The Peripatetic Poetess

The Poetess Blog is Moving!

2010-12-16T20:00:00.000-08:00

A slight change: you can now find my writing-about-writing - as well as all previous posts from The Peripatetic Poetess - over at Colleen S. Harris, Wordsmith. Hoping I'll be a bit easier to find with a blog under my name. Thank you for reading, and I do hope you move over with me and become a follower there!

Pushcart Nomination! "When You Came Home From the War"

2010-12-02T06:15:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning to an email from Colin, editor of Lamplighter Review, informing me that I'm one of the authors chosen to receive a Pushcart nomination for this year for my poem "When You Came Home From the War."

When You Came Home From The War

your body was a war-torn city.
We rubbed against each other
and it sounded like violins scowling.
We loved like October maples scream
and we loved like kudzu, overtaking all things.
We were lovers because there was nothing else
we could think to do with our bodies
but burn them.

I am excited - this poem is one of my favorites, and appears in These Terrible Sacraments.

I was honored to be a nominee for the Pushcart Prize for the last round - it's heady company to be in, and given the quality of what was in the collection this year, I don't envy the judges their task. Well, I do envy their getting to read all that excellent work, but trimming it down must be quite difficult. I didn't make it past the nomination last year, but I'm crossing my fingers for this new round. Congratulations and best of luck to all the nominees for this year!

These Terrible Sacraments is Available from Bellowing Ark!

2010-12-01T13:30:00.000-08:00

These Terrible Sacraments is available now from Bellowing Ark Press! Please go check it out - the cover is a beautiful glossy thanks to the dedication of my editor, and (if I do say so myself), I hope you find it to be a powerful collection. The poems reflect the impact of war not only on a soldier, but on his family and loved ones, and I hope the book finds a wide, interested, and compassionate audience. If you are feeling extra generous this holiday, order a copy.

It's important to remember those who voluntary place themselves in harm's way to serve a greater good, and their families who do without them. Thank a serviceperson as you travel this holiday season, and remember - you may be grumpy due to crowds and long lines, but the reality of a soldier's life abroad is much more difficult than that...and they don't get to complain. Remember to ask yourself what you are grateful for. As I say in the dedication of the book, to my brother Patrick (USMC), I am grateful he came home safe. I hope all our other men and women serving are as blessed.

The Kentucky Vein moving right along at Punkin House Press!

2010-12-01T13:23:00.000-08:00

The Kentucky Vein came back to me with suggested revisions by editor-goddess Cheryl, who has a keen eye for *everything*. (Dear all authors: you need an editor with hawk eyes. Trust me. And thank them.) I finally bounced it back today, and I think we're looking at a tentative Summer 2011 release from Punkin House!

Not that Punkin is resting on their laurels until then. If you visit the Authors page, you'll find that they are promoting their printed authors as well as the pending folks, which is very fun to see. In fact, they've even got my author page up, if you care to read it! They're busy attaching our Facebook profiles, creating author pages in Facebook, setting up writing blogs for each of us, and they will be posting video of readings from our manuscripts. I'm feeling very lucky to have been accepted by such an energetic team!

Genrebreaking II: Wandering Farther Into the Wood

2010-09-02T19:42:00.000-07:00

I've dabbled in some creative nonfiction essays, and that has worked out more or less well, but rambling on about something I want to talk about is easy (if not necessarily graceful). I've gone much deeper into the genre woods this time, looking for refreshment and challenge. I've started a fantasy novel!

Now, to be fair, I started this novel ten or twelve years ago and stuck it in a drawer. Any number of reasons - I'm not fiction-trained; being a poet means I lack the stamina for a full-fledged novel length work; I wasn't sure where it would lead me and that made me nervous (because fiction, after all, needs a plot, whereas poetry doesn't, really).

In any case, it's been nagging me for awhile now. The poetry muse is quiet for now since I can't quiet my brain, but all sorts of fun snippets for this story keep colliding in my brain, creating interesting scenarios, sparking plot that actually moves it forward past the murk that stopped me from writing it years ago.

I fully expect the book to be god-awful, at least in its initial form. I don't know if a first draft of it will ever even get done. But I very much want to give it a go and see if I can make a real story live. A REAL book, for all the folks who lift up their noses suspiciously when I mention my other books are poetry.

I've looked into some things to keep my eye on (like the Snowflake method of keeping track of things - this story got unwieldy fast, and became too much to hold in my head). I'm tracking a lot of craft-of-writing blogs that focus on fiction, and some cruel/funny literary agent blogs for tips and tricks. So far I have an interesting mash - we'll see what comes of it. It's far more interesting than a personal diary would be, and I dont feel the need for it to be perfect on the first strike like I do when working with a line of poetry.

And so the book, which will likely never see the light of day, is tentatively titled Warborn: Book I of the Warmaiden Chronicles, and I'm tickled to be working on it until the poetry side of my brain reasserts itself.

Manuscripts in Progress: Slow Going

2010-09-02T17:25:00.000-07:00

With These Terrible Sacraments and Gonesongs put to bed and coming out over the next 18 months from Bellowing Ark, and waiting on the editors at Punkin House Press to tear apart the essays in The Kentucky Vein in the next year or so, all of my completed manuscripts are out and done.

**WHOOSH** <--Sigh of relief.

Now, I have two poetry manuscripts in their infancies. Madwoman City (title subject to change, it's early yet) is a collection of narratives in different womens' voices (including characters from fiction, popular figures, goddesses from different cultural mythologies, historical characters, and some random men on their interactions with women in all out lovely, burning madness). It's not taking a great shape yet, but there's a shadow of a shape there...essentially, I have to get cracking at writing new pieces, and then I can pick and choose the ones that fit the mood of the book I want to build. I've got a second infant collection, Two Apples Too Heavy for Heaven - a few poems had actually started in Madwoman but the tone didn't seem quite right...these have more of an eye towards deities, in various forms and emotion. This one, somehow, I think will be the most difficult to write and put together well; I also think it'll be an important one for me to write.

I had actually tried to mash the two books together in the hope that would work and I'd have another near-done manuscript. (I know, I know, there's no need to rush, that's sloppy, and I've already got a ton in the pipe waiting on release. I know!) In any case, it didn't work for me, at least not as the collections stand right now, with a handful of pieces in each. And I've been so tired from being sick for the past 6 weeks that I've not had the energy to do anything but try not to fall too much farther behind at work. And so what I really need is quiet time, where I can tidy my brain and get back to writing.

Between the illness that has slowed me down (still recovering from taking out my nasty gallbladder), stressing over work, meeting other writing deadlines for librarian-related publications, and not sleeping well, I've lost a bit of my creative center. Luckily, we're coming up on a holiday weekend where I will do nothing but vegetate (and perhaps a bit of homework for that doctorate I'm working on). Perhaps this will help me kick my creative side in the pants and get it going again. Truly. It doesn't get to take a vacation until *I* do.

The Kentucky Vein Finds a Home: Publishing with Punkin House

2010-08-19T17:56:00.001-07:00

I am over the moon - in addition to waiting for the release of These Terrible Sacraments (Nov. 2010) and Gonesongs (2011) out of Bellowing Ark Press, my collection of poems and essays The Kentucky Vein (formerly titled The Green of Breakable Things in older blog posts) has been accepted for publication by Punkin House Press!

Punkin House is a new small independent publisher - they just launched their first books this summer, and are releasing in both e-book and print format (which I find exciting). They are very active in getting their authors reviewed, interviewed, and otherwise splashed around the internetspace, and I am very excited to be joining their family.

The Kentucky Vein is a very different book for me. The poetry is mostly deep-image, as opposed to my usual narrative style, which I had a lot of fun working (and occasionally wrestling) with. The collection also includes a number of essays, and because I'm not as confident in my CNF, I'm looking forward to getting comments from their editors on that section. There's no hurry on this one, as they have a number of folks they're releasing as they polish the books, so it will likely be 2011. Stay tuned!

These Terrible Sacraments Going to Print November 2010

2010-08-19T17:38:00.000-07:00

Hooray! Just in time for the holidays, Bellowing Ark Press will have These Terrible Sacraments coming out in print. I'm excited that the book will be out in time for the holidays, and I'm hoping (hint! hint!) that folks will take advantage of it being so close to the timing and perhaps grab a copy as a gift for someone.

This book is particularly important to me (though of course to writers, they all are, I'm sure). It contains a number of stories my brother related to me about his time as a US Marine in Iraq & Afghanistan, and back home on base, but it also contains poems from the perspective of those of us left behind - mothers, sisters, and lovers. I worked very hard to neither demonize nor romanticize war and its effects - this book is simply my testament of experience, and I hope our service members and their loved ones find that it does justice to the topic.

My editor, the esteemed Robert Ward, is sending me the manuscript with some reordering later this week, and I am looking forward to seeing his vision for the manuscript (he always seems to know the shape of the book better than I do). I can't wait to share the cover image with you all, and, of course, the final printed copies!

First Draft: Persephone

2010-07-17T19:45:00.001-07:00

I'm liking this one a lot, though I have the feeling I'll be revising her a bit. I've heard it said often one should never love one's own work - pah, I say. You had better love your work. Sometimes that's all that gets you through rejections, revisions, and the long haul from poem to manuscript. That said, I would venture to say that you need to be able to take your lumps and critics seriously, too, or you'll never learn to improve your craft.

In any case, I offer you a first draft of "Persephone," and I'll admit to liking the last few lines quite a bit more than is proper. Here's to hoping this one grows into a keeper!

Persephone by Colleen S. Harris

There is nothing so faithless as
a girl left on her own among the other
green and growing things. Brimming

with life, carelessly killing the field’s
flowering army so she can wear
ribbons of bluebells in her hair,

she has no need of forgiveness
or prayer, no sense of life’s fraying
hem. She has no idea she’s dancing

over death’s own head, bare feet
knocking at his soil door until he rises
hungry from the pit, the field a gaping

maw, his sudden hand a vise
on her ankle as she falls. Landing
in a heap, tangled in her own long

locks, trapped between his body
and the earth, she looks up
at him and finds the need for faith.

