Happy things

Thing One: Discovering Genre: Poetry, the classroom anthology that includes work by several of your friendly neighborhood bloggers, won an award from the Association of Educational Publishers (and here's the official awards list). Cool!

Thing Two: Ed Byrne, editor of the nifty Valparaiso Poetry Review, nominated my poem "Swallowed" for the Best of the Net anthology. Again, cool! Watch his blog this weekend to see which other poems he's nominated.

Thing Three: Whoops, I'm still sitting on Thing Three! (Kind of like the princess and the pea. Only, you know, not.) I want to wait until a few more t's are dotted and i's are crossed, which might be a few weeks actually, but then I'll have a small announcement. I know, I hate it when people do this too. La la la. :)

It's August tomorrow. I can't believe it. Where the hell did my July go? Come back, July! I wasn't through with you!

Belfry

Yesterday in Province- town, they finally hoisted the old belfry back up onto the top of the public library. They were actually originally supposed to do this the week that I was there, and I'm sorry I wasn't able to see it in person! The building dates to 1860, and used to be an Episcopal church; it's a gorgeous, classic New England church building, and the restoration is really lovely. There's even a 62-foot half-scale model of a Grand Banks fishing schooner, the Rose Dorothea, inside! I've spent a number of hours sitting in that library, browsing and writing. (It does get hot and steamy in there on warm days, though.)

I look forward to seeing the "new and improved" P-town skyline, complete with restored belfry, the next time I visit.

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Rain, rain, go away . . .

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Meditating, lately, on gratitude. I have come to the conclusion that what I experience as "living in a condition of gratitude" is what some other people may experience as "prayer." Whatever it is, it seems to be relatively good for my writing, or at least seems to create a space within which I am likely to get some writing done. Lately I am more interested in just getting writing done than in worrying about whether it's any good or not, which is probably why I have been terrible about getting anything sent out for the past few months. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I should probably get back on the submission track sometime soon, I suppose.

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The back-to-school sales have begun, already. Holy cow....

Bonus poem

A very rough draft from yesterday. After a week of listening to Carl Phillips talk, I think his penchant for making really long sentences rubbed off a bit. *grin* I'll take this down within 24 hours or so.


[and, it's gone.]

Me and some poems

1. Me

Bloom: Celebrating Life in Bloomington has uploaded parts of the April/May issue to their website, including the article about the Bloomington poetry scene. To read profiles of & poems by a bunch of Hoosier poets (Cathy Bowman, Roger Mitchell, Jenny Kander, Patricia Coleman, Tony Brewer, and yours truly), go to the Bloom Magazine archive and click on "The Beat Goes On: Bloomington's Poetry Scene." The article is in pdf format.

2. Some poems

I thought it might be interesting to offer a list of the poems we talked about in Carl Phillips' workshop the other week (other than the student workshop poems). We talked about various aspects of these poems, primarily focusing on how they create and disrupt patterns (language, syntax, placement on the page, etc.) and how we can use what we see in these poems to help us revise our own work. Some of them were already familiar to me, but a number of them were new, and I feel like I learned quite a lot about how to read poems as well as about writing/revising the things myself. Anyway, these are not necessarily in the order in which we discussed them, though we did start off the week by looking at the Jarrell & returned to it frequently in the course of our discussions.

Randall Jarrell, "90 North"
Martha Collins, "hang" and "burn" (from Blue Front)
Robert Creeley, "The Souvenir" and "Kore"
Carol Frost, "To Kill a Deer"
Robert Frost, "After Apple-Picking"
Marilyn Hacker, "Pornographic Poem"
Robert Hass, "At Stinson Beach"
Langston Hughes, "Island"
Laura Jensen, "The Red Dog" and "The Crow Is Mischief"
Brigit Pegeen Kelly, "The Dragon"
Peter Klappert, "No Turtles"
Yusef Komunyakaa, "Venus's-Flytraps"
Sharon Olds, "I Go Back to May 1937"
Muriel Rukeyser, "Looking At Each Other"
Sandro Penna, "The Stars Don't Move" (trans. W.S. DiPiero)
Louise Glück, "Mock Orange"
Ellen Bryant Voigt, "Largesse" and "Song and Story"

I was reminded all week that reading poems with other poets & talking about what we can learn from them, as poets, is something I really miss in my life right now -- and is probably my biggest motivation towards getting an MFA. I will always write on my own, and summer workshops are great for getting my workshopping fix; but studying the work of other poets, contemporary & otherwise, just feels so important to me right now -- and having some guidance with that would be absolutely lovely. I really liked how Phillips guided us through these poems & what he chose to emphasize about them -- it felt like a very useful & fruitful approach. Definitely something I could stand a little more of.

Looking out...

library window
Originally uploaded by land mammal

...from inside the Provincetown Public Library, towards the east end of town (towards Truro). You can see a bit of the bay, past the crowded buildings, and the curve of the Cape.

Good news in the blogosphere

Congratulations to Carol Peters, whose chapbook Muddy Prints, Water Shine will be coming out in the New Women's Voices Series from Finishing Line Press. I first met Carol in D.A. Powell's revision workshop in 2005, and renewed the acquaintance last summer when we were both in Provincetown the same week though for different workshops. She is a terrific poet with a good eye for detail & landscape, and I'm betting her chapbook will be worth reading.

Back to the world of 8 to 5

Going back to work after a week of vacation-slash-workshop can feel a bit like slamming one's head into a brick wall. I'm very fortunate in that I have a job I actually like, which helps. It also helps that I have a ten-day retreat to look forward to in the fall. One of this weekend's tasks will be putting together the application for that. (I'm applying to one place; if that doesn’t work out, I have another in mind. But I have a good feeling about the first place.)

I am starting to think about what books I'll want to bring with me -- some to inspire me, some to study how they're put together, some just for pleasure. We talked a bit in my workshop last week about putting together manuscripts, which was pretty interesting. Sounds like there are about as many ways of thinking about manuscript structure as there are poets, and maybe more than that. I have a lot of weather in my poems, so I'm toying with the idea of trying to create some kind of a seasonal structure -- but what I want to do is try about three or four different things (including straight chronological order and straight alphabetical order, just for grins) and read through the poems and see what sort of connections I can discover. I drafted a new poem in 4 sections (well, newish -- at least the first section is material I've worked with before) in Provincetown which is, I think, helping me understand some of my larger project and how the connections among poems might work. Maybe.

Which poetry collections (single collections, not selected/collected) do you especially admire in terms of structure?

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I usually try to respond to blog comments, but I've not been good about it for the past week or so. Sorry about that. I was a little preoccupied with Provincetown. :) I would try to catch up, but y'all aren't going to go back and look at this point, right? I appreciate the comments though. It was nice to be having a wonderful time & be able to share a little of that with others. It was too good a week to keep it all for myself.

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Gorgeous, gorgeous slender crescent moon in a French blue sky out there, a flock of swifts spiraling around over the houses, crossing past the moon. Fireflies beginning to rise. Who says the Midwest isn't lovely?

It's no fluke...

8. Diving
Originally uploaded by land mammal

Okay, I'll refrain from further whale puns. Sorry. ;)

Left Provincetown today, leaving behind absolutely perfect weather. I'll be on my way home tomorrow. This morning I went out on a whale watching cruise, something I do at least once every time I visit P-town. Something about getting out on the water and seeing these magnificent creatures is just thoroughly addictive. It was a lovely way to end a productive, enjoyable, and even (gasp) relaxing week.

Last day

Fine Arts Work Center
Originally uploaded by land mammal

It's an absolutely gorgeous morning -- warm, with abundant sun, well-fed birds hopping about in the mulberry tree outside my bedroom window. I sat outside in the sun, in a chair in the gravel courtyard, until I couldn't stand it anymore.

I picked up Robin Becker's newest book, Domain of Perfect Affection, here -- I really love her work -- and was reading it. Realized, a couple of poems in, that this week has made me a better reader of poetry. Which is something that I wasn't necessarily expecting to get from this workshop, but am VERY pleased to have found here; I think reading poetry and writing the stuff go so hand-in-hand as to be impossible to separate in any meaningful way. (It's that way for me, anyway.)

So I am going home with that, and with a few new drafts, and with some excellent exercises/prompts I want to work with, and with a certain sense of fullness that comes from living this way for a week -- as if poetry were central to everything.

Which it is.

Always.


[Above: The Fine Arts Work Center campus. My little apartment is at the top of the set of stairs you see here, and the studios where the writing classes meet are along that balcony. It's an unpretentious building, for sure, but magic happens here.]

