75º ~ had to do a double-take before typing that temperature, highs topping out at 90/92, blessings

Longtime readers of the Kangaroo know that before I started on my fever journey, I had finished manuscript #2, the weather book.  The weather book has been a long, rambling journey without the direct focus of the narrative sequence of the fever.  The weather poems/elegies began in the long shadow of the publication of Blood Almanac and cover six or seven years.  The manuscript was once titled Glacial Elegies and then In a World Made of Such Weather as This.  Several great poet friends read the book in different incarnations and offered wise suggestions for strengthening, and the manuscript received several semi-finalist nods and a few finalist placements.  Still, no publication.

In the meantime, I also wrote a dozen prairie fairy tale poems, as well as a few autobiography/mapping poems.  These were just gathering dust on the desk once the sickly speaker took over and the fever poems became my focus.

So, yet another good poet-friend volunteered to take a look at the mss. and the tales/mapping poems and see if they belonged together.  I had a strong suspicion that they did, but since I was so focused on the sickly speaker, I hadn’t sat down and reassessed.  Thanks to this poet-friend, the mss. has a new iteration and now includes the strongest of the tales/mapping poems and cut out just a few of the weaker weather poems. 

For the moment, I’m feeling positive about the changes.  Still, I need to sit with things for a bit and see what shakes out. I’ve also realized that with the new version, the weather title no longer really works, so I spent the morning brainstorming new possible titles.  One of the techniques I love to use for this is Wordle.net.  On Wordle, you can input a text and the program creates a graphic based on frequency of word use.  Here is how the current version of the mss. looks.

Based on this, I was able to add four or five options to the title list I’d created by simply reading through the entire mss. and looking for lines that jumped out as titles.  I’ll keep you all posted.

In the meantime, the fever book is “resting” until the weekend, when I hope to revise a few last poems and then give it a thorough going over, testing for weak spots.

This whole journey would not be possible without the strength & support I get from you all.  Ever thanks for reading! My poetry cup certainly does runneth over!

91º ~ the killer trip-digit temps seem to be easing off the horizon ~ amazing how different the low 90s feel, a great breeze today and only one or two hours when the sun conquered the breeze

Friends and Fans of the Kangaroo!

It is my great delight to announce my newest adventure in poetry, helping to edit Heron Tree, an online poetry journal, which will be the first publishing venture of Heron Tree Press.  My dear friends Rebecca Resinski and Chris Campolo have made this all possible and I am thankful and excited beyond belief.

Here’s a glimpse at our announcement.

I hope you will all include us when you begin submitting your September poems! 

And spread the word!

96º ~ heading up to 99º but looks like Friday – Monday should be down around “normal” = 90º – 92º ~ most of the state is listed as in “extreme drought” so the small pop-up thunderstorms we’ve been seeing offer little hope of changing our course

Next Tuesday, C. reports back to school, and next Thursday, I do as well.  There are gathering forces all around the desk of the Kangaroo.  We are trying to take care of our left-over to-do lists and trying to soak up these last few days of calm.  I’ve already been back on campus several days in the past week or two so this isn’t a clean-cut transition.

from Wikimedia Commons

I’ve always felt that this time is much like New Year’s Eve for others; it’s a time when I reflect on my goals for the upcoming year and time when I huddle in and sleep a little extra.  I have to say that this year looks to be quite topsy-turvy with lots of changes on the horizon.  There will be some major changes at school and some new adventures in poetry.  I’ll be updating you on those poetry-related adventures just as soon as I can (nope, not book related at all).  I bring these things up now to say that I will most likely have to re-evaluate what time I have for the blog.  I’m thinking that my new goal will be to post twice a week.  I’ll most likely have to give up posting my draft process notes as time for writing will shrink in the days to come.  I’ve already whittled away at my blog feed and created a “favorites” folder to try and prioritize my time in the blogosphere as reader.  All of this makes me sad, but until the world rewards poetry as it rewards corporate raiders (or until I win the lottery) something has to give.

But not quite yet…

Today, I’ve worked on submissions, but I confess that lately, I’ve felt like I’m slugging through slowly drying cement when trying to focus on the business side of poetry.  I’d rather be writing or revising.  (Which leads me to think of those bumper stickers that say something like “I’d rather be surfing” or some such.  Imagine if there were one for writing.  Some turned heads for sure!)

