until recently.

Perhaps I didn't have enough meaning to begin with back then.

I've probably mentioned that I trashed an entire book this past year. I made the Saint Monica series into a chapbook, but that left 50-60 pages of poems that I basically abandoned after publishing most of them in journals. People have been shocked that I don't intend to make those poems into a book. I don't want to, and it wouldn't feel right. I couldn't picture myself doing a reading tour with those poems in 2012.

Kelli has some fascinating posts about the evolution of book manuscripts. I know that I need to get motivated to work on assembling/sequencing/submitting my new ms, the one I wrote to replace the one I threw away. I wonder if I'd be more motivated if I didn't work in literary publishing. I wonder if I am totally overthinking this. I wonder if I'd seem so cavalier if I were a fiction writer. Don't they throw things away all of the time?

Not jellyfish, of course.

Bird's eye.

2009-10-28T12:37:00.004-04:00

I'm still not writing, but I'm taking pictures again, and that makes me happy. I'm using my real camera quite a bit, and the camera on my blackberry too (I figured out how to turn that evil flash off). Every day I see 2-3 things I wish I could've photographed, but either wasn't quick enough or was too self-conscious to stop and ponder. There's a lovely sewer grate with my name on it here on campus, and some day it will be mine.

Right now I'm contemplating frugality. I've never had to be especially frugal in the past, but being on my own and supporting two kids by myself, I need a crash course. I'm trying to only purchase items I really need at the grocery store. In my former life I'd cut myself a blank check for groceries and end up buying all kinds of strange items. Last week I shopped when I had barely any time, and that helped. My one semi-indulgence has been turning my creepy basement into a nice rec room. I'm hoping it will be a good investment.

Perhaps this is a personality quirk, but I always consider the week I'm currently in to be "over." So I'm already in week 11 (out of 15) of the semester. Somewhere near the end of September time sped up. It's warm here now, and though I spent several hours with the leaf blower the other day somehow my yard is all leafy again, just not quite as bad. The leaf blower had a direct effect on my handwriting, after shaking my wrist for that long, and my signature looks like the scribblings of a madwoman. I think it's funny. Thankfully I don't have papers to grade right now.

I think I had a dream about AWP Denver last night, but I don't remember any of it.

The Real Scare

2009-10-26T08:32:00.003-04:00

Today I'm giving "working at home" a try, while various people come kill ants, measure for carpet, maintenance the furnace, and install a programmable thermostat. While this happens I plan to do some grading, and also blow the leaves out of the back yard. My yard is the width of a business-sized envelope, so hopefully this won't be too hard. I already did the front and it did not kill me.

It's strange being in my house alone. It's luxurious, and not luxurious, but mostly just creepy. Every minute of my home time is usually witnessed by at least one, if not both, of my kids. Right now I'm feeling very unsupervised. But I still need to get work done.

Without meaning to, I have entered into a phase of not writing. Perhaps it's an October thing. At any rate, there are no new poems to report. I was too tired Friday night, and so forth.

I know this is, like, twenty years too late, but I think I'm finally ready to stop trying to impress my parents. It's impossible. Even if I won the Nobel Prize my mom would still remind me that I'm not a brain surgeon. If I went back to school to become a brain surgeon she'd probably gripe about me not being the right kind of brain surgeon. It's just very disheartening when your own parents are incapable of being pleased with you.

Perhaps instead of working at home I'll go get a mohawk! That'll show 'em.

Wherein the author is unusually refreshed.

2009-10-23T13:39:00.005-04:00

Usually I get about five hours of sleep a night, waking up at 5:30, but my daughter had the day off from school today, so I got to sleep until 6:50 (when my son woke up), and it made such a difference. Then I was somewhat non-hassled getting ready, since there was no elementary school urgency, and I took care of some household chores, and that made me really happy. Sometimes I'm baffled by the things that make me happy.

I subbed for a friend's class today, and it was a delight. I am looking forward to the days when I get to be a teacher again, and just a teacher, not 2/3 administrator 1/3 teacher. Only 2.6 more years to go. Sigh.

I am teaching these books in my Spring MFA class. I've been carrying around the copy of Harmonium everywhere I go. So far the students, with a few exceptions, are happy about the syllabus.

The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest
Meditations in an Emergency, Frank O'Hara
Ariel, Sylvia Plath
Harmonium, Wallace Stevens

Last week I was on fire in the blog department, but this week wasn't as fruitful.

What was fruitful? The chocolate-covered strawberry and apple that I just consumed.

I haven't written a poem in two weeks. Tonight I have to scrub orange juice off my hardwood floor and wall (apparently Ray really meant it when he dropped his cup the other day), but once that's done I intend to write.

Here's a new online litmag to submit to: NOP (pronounced "nope,"). The editors are a stellar bunch. Check out the call for submissions. It's not on paper!

I could be grumbling about the rain right now, but the amazing Dora Malech has two poems in THERMOS, so obviously all is right in the world.

I (almost) always root for the underdog.

There's one more week to submit to Barn Owl Review. Check out the new review of Dick of the Dead by Rachel Loden.

Happy Friday!

No Swan So Fine

2009-10-14T09:02:00.008-04:00

This morning when I walked into Olin Hall for whatever reason everyone around me was very small. The undergraduates I passed all looked like elementary school students. Perhaps I made the coffee extra strong today?

There aren't too many days that I lament, dang, I'd like to be in Buffalo right now, but today is one of them.

For the Ohio writers out there: Rubbertop Review is now taking submissions for its second issue. Check it out!

I think I am getting used to the new camera. My old one would've picked up more definition on the gorgeous bird above, however.

I'm hoping that today is relatively peaceful so that I can continue catching up and maybe get a little time to write tonight. My kids were extra difficult to get out of the house this morning (go get your shoes so I can help you put them on // [child gets shoes and throws them into bathtub] // you are driving me crazy // [child takes socks off and runs away]).

Hopefully that's not a metaphor.