C'mon in ... the water's fine

happy dog on foggy harbor beach
Originally uploaded by land mammal

Since I plan to give out my blog URL tomorrow in class when we all share email addresses, I want to take a moment to issue an official welcome to any of my classmates from this week who may stop by this blog. Welcome! (Did that sound official enough? Did it have authority?)

I want to encourage you to look over to the right-hand column of this blog and investigate the links you'll see there (the ones listed under where it says "I read too many blogs" -- which I do). There are a lot of really cool blogs there, almost all written by poets, many of whom are very fine poets. It's one kind of cool way to learn about how poets live, what they think about, how they negotiate the day to day. Which is to say, pretty much like non-poets, except that we use weird-ass words like "enjambment" and mean something by them.

It has been a good week here in Provincetown. Tonight is the potluck barbeque, open studio time for the visual artists, and student reading. After that, our class plans on going out somewhere for drinks or what-not. (Not THAT kind of what-not, ya pervs.) I always love the student reading; both years I've been here there have been at least a couple of pieces that have really grabbed my attention. And it is a fun audience to read for.

It's hard to believe the week is almost over, though. It is always hard to leave. I've met some really cool people and had some great conversations. I don't want to dive prematurely into the whole "wah wah wah it's over" thing, but things do start winding down soon... sigh.

Today, though, is an absolutely beautiful day. There is abundant sunshine and a cool breeze, and I have poems in my head. Life is good, y'all. Life is good.

[Above: A really cool dog I met walking along the harbor in the fog; click photo to enlarge.]

This place...

foggy harbor beach 2
Originally uploaded by land mammal

This place is under my skin for good, I think. I woke to fog this morning, walked down by the harbor for a while, stopped at the Portuguese Bakery for a croissant filled with linguiça and cheese. Then four hours of class, talking about poems, being in a room where nobody thinks it's weird if you spend five whole minutes talking about whether to put a comma at the end of a line or just rely on the line break to dictate a pause. Then walking down Commercial Street for a while, running into a fellow poet, sitting at a picnic table near the harbor talking about the old "to MFA or not to MFA" conundrum. Going out to dinner with two other poets, talking about teachers we've known, books we've read; stopping at the new dessert café on the way back. Going to a reading and a slide talk, stopping by the computer lab to print out a few poems, stopping by the bulletin board to put my two-sentence bio for tomorrow's reading in the envelope labeled for same.

A couple of you have said things like "hey, next year I might apply." I want to disabuse y'all of the notion that one must apply here. They have in the past had individual advanced workshops for which one had to submit an application (though I don't think that was the case for any this year), but for the most part, you just register and plunk down your deposit. Even so, the caliber of students here is astonishingly high. This is my third workshop and pretty much everyone in all three workshops has been a serious, committed poet, not a weekend dabbler looking for ego strokes. Judging from the folks I've met and what I've heard at the student reading every year, the same is true for most of the workshops here. We've got people with MFAs in our workshop, even one who's already had a book accepted by a good press. Somehow this place manages to be at once noncompetitive and yet selective.

So if you're the sort of person who likes summer workshops, or might consider liking them, I highly encourage you to consider FAWC for next year. (Heck, there are probably spaces open in some of the workshops remaining this summer.) And if you're the sort of person who teaches in summer workshops, or might consider teaching in them, I don't know how one goes about getting oneself invited to teach here, but if you're interested I would encourage you to inquire.

It isn't perfect here. It's expensive to come here, and the mosquitoes are large and hungry. And fabulous as the FAWC staff is, they have yet to figure out how to give us more than twenty-four hours in a day.

Other than that, it's pretty damn grand.


Also also: from Free Will Astrology for the week of July 12:

The German word selig can mean both "ecstatic" or "blessed." It implies that profound bliss can be a divine gift; that deep pleasure may generate or come from spiritual inspiration. The English language doesn't have a term comparable to selig, maybe because our culture regards ecstasy with suspicion. Religious people tend to believe that the blessed are those who are good and kind, certainly not those who are skilled at cultivating ecstatic states. People who worship rationality, on the other hand, like intellectuals and scientists, often think of ecstasy as at best an irrelevant state, and at worst a non-productive or deluded indulgence. Personally, I'm in alignment with the values embodied by the word selig. It happens to be your specialty this week.

[Above: Provincetown harbor beach in fog. Click the image to enlarge.]

How it's going

It's going very well, thank you.

Oh, you wanted more details than that. Well, okay. :) So every day we have class from 10 to 12 and 12:30 to 2:30 (it was originally scheduled for 10 to 2, but Carl felt that was a heck of a long stretch to have class without a lunch break, so we have a half-hour for lunch). It seems to work pretty well. We start out by discussing some specific poetic issues, starting with one or more poems from the packet we got on the first night; we've talked about poems by Jarrell, Creeley, Laura Jensen, Marilyn Hacker, Martha Collins, Langston Hughes, & Brigit Kelly; for tomorrow we're reading Komunyakaa and Frost. Somewhere in there Carl gives us a writing/revision prompt or exercise, which is optional. (I actually haven't done any of them yet, but I want to do all of them & do plan to try them!) Then we have a short break, and come back & workshop 3 poems. After our lunch break we workshop 2 more poems, take a short break, and come back for a looser discussion of "the writing life" issues -- more general issues & questions we may have. Today, for example, we talked about putting manuscripts together. (You guys, I am really nervous about trying to do this! I know that's silly.)

Then we have free time in the afternoon for writing, reading, napping, exploring the town, going to the beach, whatever; and at 8 there is generally a reading and an artist slide talk. Last night was Carl's reading, which was a bit too short (better to leave us wanting more, I suppose!), and a slide talk by painter Andrew Mockler, which was quite interesting. I don't know much about art, so it is always interesting to hear visual artists talk about their process. There are always, it seems, useful parallels to be drawn with the writing process.

Last night a small group of us ended up at the Squealing Pig for drinks and conversation. What I love about being here is that we can talk about the silliest, dumbest stuff, and then all of a sudden the conversation shifts back over to poetry for a while. It's like poetry is a part of regular life and not some special thing you have to set aside for an appropriate time, you know? What a concept.

Today I visited (ahem) a couple of bookstores, including the used bookstore. I don't know why I feel it is my personal mission to support independent bookstores wherever I go. One of these days the floor of my house is going to collapse under the weight of all those books. I did buy Annie Dillard's new novel, which is set in Provincetown, and I also found (used) a complete volume of Cavafy, who people keep quoting at me so maybe it's time to actually read him.

Plus, it was nice just walking down Commercial Street. Here at the Work Center you can feel a little bit set apart from the bustle of the town, which is lovely sometimes and peaceful, but it's also nice to get your feet wet in the flow of the crowd, as it were. It is Bear Week in Provincetown; I'd never been here during Bear Week before. I guess there are a few more bears here than usual, but I'm not sure I would have noticed if someone hadn't mentioned it, honestly.

Tonight Gail Mazur reads, and a slide talk by Marian Roth, who does pinhole photography. Should be fascinating.

[Photo above: Race Point Beach]

Postcard from Provincetown

apartment 7
Originally uploaded by land mammal

The front door of my little apartment here at FAWC. Welcome. This is where it all happens...

Postcard from the Province Lands

1. Province Lands
Originally uploaded by land mammal

Taken from the observation deck at the Cape Cod National Seashore's Province Lands Visitor Center. Here you're about three stories up, looking out over scrubby trees over the endless dunes with Race Point and the Atlantic Ocean at the horizon. This scenery goes on and on and on all around you and photographs don't nearly do it justice.

(Click on the photo to enlarge it.)

Just checking in from Provincetown

Everything is going wonderfully so far! No glitches with the air travel; found a lovely little bookstore not far from where I spent the night in North Dartmouth, MA (why do I feel a personal responsibility to support every independent bookstore I can find??? no wonder my house is drowning in books); got to Provincetown in the late morning and spent about three hours on Race Point Beach, during which time I felt every little bit of tension in my body completely dissolve and wash away (and I also wrote a quick little poem); checked into my little apartment at FAWC and bought groceries and got settled in before a sudden downpour; had our orientation & our first quick little "get the logistics of this in order" class meeting; went to a good reading tonight by Tony Hoagland and Jason Shinder; came back to my room and drafted another new poem -- a funny one (at least I think it's funny!), which is unusual for me but how could you not want to write a funny poem after hearing Tony Hoagland?

It was hot and humid and relentlessly sunny all day, so the downpour and the clean cool air that followed was like a blessing.

