Many thanks to Matt Henriksen for inviting me up to Fayetteville for a reading on Saturday and to Katy Henriksen for designing this beautiful poster.

It’s been a wild week with the death of Lou-Lou, the hosting of another successful reading for the Big Rock Reading Series, and the inevitable collection of papers to be graded.  This afternoon, there is an appointment at the auto-shop for the 60,000 mile maintenance & oil change on my Honda.

Still, I put my butt in the chair this morning.  Knowing that I might struggle I bit, I wanted the most help possible, so I returned to Lucie Brock-Broido’s The Master Letters, a book which has been fruitful in suggesting titles, but which is also jam-packed with words that ricochet around my brain and make sparks.

Here’s a picture of today’s process.

I’ve really begun to like the idea of mapping as I go.  So that when two words wind up on the page together and suggest something (this is the hard part to explain), I circle them or draw arrows or lines & whatnot so I don’t lose the energy of that combination as I continue to sink into the draft.   I included the book as well so you can see that I mark up the poetry I read.  In fact, the more marks the higher on my list of favorites. 

Today’s draft “Long Sliding Toward Oblivion” gets its title from a line in Brock-Broido’s poem “Into Those Great Countries of the Blue Sky of Which We Don’t Know Anything.”  It ended up being an epistolary poem to the sickly speaker’s unnamed, female mentor (playing off Emily Dickinson’s & Lucie Brock-Broido’s letters to an unnamed ‘master’).  It begins:

I haven’t received the official photos from last night’s reading yet, but here are a few I snapped.  It was another great success, and I can’t say enough about how wonderful Alison Pelegrin is as both a poet and a human being.  If you run a reading series, you should book her!  I know the Big Rock Reading Series is the better for having hosted her.

the crowd begins to form

photo by Tim Jones

Alison signs books for her adoring fans

my friends chat in the after

photo by Tim Jones

 Now it’s off to school to start grading a new set of papers newly arrived in my inbox.  Ah, the life of a teaching poet.

Amidst the turmoil of illness and the sadness of death (of our beloved cat, Lou-Lou), the world of poetry churns on.  Here are a few announcements.

I’ll be reading in Fayetteville, AR on Saturday, 22 October, for the Improved Lighting Reading Series.  These readings take place at the fabulous Nightbird Books on Dickson Street.  We start at 7:30 that night, and I’m thrilled to be reading with Amanda Auchter, Tony Presley, and Mark Spitzer.

If you are in the area, please stop by.  There will be Earnestine giveaways of some sort.  🙂

Having done my MFA at the U of Arkansas in Fayetteville, I’m super excited to be invited back to my favorite college town in one of its prettiest months.

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Saturday, I received my contributor’s copy for the latest South Dakota Review, which is under the new leadership of Lee Ann Roripaugh, the first woman editor and only the third editor in the history of this wonderful journal.

This issue is AMAZEBALLS and you must get a copy ASAP to read poems by Adam Clay, Mary Biddinger, Bruce Covey, Matt Mauch, Heidi Czerwiec, me, and so many more (not to mention the fiction and nonfiction, too!).  Also, I love the new larger format.  So weighty in the hands.

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Tomorrow is our second event in the Big Rock Reading Series.  Wahoo.  I simply cannot wait for Alison Pelegrin to get to town and unleash her poetic powers on the PTC audience.  I’m not sure they know what’s about to hit them.  If you are in the area, the reading starts at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday night.  All information here.

Alison is a good friend and an awesome poet.  She has two full-length collections from the University of Akron Press:  Big Muddy River of Stars and the HOT OFF THE PRESSES Hurricane Party.  I’ve read both and YOWZA.  Also, I definitely think Hurricane Party should win some kind of design award for this cover.  Spectacular.

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In the meantime, I also received two out-of-the-blue emails from
poets who had read my work in other journals and wanted to let me know
what they’d enjoyed about the work.  I’ve written here before about my
own mission to reach out to those writers whose work speaks to me whenever
I’m reading a journal or book.  Being on the receiving end of such
emails reminds me to double my effort in the future.  It really is
spectacular. 

One of those sending an email is also an editor for a
long-standing and extremely well-respected journal.  He asked me to send
in some of my work.  As we all know, there is nothing guaranteed about
this kind of solicitation, but I wanted to mention it here for those who
wonder if this kind of thing really happens.  Yes, apparently it does. 
Apparently it is true that editors read other journals and seek out the
work of those writers they admire.  (I hear tell that if you write fiction, this
sometimes applies to agents as well.)

So thank you to the two people who took the time to email me last
week about my poems.  It was a hell week on a personal level, and those
emails dropped into my inbox at the perfect time.

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Until next time, friends and fans of the Kangaroo, be safe, be happy, be content.

Our Lou-Lou lost her fight with myelofibrosis on Friday.  And so, yes, Dear Reader, we are without a cat in the house for the first time in over seven years.  It’s a quiet, empty feeling.  Most of you may remember that Libby died in June from hydrothropic cardiomyopathy.  Both of these deaths were unpreventable and proved just how little we can control in this world.  While Libby was fairly young at seven and a half when she died, Lou-Lou’s death was even harder to bear as she had just turned three in July.  Her disease, where the immune system turns on the bone marrow and the red blood cells, usually strikes in cats between kittenhood and three years old.

Perhaps I share too much; however, in the telling of the details there is a way through the sorrow (for me).  I know that others prefer to grieve in silence. 

Many thanks to all who sent condolences on Facebook.  As I said with Libby, I am surprised at how much those small words “So sorry for your loss” help ease the grief. 

Finally, here’s a picture of the desk to show what loss looks like for me.

