79º ~ thunderstorms in the offing, an amazing one last evening with lots of jagged lightning and impressive thunder, a few more days of upper-90s and then looks like more normal temps (i.e. 90-ish most days) ~ humidity swelling all doors

from creativecommons.org

From: Alice In Wonderland
Music: Sammy Fain
Lyrics: Bob Hilliard

I’m Late, I’m Late
for a very important date,
No time to say hello, goodbye,
I’m late, I’m late, I’m late

So goes the song of the White Rabbit and so goes my life (all drug references excluded, please).  School is in full swing and I’m committed to several extra projects this week and next. 

I WILL be here Friday for my drafting time, and I’m squeezing in some other work time when I can.  I’m still whittling down my stack of submissions, and I’ve been working on answering some interview questions for an upcoming publication. 

I’ll catch you all on the flip side.

73º ~ it’s early yet, on the way up to 97 – 100, mostly clear skies, the sun beginning to break through the leaves above the roof lines over my left shoulder, near calm

There’s a reason I do my drafting and other poetry tasks first thing in the morning, Dear Reader.  This first week of school proves again that by the afternoon and evening, I’m wrung out, done, unable to compute.  So, I’m happy to report that this morning was a success.

As with my last several drafts, I went casually word gathering to start the day, although I switched from Lucie Brock-Broido’s The Master Letters to Julianna Baggott’s Compulsions of Silkworms & Bees.  Still, as I word gathered, I kept an eye out for a line that might suggest a title.  For some reason, this way into the drafts keeps working (knock wood), so I’ll keep exploiting it. 

Baggott’s style is distinctly different from Brock-Broido’s, with Baggott’s tone more down-to-earth than Brock-Broido’s, I think.  While at first a bit uncomfortable, after a bit, I was glad in the shift of gears.  When I came to Baggott’s poem “For Theodore Roethke,” I found my title in the following line, “this garden of our fragile breathing.” 

The draft for today is titled “This Garden of My Fragile Breath.” It is, again, an epistolary poem, this time set in tercets (nine total).  My speaker remains a sickly woman, although no fever this time.  Instead, failing lungs.  As my grandfather died of COPD, I found myself drawing from some of the images surrounding his experience with lung disease. 

Bronchial Tree of Lungs from SPL

I’ve found a groove in writing these poems in which the sickly speaker addresses a healthy “other,” the “you” in the poems, who might offer her comfort.  Again, I’m not going through any major illness right now, so I’m surprised by how much I have to say about the matter. 

Strange muse, but I will not turn her away.

87º ~ great little thunder shower this morning, now bright sun and humid air heating up

Last night I had the great pleasure of attending Tales from the South and hearing good friend Hope Coulter read.  Tales from the South is a locally produced radio show featuring southern writers presenting stories from their own lives.  These are often humorous or poignant or a mix of both, as was Hope’s tale, “The Lake.”  Raised in Alexandria, LA, Hope spent many summer days of her youth on the lake, and this tale led us through her learning to water ski, accounts of the adults in the group staying up late with a few adult beverages, and one hungover uncle’s toppling into the lake the next day.  Beneath the humor and coming-of-age details, Hope laced just the right amount of nostalgia without falling into the dreaded over-sentimentality.  There was also an acknowledgement of all the difficult times yet to come in her life that she could only feel vaguely encroaching as she grew closer to adulthood.  Beautiful.

The shows are taped on Tuesday nights at Starving Artist Cafe in North Little Rock, and are broadcast on local NPR on Thursday nights.  The show reaches more than 130 million listeners worldwide on World Radio Network, airing at 9:00 a.m. CST on Sunday mornings.  If you get a chance to listen, tune in.  You won’t be disappointed.

73º ~ ack, just saw a 100º forecast for Saturday, looks like our brief “cool spell” with highs in the upper-eighties and lower-nineties is on the wane, still, today’s sky is clear and the breeze is not at all oppressive

I’ve got a new schedule at school this semester that allows me two hours at the desk of the Kangaroo before I have to head up to campus.  I think I’m going to like this.

This past weekend through today, I spent time drafting a guest post.  When the post goes live, I’ll let you all know where to find it.  What I learned, again, is that with prose, I definitely need the guidance of a solid editor, and I’m thankful for the one I had this time around.  My prose tends to get all loosey-goosey with extra words and purple phrases, as I’ve just demonstrated.   I can still recall the notes in the margins of my college essays reminding me to “condense” and “tighten.”  In poetry, I’m cool with that.  In prose, not so much. 