My little apartment is on the second floor, and one of the bedroom windows looks out directly into the branches of a mulberry tree, absolutely laden with ripe and unripe berries. Which means that, in the morning, I bet there will be a whole bunch of hungry birds chomping and chirping about two feet from my head. This makes me almost giddy with happiness, the thought of awakening that way.

I think Carl Phillips is going to be a very good teacher. It's going to be a wonderful week.

This place is magic, I swear it.

And I still can barely believe how fortunate I am to have received this scholarship and this grant, that I can be here without having to worry that I'm spending money on something frivolous like poetry (which we all know isn't frivolous at all, but...) instead of repairing the house or whatever. Because coming here the past two summers has stretched me financially -- it's been worth every penny, but it was difficult -- and to be able to take in the blessings of this place without that difficulty is just ... such a gift. And to have it affirmed by multiple (!) outside sources that yes, this is what I should be doing and yes, this is where I need to be right now and yes, the work I may be able to do here is worth a certain investment ... I can't begin to put into words just how full that makes my heart feel.

So I'll try to keep the "OMG I am so lucky girl" chatter down from here on out, but I had to say it tonight. Because I am feeling very, very lucky and very, very blessed. And I think putting a little gratitude out into the world is probably a good thing all around.

The Project

Good news from the Indiana Arts Commission: they've approved my project modification. This basically means that the funds that would have gone, in the original proposal, towards my workshop tuition -- now covered by the Ali scholarship (thank you, thank you, FAWC!) -- will now be used in other ways.

I feel like I've been walking around in this state of wide-open gratitude for the past couple of weeks, since finding out about the grant. Really, I've been feeling pretty darned grateful ever since May when I found out about the scholarship. It is amazing to me, and kind of scary too, that people who don't even know me can take a look at some of my work and believe in me enough to make this kind of an investment. It makes me want to work really hard, to put myself on the line a little bit more than I otherwise might. I guess that's the whole point of it. Ultimately, I have to write because of what comes from inside me: I have to motivate my own self, not depend on encouragement from others. Writing is ultimately a pretty solitary act. But damned if the occasional encouragement doesn't give me a good and helpful kick in the pants. :)

So here's a quick rundown of the project I proposed and for which I'm getting the grant. The main thrust of it is to get my #$%*! book manuscript banged together, finally. To that end, the grant is covering travel & housing expenses for my workshop next week, which is a revision workshop -- the review panel really liked that I'd specifically chosen to focus on revision at this stage of the game, and my hope is that I will try to think about how revision might feel different as I begin to work with a bunch of poems as a body of work, how the poems might inform one another as I work to revise them.

Then I will be packing my bags again in October and heading off for a ten-day writing retreat. (I haven't applied yet, but I have someplace in mind; gotta get that application in now!) I want to take stacks of poems, and scatter them around the room and put them in piles and spend the time constructing that manuscript. Of course I'll revise poems as needed, and maybe write new ones as I find places where I need new ones in the manuscript. I also plan to take a big stack of books and get a bunch of reading done, and I'd be very surprised if I don't also draft a lot of new poems just by virtue of having that sacred time and space set aside & surrounding myself with words. But the main goal will be to come away from the retreat with a workable draft of a book-length manuscript.

Then I've also got a little chunk of money in the budget for contest and submission fees. Optimistic, huh? :) I should be able to send it out to about ten places. I'm not thinking about that part too much yet.

Finally, in March or April of next year, I'm going to do a big bang-up gala reading. I plan to invite a couple of other local poets to read with me. I'm nervous about it, because I've never "headlined" a reading before -- usually I just read with my poetry group or as one of a lineup in someone else's event -- I wonder whether anyone will actually come? I guess we'll find out.

One of the requirements for the grant is that there should be some "public benefit" derived from my project. This is sort of interesting, because the ultimate outcome would be to get the book published and maybe that benefits somebody besides me (sort of), but if that happens it won't happen during my grant year. I'll get it submitted during the grant year, but I doubt I'll hear back from most of the places before the funding cycle ends. The spring reading is part of my "public benefit" component. The other part: blogging! I plan to blog about the whole process -- managing the grant, going to the workshop, wrestling with the manuscript, sending it out. My hope is that other poets will be able to learn something from my experience, even if it turns out to be "how not to do it." *grin*

It was interesting putting together the grant application. I went to a workshop for potential grant applicants, at which a couple of Indiana Arts Commission staff members explained the process and answered questions; that was so helpful and if you're thinking about applying for a grant and have the opportunity to attend something of that nature, it's well worth it. Besides the "public benefit" part, one aspect of the proposal that they stressed was that it should represent taking the next step in your artistic career. That meant I had to spend some time thinking about what that might mean for me. Even if I hadn't been awarded the grant, that process would have been so helpful to me: asking myself what I was ready for, what could I do to really push myself, what seemed equally feasible and terrifying? Because I'd thought about just asking for a really nice laptop, and I could certainly use a new laptop to replace my on-its-last-legs one, but would that make me a better poet? Nah.

So that's the basic road map for this grant-funded year. It all feels like a very big step to me, but (and I hope this doesn't sound too ego-y) it also feels like a logical step. It's about time I got cracking. I'm forty-six years old; if I want to have a book published before I'm fifty, I don't have a lot of time to waste.

It's pretty funny being this open about the whole process, saying out loud "yes, I am working on a book manuscript and I'm going to try to get it published." I hope I'm not jinxing it. This is all going to be an interesting experiment....

Tell me about your teachers

As I prepare to head out to another summer workshop, I am thinking a lot about what I want the week to be: what I want to learn, what I'm willing to put forth, what I have to bring. I've heard from multiple sources that Carl Phillips is a very good teacher, so I think I've got a great week to look forward to.

Anticipation, as it so often does, makes me look back as well. I'm thinking about some of the writing teachers I've had over the years. Since I haven't (yet!) done an MFA, these pretty much fall into two groups: those who taught me when I was an undergrad English major, and those who've taught me in summer (mostly one-week) workshops.

I'll be the first to admit that I had some pretty terrific teachers as an undergrad, and that I did a pretty piss-poor job of taking advantage of their gifts. I was probably not too different from a lot of other twenty(ish)-year-olds in that one of my biggest goals, in each poetry workshop, was to prove that I was talented. Maybe part of that was the phenomenon of being graded, and being the Good Student who wanted to maintain her high GPA. But that attitude got in my way so big time -- I was reluctant to take risks that might not work out, to go out past my comfort zone, to fail productively. Plain and simple, I didn't want to look bad. I would have learned so much more if I'd been willing to risk looking like a fool sometimes.

I've had some pretty terrific teachers since then, in summer workshops, too. Most have been at least good; some have been amazing. I love the intensity of a short one-week workshop. I love the challenge of going into a room full of strangers, and having to almost immediately drop a lot of defenses, take risks, put myself out there, make myself vulnerable. At its best, it is exhilarating. At its best it changes me, often in ways I don't begin to understand for weeks or months after the fact.

That necessity of walking in and almost immediately making yourself vulnerable, instead of having a few weeks or class sessions to ease into it and get to know your fellow poets as you do in a longer workshop, means that it's absolutely essential for the teacher to create an atmosphere in which it is safe enough to do that. This means in part: discouraging snark, discouraging show-offiness, encouraging risk-taking, demanding & offering honesty, demanding & offering respect. It also means, sometimes (and here's where some people will probably beg to differ), making an effort to find anything to praise -- and sometimes, acknowledging a student's failure. Both can be difficult to hear. Both can be difficult to trust. (And trust is so key here.)

The best teachers I have had, and I'm thinking of two in particular, have managed to say to me in so many words that I had talent, that I was doing very good work -- and to say it in such a way that it terrified me, made me feel like throwing up. Because what I got from the praise was that I was holding something alive and powerful in my hands, and that I had a responsibility to do something about it. They told me that I had a lot of hard work ahead of me, and knowing how hard that kind of hard work is, the prospect was (and is) daunting.

And that's my favorite praise of all time, the kind that makes me feel like throwing up. The words from those two teachers are the ones that I hold on to and come back to when it does get difficult, the tapes I replay when it's dark inside my head. Because I trust that that praise is real. It's not just blowing sunshine up my ass. As a summer-workshop student, I'm wary of praise; it would be easy, I think, for a teacher just to sit there and tell their students how wonderful they are -- knowing that after the week is over they may never see those students again, and knowing that, frankly, that's what some students want to hear.

