39º and clear skies, much sun
A quick Tuesday appearance to encourage you all to click over to Linebreak this week. George David Clark, of “Jellyfish” fame, has a new poem up today, “A Crossing,” read by yours truly.
Enjoy!
Still 27 balmy degrees
Here are three new books that are sitting on my desk. I’ve got an hour to read and draft before hitting the slopes of higher ed.
Prairie Fever
Mary Biddinger
Steel Toe Books, 2007
(Come on with a title like that, how could I NOT read this?)
Unde
rlife
January Gill O’Neil
CavanKerry Press, 2009
(Special thanks to the author for sending this book to me!)
Temper
Beth Bachmann
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009
(Special thanks to the PTC Ottenheimer Library for buying this book!)
Help support poets and poetry by either buying or borrowing a copy of one of these books today.
27º and direct sunlight
Today is the first day of class at PTC, so we’re back in business. Rumor has it we are seeing close to a 20% increase in registration from Spring 2009. (Classes are packed!) In the fall we had a 13% increase over Fall 2008. As larger universities downsize in a down economy…community colleges are where it’s at! Sure, my job is non-tenured, but with numbers like these, I’m feeling some security about my paycheck … knock wood. And it’s a full-time gig, which means benefits. I’m thankful for all of that!
Today, Poet Mom, January O’Neil has a post up about the business side of publishing. She poses two questions: one about taxes and one about estate planning. I’ve always wished for a book about the business side of being a writer of literary short stories and poetry. I know there is a lot of information for writers who freelance and/or publish in the mass markets, but most of that doesn’t apply to the smaller scale of short stories and poetry. Does anyone know if there is such a resource?
20º and 98% sunny (2% thin, hazy cloud-like substances)
A brief mention here and then a day date with my man.
Justin Evans has a post up about the attempt to balance teaching writing and actually writing, and in his case, he’s a high school teacher so the balance is all the more difficult to achieve. My favorite part of the post is his parting shot:
I suppose I could, in an attempt to find catharsis, throw away all restraint and become a variation of Kurtz in my classroom, inflicting true terror into the lives of my students.
Oh, wow, I had a sudden vision of the classroom as the journey to that “heart of darkness” with which we English majors are all so familiar and myself as Kurtz. Shiver. Shudder.
26º and pure sun
Submitted today: 2 groups of 5 poems each, each group submitted to 5 journals.
Here ends the list of goals to be achieved before the semester begins. Woo Hoo!
13º, windchill -4º, splotchy clouds
Arkansas is currently experiencing its coldest weather in 10+ years (like much of the rest of the South). Having abandoned my roots in the Midwest b/c of my thin-skinned inability to withstand the weather of winter, I’m not faring very well. To keep my mind off the numbing cold, I’ve found many links to share today. Here we go:
Born on January 2, 2010, Corium is an online, quarterly magazine, featuring short and very short fiction and poetry. New issues will run in March, June, September and December. That’s who we are now. But Corium is a living project that will develop and change over time. The skin is the largest organ in the body; we will test its limits of expansion. It will not contract. We are excited to exist and intend to publish amazing work. Maybe yours. Send us something.
Poet Mom, January O’Neil, shares a great story about her son’s perception of her/their fame, given her first book, Underlife, just came out. Also a great video of Naomi Shihab Nye.
Check out Dana Guthrie Martin’s 2010 poetry reading challenge. I love this and will dovetail it with my goodreads 2010 poetry reading challenge.
Perhaps the last word on best-of-2009 poetry lists. Coldfront has a year in review that features an exhaustive list of bests. Best categories: best cover, best opening/closing lines, and best first/last poem in a collection.
As for me, dear readers, I must confess that I did not get my submissions done last weekend, so I’m going to tackle those today to clear the desk for the onslaught of students who populate my classes next week. I also need to submit the manuscript for some new contest deadlines and to publishers who read mss. in January.
Wherever you are, there’s a good chance it’s colder than it should be, so stay warm by any means possible.
24º and still no sign of snowy clouds
My earlier prediction of getting some word work done came true! Woo hoo! My goal during my teaching months is to draft one new poem a week. In 16 weeks, I hope to have 10- 12 poems … knowing that some weeks things won’t work out or that the draft will ultimately fail, which is fine b/c I’m still showing up … still playing with the language.
Today I returned to something I posted about last fall: the word bank and the random number generator. I started by beginning to read Beth Bachmann’s Temper, which I’ll post about later, but then I really wanted to write. After casting about for a time, I knew I needed a springboard to launch myself back into the writing mode. I flipped back to the beginning of Bachmann’s book and randomly picked nouns, verbs, and adjectives that called to me, making lists of words in my journal. Then, I numbered the words (1 – 51 today) and used the random number generator at random.org to form pairs of words. Once I had about 10 pairs, I already saw several lines forming. Eventually, I drafted a 15-line poem in 3 stanzas of 5 lines each. This is a bit unusual for me, since I normally draft in couplets or tercets. Also a bit unusual is that this is a character poem about a woman I just made up in my head based on several lines the random number generator suggested. Cool. I have no idea if it will survive, but the draft is called “Having Been Entrusted with Safekeeping.”