Now she believes, and prays.
When the dark hand of a god slips
up your skirt, how is a girl to say no?

Aaaaauugh! it's the Blob Blurb!

2010-07-17T14:38:00.000-07:00

So, my first book, God in my Throat: The Lilith Poems, was unblurbed. On the back it's just a pic of (a much thinner) me and my bio. Easy-peasy. The only thing I worried about was making sure I caught everything in the galleys, and then promoting the hell out of her.

This go-round, I asked my editor if he'd like for me to beat the bushes for some blurbs for These Terrible Sacraments. He enthusiastically replied yes, and that he could put my "About the Author" bio and pic inside the book at the end. It sounded like a grand idea at the time.

And now here I am realizing that I haven't the foggiest idea how to go about begging a blurb. Because I really think what I am asking for is for a well-known poet that i admire to read the manuscript, and *then* if they like it, if they wouldn't mind saying so in a short quote. I feel very foolish, having just sent out my first "I really admired your books X and Y, and used them in a lecture I gave on Z. I was wondering, since you are someone whose work I admire greatly, if you would have the time to read my forthcoming manuscript. I very much hope you'll enjoy it, and I would appreciate your time."

And there are poets I know well who I have workshopped or otherwise known well - should blurbs be only from folks who don't know you personally? I don't know. I do hope that if I gave my manuscript to someone that they'd be honest no matter how I knew them and just say "No, thank you, no comment" if they didn't adore the book and want their name on it. I know it's not personal - there are a lot of writers I like a lot whose writing I'm not enamored of, and your name in print is a funny thing. It's awfully permanent. I want whomever is willing to blurb me to be proud to have their name on the jacket.

I should have kept my mouth shut and just left my author info on the back of the book. Pppfffflllllbbt.

Let-tuce Buy Books!

2010-07-15T09:14:00.000-07:00

Karen Gowen, author at Coming Down the Mountain: From Reclusive Writer to Published Author, has a great contest going on right now. Let her know about your published book, and you're in the running for her to read, review, and publicize it! A great opportunity, and very generous. All of us should be so happy to promote our sisters and brothers-in-ink!

Caveat Scriptor: PublishAmerica Scam

2010-07-15T07:08:00.000-07:00

Ah, writers. We're like puppies. We're so accustomed to rejection and the hard road that when someone offers us praise, or that great golden ring of book publication, we're likely to leap first and look later. Today, I urge you to beware the PublishAmerica scam, with shady contact info, shady contracts, and shabby treatment of both authors and their work.

I urge you to read books by a prospective publisher, talk to their other authors about their experience with the publisher, and do your research. Not sure where to start with research? Talk to your local librarian. We're *very* friendly, and we're dying to help you find answers.

Neutering “Poetess” – Why Calling Myself a “Poet” Doesn’t Fix the Problem

2010-07-13T19:03:00.000-07:00

Recently, a generous reader (Rosemary N-W) commented on a post:

…

Oh yes, and there is that *shudder* word 'poetess'. Do you hafta? The old feminist in me cringes; we in my generation insisted on being given equal status, arguing that one doesn't, for instance, say 'doctoress;' or lawyeress'. You are SUCH a briliant poet, why not claim it? Self- denigration is inappropriate for your talent, believe me.

I will admit, as I replied to Rosemary, that

I hadn't considered the word "poetess" as at all denigrating - hardly anyone uses it anymore, truth be told. I don't consider it an unequal term - perhaps an antiquated one. No, we don't say "doctoress" or "lawyeress" - everything is sexless nowadays. But I had many, many years of romance language training, and I'm rather enamored of the richness of a language that allows you to gender nouns. I don't mind being gendered - I'm a woman, I'm happy to claim that, despite whatever judgment comes with it.

I understand that a large part of this is that I missed the years of struggle for the measure of equality I *do* have, which it sounds like you were engaged in. I certainly don't take it for granted, and I do know there's still a long way to go. If a woman poet is going to be considered unequal, in my opinion, it's not the word "poetess" that does that.

I’ve been chewing on this comment-conversation for awhile now. My first (admittedly ungenerous) reaction was that calling oneself “poet” is hardly setting oneself up for admiration and grandeur. It’s a (very) wobbly few steps above “homeless” when claimed as a profession, and less prestigious than any number of other professions. In fact, I’ve rather had to beat myself out of mumbling it, and I work VERY HARD, when folks ask what I write, to stop at “poetry” or “I’m a poet,” and not add “but I am also a librarian. You see that? Full time job and contributing member of society. I HAVE A REAL JOB.”

Society (and parents) may prefer the “I have a job” admission addition, but to the poet (as I imagine it might be for any artist), that job that pays the bills is, in itself, an admission of failure. “Yes, I am a poet, but I’m not a rich or famous or even middle-class poet. In fact, if I were to try to make a living with my writing, I’d get thinner than I did on the South Beach Diet and ask you if I could have the box your new computer came in so I could add a dormer to my homeless un-house.” That’s no way to impress a crowd.

And so I don’t think “poetess” is any worse off than the word “poet” itself. There’s enough baggage these days that comes with being any kind of creative sort that poeting isn’t any more prestigious or less value-laden than its sisterly form. Personally, I am enamored of the way romance languages gender their nouns, and I like the chance to get a bit frilly on occasion. I’m not particularly interested in neutering my title for form’s sake, and it has no impact on the quality of my work – you either like my work, or you don’t. I don’t take offense. There are many fine poets I can’t quite stand to read, though I appreciate their contribution to the craft. And I’m happy that they write, and consider them family of a sort, even if it’s the crazy drunk uncle kind of family.

Other poets don’t look at me sideways if I say the word “poetess.” They might think I’m a bit wonky or unnecessarily flamboyant, but, please. That’s NORMAL in the writing world if you hang around poet circles. It’s practically a competition. And to be quite frank, I didn’t like the swallowed stop of “Peripatetic Poet” – I much preferred the rhythm of “Peripatetic Poetess” as the title of the blog. In true poet form, I eschewed propriety in favor of what I considered a better mouthfeel of phrase.

It may also have been the case that "Peripatetic Poet" was taken as a name on Blogger (and hasn't been posted to since its inception in 2005), so I had to do something so as not to lose my lovely phrase as a blog title.

It’s not a matter of differential status based on womanhood. Well, perhaps it is – I have the choice of calling myself a poet or poetess as I please, whereas I imagine a man would have a harder time getting away with the feminine form. In any case, it’s a status I chose, as I named the blog, and to me, it is a source of pride. Hell, anyone can get a job. But me? I am a writer. I am a poet. I break off little pieces of myself and my truths and offer them in the hope that someone will find them interesting, useful, or songlike enough to remember.My name is in print, I am in the Library of Congress, and I have an ISBN. That's about as successful as it gets for a poet of any stripe, unless you hit the Really Awesome Jackpot of Writerly Life and get Billy Collins or Kay Ryan famous.

So feminists, fear not. I’m not reverting, I promise. Hell, if I could get away with it, I’d call myself a bard, but I’ve neither the instrumental nor the metrical talent to go that far.

In any case, I’m just very happy someone reads the blog, and gives me the opportunity to think these things out loud.

On Stretching the Poet-Brain with Other Writing

2010-07-13T05:17:00.000-07:00

Lately I have been swamped with work-writing. As a tenure-track faculty member, and not in a creative writing or English capacity, I have a responsibility to contribute to my field (which happens to be librarianship). This means that I choose to present at conferences on the work I do, and often, I write about it, or of other areas of librarianship that interest me.

It's a wonderful opportunity to stretch my brain in different ways than my creative writing stretches it. I think more about structure, and most of the time it requires more in-depth research, since scholarly articles and research-based book chapters have a longer bibliography than my poetry does. It also requires that I grapple with reality, as opposed to what I can create with brain gymnastics. I would argue that it is not less creative, it is just very different. Given the prescriptions we tend to follow for peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and even newsletter articles, to me it is akin in poetry to writing in strict form, without the occasionally-making-words-up part.

In any case, I consider it the flip side of the coin of my writing life. You'll mostly hear about my creative writing on this blog, but I am also thrilled to report that my first-ever peer-reviewed academic journal article is forthcoming from Journal of Access Services. "Matrix Management in Practice in Access Services at the NCSU Libraries" is slated to be out in the October 2010 issue. I also have a book review for Cliff Landis's A Social Networking Primer for Librarians in the same issue. For the November Brick & Click conference, I've just sent in the write-up of my presentation "Leveraging Technology, Improving Service: Streamlining Student Billing Procedures" for the conference proceedings. And finally, I sent in " "The First Thirty Days: A Playbook for the New Library Manager" which will appear as one of the LISCareer newsletter articles in October.

And so, though I've been feeling guilty about not writing any new poems (I've just been doing some last minute fiddling with These Terrible Sacraments), I have been writing. I've also been reading - Marilyn Hacker and Joy Harjo are the poets of the week on my coffeetable, beside some reading on leadership I have to do to prep for my doctoral program that starts in August. I haven't fallen off the poetry wagon, I'm just percolating, and hoping to get back to my more creative side this weekend.

"Confession" appears in New Verse News

2010-07-10T11:04:00.000-07:00

I am thrilled to report that another piece from These Terrible Sacraments has been picked up. "Confession" appears here in New Verse News.

This morning I tinkered with the "finished" manuscript a bit more and sent it back to my editor. I need to stop looking at it at some point, just wait for Robert's suggestions and then fiddle with it.

Identity Crisis!

2010-07-07T19:27:00.000-07:00

As a librarian, I'm pretty well versed in social networking, and the possibilities for creating different persona for different pursuits. Until now, I've made the choice to essentially blur everything together - professional libraryland life, personal life, and writing life. As the newest book releases approach, however, and as I succumb to the draw of drowning in web 2.0-ness and alienating all of my audiences (though everyone is relatively good natured about seeing posts they care not much about) as well as cross-postnig to the point of ridiculousness, I've decided to try to separate things a little bit.