People will pay good money to go to summer workshop after summer workshop and be told that they are amazing. I don't want that. I want to be pushed towards places that scare me. If at some point during the week I feel like crying or I feel like throwing up, that's probably a good thing. I want to be asked to work harder than I would ask myself to work. And I want to be given an environment, a temporary community, in which I feel safe enough to do that, in which I know my effort will be respected and taken seriously. If I can have that and also some good hard laughter and some silliness now and then, even better.

Yeah, I don't ask much, do I?

Bear with me here for a moment while it gets weird in here: It's kind of like sex. You put yourself in this position of vulnerability, where you could very easily get hurt -- and sometimes a little bit of pain even makes it better. The power of the experience comes directly from that vulnerability and openness. Also: attentiveness to what the other person(s) may be experiencing is important, the cues (verbal and nonverbal) they give you. And faking it doesn't do anybody any favors.

So that drifted away a bit from thinking about teachers to thinking more generally about the workshop experience, but of course it is usually the teacher who has the most responsibility for setting the tone of the workshop experience. And even though you may get valuable feedback from your fellow students, it's usually the teacher you want most to hear from, their words you're paying for.

I think, too, of my sensei, back when I was a serious martial arts student. There were days when she pushed me so hard and so far past my comfort zone that I hated her, and that was an important part of my growth. I think that happens more in a long-term teacher-student relationship, and there isn't necessarily enough time to reach that point in a one-week workshop -- but I can think of at least one teacher about whom I have thought, if I worked with you for long enough I'm sure I'd hate you at some point, and then thank you for it later. (And I find myself wishing that I could have that opportunity. I am so weird sometimes.)

And so, a request. Tell me about your teachers. (Name names, or don't, whatever you are comfortable with.) Do you respond best to a Paula Abdul, relentlessly pointing out the positive, cheering you on, believing in you even when you suck? Or does a Simon Cowell help you more, not mincing words or putting up with any of your crap, dishing out the tough stuff you end up thanking him for later? Or are the best teachers maybe a little of both? Does some praise help and some praise hinder? Are there aspects of the teacher-student relationship that interest you, that I haven't touched on here? I am fascinated by this dynamic, if you hadn't already guessed.

Full

Last night the moon kept me awake most of the night. I didn't even realize that was what it was until I peeked out the window at like 4:00 and oh hello.

* * * * *

I'm working with some new material -- or, to be more precise, material I've been working with for about a year now, but didn't really recognize it until now. One thing that happens as I get better at this writing thing (or at least as I continue to stick with it) is that I am more and more able to be aware of my process, of what spurs me on and where to push myself harder and what my options are in various directions, without letting that awareness get in the way of ... whatever it is that happens. The trick is to stay out of your own way, but it's easier to get out of something's way if you can see it coming.

The balance of naming and mystery. Embracing both.

* * * * *

Sometimes a kind word or two is all it takes to kick ass into a slightly higher gear. And don't think it's not appreciated; it means the world. Even if it scares me (which it does).

* * * * *

The word embodied. The funhouse mirror.

I am so eager for what waits for me. Like that full moon, it's out there shining.

The future, the past

The future:

Upcoming, probably in my next post: I'll outline the project which my Individual Artist Grant will be funding, and why I'm going to be one darned busy poet for the next twelve months.

Upcoming, in a little over a week: Hey, cool! Tony Hoagland and Jason Shinder are reading at FAWC on the Sunday I arrive there. I'm not intimately familiar with the work of either poet, but I've read a bit here and there, so I'll look forward to this. Carl Phillips and Gail Mazur are reading that week too (of course, since they are teaching). And the Saturday I leave, there is a reading by Keith Althaus, Sara London, and Paul Lisicky (whose work I like a great deal). Dang! I've got motel reservations in Providence that night, and seriously doubt I could find a place to stay in P-town for just that one night -- so sticking around for that reading would mean making the drive to Providence quite late at night. Hm. We'll just play it by ear. Maybe I'll find a couch to crash on.

The past:

Here's a really old poem, just for kicks and giggles.
Harvesting

The summer wears on
becomes overripe and malodorous.
You try not to move too much
but always something calls you,
the phone, a kid selling candy,
the water for your dinner boiling over.
Every action feels like an uprooting,
limp pale tendrils pulled through dust
and clods of dry earth.
You want it to rain.

But what you planted grows relentlessly
despite the weather,
tomatoes swell and split and fall,
zinnias grow too tall for bouquets.
In back, early windfall apples
hit the ground at odd moments,
plock, and you gather them in paper bags
but it's too hot to can or bake pies.
Every night you check
the asparagus, cut the stalks
when they're still tender,
finger high. What you miss
keeps growing, ferny and defiant.
No matter how much you harvest
some escapes you, falls free,
goes to seed.

-A.H. (1987)
Published in Calapooya Collage #12, 1988

Eight

PWADJ tagged me, so I'm supposed to reveal eight things about myself. I'm not a particularly mysterious person, so this probably won't be too exciting....

1. I always wear comfortable shoes, thus neatly fulfilling a couple of stereotypes at once.
   
2. I didn't get a driver's license until I was 29 years old.
   
3. I'm only 5 foot 1 (and a half). I know, I blog like I'm much taller.
   
4. I used to be a very serious karate student when I was in my early twenties. I trained for some seven years or so, and got as far as second-degree brown belt. I never quite got it together to go for my black belt (I was getting kind of burned out), and then my sensei left town.
   
5. The first poem I remember writing was a long rhyming thing about the Apollo space program that I wrote when I was about nine years old. The only lines I remember for sure: "Apollo 11 / Went straight up to heaven." Oh, the humanity!
   
6. I don't have a significant other or a religion. I think poetry is both of those. I'm not altogether certain that's healthy, but there you have it. I kind of like it this way, actually.
   
7. My first celebrity crush, when I was like six years old, was on Catwoman (from the campy original Batman series with the NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA BATMAN! theme song). Mrrrrowwwrrrr!
   
8. I can't watch TV shows about lost or injured or abused animals, even if they get rescued and are OK in the end (like all those Katrina animal-rescue stories). I think about the poor scared animals and I just can't stand it. I know, I'm way too much of a softie.
   

Okay, that's eight. I kind of hate these things, so if you want to be tagged, consider yourself tagged!

Newsy linky bits

Annie Dillard has a new novel and it's set in Provincetown! I think I'll buy it when I'm there.

* * * * *

If you are a DIY publisher, micropress, or anything like that, check out The Word Vine!

What a totally cool idea. I hope it takes off big time.

* * * * *

I love this poem by Beth Ann Fennelly in Blackbird: "The Kudzu Chronicles." I had a cat named Kudzu once, because when he was a kitten he grew like crazy and took over everything. He wasn't a noxious weed, though.

* * * * *

Two weeks from today, I'll be in the midst of my workshop with Carl Phillips. I hope it's good. I bet it will be.

Speaking of Provincetown, the Fine Arts Work Center has named a new Executive Director. She is an attorney and a gardener. I hope it proves to be a good fit for everyone.

* * * * *

Gemini Horoscope for week of June 21, 2007

We're almost halfway through 2007. It's time to take inventory of how well you're capitalizing on this year's unique opportunities. So let me ask you, Gemini: Are you working hard to heal the indecisiveness that has dissipated your energy in the past? I hope so. You've never had a better chance to unify your divided mind than you have now; you will continue to be the beneficiary of unprecedented help from cosmic forces whenever you make concentrated efforts to coordinate your diverse desires. I urge you to invoke all your ingenuity as you seek out the magic that will make you a virtuoso of variety.



"Cosmic forces," eh? Cool! *grin*

drafty in here

I haven't been writing much for the past month or so -- so I am glad for what comes, even if it's not much (as this one isn't).

It won't stay up for long...


[snippity-snip]

I will not take these things for granted

Today I received the happy confirmation that, out of a record pool of 226 applicants, the Indiana Arts Commission has selected me as one of the 2007-2008 recipients of a $2000 Individual Artist Grant.

I think they were going to be awarding about 40 grants -- I haven't yet seen the list of recipients. I'm dying to find out which of the other literature proposals got funded!

There will be more details about my project to follow, because -- dig this -- blogging about the whole process was a part of my proposal. Hee! I will tag grant-related posts with the tag "2008_IAP_Grant" so they can be followed here. For now, suffice it to say that I am going to be one busy poet for the next twelve months or so -- and of course there is plenty of paperwork.

