35º ~ high, soft brushes of clouds, the sun still sparkling through, changing moment to moment

Today I’m posting about two drafts, although one was begun earlier this week. 

Let’s start with the apocalypse.  I stopped watching most news broadcasts this past summer around day 27 of the BP oil spill.  For some reason, I can read about horrible things in the paper and listen to accounts of disasters on NPR, but watching video news just sends me into a tailspin.  Recently, I decided I should probably try to watch the news again as I was feeling a bit out of touch, even with reading the paper, the online headlines, and listening to NPR.  My reward?  The report last night on the federal governments’ new emergency plans for nuclear attacks.  The answer: shelter in place saves more lives than trying to evacuate.

While the reporters went above and beyond to assure us all that there was no imminent threat and that this was just the result of a government study, I couldn’t help but have flashbacks to my childhood in the 80’s.  In particular, I found the movie, The Day After, playing itself out in my head.  I was 12 when it aired on TV for the first time, and it put the fear of nuclear war in me, a fear that has never really left.  In part, the movie made such an impact because the setting is Kansas City and a small town/farming community in Missouri, and wouldn’t you know it, I knew that Kansas City wasn’t all that far from where I lived, and that small town in Missouri sure looked a lot like my small town in Iowa.  The characters in the movie were recognizable to me in ways that characters in most movies at the time weren’t. 

Schools had stopped having nuclear war drills by this time, although my parents recounted their experiences of crawling under their desks and covering their eyes, but my school was one of the oldest in town, and it still had a fallout shelter in the basement, a place we were allowed to visit on one or two occasions, although I can’t remember why.  I do remember the large yellow and black pie sign either on the door or in the room somewhere.  Chilling to a child with an imagination as large and threat-prone as mine.

All of this is a long introduction to the fact that I found myself writing an unusual poem this morning, one I titled “Shelter in Place.”  So obvious.  What’s unusual is that I don’t tend to write political poems or poems based on current events/news reports, and yet, here I was doing just that.  It felt uncomfortable, but I couldn’t stop.  I had to get it all out there.  There are two healthy stanzas, a rare form for me these days.  In the first, I deal with the memories of the movie and the cold war.  In the second, I deal with the idea of trying to shelter in place when the air itself would be poison, when I have no basement in which to seek refuge.  I’m not sure the poem is done yet.  If I choose to return to it, I’ll need to address the added fear of a nuclear bomb in the hands of terrorists.  It’s one thing to see the ICBM’s coming from a long way off and launching the counter attack and obliterating everything, but it’s another thing entirely when there is no enemy country, no escalation of hostilities and thus no chance for negotiations, no working toward detente.

On to brighter things, I also worked on a poem I started earlier this week, but today was the first time I put it in the computer and thus call it ‘drafted.’  This is the opposite of the above, a love poem called “Waiting for You to Return from the Mountain.”  C. is done with school today, and as has become their practice, he and his best teacher friends will drive up to a cabin in the mountains northwest of here to blow off their pent up steam and unwind.  It works out well for us all, since they are mostly fit to be tied at this point in the semester.  However, I still miss him when he’s gone.  The first lines of this poem came to me while I was out to lunch by myself and reading lit mags.  I didn’t have my journal with me, so I had to tear off the back cover of the lit mag and draft the lines there.  I know the editors will forgive me for the ruination. 

Of course I’m happy to have these two new poem-lings, but I must confess, Dear Reader, I am still swamped with a feeling of doubt about all my work right now.  I know, I know, I’ve had a great year of publications and I’m not discounting that.  However, at the moment, I can’t seem to see my own work clearly.  I’m hearing critics with the turn of every page.  I shall now attempt to silence those critics.  I’ve heard that duct tape works wonders on most household problems, perhaps it will work for silencing critics as well as when the time comes to shelter in place.

Peace.

31º ~ sky 3/4 clouds, 1/4 blue, brisk winds continue…snow, gasp, in the forecast for tomorrow, but the temps will rise, so nothing sticking, praise be

First, I love and admire the work of both Cheever and Wright.