As ever, this is the writing - mostly creative writing, though I'm bound to mention my professional nonfiction stuff occasionally - blog. However, if you were following me as "warmaiden" on twitter but would rather just see tweets about writing, you can follow me as colleensharris there.

And because I was feeling froggy, I set up an author's page on Facebook. You can become a fan and get the latest announcements about publications, book progress, and more if you go here.

Thanks for your patience as I experiment with unraveling the threads of myself!

Read Pieces from These Terrible Sacraments, and More Publication News!

2010-06-25T12:36:00.001-07:00

For those of you interested in a taste of what These Terrible Sacraments looks like, you can read four poems from the forthcoming collection online at Public-Republic:
"Patrick Speaks of Wealth"
"Doubting Thomas"
"This Poem Takes Liberties"
"Language Lessons"

Two more poems, "These Terrible Sacraments" and "The Postscript She Doesn't Write" will appear in Minnetonka Review. The poem "Violet Petals", a poem from the unpublished book manuscriptThe Kentucky Vein, will appear in volume 3 of Hawk & Whippoorwill.

Books Like Fields of Flowers: Manuscript News

2010-06-18T11:22:00.000-07:00

Good news on multiple manuscript fronts! I completed These Terrible Sacraments and sent the book off to my editor earlier this week. For that book, now I just wait to see what recommendations he has for reordering or recasting some pieces, but I think it's pretty close. I'll be consulting with Peter Hammarberg, the same genius who helped create the cover for God in my Throat: The Lilith Poems. I'll be excited to hear his ideas for the cover art.

These Terrible Sacraments is a collection of poems that stems from the stories my brother has told me from his time as a US Marine in Afghanistan & Iraq. I am very, very excited about this collection coming into print, and I very much hope that it does justice to our folks in uniform, and those they leave behind as they serve.

The Gonesongs manuscript was actually completed, combed over by my editor, and re-ordered before my May move to Chattanooga, so that manuscript is already bagged. I have cover art planned for this one already, so she should prove simple, despite being the book that will come out later. The bulk of this manuscript is poems of experience - family, growing up, losing loved ones, love and love lost. It is essentially my MFA creative thesis with a great deal of work added to it to flesh it out. A lot of work went into this one, by a number of different people, and I'm proud that all of that effort will find a home in print.

Both These Terrible Sacraments and Gonesongs are forthcoming from Bellowing Ark Press. If you haven't subscribed to their mag, read any of their books, or (if you're a writer) submitted work to Robert Ward there, I highly recommend them. I am, of course, biased, since I've received a great deal of personal attention and encouragement from them.

Regular readers of my blog (or my twitter, friendfeed, or facebook streams) may remember mention of another manuscript, The Green of Breakable Things. After a bit of revision, she is now titled The Kentucky Vein. Salt Publishing in the UK asked for the whole manuscript after a query, which I was excited about, but have since been silent. Punkin House press sent a positive reply when I cut it down to a chapbook and submitted it, and we are currently discussing turning it into a poetry and CNF essay genre-mixed book. I think this would be a dynamite project, and am waiting on word back. I have high hopes - cross your fingers for me!

More genrebreaking

2010-06-05T14:49:00.001-07:00

In fun news, I just got word from Withersin that a recent rejection was an accident, and my flash fiction horror piece is actually on the short-list. I'm crossing my fingers that it makes it to publication, but in any case, I'm chalking this off as an "I don't suck!" triumph for working in another genre *grin*

The Best Rejection

2010-05-20T05:28:00.000-07:00

You wouldn't believe it, really - especially if you're a writer - if I told you that last night, a rejection letter made my day.

But it did.

I sent in a creative non-fiction piece to Copper Nickel. Untrained in CNF for the most part, I expected flat rejection (and perhaps some snickering), but I quite liked the piece and thought I might get lucky. Last night, the generous editors of Copper Nickel sent me this rejection:

"We think this piece has potential and that it is relevant because of the many people searching for meaning and struggling with religion as an institution. Having said that, we don't think it is fully fleshed out and complete. It could use more. We hope that you will feel encouraged by this short note and send us something else, or a rewrite."

It gives me something to hang my hat on. It's not an acceptance, but it shouldn't have been - I'm a novice at this sort of writing and the piece needs work. But the fact that the editors actually encouraged me to work on it at greater length - or to send them something else! - was a very real boost to me. It proved they read my piece. It proved that the piece was salvageable with work, editing, and redrafting. (This is where I, and most other writers I know, insert the happy "I am not a failure" dance.) It proved I wasn't wasting my time. It reminded me of something I do occasionally forget: rejection and failure are not end-points. They are rest-stops where I can pause, take a closer look at what isn't working, and rethink things a bit.

So this morning, I am pleased with thinking that I don't have to stop writing CNF, I just need to get better at it.

It's the most encouraging rejection I've ever received.

Reading for 2010

2010-04-29T14:29:00.000-07:00

Back in January, I decided to keep track of my leisure reading for the year. I know I tend to read a lot, but I've never kept a record (which becomes awkward when I accidentally buy multiple copies of something, or my loot from the public library are things I've read before.) In any case, the damage for 2010 so far is pretty impressive, and I'm pleased that I've been able to read so many poets in addition to my usual bodiceripper and vampire fare:

Damaged by Alex Kava
High Windows: poems by Philip Larkin
Sestets: poems by Charles Wright
Bells in Winter; poems Czeslaw Milosz
Here, Bullet: Poems by Brian Turner
Bethlehem In Broad Daylight: Poems by Mark Doty
Slantwise: poems by Betty Adcock
Messenger: New and Selected Poems 1976-2006 by Ellen Bryant Voigt
Broken by Karin Slaughter
Jane Kenyon’s Collected Poems by Jane Kenyon
Captive Heart by Phoebe Corr
The Uncertain Certainty: Interviews, Essays and Notes on Poetry by Charles Simic
Gravity: Stories by Michael Davis
The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
Life Makeovers: 52 Practical and Inspiring Ways to Improve Your Life One Week At A Time by Cheryl Richardson
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Find Your Strongest Life: What the happiest and most successful women do differently by Marcus Buckingham
I Wish I Had a Heart Like Yours, Walt Whitman (poems) by Jude Nutter
Notes from No Man’s Land: American Essays by Eula Bass
Push by Sapphire
Face (poems) by Sherman Alexie
Wormwood by Poppy Z. Brite
Bone Magic by Yasmine Galenorm
So Cold The River by Michael Koryata
You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto by Jaron Lanier
Under the Dome by Stephen King
Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
Relentless by Dean Koontz
Sizzle by Julie Garwood
Cloud Watcher by Lilith Saintcrow
A Tale of Two Gardens: Poems from India 1952-1995 by Octavio Paz
The Spirit Level by Seamus Heaney
The Last White Knight by Tami Hoag
The Scripture of the Golden Eternity by Jack Kerouac
Days We Are Given: Poems by Alice D’Alessio
Beyond the Highland Mist by Karen Marie Moning
Hidden Fire by Jo Davis
Under Fire by Jo Davis
Trial by Fire by Jo Davis
Door into the Dark: Poems by Seamus Heaney
Blaze of Memory by Nalini Singh
Branded by Fire by Nalini Singh
Hostage to Pleasure by Nalini Singh
The Demon's Librarian by Lilith Saintcrow
To Desire a Devil by Elizabeth Hoyt
To Beguile a Beast by Elizabeth Hoyt
To Seduce a Sinner by Elizabeth Hoyt
To Taste Temptation by Elizabeth Hoyt
Blinking with Fists: Poems by Billy Corgan
Angels' Blood by Nalini Singh
The Darkest Whisper by Gena Showalter
The Darkest Pleasure by Gena Showalter
The Darkest Kiss by Gena Showalter
The Darkest Night by Gena Showalter
Mine to Possess by Nalini Singh
Caressed by Ice by Nalini Singh
Visions of Heat by Nalini Singh
Slave to Sensation by Nalini Singh
Nine Horses: Poems by Billy Collins
Must Love Hellhounds - Short stories
Storm Watcher by Lilith Saintcrow
Dark Watcher by Lilith Saintcrow

Gonesongs Reordered and Sent to Artistic Geniuses

2010-04-27T18:56:00.000-07:00

I am happy to report that I have finished retyping the suggested reordering of Gonesongs. Peter Hammarberg and Christina D'Airo, the artistic geniuses who brought you the cover and inside art of God in my Throat, have graciously offered to read this manuscript and take a bunch of fabulous photos for me to choose from. I cannot wait to see what they come up with!

Protip: surround yourself with awesomely artistic and generous people early and often. Unless you are fabulous with visual arts in addition to words, you'll need the help. Desperately. And often, what they will bring to, or see in, the work will be vastly different - and likely more beautiful - than what you see yourself.

Considering the Power of Words and Silence

2010-04-18T11:28:00.000-07:00

Ever since I learned to read and write, the power of words has thrilled me. It also to this day terrifies me how much power a handful of words from the right (or wrong) person at the right (or wrong) moment can hold so much power over your life. Think about it: the words you want to hear. The words you are loathe to hear.

Someone offers you a job. Someone tells you that you are fat. Someone tells you they think you are beautiful. Someone admires your work, or someone tells you to look for something in a different field. Someone reveals a secret. Someone tells a lie. Someone says I love you.

And, by extension of the power of words, the power of silence. Someone chooses to hold their tongue instead of gossip. Someone does not accuse you. Someone does not say I told you so. Someone chooses to remain silent instead of asking you to stay. You do not tell someone how important they are to you. You do not say how much you need a particular thing in order to be happy. You do not say I love you.

Even these things we do not say, they are word-forms, with as much power in the withholding as the giving of words.

And on this, we build our lives, and it is all sand and fog.

And they are, in the end, all just words. But what different directions they spin us in, what effects they have on the trajectory of our lives. How easily they can help us transcend ourselves...or crush us, as though our centers weren't made of bone at all.