I also need to insert a small caveat -- in the "everyone should have such problems!" department, I am going to have to revise my proposal because of getting the Agha Shahid Ali Scholarship from FAWC -- since the workshop is part of the project being funded. Yikes! I did NOT expect to get both the scholarship and the grant -- but I am NOT complaining!! --The revision, as I understand it, means that the IAC has the opportunity to re-evaluate my proposal. But I have already figured out how to handle this, I think, and hopefully it won't be a problem.

Yeah yeah, everyone should have such problems. *grin*

So, more later on the details of the project. For now, if you'll excuse me, I have a major BUTT-WAGGLING HAPPY DANCE ALL AROUND MY LIVING ROOM that needs to be performed....

Hoosier

Indiana has a Poet Laureate -- who knew? I've lived in Indiana since 1971 and I've never heard of this person. Interesting. (Thanks to Jilly for the link!)

Landlocked girl

It is a summer evening in Indiana, cicadas and crickets buzzing, swifts circling ferociously through the sky, swooping up insects. Because it's summer my thoughts turn to the beach town that I love, where I try to spend a week every summer, have managed to do so four out of the last six summers though once I couldn't manage a full week. It amazes me to be planning for the ocean. I am the first one in my family to make regular visits to the ocean, though I grew up reading books about people who did. But that was for rich people. I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a rich person. And yet here I am, making lists and reservations, shaking a bit of sand out of last year's suitcase. How did this become my life?

Growing up, I didn't know the ocean. I'd never even caught a glimpse of it until I was twenty. But I was fascinated by it, dreamed of it as only a landlocked girl can dream of it. I imagined what "the taste of salt air on my tongue" might be like. I imagined it the way I imagined sex, in just that hushed a tone. When I was ten my family moved to Indiana, and some months later we made the hour's drive to Lake Michigan, my first sight of water that went past the horizon. I was entranced, I collected rocks from every beach we went to, I climbed up the dunes and went running tumbling down. Gray water, small waves, the smell of dead alewives washed up on the sand. I dreamed of brine and seashells and the real ocean. I listened to Heart's album "Dreamboat Annie," with its bits of seagull-and-crashing-wave soundtrack. I remembered the album my parents had when I was a little little kid, Hawaiian music and the sounds of ocean surf. I could almost daydream myself there.

Years later, thirty-two and head over heels in love with a woman who lived near the beach, I visited her and for the first time slept within walking distance of salt water. It was October, sunny and just warm enough. While she went to work I walked along the beach, caught sight of a pod of dolphins traveling, leaping through the waves. Years later, offered the opportunity to take a vacation, I remembered those dolphins and thought that I might like to go whale-watching. That's how I found myself in Provincetown for a week in June of 2001, alone, incredibly at peace.

The softest animals live in the ocean: jellies, anemones, velvety rays. Cetaceans, smooth and sleek and rounded. Squirmy cephalopods moving freely in every possible direction, no more solid than mercury. Seals with their huge liquidy eyes. It's like the water that surrounds them enables them to be that soft, that vulnerable. I know what that is like. And I'm kidding myself, of course, because the ocean is also full of jagged teeth and spiny things, shells that cut your bare feet on the beach, rocks you can't even stand to walk on.

I'll probably always come back to the midwest, always be the landlocked girl with the landlocked heart. But I'll keep going back to water, back to salt. It's a small pilgrimage, a kind of prayer. When I first get to the beach I walk to the water, let it lap around my feet, do a little dance because it's cold. I cup my hands, bring salt water to my lips. Every time, the sweetness of it surprises me.

Bloomsday

Happy Bloomsday!

When I was an undergrad I took an entire semester-long seminar about Ulysses. It was pretty amazing, though I suspect I would get a lot more out of that book if I read it now than I did back when I was twenty. Someday I'd like to go back and read it again.

* * * * *

I love travel planning, deciding to go somewhere and then researching the heck out of it beforehand. I am so not a spontaneous girl. The planning is at least half the fun of the vacation, though.

* * * * *

Carrie Newcomer's annual free concert in the park was yesterday evening. As always, a lovely time was had by all -- picnics, dogs, little kids playing on the swings and dancing, birds wheeling overhead. At one point a huge black butterfly flew over much of the crowd, just past seated-head level. It never feels quite like summer until after Carrie's park concert. So, now it can be summer.

* * * * *

Biding my time, waiting on the commission...

* * * * *

I've ordered this book by Eloise Klein Healy, this one by Ellen Bass, this one by Anne Marie Macari, and this one by Sam Witt. Next I'm going to order Erin Bertram's new chapbook. It's not like I need more books in my house, and it's not like I have any shortage of titles in the "haven't read this yet" pile. (Okay, piles, plural. Eek.) I just love buying books. (I could stop anytime I wanted to. Really. Um...)

At least nobody can accuse me of not supporting poetry. *grin*

Hoot

Pleased to learn that an odd little poem of mine called "Surviving the Fairy Tale" will be included in the inaugural issue of Barn Owl Review, due out at AWP in January.

Which makes me want to go to AWP! But New York hotels are just awfully expensive, even at the discounted conference rates. I doubt I'll be able to swing it, but I'm trying not to rule it out just yet.

* * * * *

Speaking of hotels, the following description appears on the website for the Best Western in Seekonk, Massachusetts: The brand new Best Western Providence-Seekonk Inn features 50 rooms, three stories, one elevator with indoor pool and fitness room.

That must be one heck of an elevator!

* * * * *

Some nice publicity for Valparaiso Poetry Review -- thanks to Ed Byrne for passing this one along. I am amused that they picked me out as one of the names to mention, probably because it's an Indiana newspaper and I'm, you know, from Indiana and stuff.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Lifestyles of the Rich and Gaymous

The New York Times has a nice article about Mark Doty & Paul Lisicky and their new place on Fire Island, and why they left Provincetown. Mostly the article is about their fabulous home though.

I understand why they left Provincetown. I find myself wishing I'd discovered that place, started going there (...been able to afford to go there...), years before I did -- back when it was still more of a funky artist town and not quite so gentrified. At the same time, I think I got there when I needed to.

I first went there, actually, in 1982 for the annual women's martial arts camp I used to attend every summer; it was held in a different location every year, and the first year I went, it was in P-town. (We had our big mass opening & closing workouts in Town Hall, which was just too much fun.) I didn't go back until 2001 though, a few months after finishing library school, just exactly when I was ready to start writing again -- though I didn't realize that until I found myself sitting on the beach scribbling madly in my journal. I spent a week there, staying by myself in the lovely Fairbanks Inn, whale-watching and shopping and beach-bumming and generally happy as a clam. (Happier, probably, than the clams I ate that week. Hm.)

I found out about the Fine Arts Work Center sometime after that trip, and decided I wanted to go there someday. In 2003 I couldn't afford a week-long workshop, but I found a good airfare that just happened to coincide with a few days in which both Mark Doty and Stanley Kunitz were scheduled to read. Lucky me! I remember the moment I walked onto the grounds of FAWC, I felt right at home for some reason, even though I didn't know a soul there. It was kind of like -- oh, here's where my people have been hiding!

I registered for a workshop in 2004, but had to cancel in order to spend time with my mom when she had knee replacement surgery that summer. But when I finally showed up for workshops in 2005 and 2006 -- well, those of you who've been reading this blog for a while know how much fun I had and how hard I worked, those weeks. Going back there feels like going home, now -- and by "there" I mean both FAWC and the town itself: the harbor fog, the dunes, the gloriously queer parade along Commercial Street at night.

Provincetown feels so much like home. Even though I'll never, never be able to afford to live there -- and completely understand why someone who has loved it would leave it now.

Then again, I'm the one who actually likes living in the Midwest. So what do I know. *grin*

Oldies

When I say this is an older poem, I really mean it. I wrote it in 1989, when I was (yikes!) 28 years old. 1989 is also, coincidentally, the birth year of many of the folks entering college this coming fall as freshmen. (To those of you who suddenly felt really old there for a second: yeah, me too.)

Anyway, this was published in Prairie Schooner (Fall 1993), which makes it one of my "biggest-name" publications. Despite that, it doesn't seem to be making it into any of the manuscripts I try to put together. I won't go so far as to say that I don't believe in this poem anymore, but it feels ... distant, now. When I wrote it, so long ago, I think I still kind of bought into the notion that one must feel some kind of suffering in order to write, and I think the pain in this poem is sort of manufactured. ("The taste of my own blood" indeed. How goth!) Still, it has some images I really like, and I'm fond of the three-part contruction, how it gave me the freedom to write three sections that didn't follow upon each other in any kind of logical or narrative way -- but that do feel connected, and they do feel like they're in the right order, they're not so independent as to be interchangeable. So there are still things I like here, even if it's not a poem I'd probably want to write now.

