Monday, April 27, 2009

Spring fever

First off, run over and congratulate Diane K. Martin, who has some terrific and long-awaited great news!

I've been busy, and not blogging. Poetry stuff, music stuff, wishing there were more hours in every day stuff.

Got a grant application submitted which, if I get it, will send me to AWP next year. Fingers crossed. And if nothing else, putting the application together was a worthwhile experience -- a chance to step back and look at the trajectory of my work and what I've been doing with it. I hadn't updated my artistic resume in a while and it was nice to realize that I really did have some things to add to it. Speaking of which, I promised my manuscript I would send it out to two more places (maybe three) this month and then if it doesn't get picked as at least a finalist, we're talking major revision. Er, "this month" means I don't have a lot of time left, doesn't it? Guess I know what I'm doing tomorrow evening.

Getting so much happiness & energy from music lately. I've decided that in addition to the Bruce Springsteen show in Chicago next month, I'm also going to see him in St. Paul the night before. I will be in St. Paul for less than 24 hours, which seems a little crazy, but I felt my face bust into a giant grin when I got my ticket in today's mail, when I opened up the envelope and carefully extracted that precious little piece of paper. And that told me I made the right choice when I decided to go. If I could be even half as present with my work as Springsteen is with his, half as committed, I'd get a whole lot more work done. I almost think of him as one of my writing teachers. Weird, huh?






This past Friday night I went to Indianapolis to see some of my other musical heroes, the Indigo Girls. I hadn't seen them in a few years, and that's a few years too long. It was a general-admission, standing-room show in a room the size of a large high school gym, and I was incredibly fortunate & ended up standing front and center. I mean, I was so close that I was even able to get some (semi-surreptitious) halfway decent pictures with my cruddy little no-megapixel cellphone camera. I went by myself, but unexpectedly met up with someone I knew a bit from online, and had a great time hanging with her and the friends she'd come with. And, you know, I really need to remember how much music feeds my spirit. Especially when I go to a show where I'm standing, putting my arms in the air, singing along -- not hunched over in a seat protecting my heart. There's a communal experience that happens at some shows -- Springsteen, Indigos -- almost a tribal thing. There's nothing else like it, and it feeds me deeply.

Finally, I squoze out two lines of a villanelle the other day. If I actually finish it and make a proper villanelle, you can be assured that hell has frozen over, which probably means all the swine flu viruses will be frozen to death. In which case I had better get cracking.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hell is a very strange place what with global climate change. Would you believe that I actually started roughing out a villanelle today? Mind you, I had written a bunch of scratch lines last week with the intention of poking them into a villanelle, but the coincidence is still fairly intriguing.

Lisa Nanette Allender said...

Hi Anne, Love your blog. Will try to get better about posting comments. I totally am with ya on The Indigo Girls. They are amazing!

Unknown said...

Thanks for the shoutout!

Jessie Carty said...

Anne, it is always good to reassess where you are as a writer :) When I did that I ended up retiring my first manuscript for now until more of the individual poems are published then I'll revisit it.

But never stop the poets cause I'm revising a 2nd manuscript!

We can do it!

Kate Evans said...

YAY Indigos! We've seen them many times, and 3 of those times we were front and center. I have a major Amy-crush. I know, how stereotypical of me.

Emily A. Benton said...

I've always thought music feeds gaps in the writing life. Or at least that's what I keep telling myself :)