72º~ sunny days continue, headache inducing sun to tell the truth, a promise of more moderate temps for next week

Monday evening I had the double-whammy-pleasure of being reminded that sometimes I do make a difference in my students’ lives. 

First, here’s S. Mara Faulkner, one of my own former instructors who shaped my future and still means the world to me.

Mara Faulkner, OSB, instructor, mentor, friend

As for Monday night, I attended the dual launch party for the student literary magazines from PTC and UALR.  Many of the creative writing students that start at PTC (community college) go on to earn degrees at the University of Arkansas Little Rock.  They make me so proud.  In any case, at the launch party several of my former students read their work, work that was originally written in my creative writing class and that went on to be published in one of the journals.  A few of the students pointed out the fact that they began the poems while in my class.  The attention was slightly embarrassing, but it really did warm my heart to be reminded that there are people still interested in reading and writing poetry and that I can help guide them on their journeys.  (Yes, I really am that earnest.  I can’t help it.  I’m from the Midwest.)

When I got home from the launch party, I found another such moment waiting for me in my inbox.  Below is the text of the email (with permission from the writer, of course).  For clarity’s sake Governor’s School is a summer program for rising high school seniors.  Students live in dorms at a local college and experience college-level classes while meeting new peers from all over the state.

Hello Sandy,

PS I can’t put Blood Almanac down and remember you reading “Lover, Say Prairie” to us in class.

It may seem like I’m calling attention to myself by posting about these two experiences, but that is not my intention.  Both events just made me so darned happy that I feel like I must share the joy.  And for all of those fellow teachers / instructors out there…we really can make an impact on our students’ lives.  Every once in a while we get the gift of knowing that for sure.

Thanks to all of my students past and present for making my life the fuller for knowing you all.

74º ~ sun, tiny breezes stirring the mid-level branches, windows open for now, more heat to come,

Another fragmented morning and jumbling thoughts, many of them schoolwork related, many of them remnant emotions from tumultuous dreams.  As I sat at the desk, cleared of any papers save poems and journal, I had to keep reminding myself to be calm.  I took a lot of deep breaths when spastic thoughts intruded.  I fought the “monkey mind.”  After trying several starts at lines that didn’t go anywhere, I went to my Inspiration Card folder.  For more info on inspiration cards, go here and here and here. 

I was surprised by cards I’d forgotten I’d made.  This I think is a key.  To love the cards while I’m making them and then put them aside for some weeks/months until they become new again.  In fact, the first card I saw suggested lines almost immediately.  Here’s a rather poor quality picture of it, as a mirror image.  The words from the cut-ups say “backdrop for an archetypal” and “Bloodline.” 

As always, I started with my pen and journal and filled two pages there (not hard since my handwriting is fairly large and sloppy).  The lines eventually coalesced and I was off to the computer to draft the full-fledged poem.  For such a rough start, I’m surprised by the length of the poem and how cohesive it feels already.  Sometimes these cards offer only surface-level lines without a real emotional backing, which is something I need in poetry.  Today, however, I was able to draft “The Old Ancestral Homestead” (a title most likely to be revised) and bring in emotional depth based on my life without having the poem slip into autobiography.  Not that I’m opposed to autobiography in poems; I’m just working on some distance for myself these days.

Happily, I have a bit of that euphoric feeling when the drafting has gone well.  Go Poetry!

93 deg ~ from inside my brick cubby at school, no idea what the outside weather is looking like, but I imagine, full sun and a small breeze

Here’s what all the excitement is about.

80º ~ strong sun, playful breezes

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the gift of doing a manuscript exchange with Stephanie Kartalopoulos (click here to read).  Today, I’m writing about the result of that exchange.  Wow.  I feel like a minor earthquake has taken place, but with wonderful results.

First, let me say that Steph’s manuscript was so strong and well-ordered that it taught me much just by reading it so closely.  I felt like I might have let Steph down a bit comment-wise, but I’d say we should all expect to see the manuscript become a full-fledged book very shortly!

As for my own manuscript, a little backstory for any new readers.  This will be my third year sending this mss. out; however, I’m beginning to discount the entire first year.  I started way too early again, and have since jettisoned a good third of those poems.  What went around last year was much more finished, and as past readers will know, I fussed and stressed over the order quite a bit.  What Steph was able to point out to me was that the order was arranged by grouping poems with similar images together a little too strictly and this wasn’t letting the multiple themes of the book weave together in as interesting a way as possible.  (Steph has been a reader for a national poetry press and I’m so thankful to be a beneficiary of that experience!)