The title of this post and the contents are inspired by a series of links and blogs I came across in my reading this morning.  First, I read Julianna Baggott’s post “Why We Write. What We Read.” on her Bridget Asher blog (Baggott writes under three different names).   Baggott’s post whetted my appetite for this discussion of race (a difficult word) in the 2010 Best American Short Stories collection.

From Baggott’s blog, I linked to both Roxane Gay’s “A Profound Sense of Absence” over at HTMLGIANT and Tayari Jones’ “Letter to Vanessa,” which links to Gay as well.  (I love the web of the blog world!)

Please follow the links to read these wonderful explorations of race in today’s fiction. According to Gay, within the BASS 2010 “Almost every story in the anthology was about rich or nearly rich white people” and their problems.  (Disclaimer: I have not read the book.)  Jones picks up the conversation by also touching on a ‘real’ reader, someone not reading for a job (editor/critic/academic/etc.).

The following challenge comes from Gay’s post:

Not one to resist a challenge, I started a list in my head, and Dear Readers, these are poets, so not quite on topic, but I think the diversity issue exists across the board.  (A good blogger would provide links for them all, alas, I’m short on time this morning.  Sorry!)

Antoinette Brim, author of Psalm of the Sunflower
J. Michael Martinez, author of Heredities
Li-Young Lee (hero), author of Rose, The City in Which I Love You, and more
Joy Harjo (hero), author of She Had Some Horses, In Mad Love and War, and more
January Gill O’Neil, author of Underlife
Allison Joseph, author of My Father’s Kites, Voices, and more
Eduardo C. Corrall, blogging at Lorcaloca
Tracy K Smith, author of Duende
Quincy Troupe (hero), author of Weather Reports and more
Oliver de la Paz, author of Furious Lullabies, Requiem for the Orchard, and more
Victoria Chang, author of Circle and Salivinia Molesta
Khaled Mattawa, author of Zodiac of Echoes, Toqueville, and more
Reginald Shepherd (super hero), author of Otherhood, Angel, Interrupted, and more (***chose Blood Almanac to win the Anhinga Prize), he is missed

Well, then I started thinking of writers whose race is unknown to me or is unclear to me.  I’m terrible at figuring this out for people of blended heritage (I’m also terrible with age and gender if someone looks the least bit androgynous or when reading has an androgynous name).  So, unless a person writes specifically about race, age, gender, etc. I might not notice it.  The list above is certainly not exhaustive.  If we are really talking about diversity, I would include a bunch of white women, LGBT, and working-class writers as well, and I’m glad that Roxane Gay makes the point about wealth that she does in her post.

I wonder if diversity is something I seek out subconsciously, having been educated by a group of canon-busting professors in the late 80’s/early 90’s (thank you, Mara Faulkner, Ozzie Mayers, Madhu Mitra, Mike Opitz, Janet McNew, and all the rest!)

I wonder why my MFA program was made up of nearly all white writers. (Sadly, less canon-busting going on there).

I wonder if poets have made better work of promoting diversity.

I wonder if my few years spent working in independent bookstores makes a differenc.

I wonder if and when the diversity issue will be overcome.  For fun, I happen to read a series of crime novels set in the future (around 2060), and in the books, a great majority of the characters are described as being of blended heritages.  Given that these are ‘who dun its’ the writer has to give us basic descriptions of each character/suspect so we can figure out the clues; we get images of skin tones, health/body type, economic status, etc.  It took me a few books in the series to catch on to the subtle shift in ‘racial’ (I distrust and question this word so much) makeup of the world as this author predicts it.  Smart move on her part, given that many experts agree that by 2060, the US will no longer be a white majority country; instead, we’ll be closer to the melting pot metaphor than the tossed salad metaphor.  What will our literature look like then? (May I live to see the results!)

So, I’m left once again with more questions than answers.  Any thoughts, Dear Reader?