I also feel a little disconnected from this poem because it dates back to before the writing hiatus I began (unintentionally) in 1994, when my life got just a little nuts. I was starting to get some good publications, and had a couple of chapbook manuscripts that were finalists in various competitions, and then I stopped for about six years -- barely writing at all, and sending out almost nothing. When I came back to it -- after grief, love, more grief, and library school -- it felt like starting over, in so many ways. I'll write about that someday.

Anyway, here it is, just for grins.

* * * * *

Telling Stories, The Evening Star

1.
I drink strong coffee to wash
the taste of blood from my mouth.
I tell myself stories as I fall asleep
to banish the taste of blood
from my dreams.
One blood is mine,
one someone else's.
I bite the inside
of my cheeks sometimes
to stop myself from speaking.

2.
Venus glitters, evening star,
like an idea I might have had.
In the morning
the waning moon will cast
pale light on crusted snow.
I walk outside in these times
of half-light, trying to name
the colors. The names elude me
and so the colors fade
into night or into day. In the west,
past twilight, Venus sinks
imperceptibly lower each moment,
a piercing light that makes the sky
look darker, that gives bare branches
the fierce clarity of knives.
My breath is a pale cloud, descending.

3.
One morning I wake with a stiff neck.
Nothing helps, not heat, not stretching.
All day I stumble clumsily, trying not
to turn my head, gasping with pain
at any sudden movement.
Feeding the cats, I lower myself
slowly to the bowls; folding laundry,
I am careful not to jostle.
And I think, how we arrange
our lives around our pain,
the care we take.

I step out into stars and snow,
but stiff and sore, I can't look up.
I take the evening star on faith,
its steady light slipping westward.
I don't need faith for the ice underfoot,
the crunch of the snow's crust,
the cold that numbs my feet.

The taste of my own blood
warms me. My breath
rises like the end
of a question,
like a story I'd tell.

-A.H. 1989

Alexie interview and revision out loud

For those of you who are Sherman Alexie fans, and those who just like entertaining interviews with writers, check out this excellent interview on the Powell's Bookstore site.

I love the idea that he's rewriting his novel as he reads/performs it, and the idea of republishing it to reflect those revisions. He's right -- musicians change their songs all the freakin' time! Poets, well, sometimes we revise a poem between its appearance in a journal & its subsequent enshrinement in a book; very rarely, I'll find a poem in a selected/collected and note that it has been revised since its earlier bookification.

When you give a reading, do you revise your poems as you read or do you always stick to what's already written down? Do you improvise on them? I guess this question is aimed more at "page poets" since I already know slam/performance poets do that kind of thing a lot -- but if you count yourself among those latter, and you also publish, how do you decide which version gets published?

I know I certainly use reading aloud as a revision tool, reading my drafts aloud to myself or sometimes to my poetry group. (I'd kind of worry about any poet who didn't do this at least some of the time.) Occasionally I've changed a word here and there during an actual reading, either on purpose or inadvertently, and sometimes those small changes stick. But I'm talking about more extensive revision, and public readings moreso than critique groups/workshops.

Thoughts?

The hairball theory of rejection slips

This evening while working on getting some poems sent out, I had a tiny revelation: the way I feel about rejection slips is pretty much exactly the same way I feel when one of my cats yarfs up a big old hairball. It's not particularly fun, and I have a moment of thinking "well crap," but it certainly isn't going to ruin my day or anything. You just clean up the hairball, send the poems somewhere else, and get on with your life. :)

Smaller

I forget which teacher it was who said not to put a heart in a poem unless it was an actual, beating, dissectable heart. This is not a metaphor. This is my actual heart.

All those years of hearing friends complain about their diets, count every calorie, exercise their bodies as if it were a math problem to dispose of. All those stubborn years of loving my flesh just as it was. Well I still love it, every inch of it. But upon my heart’s alarmed complaint it’s my turn now, the low-fat cheese, the lunchtime walks (so brisk and filled with purpose), the steady tick of numbers making narrow columns in my head. Twenty-five down. I have more room to breathe now, feel my hips amazed and capable of swaying in place of the slow clotted dance they did before. I plant my own hands on my waist and it feels different now, my own body smaller underneath my palms like someone else’s, strange and not. I’m intrigued, want to touch it, test my own response. Like a far-off love come calling: voice familiar, body new. I introduce my thighs to one another, cross and recross them, feel the pivot of my waist. I need new clothes, my t-shirts hanging past my hips, pants slipping dangerously. I need a haircut, a new name. I love every inch of it, love it still – I take up all the space I ever did but fill it now with breath, with the tongue-drum of my rescued heart.

* * * * *

The body is political and personal -- there's not much of any way around it, especially for women.

* * * * *

Outside: One of those thunderstorms that begins with a good 45 minutes of distant grumbling, and now a downpour of Noah-esque proportions, rain that feels like surrender, rain running like a tiny river down my driveway. Rain that splashes up in great sheets as cars whish past on Walnut Street. Rain that reminds me I have got to get my roof fixed, dammit.

And the winner is...

Just got word of this year's Lambda Literary Award winners. In poetry, the awards went to Lemon Hound by Sina Queyras and A History of My Tattoo by Jim Elledge.

Also of note, Alison Bechdel's terrific Fun Home got the award for Lesbian Memoir/Biography. Bechdel's book, a "graphic memoir" (for lack of a better label), really stretches a lot of boundaries; it's brilliantly drawn, and brilliantly written to boot. I read it almost a year ago and it's still lodged inside my brain. The book has won tons of awards, and it definitely deserves 'em.

I haven't read either of the poetry winners (yet) though. I'd love to hear from anyone who has! Are they worth picking up?

Forty-six

At my mom's for the long weekend, in the town where I went to high school. This town is, I think, permanently stalled somewhere in the late seventies -- and that's not just because that was when I moved away. Swear to god, I opened up the newspaper and saw that one of the big upcoming concerts is the Doobie Brothers, and Styx just played here last week.

Funny, the things that manage not to change.

* * * * *

"I don't fuck much with the past but I fuck plenty with the future" -- Patti Smith

* * * * *

Gemini Horoscope for week of May 24, 2007

To best take advantage of the fresh and innocent cosmic forces that are offering themselves up to you, try experiments like the following: eat food you've never tried; listen to new music; climb a hill that has always been in the distance; have a down-to-earth conversation with a person who up till now hasn't been quite real to you; try erotic experiences you've wondered about; scrawl graffiti on a wall that has never been written upon; and push yourself to feel positive emotions that you may sometimes be too lazy or cynical to seek out, like playful reverence, intense curiosity, voracious gratitude, and surprised delight.

* * * * *

With the Sun sextile Saturn in your Solar Return chart, work you have done begins to pay off this year. You may be recognized or rewarded in some way for the efforts you put forth. Because you project a more responsible and credible “you”, people in authority tend to be more inclined to appreciate you and recognize your work. This is a year when you put your life in order in some significant manner.

...Well, all righty then.

Which came first...?

Thanks to a member of my poetry group -- actually, thanks to a student of hers, who raises chickens & found herself overwhelmed with eggs -- I have a dozen super-fresh, non-industrially raised, gorgeous brown eggs in my refrigerator. Actually, I only have ten of them now. I just made myself a couple of scrambled egg "burritos": two scrambled eggs, low-fat cheese, and some fresh green pepper for zest & crunch, all wrapped up in hippie-looking whole-wheat tortillas. Delicious, very satisfying, and reasonably good for me.

I'm trying hard to increase my repertoire of reasonably healthy meals. The goal is not to keel over from a heart attack in my (rapidly approaching) fifties. I think that's a decent goal.

* * * * *

Did you know the National Park Service has an extensive artist-in-residence program? The terms of residency vary among the various parks, some as little as one week and some as long as eleven months -- most are around two to four weeks. Most, though not all, are open to writers. There are some pretty darn cool places you can go.

* * * * *

After the holiday weekend, I want to do some serious work on revision. I also need to get some poems sent out. What are your favorite journals that read during the summer?

Dog people, listen up!

If you have a dog, you need to read this -- Xylitol, a sweetener used in sugarless gum and other things, is extremely toxic to dogs. As little as a few sticks of Xylitol-sweetened gum can easily kill a dog. Scary! I had no idea.

* * * * *

Funny thing about getting poems published -- sometimes people read them. Even people you don't actually know (scroll down a bit). And they even study them and think about them. For some reason, this blows me away a little bit. (Like -- you mean people read this stuff even if I don't personally shove it in their face? Whoa...)