21º and sunny for now, snow expected later today
That’s right folks, the powers that be are calling for an inch of snow overnight…what do you bet the powers that be in the school district do NOT cancel school for that… not after the embarrassment that was our Monday snow day.
I’m still struggling to shift gears from vacation-mode to school-mode and classes don’t start until next week. However, today, I do feel more into my poetry space than I’ve felt in a few weeks. So, I’m hoping I’ll get some word work done this morning before going into the office to work on my online World Lit class.
Here are three links that hit the spot this morning.
1. Kelli Russell Agodon’s blog features a post about things a writer should be doing BEFORE a book is accepted. I found this to be true when I was working with Anhinga on Blood Almanac, but it was great to be reminded as I’m sending book #2 out into the world. I still haven’t gotten the website started, but I know it will be a priority soon.
2. Saaed Jones over at for southern boys who consider poetry (one of my favorite blog titles!) has a post about his writer’s notebook that dovetails nicely with the great discussion you all provided on Monday’s post (thanks so much for joining me in conversation!).
3. Susan Rich, blogging at The Alchemist’s Kitchen, is doing a series of posts on ekphrastic poetry. She provides some great insights into the poet writing about other art forms.
One last thing…I’m open to any blog topics you all are curious about. Leave a post with a question or topic if there’s something I haven’t touched on (relating to poetry/writing, please) and I’ll be glad to put it in my blog topics file for later thought and posting.
Oh, and send snowy thoughts to the school administrators and maybe we’ll all get another vacation day tomorrow!!
24º and a fury of flurries
This morning 
my husband got his wish…a snow day. I’m a bit stunned by it, given the “dusting” of snow that is on the ground, but hey, this is the South in all its glory. My school is on a 2-hour delay, but we don’t start classes until next week, so this mostly concerns the hard-working staffers and administrators who are handling registration and all the policies that go into getting the semester started. [For those of you who are truly snowed in…my apologies from the South.]
I’m feeling a bit fragmented this morning and having a hard time thinking about poetry b/c I’m feeling the slight unease of needing to get three classes prepped this week. (Sure, I brought home all the materials, planning to work on this a few hours here and there over the break. The best laid plans and all that…)
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So, here’s something from December. Anne Haines blogs at Land Mammal, and a few weeks ago she wrote about paying attention to three things each day, a goal I can wrap my scattered mind around. Here are my three things from yesterday:
1. The rattle in the vent when the heater kicks in is not an unkind thing.
2. The warmth of the sun seeps through my wool socks as I prop my feet on the desk.
3. Sunday, I feel like a jellyfish, suspended in a day with no obligations, pushing myself this way and that without any hard steering.
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Also from December, Kristin asked about my thoughts on blogging and my paper journal. Way back in the day of junior high and high school, I kept a personal journal. Through college, this morphed into a writing journal alongside more personal angst entries. Throughout my 20’s and early 30’s I wrote both drafts of poems and personal entries…almost always expressing my fears and frustrations rather than my joys and celebrations. As my life became more settled (marriage, book, steady job, etc.) those entries have tapered off and I mostly use the paper journal for drafting and poetry work. I’m not sure I’ve ever really done the true journalling work of deep self-searching.
I know that blogging started as online journalling, but I guess I approached it somewhat differently. I always wanted an audience, and I knew from the beginning that the blog would be about poetry work and not personal details so much. I approach the blog less as a vehicle for self examination and more as a vehicle for conversation with the poetry world; however, I do want to be as honest as possible with my audience so I try not to shy away from getting at the reality of being a working poet (celebration of publications alongside the fact of rejection). I also want this space to be as much about the work of others as it is about my own work…thus the many links to other sites. So, I don’t think my paper journal has suffered due to blogging. I think it has followed the path of my life fairly consistently…when I’m content it is mostly poetry…when I’m distraught it is mostly a place to vent and question and search for comfort.
I’d love to hear what other people think about this topic: how you approach blogging, if you use a paper journal and if so, if it has changed with changing technology.
26º and cloud-layered
Tomorrow marks the return to work for both my husband and myself. This means I’ll be back to blogging on MWF with an occasional S or S thrown in for good measure. It’s been a blast being able to blog nearly every day, but I’m realistic enough to know that once the teaching commences, that will have to fall away.
Today, my plan is to finish the last of my goals for the break: to prepare my January submission packets. I’m a meticulous record keeper, so submitting (always done in batches) is a great way to check in on things.
Two things to leave you with before I crack open the Excel spreadsheet:
1. HTMLGIANT, a blog I’ve only recently started reading, by Sean Lovelace, has a great post which includes a checklist to identify writers. I’m especially fond of #3 and #9.
2. The inaugural issue of Bone Bouquet is available in PDF. Looks like a fabulous line up and I can’t wait to sit with it and absorb the words.