 
29º ~ cold, cold, cold ~ never ending sun, still a bit windy

Now that the semester’s been put to bed like a cranky child, I’m swinging back into reading mode and loving it.  Normally, I reserve these posts for mini-reviews of other poets’ books; however, Stephanie Kartalopoulos’ fabulous guest post on the 32 Poems blog gave me the boost I needed to head back to my own book-in-progress and give it a good going over.  In her post, “What’s Your Intention?” Stephanie asks great questions of the book-in-progress, for example:

I’d known for many weeks that I needed to get back to my own book and re-read to answer some of these questions, although the questions were much more vague before Steph’s post!   So, the house was quiet and the sun splashing on the desk in great sheaths this morning and all the planets aligned for manuscript reading.  Long-time readers will know that I went through a massive revision of the ordering of the poems in the book, in part thanks to a careful reading by Stephanie herself.  That all took place back in early September.  What this means is that the book is no longer a comfortable old shoe.  Re-reading the new version today was clumsy and slightly uncomfortable, although I could see the shine of this better, newer shoe.

Dear Reader, I fear that I am no good at book making (btw, I’m lousy at games of chance as well!).  It is quite hard for me to see and feel the thing as a whole.  Each poem is so well known to me; each poem is so itself.  I can see small groups of poems all linked together, but apparently those links are heavy-handed and eliminate the reader’s feeling of discovery.  So, BOOM went the first version.  I do like this newer version and the surprise it allows.  I can see this now, but I couldn’t see it before.

So, how does one learn to do this mysterious work, this stitching together?  How does one begin to answer the questions above?

Any advice is welcome.

PS: after reading the book, I went to get the mail and found my first rejection for the fall book season.  One of my top three presses said no thanks, but with a nice note and a semi-finalist mention, to keep it all from being completely horrible. 

Onward to the next round.

57º ~ doom and gloom skies today…working our way up to 62 and stormy weather, all heralding a serious nosedive in temps as a cold front invades

To understand the title of today’s post, you’ll have to click over and read Kelli’s post “Submit Like a Man.”  As one of the editors of Crab Creek Review, Kelli discusses the gender difference when her journal sends out a rejection that asks the writer to submit again.  Apparently, male writers submit again right away and female writers wait too long.  While this is purely anecdotal, I’m mesmerized by it.  I confess, I’ve usually waited at least six months and most often until the next submission period if the journal has one. The world is full of stories about how swamped journal editors are and one wouldn’t want to offend by submitting too often, right?   Well, after reading Kelli’s post, I’ve changed my approach this fall.

In October, I resubmitted to a journal that specified they wanted to see more work and I should disregard the submission period.  I haven’t heard back from this journal, but I appreciated their pointed comment that left no doubt about how long I should wait.

Today, I’ve just resubmitted to a journal that rejected me at the end of November.  I know this is a terrible time to submit as most editors and first-readers will be taking a break over the holiday, so my poems will just sit there gathering dust for a few weeks.  For me, however, this is fine.  I’d rather have them out there waiting around a bit because I tend to forget about resubmitting once I’ve filed the rejection away.  I’ve tried making notes on post-its or leaving the journal’s file folder out on the desk, but the clutter usually wins. 

As I was working, I was also mulling over this word: submission.  Like many words, there are a variety of definitions, of course, but I was caught by the idea of giving up authority…to submit to some Other that holds some Power, to be submissive.  (Here, the idea of the Alpha dog kept insisting that I acknowledge it.)  In the act of sending the poems out there, we are also giving the power of judgment to the editor.  This means admitting that we value the judgment of that editor and are willing to lie down and lower our eyes in submission as good members of the pack.  Woof.

I know that this may seem obvious to many of you, Dear Readers, but I’m a slow learner.

In any case, as rejection (or being winnowed out as one blogger (name I can’t remember) recently put it) will always be a part of my life as a writer, I’m always searching for better ways to make it work for me rather than against me.  Perhaps recognizing my own part in giving up some of my personal power will help with that.  If not….there’s always chocolate!