Through her amazing generosity, Steph offered a true re-seeing of the order of the book.  She didn’t order it for me, but re-arranged which poems might go in each of the three sections.  She tore apart poems that I felt were married to each other.  I confess, there was a bit of the sledgehammer-to-the-chest feeling at first, but my old workshop training kicked in and I just put my head down and noted her groupings. 

We also talked about the title, as it is a bit longish.  The first year, the mss. was Glacial Elegies.  Last year it became In a World Made of Such Weather as This.  I’m now toying with Such Weather as This.

That was yesterday.  This morning, I locked the poor kitties from the office and spread the new groups out on the futon. 

Sec 1 done; Sec 2 in prog

Sec 1 – 3 done

Because of Steph’s prompting, I was forced to see each poem in a new way and I saw the larger themes of the book come through more strongly, just as she’d seen that they might.  Wow!  Wonderful and welcome seismic shifts occurring. 

Of course, like all good revision, this one will need to sit and season for a bit.  I’ll keep you all posted, Dear Readers, and thank you kindly for your attention.

This post was composed nearly two weeks ago and got lost in the shuffle of life.

75º ~ yesterday’s stormy skies refused to rain, today’s offer the same tantalizing hope with little promise from the weather forecast

Today’s good news is thanks to and welcomed with my cousin, Marta Ferguson, whom I wrote about here.  Two weeks ago, Marta emailed to let me know that Spillway, a journal with which I was unfamiliar, was calling for submissions on the theme of family, and they were especially interested in reading poems written by family members.  The deadline was 8/31, so we did a quick exchange of poems to settle on our choices.  Then, Marta put the submission packet together and sent it off to editor, Susan Terris.  Last night we received the good news that we were in!

Click image for link to Spillway

I just need to remark on how cool it is to be appearing with Marta and how awesome she is for corralling the whole thing and urging me on.  I also need to thank her for introducing me to a journal and poet-editor I should already have known about, and one attached to a super cool organization.  Spillway is published by Tebot Bach, a community literacy advocate group in southern California. 

Since learning about all of this, I’ve read up on the organization and the journal and read several of Terris’ poems online.  I’m definitely looking forward to reading more of her work and learning more about Tebot Bach.

82º ~ good sun, small breeze, on the way back into the 90’s for the next few days

Today was the start of a new journal, pictured here for your enjoyment.

This morning was a bit more fragmented than I like for drafting days.  The order of my routine was jostled, which should be fine b/c I have nowhere to be at any given time; however, I felt disjointed when I did sit down to draft.  I tried reading a few poems to get me going…no luck.  I tried copying out good words from said poems and using the random number generator (explained here and here) to start knocking words together in hope of a spark…no luck, although one word group gave me a slight tingle: bone and hook. 

Growing up in a fishing family, I’d been around several accidents involving a hook lodging in someone’s hand, but the idea of the hook sinking into the bone kept swimming around in my head.  I wrote out “the hook in the bone,” and then I remembered a line from last Friday that I didn’t use: “there are ghosts in these fingers,” and I started imagining the skeleton of a drowned girl at the bottom of the lake I used to visit with my family.  All of a sudden, the lines were tumbling into the journal…very mismatched and scattered, but I felt like there was something there.  I fiddled and fiddled with it and got it onto the computer.  Eventually, I realized that I was drafting two separate poems or at least two parts of a poem.  Thus I split the pair, in blackjack parlance, as I eventually removed one section from the draft and opened a new document to work on it separately.  So now, what I have to show for today’s drafting are two poems “Midwestern Fairy Tale for Drowned Girls, Part 1” and “MFTforDG, Part 2.”  I’m not sure if they should remain separate poems with the titles connecting them or if I should merge them back to the same document and use section headers within the poem itself.  That feels like a question that needs to wait a while, as the poems gain a little age in the folder.

I did find myself killing trees again.  These poems are more narrative than last week’s lyric poem and I found myself fussing over small choices and needing to reprint every change so I could read through the entire draft again.  I’m interested in seeing if this pattern holds true in the future.