* * * * *

Anyone have interesting Memorial Day plans? I'm going up to my mom's so she can feed me birthday cake...

* * * * *

Starting to make my Provincetown travel plans. Usually I fly into Boston and take the ferry over to P-town, but this time I'm thinking about flying into Providence, RI and renting a car. The Cape Cod traffic in July may make me regret doing it, but I think it might be fun -- plus then I'd have a car in P-town, which I never have before, and could pop out to Race Point at night if I wanted to. If I fly into PVD, I will probably tack an extra day onto the beginning and end of the trip, try to see a few sights in the vicinity. If anyone has cheap motel recommendations in the Providence area, I'm all ears. Seekonk or Fall River look like good possibilities as well. (I just like saying Seekonk.)

* * * * *

DirecTV is picking up the Tennis Channel. My ass may never leave the couch again.

Fifteen / Forty-five

So I recorded this "DirecTV Exclusive" concert thingie, featuring Heart performing their 1976 album Dreamboat Annie in its entirety -- all of us thirty years older now, of course. Oh my, my, my. As it turns out, I still do have pretty much every note of this album memorized. This music was magic for me when it first came out, when I was fifteen... I don't know what it was about it. There was something about the blend of acoustic and electric guitars, the delicate plucked melodies pushing up against the muscular, driving bass and drums -- and of course the voices of two women singing in harmony, something you didn't hear a whole lot of on the radio back then. For that matter, you didn't hear a whole lot of women singing rock back then, either -- there were folkies, and there were disco divas, but women really rocking? That was something new and awfully exciting. It took me exactly where I wanted to go. Where I needed to go. In a way, I think it helped me figure out how to write, gave me permission to find the power in my own voice.

I loved all of Heart's albums from the mid-seventies through the early eighties: Little Queen, Magazine, Dog & Butterfly, Bebe Le Strange. But Dreamboat Annie was always home for me, in a way. It sounds kind of funny now; I think the music that we love when we're fifteen or sixteen, I think we love it in a different way than the way we love music as adults. There's more at stake, somehow. I don't know.

There were other albums I loved in those years. Fleetwood Mac's Rumours (as well as the duo album Stevie Nicks & Lindsay Buckingham made before they joined Fleetwood Mac, called Buckingham Nicks). Patti Smith's Easter. Bruce Springsteen's Darkness on the Edge of Town. Jackson Browne's The Pretender. Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles. I'd hole up in my room all evening burning incense and listening to records (you know, vinyl...) and writing poems. I wrote so many bad poems inspired by all that music! Well, some things never change, heh. :)

It's funny. Listening to this music now, the girl I was then seems so far away from who I am now -- and yet not so far away at all. How I live now, who I am, isn't so very different from who I wanted to be and who I kind of expected to be, whether I admitted it to myself or not. Working in a library, living alone in a little old house with two overly affectionate cats and far too many books, writing poems, making little pilgrimages to the ocean whenever I can? Yeah, fifteen-year-old Anne would have been just fine with that.

Forty-five-year-old Anne is fine with that, too.

What have you revisited? An album, a book, a poem, an old friend? Tell me about it. I'd love to hear.

A light in the fog (Provincetown, 2005)

Personal and local

Personal #1: One of my cats, Honey Bear, is spending the night at the vet's tonight. (He has some occasional, er, digestive issues ... let's just say the poor dear is getting himself roto-rooted.) He should be home tomorrow and back to his old self fairly quickly, but the house is too quiet tonight with only one cat. I am very lucky that my cats go to a vet practice where there are several doctors I trust. I don't know where I'd be without an excellent vet! Send a little "get well soon" thought to my Bear if you have one to spare, hm?

* * * * *

Local: The Indiana University Writers' Conference is coming up. I won't be doing the conference this year, but I do plan to attend some of the evening readings. Here's the schedule, for anyone who might be local enough to make it here and might be inclined to do so. All readings take place at 8:00 pm, in Whittenberger Auditorium (in the Indiana Memorial Union). If you see someone here that I absolutely should not miss, give me a holler!

Sunday, June 10th: Khaled Mattawa & Matthew Klam
Monday, June 11th: Catherine Bowman & Nicholas Dawidoff
Tuesday, June 12th: Crystal Wilkinson & Adam Langer
Wednesday, June 13th: Conference Participant Reading
Thursday, June 14th: Heather McHugh & Lee Martin

* * * * *

Personal #2: Apparently I do, too, have some iota of self-discipline: I am rapidly closing in on a 25-pound weight loss. I still have a ways to go before I get to where I want to be (which is a weight that won't make me dead before my time -- I have no particular desire to be skinny, just want to be healthier), but perhaps I need to remember this when I try to tell myself I'm not sure I have enough self-discipline to do other things. Like, put together a book manuscript. Or get myself into, and through, a low-residency MFA program. Ahem.

* * * * *

Personal #3: I'll be moving to a new space at work within the next couple of weeks. I started in a new position about a year ago, and my new department didn't have space for me, so another department graciously let me use a cubicle in their office suite; but my "real" department is moving to a new floor this month, so I'll be moving in with them. I saw the new space last week. It's very, very, very beige. Should be nice once it gets people, and plants and stuff, in it though. It is pretty funny that a dialup-using semi-Luddite like me is actually a part of the Library Information Technology department, isn't it? Hee!

Edging back to normal

...whatever "normal" is! *grin*

Now that my mom has been home from the hospital for a few days, and I'm home from taking care of her, it's time for me to rest up a bit and then get back to business. I have two months till my workshop in Provincetown, and especially now that FAWC has given me the Ali scholarship, I feel like I have a responsibility to show up ultra-prepared, with poems to work hard on and a good sense of what I want to learn from the week. I do think I get more from a summer workshop if I prepare for it, plan for it, identify what I'm there for -- though it's also essential to be open to surprise, to learn something you didn't expect to learn.

Speaking of which, did you see this nice article in the New York Times about summer writing workshops? Of the ones they mention, FAWC is the only one I've been to, but they all sound like fun.

Also, I need to get stuff sent out -- I have hardly anything out right now, and hello, you don't get anything published if you don't send anything out. I spent April focusing on drafting new work, so it's time for a little breather to take care of some of the older stuff for a while, kick it out of the house and see if it can fend for itself yet.

* * * * *

Pleased to see that Lucille Clifton got this year's Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.

* * * * *

The Indiana Arts Commission has made audio files of this year's Individual Artist Grant panels available for download. You can listen to people talking about me behind my back! Except it wasn't really behind my back, since I was there. Anyway, they're humongous files, so don't try it over dial-up. (Am I the only blogger in the world still using dial-up? What can I say, I get it for free, and on my budget, free is always good....)

* * * * *

It's May. How did it get to be May already? The university had its commencement exercises on Saturday, and although more students enroll in summer sessions than back in my undergrad days, campus is still much much quieter than it is during the year. It's lovely.

Really happy news

I just got word that I am this year's winner of the Agha Shahid Ali Scholarship in Poetry at the Fine Arts Work Center! This covers the tuition for the workshop I am taking there in July. I'm absolutely thrilled, and so grateful to get such strong encouragement for my work from an organization I think the world of. (Okay, that's not grammatical, but it's late and I've had what we in the poetry business call "an extremely long-ass day.")

When I read the email, I kind of shrieked and scared the cats. I am still bouncing in my chair and giggling a little bit.

Y'all have no idea how badly I needed some good news -- this is just incredibly well-timed. I don't think I could be any happier if I'd won American Idol. :)

Hospital days

Just a quick check-in to say that my mom came through Tuesday's hip replacement surgery nicely. She's had a few glitches along the way (blood pressure going way too low for a while, the usual assortment of what doctors call "discomfort" and everyone else calls "terrible pain," some minor visual hallucinations -- you know, the kind some people take narcotics on purpose to enjoy --, stuff like that). But she's mostly doing well and expects to come home tomorrow. I'll be here a few more days helping out.

Not much poetry -- I thought I'd get some reading done, but have been too wiped out by the end of the day to do much of anything but collapse on the couch and watch American Idol. I have some thoughts & images about the experience of being the family member in the waiting room, which may or may not turn into poem(s); we'll see.

Pretty tired, and before I can sleep, I still need to do a few things around the house to prepare for tomorrow. Things should get easier from here on, though.

Hope everyone out there is well.

NaPoWriMo fall down go boom

Congratulations to all those who are closing in on that NaPoWriMo finish line! For myself, I've had to admit defeat -- just too much else going on. But I did end up with 21 drafty poems, definitely more than I usually come up with in a month; and it's not out of the question that I might come up with one or two more before May 1st. If I weren't frantically preparing to go out of town, I'd probably still try to make it to thirty over the weekend. Oh well.