Today’s submissions were sparked by both a rejection and an acceptance this week.  All of the work I’m currently sending out is from the fever series, so it’s been quite interesting to see what sticks where and what needs to go back to the drawing board.  I have to say that the rejection was quite wonderful and praised the project as a whole, so that was nice.  Still, I’m wondering if the narrative arc will prevent some of the individual poems from finding their own homes.  Time will tell.

The acceptance was fantabulistic!  It’s from a journal I’ve been submitting to for several years, a journal I read from cover to cover every time it comes out.  I first sent in a set of five fever poems in June and the editors requested a larger sample in July, so I sent in five more.  They just accepted two poems from the second batch I sent in.  Wahoooooooo!

Both of these events were on my mind this morning as I revised two poems that had been among those rejected this past week and gathered together a new submission packet.  I study and re-study the poems that “make it” and try to figure out how to shore up the ones that didn’t.  I’m often surprised at the fact that there is more pruning to be done.  I’m not drastically changing the poems, just clipping away a little extraneous language here and there.

~~~

Many thanks to those of you who have offered support and friendship all summer long.  I’m looking forward to seeing what this new year brings!

84º ~ past noon and still in the 80s?, thank the rains for that, just a small drizzle, not enough to crack the drought, but the clouds are doing their job with the sun & the temps  (yesterday, we stayed at 85º until 2:00 p.m. when the clouds broke and the sun came out, went up to 102º in less than two hours)

The happiness of the day? 1) A morning so cloudy and drizzly that I slept in b/c the sun did not provide the usual alarm and 2) I spent several good hours with the fever manuscript and drafted one last poem.

I began my poetry time today by re-reading the fever manuscript from start to finish.  I’m happy to say that I only found one word to tweak within all of the poems that have been substantially revised.  I have perhaps six remaining poems that need to be scrutinized more fully.  It was a relief to get back to the sickly speaker and re-engage with her story.

As I got to the end and moved into what I had labeled as the appendix containing the five definition poems, I realized that I might want to provide some links from within the body of the book to the appendix.  I’m thinking of those footnotes that refer to a specific page in the back of the book.  Maybe?  Right now the appendix section feels like it’s sort of floating at the end, and I know in many textbooks this is the case, so it might work as is. 

After reading through the whole thing, I turned to drafting those last two poems I mentioned previously.  It turned out that the image I dreamed up of what I thought would be the final poem had already been covered in what is the existing final sickly speaker poem, so all is well.  That meant turning to the general orders poem for the mystics.  As I drafted it, I had the two previous general order poems up as well.  In the mix, I decided to change all of the titles so I have “11 General Orders of a Nurse,” “11 General Orders of a Whitecoat,” and “11 General Orders of a Mystic.”  While I like the use of “Sentry” for the nurses, I thought it would be forced to use “11 General Orders of a Sentry,” “…of an Officer,” and “… of a Civilian Consultant.”  Who knows, I may change my mind.

The mystic poem did not come easily, nor did I expect it to given the time away from the desk; however, I kept bringing myself back to religious words and images and re-reading some of the mystic poems to remind myself of their roles.  The draft begins:

Make of your body a camouflaged shell.

Carry the sacred and the sacramental at all times hidden within.

The orders for the nurses and the whitecoats all begin with imperatives about tending the “fever body,” so I liked the parallel with starting this one with the body again, but this time it focuses on the mystics’ bodies.  The poem also gets at the tension as the mystics all work slightly outside the whitecoat/nurse system and sometimes fulfill missions for the unseen mentor.

As I drafted this last poem, I also revised the two previous general order poems and printed out copies to add to my wall of manuscript (pictured above).  I decided to create two appendices:  Appendix A: General Orders and Appendix B: Glossary. 

I’m absolutely thrilled with where the manuscript stands (53 pages…51 poems, 2 title pages – one for each appendix).  This manuscript began almost a year ago exactly and this is the fastest I’ve ever written this many poems and felt this strongly about them all.  My goal for the fall will be to fine tune and revise (especially those last few poems drafted in June that I haven’t had time to really work with).  I’ll be sending out individual poems and seeing what happens there.  I suppose I’ll shoot for the spring to begin sending the manuscript out as a book, unless some major crack exposes itself in the meantime.