On A Full Brain and a Furious Pen

2010-04-17T10:29:00.001-07:00

Last night I reformatted and edited my MFA thesis and sent it out a peer reviewed journal (with a list of possible others if it doesnt get picked up there). I have 5 poetry projects in-progress (some farther along than others, and 6 if you count a book already contracted but not completed), and another two I want to start but have just been germinating in my brain without any ink (or pixels) spent on them yet. I also have a CNF essay collection in progress with two essays completed and sent out to various lit mags, and another twelve or fifteen ideas of additional essays. I have an idea for a collection of critical essays on a particular section of literature that I am interested in writing about.

I am co-editing two anthologies with Carol Smallwood on writing for women, Women and Poetry: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing by Successful Women Poets and Women Writing on Today's American Family, and currently sending out the book proposal to publishers for those. I also have ideas for 2 more anthologies that I haven't even started crafting proposals or calls for contributors for, and I have been considering writing a collection of critical essays on an area of literature I'm very taken with.

And all of this outside my actual job, which I like very much and is at least as time consuming as my writing projects. But I am still grinning like an idiot about it all, even with the whirring brain, the random hits of ideas or lines that I have to grab a pen and mark on a random receipt before it flies away from me.

And so, because of all of this bouncing inside my skull, whenever I am not at work, sleeping or packing, I am writing (or thinking about writing). I was just thinking that it must be incredible to be able to do this as a full time job. I love librarianship, but if I hit the Lotto tomorrow...

Call for Contributors: Women Writing on Today’s American Family

2010-04-15T14:51:00.000-07:00

Women Writing on Today’s American Family

Submissions are being sought for an anthology about writing and publishing by women with experience in writing and publishing about family. Possible subjects: using life experience; networking; unique issues women must overcome; formal education; queries and proposals; conference participation; self-publishing; teaching tips. Tips on writing about family: creative nonfiction, poetry, short stories, nonfiction, novels.

Practical, concise, how-to articles with bullets/headings have proven the most helpful to readers. Please avoid writing too much about “me” and concentrate on what will help the reader. No previously published, co-written, or simultaneously submitted material.

Foreword by Supriya Bhatnagar, Director of Publications, Editor of The Writer’s Chronicle, Association of Writers & Writing Programs, George Mason University.

Afterword by Dr. Amy Hudock, co-founder of Literary Mama, an on-line literary magazine chosen by Writers Digest as one of the 101 Best Web Sites for Writers.

Co-Editor Colleen S. Harris is a 2010 Pushcart Prize nominee. Her book of poetry, God in My Throat: The Lilith Poems (Bellowing Ark Press, 2009), was a finalist for the Black Lawrence Book Award; These Terrible Sacraments, is forthcoming in 2011. Colleen has a MFA degree in writing and has appeared in The Louisville Review, Wisconsin Review, River Styx, and Adirondack Review, among others. She’s included in Library Journal; and Contemporary American Women: Our Defining Passages.

Co-Editor Carol Smallwood is a 2009 National Federation of State Poetry Societies award winner included in Who’s Who of American Women who has appeared in Michigan Feminist Studies, The Writer's Chronicle, The Detroit News. She's included in Best New Writing in Prose 2009. Her 23rd book is Writing and Publishing: The Librarian's Handbook (American Library Association, 2010). A chapter of newly published Lily’s Odyssey was short listed for the Eric Hoffer Prose Award.

Please send 3-4 possible topics you would like to contribute each described in a few sentences and a 65-75 word bio using the format like the bio’s above. Please send by May 24, 2010 using FAMILY/your last name on the subject line to smallwood@tm.net. You’ll receive a Go-Ahead and guidelines if your topics haven’t been taken. Contributors will be asked to contribute a total of 1900-2100 words. Those included in the anthology will receive a complimentary copy as compensation.

Call for Contributors: Women and Poetry: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing by Successful Women Poets

2010-04-15T14:50:00.000-07:00

Women and Poetry: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing by Successful Women Poets

Contributors needed for articles about: time management, using life experience, women's magazines, critique groups, networking, blogs, unique issues women must overcome, lesbian and bisexual writing, formal education, queries and proposals, conference participation, judging poetry contests, feminist writing, self-publishing, teaching tips--just a few areas women poets are interested.

Practical, concise, how-to articles with bullets/headings have proven the most helpful. Please avoid writing too much about “me” and concentrate on what will most help the reader. No previously published, co-written, or simultaneously submitted material.

The Foreword is by Molly Peacock, the author of six books of poetry, including The Second Blush (W.W. Norton and Company, 2008).

Co-Editor Colleen S. Harris is a 2010 Pushcart Prize nominee. Her book of poetry, God in My Throat: The Lilith Poems (Bellowing Ark Press, 2009), was a finalist for the Black Lawrence Book Award; These Terrible Sacraments, is forthcoming in 2011. Colleen has a MFA degree in writing and has appeared in The Louisville Review, Wisconsin Review, River Styx, and Adirondack Review, among others. She has been included in Library Journal; and Contemporary American Women: Our Defining Passages.

Co-Editor Carol Smallwood is a 2009 National Federation of State Poetry Societies award winner included in Who’s Who of American Women who has appeared in Michigan Feminist Studies, The Writer's Chronicle, The Detroit News. She's included in Best New Writing in Prose 2009. Her 23rd book is Writing and Publishing: The Librarian's Handbook (American Library Association, 2010). The first chapter of newly published Lily’s Odyssey was short listed for the Eric Hoffer Prose Award; a chapbook by Pudding House Publications.

Please send 3-4 topics you would like to contribute each described in a few sentences and a 65-75 word bio using the format like the bio’s above. Please send by May 24, 2010 using POETS/your last name on the subject line to smallwood@tm.net. You will receive a Go-Ahead with guidelines if your topics haven’t already been taken. Contributors will be asked to contribute a total of 1900-2100 words. Those included in the anthology will receive a complimentary copy as compensation.

These Terrible Sacraments and Gonesongs to be Published!!

2010-04-09T11:58:00.000-07:00

My current writing projects include: a book chapter on managing the multigenerational library; a full-length book manuscript on low-cost professional development for librarians; a handful of academic journal articles on librarystuffs such as patron billing, matrix management, and a few others.

On the more creative side (as opposed to the non-fiction side), I have recently started writing a collection of poems dedicated to my younger brother, who while in the Marines served multiple tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. It's a collection of war poems that weaves together bits and pieces of his experiences as he's shared them, pieces of my experience and that of my family as we lived through his deployments, and stories from other folks I know whose loved ones served in the military. I started it about two weeks ago, though the idea has been percolating for some time. I tentatively titled it These Terrible Sacraments.

Now, for the big news. In absolutely incredible, unbelievable, I-am-still-pinching-myself news, my poetry manuscript Gonesongs, which you may remember (if you read the blog) was also my MFA creative thesis, has been accepted for publication by Bellowing Ark Press.

In further maybe-I-should-play-the-Lotto news, I had mentioned my current project to my editor and sent the incomplete manuscript for him to see. To my complete amazement, he enjoyed These Terrible Sacraments so much that he wants to publish it as well! In fact, he'd prefer to publish it before Gonesongs, so you'll likely see it first.

I am floored for a number of reasons. First - two manuscript acceptance within less than a week of each other. For books of poetry. This does not happen in real life! Second - well, getting an incomplete manuscript picked up? never happen in a million years unless you're famous like Kay Ryan, Billy Collins or Molly Peacock. I bet they could pledge an unfinished book of poetry and someone would snatch them up. For it to happen to me - an unknown except to my friends and family - is a giant leap of faith on the part of the press. Third - that an editor would be as passionate about what I want to do with my work as I am is something that has really touched me. I intended this book as a gift for my brother - I never considered that it would be published-for-real given the political nature of writing about war. To have my publisher as committed to having people see this as I am is an incredible feeling.

The powers that be really overdid it with the generosity-stick beating over at Bellowing Ark. These will be my second and third books of poetry, and all will have come out of their press, courtesy of Robert Ward. I am so far beyond thrilled, it's like a new country. I will have to plant a flag. I will have to name it. perhaps later - right now I'm grinding on These Terrible Sacraments. I'll keep you updated with publishing schedules and artwork!

On the Importance of Ordering Your Poetry Manuscript

2010-04-09T11:56:00.000-07:00

This is a topic I don't know that we discuss enough as poets. There are a bare handful of articles about it, but nothing truly substantial, likely because it's a personal and very dependent-on-the-content endeavor: ordering a poetry manuscript. Most fiction - and even non-fiction - that I've read moves through a sense of time in the narrative. Poets are not always so lucky, and our pieces don't always cohere to each other the way a novelist's chapters do.

It's not enough to have just written enough (and hopefully more than enough, so you can toss some) poems to fill a book (usually between 48-75 pages, for poetry books). You have to make sure they go together, that they're ordered in the most attractive fashion possible so that each poem's strengths are highlighted. Now, I'm not saying you have to write a themed collection, though those seem to be increasingly popular. I am talking about that ever-elusive, oh-so-ephemeral sense of flow.

An example. My manuscript Gonesongs has poems in it that I wrote 15 years ago (though I revised them some in light of the training in craft I've had since then), some were written shortly before turning the manuscript in as my creative thesis for my MFA. The poems range from remembrances of childhood and my parents, college days, love poems, grief poems - it runs the gamut of personal experience and family history for me. Jeanie Thompson, my last-semester mentor in the program, and I worked hard to find an ordering of the poems that suited. Because of the family and history arc through the poems, we essentially ordered it chronologically so that the poems tell the history. We wrestled over some placements that weren't obvious in the timeline, and after looking at the manuscript, some poems dropped out completely because they didn't "fit" - they were so wildly of the topics addressed in other poems, so structurally or imagistically different, or surrealist as opposed to the very realistic narrative of the bulk of the manuscript, that we dumped a few. *This* is why you have to have more poems than you need to start out with. You'll find a poem (or three, or seven) that you thought worked just doesn't once you look at the manuscript as a whole.

In any case, Jeanie and I wrestled the collection into an order, I was pleased with it, but after working so closely with a single manuscript for that long, I never really wanted to see Gonesongs again. I know some poets work on one project at a time, or even one poem at a time, for years - I need to have multiple manuscripts or series going at a time to keep me firing on all cylinders. So, after spending May through November on only that book...I was ready to put it away.