This morning was really just polishing, so I had time to turn to poetry submissions.  I got sidetracked on August 1 submissions because I was doing a draft a day.  One lesson that I think is important for beginning writers is this:  yes, you need to do the writing, but if you want your work to be read by more than a handful of people, you also have to do the work of publishing, which means researching markets, sending out packets, and managing data.

Here’s my process:

I keep an ever evolving Excel spreadsheet.  It lists the title of the journal, whether they take simultaneous submissions, reading periods, number of poems per packet, and a list of acceptances and rejections that is dated so I can see my history with a journal in one glance.  This prevents me from submitting too often or too soon after an acceptance. 

I keep far too many file folders in a large file cabinet.  Each poem gets a file folder and that folder contains significant revisions and the “final” version I’m submitting.  Each journal gets a folder and that folder contains all of my submissions and correspondence with the journal.  Some of these folders are quite fat now, after a decade of submitting.

I do realize that there are now online services to help with all of this, especially Duotrope.  I like the idea of these services, but my system works for me.  While I do think services like Duotrope can help keep a writer organized, they cannot replace the years of research I’ve done with each of the journals in my stacks.  I’ve got lists of names of past poets published that I keep on notes in the journal folders.  I’ve got my own notes on editors or particular themes / styles that a certain journal might favor.

Now, when it comes time to submit, I print off my spreadsheet and check off the journals that have existing submissions.  Then, I go through and highlight each journal with an open reading period and check to be sure it’s been 8 months to a year since I last submitted, unless the editor asked for more work (another item noted in the spreadsheet).

Next, I gather all the files for the individual poems that are available for submission.  This means checking if they are currently out at other journals (simultaneously submitted) and if so, to how many journals.  In the past, I used to send one batch of poems to 10 – 15 journals accepting simultaneous submission.  Now that I have a bit more success, I limit each batch to 5 – 7 journals.  I sort through the available poems and create submission packets of 3 – 5 poems.  These I arrange in a row on my desk, as it usually ends up being 3 – 5 groups. 

Then, I turn back to my spreadsheet and gather the folders for all of the journals that fit the criteria.  These I lay out over the groups of poems, matching each journal to the group I think will best “fit” the tastes of the journal. 

It looks like this.

Finally, I scoop them all up in a tower so that I can grab one group at a time to work on.  That looks like this.

I used to have marathon weekends where I’d tackle the whole tower in a day and a half.  That’s exhausting and doesn’t really work with a teaching schedule like mine.  Now, I can spend an hour or two here and there and whittle down the tower until it’s gone.  Obviously, that’s where I am in the process today as I get ready to head to campus. 

In the next few days, I’ll work through the stack.  Right now I have 4 groups with 5 poems per group and 5 journals matched up with them.  If patterns from the past hold, I’ll find several journals that have changed their reading periods or are running special themes or other such details to derail the submission.  Would I rather be writing poems?  Maybe, but then those poems would gather dust in a drawer rather than finding an audience.  It’s all a matter of balance. 

70º ~ oh sweet relief of thunderstorms rolling over us for the past three days, bringing much needed rain and heat relief, that pesky high pressure system that had us trapped has lumbered to the west where it belongs

It’s been a busy school week, friends and fans of the Kangaroo.  Full-time faculty reported back on Monday, and I’ve had meetings and prep work filling my schedule until today.  I also forgot that it takes a few days for the body to adjust as well.  I found myself drifting off at 2:00 or so, another indication that I really need to keep a schedule in the summer to keep me fighting fit.

This morning, I went back to what’s been working well, reading The Master Letters by Lucie Brock-Broido and letting words fall on the page of my journal willy-nilly, some drawn from the book, some from the ether.  I read and word gather until I come to a line that feels like a title, something strong enough to hint at a poem.

Today, that line was “the alchemy of my merely / Mortal form” from “His Apprentice.”  I did adapt it slightly this time to “The Alchemy of My Mortal Form” as the ‘merely’ seemed unnecessary in a title.  The first line uses the first word I noted in my journal this morning, “quickens.”

At my wrist, the mottled skin quickens
at your touch, doctor.  Do not trust the pulse.