91º on the way up to 108º (before any heat index), Monday says 111º, hard not to be alarmist, hottest summer on record, biggest drought since the 50s, crops turning to dust in the fields while I make my feeble effort to keep the new hydrangea alive

So, it’s been a while Dear Reader.  June was an amazing month for poetry at the desk of the Kangaroo, July not so much.  C. and I took two trips with a week off in between. 

We headed up home to visit family in Iowa, celebrating Xmas in July with the little nieces and nephews.  Lots of kiddie pool and sprinkler fun time and a half peck of peaches we brought up from southern Missouri that made everybody smile.  Then, it was off to the city, New York City to be exact.  A week of playing tourist and seeing some amazing art and national treasures.  Sadly, I returned from NYC with a terrible cold that resulted in, you guessed it, a fever! 

(Perhaps the sickly speaker was tired of being ignored?)

For the past week this is how I’ve felt.

Science Photo Library

I’m finally feeling back to rights healthwise and mindwise and it’s time to start up with school again.  I’ve got meetings today (yes on a Sunday), Tuesday, and Wednesday.  Then all day the following Monday.  All un-paid service (official start date is Aug 16) to my department, my division, and my institution, because I believe in the vision of higher education for all and if I would choose to stay home I wouldn’t be hurting myself so much as failing to ensure that our students’ needs are met. So the next time you hear someone say that teachers of any level are underpaid, please give them my number.  I’ll explain it to them like they are six years old.  🙂

In the meantime, I did hear from the sickly speaker the other night and think I have the nubbins of the final poem for her series.  I still have one more “general orders” poem that I want to write as well.  Hopefully, I can get back into a groove now, although that groove will be the modified one of the academic year rather than the luxury of June.

77º ~ a high of only 89º expected, but the humidity is taking care of making it feel like it is 95º, so no worries, we won’t fall into delusions of temperate weather

83º ~ what? yes, 83º, much cloud-cover and a cooling breeze, a high of only 95º predicted, still no rain

Darn it if I didn’t do it again.  I drafted a new poem today based on yesterday’s military inspiration.  Since I’ve closed out my June residency, I’ve been taking things at a more relaxed pace, and I thought that today I might just gather some research by reading more “General Orders” to get a sense of the military rhythm and syntax. 

When one Googles “General Orders,” what one finds are numerous links to the “11 General Orders of a Sentry” for the Army, Navy, and Marines.  At first I kept trying to dig deeper, wanting to find more language like the language from Confederate Army General Orders 17.  I did find their General Orders 14 which called on slave owners to conscript a certain percentage of their male slaves into service for the Confederate Army.  Wow.  Of course I know of the Union Army’s offer of freedom to slaves who served, but I hadn’t heard about this effort on the part of the Confederacy to supplement their dwindling ranks.  The layers of brutality there are so many it blows my mind.

But I digress.  While I may go back to the language of General Orders 14, today I kept going back to those “11 General Orders of a Sentry.”  I was bummed because the language is so plain and the series of imperative so boring.  I looked at a couple of word banks to see if I could get a spark.  And then, it dawned on me: a sentry is the equivalent of a nurse in the sickly speaker’s universe.  Click!

Here’s the first line.

To take charge of this fevered body and all its possessions.

The rest of the poem (the list of the remaining 10 imperatives), tries to describe the nurse’s power and lack of power in relationship to the whitecoats.  Hmmmm.  That’s interesting.  The poem from yesterday gives orders to the whitecoats; this one to the nurses.  I suppose I could do one more that give orders to the mystics, the last group of folks with whom the sickly speaker interacts.

This turn toward the military feels quite natural.  I’ve been describing the manuscript to other folks as an exploration of the “medical-industrial complex,” of course playing off Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex” speech.  I know the comparison there is not precise, but it’s getting clearer, and I think I need to re-read that speech.  Perhaps that will spark the mystics’ orders?

Here’s a GI standing sentry in Iraq, thanks to Wikimedia Commons.  Now, imagine that vigilance in the nurse standing over the sickly speaker.