28º ~ coldest night so far this winter, 22º, but bright sun, a few puffy clouds barely moving, nearly all the leaves that will drop have dropped, some will refuse all winter

So, here we are in Finals Week, and I should be jumping for joy because I’ve completed the grading of my composition papers and only have the world lit exams left to grade tomorrow.  I have exit conferences with my comp students today and Thursday.  Then, all the grades will be tucked in tight and I’ll be free, free, free.  And yet, I continue to feel sluggish and unmotivated.  To complicate things, my Puritanical, Midwestern ethos seems to have settled in and I continue to flog myself for not taking advantage of all the extra time for writing that opens up before me when a semester dwindles to an end.

If history holds any consolation, I believe this mood will shift, but the muddling through it is no fun.

Still, I’m thankful for so many things:
time and health
the sun
great blog friends
great poetry friends
great friends in general
a warm house
two warm cats
a wonderful extended family, perhaps distant in geography, but not in love
a wonderful and amazing spouse whom I love and who loves me back

~~~~~

I finished Housekeeping the other day and am dazzled all over again by Marilynne Robinson’s skill.  There’s a poet behind each of the sentences in this book; the whole thing sizzles with imagery, metaphor, and music.  I dog-eared so many of the pages that the top of the book bulges now.  I added as many underlines and notes in the margin as I’d written the first go-round.  I stand in awe.  Y’all stop whatever you are doing and go read this book, right now!

~~~~~

True confessions, indeed.  Don’t hate me, Dear Reader, but I am not a fan of decorating for Christmas.  My mother loves Christmas and does the house up right.  My mother-in-law will have decorated several trees already in her house, especially for the DAR tea she hosts each year.  My sisters have the tree and the lights and all the trimmings.  I loved it all as a child/young adult.  Have I been replaced by alien pod people?  Or am I just lazy, since I love the trees and lights that are done up by others?  Or am I burned out from a long semester?  (Maybe Scrooge was actually a teacher??) We can blame the fact that there is no tree in our house on our young cat.  We adopted her in May of 2009 and within a few weeks I knew that there’d be no tree last year.  C. held out hope that she would ‘mature’ this year, but no, no tree again.  Her one goal in life is to knock down whatever isn’t nailed down.  She loves to push things off desks and coffee tables.  She lives to up-end coffee cups and pop cans, the more liquid in them, the better.  No amount of ‘discipline’ dissuades her.  I drink from an adult sippy cup for obvious reasons.  Still, we fell in love with her on one meeting and wouldn’t give her up for the world.  Now, she makes a great reason for de-cluttering most of the house…a way I prefer to live anyway.  However, during the holidays, the lack of decorations does subdue the cheer a bit.  Another character flaw with which to wrestle… 

For reassurance, I’m no Grinch, no Scrooge.  I do love the spirit of the holidays and wish you all a special season with lots of food and family/friends and time for reflection, too.

38º ~ sunny, a few high wispy clouds, warming into the sixties today, heard the word ‘snow’ on the radio in the forecast for later in the weekend, early next week…better stock up on milk and bread…hee hee

So, this morning I woke up repeating what I’d repeated before going to sleep:  ‘draft a poem, draft a poem, draft a poem, etc.’  And then I realized that I’m in no mental state for it with the papers waiting to be graded that seem to hang over my head.  I know I have time to write a poem today, but we are so close to being done with the semester…grading is all there is left…that I can’t seem to focus on writing.  I can’t even blame the pull of the earth’s core today.  I woke up full of energy and ready to go.

So, two pop culture references came to mind:

The Soup Nazi from Seinfeld’s ‘No Soup for You!’ becomes ‘No Draft for You!’

And Kenny Roger’s chorus from ‘The Gambler’ becomes ‘There’ll be time enough for writin’, when the gradin’s done.’

Catch y’all on the flip side!