That isn't to say it's a meh manuscript - I think it's quite good, and there are a number of poems in it that have been picked up by high quality journals. My editor at Bellowing Ark seemed quite taken with it, and recently offered to publish it. He also mentioned he'd like to take some liberties with the ordering, and that he'd send his recommendations to me. And so here we are.

I just received his suggested re-ordering of the Gonesongs poems in the mail. It's like a completely different book (in a good way). I am utterly floored at how the same material in a different order can make such a huge difference! He utterly upset the chronological narrative ordering (much like, I admit, a novel would have moved) of the original, creating instead of my three part storyline a book in four parts where each part focuses on relationship and emotion instead. I don't know if it is the re-ordering or because I've been some months away from the book, but to me it seems to have more emotional depth this way. I have one or two recommendations I'll send back - minor swaps, moving a poem one or two paces to the left, not a whole 'nother re-ordering, but I am pleased.

Lesson #1: When your editor asks if he or she may take liberties with your work in the interest of making it the best it can be, let them. It's incredible what fresh eyes can bring to a piece, and remember: they want it to be the best book, too. It's in their interest to up the holy-crap-awesome factor. Remember this, don't be offended, and loosen your grip on the work. You don't have to sell out on important points or compromise your integrity, but you should take constructive criticism and recommendations from the good place they are given.

Lesson #2: Walk away a bit. hate your work? Tired of it, though you were passionate about it a week, two weeks, a month ago? Walk away. Replenish your energy. Work on something different, go to the beach and relax, read a book or seven. Come back to it later and read it anew with fresh eyes.

Lesson #3: Ordering is CRITICAL to the bang of your manuscript. Try it a few different ways. I know poetess Kathleen Driskell makes it a habit to rent a room, string twine, and actually hang the poems with clothespins as she contemplates order. If I can remove the dog from the area, I do mine strewn about the floor. Whatever works for you, but try it.

In the end, though, as much as your editor wants to help you make the work the best, it's your decision. if it's not something you'll be proud to have your name on forever and ever, you need to speak up. I will again recognize that I have been incredibly lucky that the universe matched me with a generous and sensitive editor.

This Poem Wants to be a Sonnet. Dammit.

2010-04-07T19:24:00.000-07:00

While I was working on my MFA at Spalding University, when workshopping it became a running not-always-funny joke that when being workshopped by jeanie Thompson and/or Debra Kang Dean, if your poem was hitting a note but not as clearly as it could have, if it was a relatively shorter piece with a punch at the end, one of the Master Poetesses would murmur (or state very baldly):

"This poem wants to be a sonnet."

Imagine the nodding heads all around. Now imagine the screaming inner voice of the poet whose work is being discussed. Imagine the thoughts: "Oh my dear sweet flying spaghetti monster, a sonnet? Are you (very talented) bishes crazy? Shakespeare was a sonnetteer. Edna St. Vincent Millay. Elizabeth Barret Browning. Hopkins, Heaney, Peacock. But yea, though I love the saints of poetry and form, I fear the dreadful, work intensive, harsh mistress sonnet." Sprinkle a few more curses in there liberally, plus a whitening of the face, some weeping and gnashing of the teeth and a wish to drop into the floor, and that's about right.

The killer of it was, Jeanie and Debra were right. It took a few semesters, quite a bit of study, and the luck of having friendly, un-scary sonnetteer Molly Peacock as a workshop leader, but eventually I got a small sense for the sonnet. I rarely turn to form, and I am a clumsy sonnetteer for the most part, but it has helped me on occasion, and I've even had a few sonnets published in Sixty Six; The Journal of Sonnet Studies, which was a great surprise.

I am thinking about this tonight as I work on revising some poems I wrote with my brother in mind. He was recently honorable discharged from the US Marine Corps after multiple tours through Iraq and Afghanistan, and occasionally he drops tidbits of information or stories that I find fascinating and want to explore. And so These Terrible Sacraments was born. I intended for it to be a chapbook, and it's about 35 pages now. However, I keep thinking of new facets I want to explore, which may well end up giving me a full length manuscript. Of war poems, which I am quite sure will die a lonely death, since I imagine no one wants to read a themed collection on that. but I'm going to write it anyway, because it's been a hell of a ride so far.

In any case, These Terrible Sacraments is my attempt to understand war from through my brother's stories as well as from the perspective of those of us left behind - sisters, brothers, mothers, wives. My hope is that it neither glorifies nor demonizes war and those who fight it, but concentrates on the immense emotional undertaking war becomes.

It is this emotional turmoil in most of the pieces that is turning me toward form. I began the collection as a series of free form free verse pieces. As I've been revising them, some that had the momentum and friendly line breaks turned into tercets. Some of the slower more contemplative pieces have become poems in couplets. I have one or two where I think I see a villanelle poking through. But there are a number of poems, particularly the shorter - say, 13 to 18 lines - poems with a definite turn near the end, or well into the second half, that have been crying "sonnet" to me. At first it was a whisper-hint. Now it's more a cowbell-clanging.

My reaction was "this is going to suck and I will be cursing a lot." For me, sonnets require complete concentration, vigorous revision, and a ruthlessness towards the original that I rarely exercise. But the emotional content and the movement within the poem seems to call for it. And so, honoring what I've learned about my craft, and quashing my fear with the memory of merry Molly expounding upon her love for the form and it's many incarnations (intextations?), I will be hammering, cajoling, and begging sonnets to come forth from the freeform chaos of some current poems. It can be done, and as I've noted in the past, the effort is always worth it.

Honestly? It's daunting. But if I'm going to make this collection the best it can be so that I can be proud to present it to my brother, it needs must be done. *rolls up sleeves* Here, sonnet sonnet...

Gonesongs is a Go! and more....

2010-04-05T11:58:00.000-07:00

In the most recent exciting news, my poetry manuscript Gonesongs (which was also my MFA thesis) has been accepted for publication by Bellowing Ark Press. I am absolutely thrilled that the editor liked this collection so much - it's one that is very close to my heart, and much more personal than God in my Throat in some ways, since it deals with love and family without the cushion (or armor) of working in persona. There's some work left to do with the ordering of it (I never did reach a place where I was completely thrilled with the structure of it), but my editor is, as he puts it, "taking liberties," and I'll get to take a peek at them shortly. I'm looking forward to it. Never underestimate the power of an editor with a passion for their work and an affection for yours.

In any case, Gonesongs will be tentatively scheduled for publication in early 2011. Until then, if you haven't ordered your copy of God in my Throat: The Lilith Poems, you should. That way you can compare them and tell me which you liked best while also supporting a small press!

New poems coming out in River Styx, Tipton Poetry Journal, Chaffey Review, Penguin Review, Red Wheelbarrow and Lamplighter Review. I've also got a piece that will be anthologized in Knocking at the Door, a poetry anthology forthcoming from Buddhapuss Ink sometime in August 2010.

A good haul for the November/December submission batch, I think. My next submissions likely won't be until mid to late May, when I've settled in after the move to Chattanooga.

I'm up to 52 books read so far for 2010 - a mix of paranormal romance, poetry, CNF essays, and more. I'm keeping track monthly on my other blog. I've also started what I had intended to be a chapbook of war poetry reflecting some of my brother's experience, which has blossomed into a larger project. I'm hoping to polish the collection titled These Terrible Sacraments in time to submit it to the Black Lawrence Press spring chapbook competition. And The Green of Breakable Things is out at various book contests and available for interested publishing parties.

Also, the sun has finally come out to bake me, and I am sporting my first merry sunburn of the season. Let's hear it for the rebirth of growing things, and for moving on to what we are meant to do.

Happy writing, all!

Busy 2010

2010-02-21T13:35:00.000-08:00

February is not even over yet, and already it is a busy 2010!

Publications

From my creative thesis, the poems "Challenger," "Bud Vase", "Copper in Fire","Gift Shop, Museum of Natural History", "Carving Your Name" and "Coleman Canoe" have all received acceptances for a future issue of Bellowing Ark and Penguin Review. I am particularly excited to report that out of my newest unpublished manuscript, The Green of Breakable Things, the poem "Fishing" will appear in Third Wednesday, and poems "The Ant" and "Clearing Weeds from Daddy's Grave", will appear in a future issue of Bellowing Ark. Another poem which is a favorite of mine, "Star Inside the Apple", will appear in Orange Coast College Review.

In non-fiction, my book chapters “Millenials, Gen-X, Gen-Y, and Boomers, Oh My! Managing Multiple Generations in the Library” and “Management Tips for Merging Multiple Service Points” will appear in the book Library Management Tips That Work edited by Carol Smallwood, to be published by the American Library Association in 2010. Another two book chapters, “Low- and No-Cost Development Opportunities for Librarians” and “Managing Staff Stress During Budget Crises: Lessons for Library Managers” ( the second co-written with Mary Chimato) are forthcoming in the book Surviving and Thriving in the Recession: A How-to-Do-It Manual for Librarians, also edited by Carol Smallwood and expected to be published by Neal-Schuman in 2010.

New Employment

On the job front, I've accepted a professorship at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where I will work as Head of the library's Access Services department as of May 2010. I'll be applying for the EdD program there, am hoping to take workshop classes with poets Earl Braggs ad Rick Jackson, and am hoping to be able to adjunct in the English department. (Maybe not all of that at once, though.) I'm excited to be returning to UTC, where I worked as a reference & instruction librarian from 2007-2008. There is, however, quite a bit of work left to do at NCSU (not to mention packing up the apartment), so I am trying not to get ahead of myself.

Miscellany

Random things: I have been feeling very tired and run-down the past few weeks. In addition to a nasty sinus infection that simply won't go away (going on 9 weeks now), I do believe I've overcommitted. Too late to do anything about it now, but I will be better about volunteering for deadlined items in the future. In fact, I may turn down the fire on nonfiction library writing a bit after the book I committed to write is complete, and for librarystuff, tell myself that 2 articles/book chapters and 2 presentations a year is a fine momentum. Given that UTC is building as new library and taking on all the challenges that come with that, if I hit even those numbers, I'll be pleased. I'm looking forward to seeing my old personal trainer and getting myself back to the gym seriously the way I did when last in TN - I need to take better care of myself. I also plan to set aside home-time and space for serious creative writing once the library book is written (September).