Symbols of Alchemy from Science Photo Library

It seems I’m stuck on the idea of a speaker consumed with fever, as it happens again in today’s draft.  That fever weaves into my general knowledge of alchemy and the use of fire as transformation.  I’m also still working in couplets, although the couplets today are more traditional, with more fully end-stopped lines at the end of the couplets.

I promise you all that I am healthy.  I suspect that all the feline medical terminology & tests of the summer are bubbling up in the poems these days.

More gratitude to Lucie Brock-Broido, as her work, like Emily Dickinson’s, is full of leaps and arcs.  After writing such strictly narrative poems this summer for the fairy tale series, it’s been thrilling to return to the lyric form where I am most at home.

100º ~ oh, yes, that’s a trip-digit BEFORE NOON, friends and fans of the Kangaroo, I discount all forecasts as they’ve been on the low side for days, meteorologists dreaming again

This morning, we experienced an internet outage and it was perfectly timed.  I had been futzing about on the web, reading blogs and generally wasting time.  I say ‘wasting time’ not because the blogs are a waste but because my goal was to finish my seven-day poem-a-day self-challenge.  Rather than push myself to draft, I was letting the blogs distract me.  When I get back into my school schedule, I won’t have time to drift around the blogosphere.  I’ll have to draft within a certain time in order to get to school on time. 

So, while C. grumbled about the lack of an internet connection, rather than join him as I usually do, I swept all of the extraneous paper from my desk, grabbed my journal, plugged in the classical music, and got to work.  Since I’ve enjoyed two good drafts using the Lucie Brock-Broido book, I returned to it again.  Today, I decided I would read until I came to a line that suggested a title and then go from there.  I couldn’t restrain myself from stealing words; however, I’ve seen a different result if I place the poems randomly around the page rather than in columns.  The columns work very well for a word bank and random pairs, but if I just toss the words onto the page, knowing I’m not going to number them, then some unexpected sparks appear.  Plus, certain words call to other words or cause me to write down words of my own. 

Today’s title is “I Have Gone Shimmering into Ungentle Sleep,” which comes from Lucie Brock-Broido’s poem “From the Proscenium.”  Oh, and the fever is still present today, just in the lines of the poem rather than the title.  It begins:

This fever is my tutor.  It lectures
scarlet on my cheeks, pale quarter-moons

on all my fingernails…

The Poet’s Fevered Pillow

I had an interesting experience with form as I drafted today.  Once I’d gotten about nine lines on the page of my journal, I felt the momentum strong enough to switch to the computer.  After I’d drafted two chunky stanzas there, I realized the form and the content were at war.  Something wasn’t right.  I decided to let the white space in by indention and hard returns.  The image of the poem became familiar and comfortable, but when I read it again, the form and content still weren’t married.  Back to the drawing board, I wound up with couplets straight through.  One thing that adding the indention and extra returns does for me is help me see where I want the lines to break.  All that extra white space makes me pause more when reading the draft out loud and I can see more clearly where I want the pauses to actually be. 

Tomorrow is return to school day.  I’ll be on campus from 8:30 – 4:00.  If I’m up for it, I may try to extend my draft-a-day, but I’m not betting the farm on it. 

94º ~ three more trip-digit days in the forecast and then a ‘cool down’ to the upper 90s, some small breezes in the upper branches, closer to the ground all is listless

Today’s draft was much a repeat of yesterday’s process, and a writer loathes nothing more than ineffective repetition.  I’ll just nod my head in thanks once more to Lucie Brock-Broido.  Again, I used a line from one of her poems for the title of the draft.  “Seized with a Small Fever” comes from “To a Strange Fashion of Forsaking.”  Again, I used some of her words, but today more of my own.  I even had some inspiration cards splashed around for image jolting. 

Yes, both yesterday and today, the lines I chose for titles contain the word ‘fever.’  No, I’m not sick, but perhaps this unrelenting heat influences me more than I notice.  Also, I like the fact that fevers can bring an altered state of mind, which lets me find more magic in my speakers. 

Today’s poem begins:

The linen here is burgundy, well-laundered.

This vessel rests beneath a gold-leafed
chandelier dimmed to sweetness.