I'll be gone for a week or so helping my mom recuperate from hip-replacement surgery, which she is having on Tuesday. I won't be entirely offline, but I probably won't be around as much as usual.

Here's an older poem for you:


Apart

The dying-battery beep reminds me
that we can't talk like this forever.

It's the things we can't help--
the lock that freezes three times every winter,

clocks that spring
forward, dinner burnt, pages

drifting to the floor--
that keep us apart.

I'm always driving west at sunset:
gold slipping nearer the horizon,

the flare of blindness on my windshield,
everywhere I turn, so much unexpected light.

--A.H.
published in Bloom: Celebrating Life in Bloomington, April/May 2007

Natasha Trethewey on PBS NewsHour tonight

Last-minute breaking news! I know many of you are Natasha Trethewey fans. I just got this from PBS -- she will be on their evening news show TONIGHT!:

PRIZE-WINNING POET
April 25, 2007

In our continuing NewsHour Poetry Series, tonight we feature this year's Pulitzer Prize winner in poetry, Natasha Trethewey.

Ms. Trethewey was awarded the Pulitzer for her book, Native Guard, a collection of poems inspired by her southern heritage and personal experiences. The book is her third volume of poetry. Ms. Trethewey teaches creative writing at Emory University. She also appeared in a poetry profile for the NewsHour last spring.

For online coverage of Natasha Trethewey and the rest of the Poetry Series, go to the Online NewsHour at PBS.org.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Segments highlighted on NewsHour Poetry Series Alert are scheduled to air but subject to change.

Quickie

Still behind on EVERYdamnTHING.

Best American Idol recaplet ever. For example: "The giant hairy Rupert Murdoch octopus reinvents monetizing easy-chair altruism for the tenth time; Ryan's classy about it. I think he's trying to make Anderson Cooper notice him." Bwahahahahaha!

I *heart* Television Without Pity.

The hurrier I go, the behinder I get.

I am behind on everything: email (whose bright idea was it to sign up on a couple of high-volume listservs, AND about seventy bajillion different National Poetry Month "get a poem a day in your email!" dealies? I realized today I had so much crap in my inbox that I'd actually missed some real, sent-only-to-me emails. Eek!), house cleaning, reading, writing, submissions, NaPoWriMo (I think I'm two days behind on that now and I may just throw in the towel) ... everything.

Today my poetry group met out at the home of one of our members. Helen lives way out in the country, so we all gathered at Tonia's house and rode out together in Deborah's lovely Prius. On the way out there we saw a large wild turkey flying along beside the road and then it crossed in front of us and landed on the other side of the road. It wasn't flying very high, maybe three or four feet -- turkeys are not particularly aerodynamic. It actually looked rather like a vulture that had swallowed a basketball. I wouldn't have recognized it as a turkey until it landed, if someone hadn't pointed it out to me. And now I'm thinking about that episode of WKRP in Cincinnati where Les Nessman finds out that turkeys can't fly. Well, apparently they can. Sort of.

I've been poking around trying to find out if by chance there might be any poetry readings or anything else vaguely literary going on in South Bend the week I'll be up there for my mom's surgery. So far, no dice. It's probably just as well, as I imagine I'll be booked fairly solid with the caretaking stuff.

I've also been reading Mark Doty's newest memoir, Dog Years, and really loving it. I am a sucker for good animal stories anyway, plus I like Doty's memoirs in general. I'm slowing down as I get close to the end, because I know it's going to get really sad pretty soon.

It's Little 500 Weekend here in Bloomington (aka "The World's Greatest College Weekend" aka "most sane people over the age of 25 or so stay as far away from campus as possible all weekend"). The Little 500 is the bike race made famous in the movie Breaking Away, which I really need to get around to owning. That movie came out just a few months before I arrived here as a dewy-eyed freshman, so I went to see it in the theater all excited that there was a whole movie about the place where I was going to be spending the next four years of my life. Little did I know, then, that I'd be spending at least the next 28 years here. Yes, I have lived here for almost thirty years. God, I'm old.

Sherman Alexie, and being That Person

First off, if anyone who was at tonight's Sherman Alexie reading happens to read this, I apologize. Yes, I was That Person at the reading: the one who has a cold, but comes to the reading anyway with a pocket full of cough drops, and makes it through most of the reading but eventually develops a nasty tickle in her throat and starts coughing, and sits there coughing in fits and starts, trying to decide whether it's more disruptive to get up and run out of the room (which would have involved walking in front of half the audience) or to sit there continuing to try and stifle the coughs. I was That Person, someone I have bitched about after many a reading, and I apologize. Sigh.

Cough, cough, cough.

(At least I had my cellphone off, heh.)

The reading, though, was fabulous. He started off by telling us that this would be his first poetry-only reading in several years, then he spent a good ten-fifteen minutes storytelling -- talking about a turbulent flight, retrieving an elderly woman's hat on the street (yes, both of these stories were as funny as you'd expect of him), small moments of grace -- which led into some of his thoughts on the Virginia Tech massacre. He read/spoke for, oh, 40 minutes or so, then took some questions. He can do this ridiculously fast 360 from pee-your-pants-funny standup comic to some really searing, powerful poetry; the reading was definitely a roller coaster ride. During the Q&A he pointed out that all the poems he'd read used rhyme and meter; he said he got fed up with writing in free verse when he realized his poems were just becoming a series of tics, like whenever he got stuck he'd just put in a salmon, like poetic Tourette's or something -- and that working in rhyme and meter has enabled him to work with material he hadn't tackled before. He said he is reading a lot of Richard Wilbur lately.

There was a funny moment during the Q&A when he was talking about MFA programs, and how he kind of envied the MFA students (the MFA program was the primary sponsor of this reading, so there were lots of those folks in the audience); he said that as an undergrad it didn't even occur to him to do an MFA, and anyway his first two books had already been accepted by his senior year -- this caused an audible intake of breath from a number of aforementioned MFA students, which cracked him up and he imitated what must be going through their minds -- "fucker!" -- then mentioned that before he graduated he'd also learned he had an NEA fellowship, so of course there was that $20,000 waiting for him; at that point he just... stood... there, looking at the audience like "yeah, you got a problem with that?" without cracking a grin, as the MFA students just moaned. Then of course he cracked up again. Yeah, he's got a sizable ego, but he also pokes fun at himself a lot. For all I know he could be a real jerk in everyday life, but behind the podium he's one of the more likable readers I've ever heard -- engaging, polished but not too polished, pee-your-pants funny a lot of the time but also deadly serious sometimes, and he seemed to enjoy being up there as much as the audience enjoyed listening.

So, a thoroughly entertaining reading, as I knew it would be. I've been reading him for years and love his work, so I'm glad I finally got to hear him read in person, and get a book signed and stuff.

* * * * *

Missed my second NaPoWriMo poem yesterday, dammit. In my defense, I was coping with a yucky cold and spent several hours completing a big old application for a thing, which included a personal statement -- so at least I was writing something, eh? As penance, I'll post a draft from a few day ago (it will disappear in a day or so):


[and, it's gone.]

Breaking news: Pulitzer!

Natasha Trethewey has been awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for Native Guard.

In fiction, Cormac McCarthy's The Road is the big winner. And Ornette Coleman got one for music, which is pretty cool.

All of this year's winners in Letters, Drama & Music can be found at the link above.

Attention Bloomingtonians

(That's Bloomingtonians of the Hoosier variety, not the ones from Illinois or Minnesota or whatever other Bloomingtons they've got out there.)

Sherman Alexie will be reading on Wednesday, April 18th at 8:00 pm at the John Waldron Arts Center. It's free, and supposedly there's some kind of a reception afterwards although I don't have the details.

I don't know whether he will be reading fiction (he has a new novel that's either just out or coming out very soon) or poetry or what, but I'm sure he will be entertaining whatever he does. Alexie has been one of my favorite writers for quite a while now, but I've never heard him read before and I am looking forward to it like crazy.

* * * * *

Those of you currently getting socked-in by the big nor'easter, I hope you are somewhere warm and safe and dry tonight! Looks pretty nasty out there.

Look what I found

My first NaPoWriMo "miss": I didn't write anything yesterday. In my defense, I was tired and coming down with a cold. Today I will write two drafts to make up for it.

Here's the first:

(A found poem)

Source text



[Someone came along and sprayed this blog with Draft-B-Gone!]