Another random note; I am looking forward to hanging up my gypsy gear with the move to Chattanooga. Aside from moving to college in 1997 and the two moves a year in college, I moved in: 2001 (twice: to NY and then to GA), 2002 (twice: switched apartments), 2003 (moved to Kentucky), 2004 (moved from apartment into house with roomies), 2007 (twice: to NY then to TN), 2009 (from TN to NC). I am looking forward to being in one place for quite awhile. If all goes well, my next move won't be until 2013 or 14, and that will be from an apartment into a house, but in the same locale. *crosses fingers*

Good ProfHacker Article on Writing

2010-01-13T07:12:00.000-08:00

ProfHacker had a recent article The Writer as Athlete, and it was a good reminder to me that you don't have to do it *all* day, but you have to try to do it *every* day. Check out the part where it tells you that you have to get your gear - this is where I fall down most of the time. I sit in the corner of the couch , crouched over a laptop in a manner I know will end in back pain. Time to step it up a notch. Maybe getting my writing space refitted will encourage me to get back to the gym! (HAhahahahahaha)

Well, Hello, 2010. Is that a Poem in your Pocket?

2010-01-02T18:40:00.000-08:00

Ooh, 2010. What a lovely, round number. A number that pretty much gives permission - nay, orders us! - to set some goals, extend our limits, and make something count. I've listed my broad personal guidelines for 2010 here at my other blog, but I've got some specific writerly/artsy/crafty goals for this year too. For instance, I would like to:

1. Not terribly daunting, but: keeping a record of the books I read throughout the year and the movies I see. It's something I've wanted to keep track of for awhile and have simply been too lazy. I've already started this one, and the list is here at "Warmaiden's Diary." Not the juicy kind of diary, just the books & movies thing.

2. Work on a poetry project a month. Aside from writing my own poetry, I do think that studying it in a structured way helps me with my creativity, and helps prevent dry spells. Now that my MFA time is over (*sob*), I've decided to make a list of poetry projects to work on throughout the year, and the list came out to 11, whcih I figure is good, considering other projects and things that'll come up through the year. I'll be able to spend about a month on each - some are exercises, like writing in form and translation, and some are actually studies (like my plans for looking into lyric and elegiac poetry). The ones that made the list for this year are:

a) to do some translation work (esp Borges, Neruda, Lorca, Alfonsina Storni)
b) read (or re-read) some national epics - Shanameh, Cid, Daredevils of Sassoun
c) study Rumi & Sappho (does that strike you as a weird combination?)
d) study Deep image poets/poetry
e) study elegies
f) study lyric poetry
g) read some Japanese poets
h) read some Russian poets
i) do a study of Surrealist poetry
j) study meter (*gulp*)
k) work in forms (sestina, ghazals, repetition forms, sonnets, etc)

3. Seriously put the last polish on The Green of Breakable Things and Gonesongs. Both have gotten a pretty warm reception from individual journals and reviews for individual pieces (and I've been thrilled with how quickly the pieces from The Green are being accepted!) - time to find them a home for their full-length selves. Both are already entered in a handful of competitions, so we'll see on that front.

4. Learn some more crochet stitches. The single crochet means my blankets are ridonkulously heavy and take forever to finish. I'd like to get out more than a half-blanket per winter.

5. Dabble in some figure drawing and oil painting. I've always wanted to, and even collected supplies...and then was daunted by the thought of marring the blank page and canvas.

That's about it, but more than enough. This isn't a list of "musts," since that would just feel overwhelming, and lead to failure. This is a list of the things I would like to do, and that I want to make room and time in my life for. This is the list of things that I can look to whenever I feel like saying, "I'm bored."

Peter Hammarberg Interview Me, Posts it on The Write Club!

2009-12-02T11:58:00.000-08:00

My good friend, scathing wit and fabulous New York poet Peter Hammarberg, interviewed me for The Write Club. His interview appears as "The Process: Featuring Colleen Harris." Peter had some really good and insightful questions - I think many of us write and rarely get the chance to talk about our process. Go ahead and give it a read, if you have a minute - and post your comments there, since I'd love to know what you think!

Breaking in The Green of Breakable Things

2009-11-30T19:49:00.000-08:00

In more good (and very recent) news beyond the Pushcart nomination:

The Lamplighter Review took my poems "Gold Frame," "In Praise of Kevlar" and "When You Came Home from the War." These are the first poems from my unpublished manuscript The Green of Breakable Things to be picked up, and I'm particularly proud of them. Hooray! Look for them in the next issue of Lamplighter. (Also, a side note - the response time was phenomenal, which is always much appreciated!)

I'll also have work out in the next issue of River Styx and Sow's Ear Poetry Review.

And finally for today, The Green of Breakable Things has been entered in her first poetry book contests. Wish her (and me) luck! (And, of course, if you're an editor and want to read the manuscript, I'd be happy to send it along *grin*)

Pushcart Nomination!!

2009-11-26T11:11:00.000-08:00

There is no turkey at my house. No stuffing, mashed potatoes, or any of the other foods and smells that I usually associate with Thanksgiving. I should probably be halfway to depressed. But, while I miss all of that usual foodly goodness, i can't quite bring myself to wallow very deeply. My trusty editor, Robert Ward, emailed me yesterday with some lovely news and an early Christmas gift: he nominated me for a Pushcart for my poem "The Light Becomes Us."

I'm absolutely thrilled/tickled/walking on air about it. (Choose your expression of joy and insert it as you will.) And for a number of reasons - first, well, it's a damn Pushcart, only one of the most prestigious writerly awards! Second, "The Light Becomes Us" happens to be one of my favorite, favorite poems of mine. (Can I have a favorite poem of my own without seeming too self-absorbed?) Anyway, it's a poem that makes me happy, each time I read it, that *I'm* the person who wrote it. Those are the best sort, I think, at least from the author's side of things.

And so, as we enter the holiday season and I am trying to make sure my worklife and my home/writing life remain separate and both lively, I am concentrating on how good a year this has been for me in terms of my creative writing. My first book published in June. My MFA completed in November. Various publications and anthologizations (new word!) in lit mags and journals, and now a Pushcart nomination. Quite the haul for a matter of mere months!

And for this turkeyless Thanksgiving, I am thankful to Robert for all of the support and good juju he has given me. I am thankful to the poets at Spalding (Jeanie Thompson, Phil Deaver, Molly Peacock, Greg Pape, Rosemary Royston, heather Wyatt and many others) for helping me to polish my craft and support this whimsical notion I had to become A Writer. To my mother, Joanne, for her unconditional love and support. And to the rest of my family and friends, both in meatspace and on the intarwebs, who humor me and politely ignore (or unabashedly cheer) my obsession with finding just the right word and rhythm. I am also indebted to every person who bought a copy of my book, either for yourself or for your library or as a gift for someone else - that was a wonderful gift to me, whomever the book ended up going to! I am thankful.

Back on the Submissions Train

2009-11-25T21:59:00.000-08:00

It is 1:00am. I just finished a few hours of submitting work, limiting myself (for tonight) to only those journals that have print publications and accept online submissions. I managed to get 21 submissions done, each with tailored cover letters, paying attention to who takes simultaneous submissions, who doesn't, and the number of poems each allows. I'm happy to see that more and more folks are utilizing the online submission manager software. it's not any easier on the eyes of the readers 7 editors (having read for the past 12 months for The Louisville Review, I feel your pain!), but it sure does make life a lot easier for writers.

I separate mu submissions by online vs mailing submissions because I prefer an efficient workflow, and it's easier for me to work this way and get more done. I was goaded into action by my poet-pal Rosemary Royston, who told me she was using her post-residency energy to get out her submissions. She inspired me, as I haven't submitted anything in ages and ages. So, twenty-one. Not bad for an initial crack. I'll do a snailmail batch (which tends to be smaller, since postage is expensive) before teh year is out, as well.

And truly? Between using Duotrope to limit the field, and the quick editing between my manuscripts-in-progress and cover letters? It took all of two and a half hours. Less,if you subtract the time I spent walking the dog. Sometimes I forget that it doesn't take much to put yourself out there. Get thee to submitting, writers!

Chugging right along. Heading to bed long past my bedtime. Happy Thanksgiving, all!

And She Lives....

2009-11-24T17:58:00.001-08:00

Okay, yes, it's been four months since I've last posted. Eep. How easily those weeks fly by without a thought, and eventually I'm able to ignore that nagging little voice reminding me about this blog. And *that* is all too close to how easy it is to ignore that little voice that tells me to write anything.

The big news: I've graduated! I now hold a Master of Fine Arts in Writing (with a poetry concentration) from Spalding University. I'm so proud I could burst!

My mother and some of my best friends hauled themselves to Louisville for my graduation, and it was wonderful to know they were there to see it and share in my excitement. WOO. Big excitement. This is the degree I am proudest of, so far, in addition to my undergrad degrees. (I appreciate the MLIS, but it was easy *grin*)

I had such a great time at my last residency, and felt so healthy with having time to write (which I did instead of drinking and smoking and staying out late partaking in other writerly bad habits), that I am rededicating myself to my writing. I am working on filling in a few gaps I see in my creative thesis before sending it out, and I have an in-progress collection that's very different from my usual, but which is a lot of fun and I think it has potential. It's tentatively titled The Green of Breakable Things, and I just submitted a few to a journal. (Ack, I've been ignoring submissions, too, and that's the other thing I need to get on.) The goddess collection keeps morphing ad changing and has lost its shape a bit, but it's still in the hopper.

I am thinking about setting up a writing corner and being serious about my writing time (as opposed to perching on the couch with the laptop balanced precariously, in my lazy after-work slouch). I have the corner all set up, and am seriously considering buying a desktop computer (as mine has died, and the wee 12" laptop is not comfortable for long-term writing endeavors). I'm pretty set on the Dell XPS. Pretty, pretty (and I've promised myself if I can polish off the two manuscripts by June, I'll play WoW again, recreationally).