There has been a lot of tossing things on the desk at random: receipts, journals, money, bills, clothing, half-hearted to-do lists, etc.  Yesterday was spent in lethargic repose; today I have a bit more energy to tackle some of this. 

Knowing that the poetry is out there waiting to be read, waiting to be written, is perhaps one of the most helpful things of all.

Today’s title references ‘hanging on by one’s’ rather that some statement about fashion and polish.  It also references an emotional state of hanging on rather than one of being overwhelmed by physical tasks.  We just don’t know what is going to happen with Lou-Lou’s health and that is difficult to say the least.  All of this emotion for a cat, and I struggle to imagine the magnitude of emotion for a close friend or family member suffering serious health issues.  Yes, I have been so lucky in my 40 years on this planet, but I see that the suffering will arrive at some point or other.  This is what my cat has to teach me.

The opposite of what I mean!

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In the meantime, I did get some submissions out the door yesterday, although I did not follow my wonderful, orderly process, as detailed here.  Instead, I haphazardly sent out to several places that have special calls for which my poems my be a fit.  I also chose to send two groups of poems to non-simultaneous submission journals (well, one asks that the write wait six weeks before sending on to other mags).  It’s odd, that normally I feel constrained by the non-simul. sub. journals, but yesterday it helped me feel like I was making some small progress in the face of chaos.

Rest assured, I have not abandoned my process method or simultaneous subs (as I still believe in them the most).  I have a stack of poems waiting to be sorted and my spreadsheet printed and ready to go.

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Finally, I have tried to skim the blogs and keep up as best I can, although I know I’m missing much.  I did catch on in the middle of a discussion about Annie Dillard’s policy on seclusion.  Here is Shawn Smucker’s original piece, citing Dillard’s statement on her website.

Apparently, this caused quite a lot of commenting and Dillard-bashing, leading Andi from Andilit.com to post this response.  My favorite part of Andi’s post is this:

I completely agree and have no problem with Dillard’s seclusion.  She is fortunate that her amazing writing talent has been recognized and celebrated to the point where she can choose seclusion.  And even if we aren’t able to financially sustain ourselves on our writing alone, we can all probably take a lesson on turning off the noise for a bit.

However, on the flipside, I will say that I gain much from my internet community, and I love to talk with writers of all skill-levels.  These relationships nourish me and encourage me in times of doubt.  I hope to always be able to engage in those relationships, yet I recognize that when one rises to the level of superstar of Dillard’s proportion, the requests for one’s time might become burdensome.  I would hope, then, that my writing will provide its own dialogue with my readers as Dillard’s does with me.

Here is one Dillard quote that lights the fire within:
“The secret of seeing is, then, the pearl of great price.  If I thought he could teach me to find it and keep it forever I would stagger barefoot across a hundred deserts after any lunatic at all.”

That’s what writing is for me, an attempt to discover the secret of seeing, a staggering after wisdom in whatever guise it chooses.

So be it.

Many thanks to Camille Dungy for posting pictures from her trip to Little Rock in September, as my pictures from that night did not turn out.

The beautiful Camille Dungy with me.

Camille Dungy & my former PTC student, Toby Daughtery

Camille Dungy & my former AGS student, Jessica Otto, also a former student of CD

Dear Reader, today, I did not feel much poetry, but the old B-I-C (butt-in-chair) rule did not fail me.  I am uncertain of this draft, but I am happy to have written some few lines in the midst of stress and chaos. 

Sticking with my tried and true method of drafting since early August, I picked up the nearest text and began.  Today’s draft is brought to you by work from the recent issue of Copper Nickel, one of my top 5 favorite lit mags in the whole wide world.

I word-gathered from work by Laura Eve Engel & Adam Peterson, Elizabeth Cheever, Zachary Sifuentes, Ann Fisher-Wirth, and A.E. Watkins.  At first, I thought I’d found a title/jumping off place when I matched two words in my journal: rivalry & miracles.  So I started trying to draft “A Rivalry of Miracles” and my sickly speaker remains, never fear.  However, after eight lines, I needed to use the phrase ‘a rivalry of miracles’ in the draft and I no longer felt like it served as well as a title, so I moved it.  Then, mid-draft, I was sort of stuck, so I went back to the poems and scanned for possible titles or guidance.  In A.E. Watkins’ “from Allerton in Winter” section IV, I found “some forgotten fury.”  I love the alliteration there, and as my sickly speaker always has a fever, I changed ‘fury’ to ‘fever,’ and thus today’s draft:  “Some Forgotten Fever.”  It begins:

Here the bed is made of iron,
flat & straight.  My cursive spine

breaks the line.  To sleep, I turn

Like the other poems in this series I’ve ended up writing, this draft is in couplets; however, there is much more enjambment going on here and the lines are shorter than before.  Perhaps my own sense of urgency is filtering through. 

In the meantime, I am wary of sticking with this process so long.  What say you: should I abandon the process of word gathering and stand on my own as it were?  Should I move on from this sickly speaker?  Or should I let it all ride and see where it takes me?

Today’s drafting process is postponed, or in the parlance of baseball, PPD.  Lou-Lou has had a bit of a crisis this past week and needs to have some treatments at the vet today.  All are hopeful because she has responded to her medications in the past and the docs have ruled out secondary infections and the like.  It looks like a change in the dosages and times per day they are given is in order.

from creativecommons.org ~ click for link

I shall return to the desk tomorrow with pen and journal and attempt a draft.

In the meantime, I’ve finally got a stack of poems ready to go out into the world and I haven’t had a lick of time to do submissions in the entire month of September! Time to re-prioritize!