The poem alternates between single-line stanzas and couplets.  Also, I use the word ‘antipyretics.’  Not one of the words I found in Brock-Broido’s poems, although she reminds me that I can use Latinate words if they fit the tone of the rest of the poem.  As a composition instructor, I’m constantly warning my students against using the “ten dollar words” to try and sound “smart.”  We are working in those classes for logical communication, straight-forward arguments.  A poem is something all together different, and while I love a poem grounded in everyday speech, it’s also fun to stretch my wings and see what I can do with a more academic diction.  Brock-Broido certainly brings it out in her poems, and it doesn’t hurt her ‘accessibility,’ at least not for me. 

And here is Lou-Lou (gaining health every day), adoring The Master Letters as I try to work.

One more day of my mini-poem-a-day self challenge.  I can’t believe I have six possible poems waiting in my ‘In Progress’ folder.  Tomorrow, that could be seven!  Can’t wait to dive in and revise. 

92º ~ what is there to say, really?  the heat goes on and on and on, the humidity is there to lick the skin to sweat in five breaths, the sun – merciless

Today, the road to a new poem draft was a long and winding one.  It was C.’s first day back at school for professional development days, and I return on Monday.  The energy in our house shifted yesterday.  I felt it.  There is a renewed sense of purpose and the hope that we will create better habits this year than last.  For teachers, the return to school may be a bit like January 1 for the rest of the world, a time of goal-setting and looking-forward.

After C. departed for his meetings, I piddled a bit, needing to do the laundry before the full heat of the day began to tax the energy infrastructure.  We’ve been asked to reduce our demand during peak hours from noon – 9 p.m.  I also took care of several bits of paper hanging out on my desk, and, oh, I ordered new shoes online, another marker of the new school year.

Finally, I sat with a clear desk and a fresh journal (wahoo).  I turned on the classical music (the only music I can use while writing) and…NOTHING.  A BIG FAT ZERO HAPPENING IN MY BRAIN.  I did hear the cicadas again today, but it seems the length of their rattling is shorter each morning.  Also, I went back and forth with self-talk:

“You HAVE to write a poem today, you are doing one draft a day through Sunday and that will be seven new possibilities!”

“Ah, I could slack today, I’ve done so well the last few days…snooze…it’s cool.”

I cheered when my better angel won but still didn’t know what to write.

Eventually, I decided I just needed to mark up the fresh journal in any way possible and began a stream of consciousness doodling.  This led me to money.  I scrawled down four key moments from my childhood that had to do with money (of course, I might be making these up, as my fictive memory is now legend in my family).  I tried to write a poem about money and got nowhere…to essay-like. 

I got up and wandered around some, moving wet laundry to the dryer, giving the cat some treats, looking out the window at the heat, etc.  As I wandered back into my office, it struck me that I should re-read Lucie Brock-Broido’s The Master Letters.  I’ve had Emily Dickinson’s letters on my brain for a few days, and Brock-Broido’s book is inspired by the three “Master Letters’ discovered on Dickinson’s death.  I love Brock-Broido’s deft use of unconventional language.  There is a spark in my body when I read her work, and it did not fail me today. 

As I started reading, I also jotted down words in my journal.  I wasn’t thinking of a word bank, in particular; I just wanted words that felt good on my tongue and in my gut.  The second poem in the first section, “Also, None Among Us Has Seen God,” contains the line “the fevers of a minor fire.”  I scribbled that out and knew I wanted to use it as a title for a poem, but I wasn’t ready to draft yet.  I kept reading.  I only made it through two more poems, getting to “Unholy.”  This poem is an epistolary prose poem addressed Dear Master–.  As I read, churning in the back of my mind was the patriarchal address used by both Dickinson and Brock-Broido.  My draft clicked.  I wanted to write an epistolary poem (though not a prose poem) to my masters: Dickinson & Brock-Broido.

Another great photo source, Science Photo Library

I did use the previous line for my title: “Fevers of a Minor Fire.”

August 5th

Dear Madam–

Feminine form of Lord, I address you
with a tongue calloused & lumbering.

The poem turned out to be three stanzas of eight lines each, with the date, salutation, and signature, adding three extra lines.  I did end up using several of the words I’d “stolen” as I read, so I guess I fell back on the word bank model without setting out to do so.

Drafting this poem made me happy because I felt lit up inside and while every line didn’t just magically appear, the drafting was rewarding once I got started.  I know I borrowed this feeling from Brock-Broido’s work, and, as always, I am in her debt.