I'm not waiting for the New Year to make my resolutions. I will write now. I will make the changes I need to make to ensure I don't let my job take over and crowd out my writing. It feels like a rebirth. Or at least waking from dormancy. Let's see what i can make happen...

Polishing Book 2: Gonesongs

2009-07-15T04:40:00.001-07:00

More from me in a week or two - right now I'm concentrating on polishing Book 2, which will be my creative thesis for the MFA. It's a whole lot different than God in my Throat - more autobiographical and more personal narrative, which makes me a bit more raw when working on it. The working title for it is Gonesongs, though I'm not sure if I'm in love with that. I've got another title percolating, but the poem that includes the title line isn't actually written yet. Working on that, and if it gets written - and fits into the collection - I'll let you know.

Anyway, I've been extremely lucky. I requested poetess Jeanie Thompson as my mentor (if you've been following this blog, you know that she was actually my mentor for my first semester in the program), and happy of happies, I got her. Her first run-through of the manuscript culled a lot of extraneous junk and unnecessaries, and included some commentary that give me a much better idea of how the manuscript stands on its own. It's sort of like the book was a slab of marble with a good sculpture inside, and she managed to carve something worthy out of it. All to say, it's already far better after her first run-through of the manuscript, even though there are a few major rewrites and revisions for me to get done in short order.

Colleen is Anthologized in Against Agamemnon: War Poetry 2009

2009-06-24T10:12:00.000-07:00

Happy news! My poem “Tysketöser” has been anthologized in Against Agamemnon: War Poetry 2009, edited by 2007 Pulitzer Prize Nominee James Adams. It's available out of Waterwood Press at Brazos Bookstore in Houston, TX (phone 713.523.0701). The focus was on poetry of witness, which is interesting, and it includes talented poets from around the globe. I am honored be included!

God in my Throat Gone to Print; Paper Proposal for Wales Conference

2009-06-17T13:02:00.000-07:00

Hi, all! Long time no write, I know. The best of news: God in my Throat: The Lilith Poems has gone to print, so if you pre-ordered a copy when the order form and website first went active, you should be seeing it quite shortly! Thank you both for your patience, and for your support of my work and the small press willing to put it out. You warm the cockles of my heart.

In other fun news, because it coincided nicely with the topic of my MFA critical thesis (which was on the poet H.D.'s revisionist mythmaking in her book length poem Helen in Egypt), I decided to pitch something to the "Recycling Myths, Inventing Nations" 2010 conference at Aberystwyth University in Wales (call for paper and panel proposals here). I almost feel guilty for it not really being related to my librarian-type research, but not enough not to make my pitch and cross the hell out of my fingers that it gets picked up for the conference. It's my first ever paper proposal (usually I pitch presentations). See my abstract below:

Revisionist Myth-Making: Poets Reclaiming and Rewriting History

Colleen S. Harris

Abstract

After a brief study of the classical foundation for contemporizing myth and some of the treatments of it that bring us to the present, the proposed paper examines how the American poet H. D. breaks from the traditional poetic epic by developing a female heroic character. The paper explores the importance and impact of H.D. writing a female hero out of the character of Helen of Troy to conquer manifestations of male archetypes such as the warrior, the lover, and the protector. Expanding from the exploration of H.D.’s revision of the Helen myth, the examination moves into the broader impact of modern poets creating revisionist mythologies by rewriting major (and minor) historical and mythological characters to reflect modern values and contemporary concerns. Other myth and history-modifying poets discussed in the context of the paper include Louise Glück, Michael Ondaatje, Claudia Emerson, Andrew Hudgins and Frank X. Walker. The paper concludes with a discussion of the impact of this revisionist mythmaking and alternative history-writing on perspectives of history, and the opportunities – and pitfalls - of contemporizing myth by infusing old mythologies with modern voice and contemporary issues.

So, here's to hoping I'm interesting enough to get tapped for Wales. (Do I get "exotic" points for being American? Doubtful, but I can hope.) Cross your fingers (and anything else you can cross) that they contact me!

God in my Throat Available for Purchase!

2009-05-17T14:50:00.000-07:00

Thrilling news! God in my Throat is available for online purchase! The webmaster at Bellowing Ark press has it up and ready for you to pre-order your copy (expected ship late June/early July). If you visit the website for the book I built (in the words of Debra Kang Dean's poetry, "a quality like something homemade"), there's a pdf order form if you prefer to order by mail via check or money order.

My nascent reading and appearance schedule is also at godinmythroat.com, and I'm hoping to add a few more NC sites, maybe another one in New York if I can swing it, a few in Lexington and Louisville, Kentucky, and am crossing my fingers that I might (puh-leeze!) land a spot at the Meacham Writers Workshop in Chattanooga, where I actually wrote the book. I'll keep you updated as I add dates!

Anyway, you can earn my unending gratitude and make my millenium if you decide to order a copy, and if I'm ever in the area, I promise to sign it. Or hug you. Both, or either, as you prefer *grin*

Books, Book Chapters, ISBNs...

2009-05-05T07:13:00.000-07:00

Tons of publishing news! I've been a complete slacker about submitting to journals lately, but I do have some larger chapter and booklength publications that are ready to go, ISBN-ed and all.

I have a chapter in Teaching Generation M: A Handbook for Librarians and Educators, edited by Robert Lackie and Vibiana Bowman-Cvetkovic. In fact, mine is Chapter 1: "The Haves and Have-Nots: Class, Race, Gender, Access to Computers and Academic Success." Wooo! This chapter feeds into a lot of the work I did as a reference and instruction librarian.

I also have two chapters published in Writing and Publishing: The Librarian's Handbook, edited by Carol Smallwood and up on ALA's catalog (available this fall). My chapters are titled “MLS, MFA: The Librarian Pursuing Creative Writing” and “The Poet-Librarian: Writing and Submitting Work.” This was a really lovely opportunity to mesh my love for librarianship with my passion for creative writing, and hearty thanks to carol for letting me be a part of it.

Most exciting, the latest news from Robert Ward at Bellowing Ark Press. The latest issue of Bellowing Ark went out with the flyer advertising God in my Throat. If that wasn't thrilling enough, a local bookstore, Quail Ridge Books, has invited me to do a reading on Sunday, September 20th at 3:00 pm with a few other local writers. Even better, they inquired about ordering copies! My publisher's reply was, "As with all small presses, publication dates tend to be "flexible;" however we can assure you that Ms Harris' book "God in My Throat" (ISBN 978-0-944920-68-8) will be available for purchase no later than 15 July 2009."

That's right, people. July 15th is the go-date. I am SO EXCITED. This also means that if you work at a bookstore, at a library, in an English department, at a uni or in a city I can get to easily, I may beg you to put me in touch with someone who can help me set up a reading. Totally cashing in on my pals - I know, tacky, but if you love me you'll brush it off. *grin* As soon as it's up on the publisher's site, I'll post the link here, and I just purchased http://godinmythroat.com/ - but it's an ugly starter page, and I need to find hosting. Working on it.

More to the point, let's talk about the fact that I have my own ISBN. This thrills me both as a writer and as a librarian. I'm immortal, now. IMMORTAL. And, of course, I'll need that number tattooed somewhere. Going to have to find a good piece of real estate to put that! Woo!

Bibliography to Date

2009-02-05T07:23:00.001-08:00

New job has me hopping, but the good news is that my extended critical essay (sort of a minor thesis) is complete and accepted. now all that's left is creative writing and putting together my creative thesis, which I'm hoping will turn into book 2. I've got good starts on two manuscripts right now, and I'm excited about both of them. More on that soon as I work on them. For now, I'd like to share my cumulative bibliography to date - it's not complete, since this semester isn't complete yet and I've one more full semester to go.

If you're interested and have the time, take a peek, let me know if I've skipped any of your favorite poets. I know there are gaps here, and I have plans to look at poets like Jane Kenyon, Maxine Kumin and Li-Young Le, among others, next semester. So, give it a run through - who would you add?

Boland, Eavan. Outside History: Selected Poems, 1980-1990. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1991.

Connor, Rachel Ann. H.D. and the Image. New York: Palgrave, 2004.

Dean, Debra Kang. Precipitates. Rochester: BOA Editions, 2003.

Doolittle, Hilda. Helen in Egypt. New York: New Directions, 1974.

Dove, Rita. Selected Poems. New York: Vintage-Random House, 1993.

Cisneros, Sandra. My Wicked Wicked Ways. New York: Turtle Bay Books, 1992.

Clifton, Lucille. Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000. Rochester: BOA Editions, 2000.

Eliot, T.S. Four Quartets. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1943.

--. The Waste Land and Other Poems. San Diego: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1934.

Emerson, Claudia. Late Wife: Poems. Louisiana State University Press, 2005.

Friedman, Susan Stanford and Rachel Blau DuPlessis. Signets: Reading H. D. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990.

Fritz, Angela DiPace. Thought and Vision: A Critical Reading of H. D.’s Poetry. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1988.

Gallagher, Tess. Instructions to the Double. Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1994.

Gentry, Jane. Portrait of the Artist as a White Pig: Poems. Louisiana State University Press, 2006.

Giovanni, Nikki. The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1996.

Glück, Louise. The First Four Books of Poems. Hopewell: The Ecco Press, 1995.

Guest, Barbara. Herself Defined: The Poet H. D. and Her World. Garden City: Doubleday, 1984.

Hayden, Robert. Collected Poems: Robert Hayden. Ed. Frederick Glaysher. New York: Liveright Publishing, 1996.

Haggis, Paul, and Bobby Moresco. Crash. Draft with Final Revisions, 18 March 2004. Bob Yari Productions, California.

Harjo, Joy. The Woman Who Fell From The Sky: Poems. New York: W.W. Norton, 1994.

Hugo, Richard, The Lady in Kicking Horse Reservoir. New York: W.W. Norton, 1973.

Hugo, Richard. The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing. New
York: W.W. Norton, 1982.

Iyer, Pico. Sun After Dark: Flights into the Foreign. New York: Alfred K. Knopf, 2004.

King, Michael, ed. H. D.: Woman and Poet. Orono: National Poetry Foundation, 1986.

Kinnell, Galway. Imperfect Thirst. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1994.

Kloepfer, Deborah Kelly. The Unspeakable Mother: Forbidden Discourse in Jean Rhys and H.D. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989.

Komunyakaa, Yusef. Dien Cai Dau. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1988.

Lauter, Estella. Women as Mythmakers: Poetry and Visual Art by Twentieth Century Women. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1984.

McPherson, Sandra. The Spaces Between Birds: Mother/Daughter Poems 1967-1995. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1996.

Manning, Maurice. Bucolics. Orlando: Harcourt, 2007.

Meek, Sandra, ed. Deep Travel: Contemporary American Poets Abroad. Roma, GA: Ninebark Press, 2007.

Merwin, W.S. The Vixen: Poems. New York: Knopf, 1996.

Milosz, Czeslaw, ed. A Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry. Harvest Books, 1998.

Morehead, Maureen. A Sense of Time Left. Monterey: Larkspur Press, 2003.

Morris, Adalaide Kirby. How to Live/ What to Do: H.D.’s Cultural Poetics. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003.

Ondaatje, Michael. The Cinnamon Peeler: Selected Poems. New York: Vintage Books, 1989.

Patchett, Ann. Bel Canto. Fourth Estate, 2002.

Paz, Octavio. The Other Voice: Essays on Modern Poetry. Harvest Books, 1992.

Peacock, Molly. Second Blush. New York: W.W. Norton, 2008.

Quinn, Vincent Gerard. Hilda Doolittle (H. D.). New York: Twayne Publishers, 1968.

Raffo, Heather. 9 Parts of Desire. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2006.

Rich, Adrienne. Poems: Selected and New, 1950-1974. New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 1974.

Robinson, Janice S. H. D.: The Life and Work of an American Poet. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1982.

Sexton, Anne. All My Pretty Ones. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961.

Smock, Frederick. Poetry & Compassion: Essays on Art & Craft. Nicholasville, KY: Wind Publications, 2006.

Stafford, William. The Darkness Around Us is Deep: Selected Poems of William Stafford. Ed. Robert Bly. New York: HarperPerennial, 1993.

Strand, Mark. Selected Poems. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991.

Sword, Helen. Engendering Inspiration: Visionary Strategies in Rilke, Lawrence, and H. D. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1985.

Williams, William Carlos. Selected Poems. Ed. Charles Tomlinson. New York: New Directions, 1985.

Dear 2008

2008-12-29T11:11:00.000-08:00

Dear 2008:

It's been real. I've learned a ton, I've gotten much done, and am leaving you wiser, better prepared for life, and healthier than I've been in a long time. While much of that might be attributed to the gym habit, I truly believe that a lot of it has to do with the writing I've gotten done and the writing that's sitting just over the horizon waiting for me. My main motivator used to be my friends, who I love and admire, but the power of that motivation fades when I live so far away from most of them and see them so seldom. I replaced them with work, and while I love what I do for a living, it's not enough to keep me going through both daylight and nighttime hours. Even writing isn't my main motivation, though it's a lovely engine and I feel like I'm doing something right.

I want to be happy. This is my new motivation. And this year I've found that what makes me happy is balance. A balance between work and play, between thought-work and physical work, between hermiting and socialization, between splurging and being frugal enough that I can address my debt, between obsession and affection. Writing happens to help me achieve this balance, and I am excited to have found a home in my pen.

So, 2008, I have a lot to thank you for. A job I've loved, and the the gumption to take the new job I'll start in 2009. A bevy of new friends on both the writerly front and the librarian front. The upcoming book and other pubs. A reminder that I do indeed have good friends who will both save my bacon and take me to task when necessary. The seeds of ideas for books I'll write next year. The chance to travel and meet some of my invisible internet pals. The eventual (and hard-earned) good health of my wunderhund Otto. My mother's recovery. My health and increasing fitness. My growing ease with the person I've become over the years. Listing all of this seems very petty, but I glow with each one. Thank you so very much, and goodbye.

Mellifluous Tones (or not): WUTC Interview

2008-12-05T08:03:00.000-08:00

Well, Mike Miller had me in this past Monday to interview for WUTC's Around and About feature on the local Chattanooga radio. I missed the airing of it because I was working the reference desk, but am happy that Mike came over to give me the file. We talked about poetry, the writing process, the revising process, various bits and pieces. We talked for quite awhile (Mike is also a writer, though I think he usually works with fiction), but he edited my ramblings admirably (though he couldn't do much about altering my voice to make me sound less like a lumberjack with a sinus infection).

Because I don't actually have hosting anywhere (LibrarianFAIL - I'm working on it, once I get moved), my favorite systems dude, InfoSciPhi has set me up so I can share the audio file with the masses.
You can listen to the interview here - if you click the link, it'll open in your media player or in a browser tab and play, but you can also right click and download the file. It's about six minutes long, and I do hope you enjoy it!

Small Triumphs

2008-11-29T19:38:00.000-08:00

Why yes, I did just finish writing my extended critical essay - the Spalding MFA version of a master's thesis (though a short one, since the main focus is in the 4th semester on our creative thesis). It has irked the everloving *crap* out of me that all of these folks pursuing a graduate degree were whining and bitching about a 20 to 30 page scholarly-type paper. C'mon,folks. Say it with me: graduate degree. I suppose I'm enough of an academic snob to feel like you shouldn't get one of those for just the creative writing part, especially since a lot of MFA programs can't very well fail you if your stuff is swill, so long as you jump through all of the hoops. A creative writing degree - an academic degree, now - should also imply that you've got training in critical thinking.

Sigh. Anyway, very happy that mine is done, since technically the final draft isn't due til packet 3. (And packet 1? Oh, due December 11. That's right. Nearly 2 weeks from now.) I'm hoping Phil Deaver (mentor for this semester, and all-around lovely poet and fiction writer) will okay this one right off, it's a very polished first draft. So, I may ask to see if I can send packet 1 early and get "The Female Epic Hero: Reclamation of Helen of Troy in H. D.’s Helen in Egypt" out of my hands. Yee haw and full steam ahead.

Oh, and I also completed a full second collection - Arguments Against Sleep is done and sent off to the Cider Press Review for its first crack (and yes, I know all about the shenanegans that went on with last year's competition). A Convocation of Goddesses is rolling, but slowly at this point. But hey, Arguments was written in a grand furnace of two weeks. My muse is a sadistic and demanding bitch. I love her.

Listen for me on WUTC!

2008-11-25T13:12:00.001-08:00

A pal of mine from workshop a couple of semesters ago, Mike Miller, has invited me onto our university's radio station for an interview and to read some of my work. I'm excited! I'll be meeting him in the studio on Monday at noon. Here's to hoping I don't completely bomb on-air! (It's about time my low voice was good for something, but I'm afraid I'll end up sounding like a man with a cold. harrumph.)

Post MFA Residency Report

2008-11-25T12:53:00.001-08:00

I spent 11/13 through 11/23 at the MFA residency for Spalding University in Louisville. It's been a stressful time with work piling up at the library and the impending move and due dates for graduate classes, but I had a wonderful, wonderful time. As much as I love being a librarian, it was a lovely chance to get into an artist headspace and pretend I was a real, live poet for an extended period. (Not that I'm not a poet, but for a living, eating and breathing the work and the lectures and the teaching.)

Residency was interesting and productive for me, though I question some of the choices that were made this round. Spalding had Patricia Gaines in with her assemblage "Strange Beauty - Blind Genius." (The pdf of the news release is available here.) She was patently unprepared for her presentation, which was disappointing. The graduating student lectures and readings were wonderful, the faculty were warm and helpful, and workshop was excellent this go-round. I got (and, I hope, gave) a lot of great input and suggestions for some pieces I had stalled out on and wanted to salvage, and it was simply a good group with good chemistry and tact, but a willingness to take up the difficult areas of work.

I did a great deal of writing this residency, which I usually don't have time to do. In fact, I've started two new collections, and have each of them about half done. This is great, given that I have to have a whole new book by October 2009, since I won't be able to use God in my Throat for my creative thesis since (hopefully) it will be published by then. And so, in addition to the in-progress collection Gone Things, I'm now also working on Arguments Against Sleep and A Convocation of Goddesses. Convocation was an idea I had quite some time ago but never really made a start with, and Arguments cropped up as an idea after a workshop session. Each of those three titles currently has about 20-25 poems in it, which is not terribly shabby. I prefer to have multiple projects going at once, so if I'm not in the mood to write in one vein, I can move to another. Here's to hoping they turn into something people want.

Finally, a note on the extended critical essay, which comes due for me on 12/11. It's our MFA program's concession to scholarly critical work, but shorter than a regular MA thesis, as it's only to be about 30 pages. The happy news: mine is about half-done, and I know quite a few folks who haven't started theirs. The not-so-happy news is, well, having to finish it. I really should have written it in its entirety earlier, but things have snowballed lately. All in good time, I have until the 11th.

Anyway, it's good to be back on track with writing, and good to be back in Chattanooga. I love the Brown Hotel and my MFA peeps, but I'm a hermit at heart, and I missed being able to crawl away for some solitude.

AWP Pedagogy Forum: Colleen FTW!

2008-11-11T18:45:00.000-08:00

Just got confirmation! My paper, "Poets Rewriting History: Researching for the Authentic Persona Poem," was accepted for presentation at the Pedagogy Forum at the 2009 Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference. Huzzah! This was my attempt to forge my librarianish interests with my creative writing interests, and I do have a particular affinity for the persona poem.

I'm really looking forward to this (though I may well need a place to crash, so if you're going to AWP and have some extra floorspace the night of February 12th, do let me know) - I've heard about AWP but have never been. I also appreciate the ability to expand my presenting into something that is very personal to me. I love librarianship and never plan to leave it, but writing I find personally fulfilling. It's nice to have my personal side validated in addition to my professional side *smile*

Another "Almost" at Black Lawrence Press

2008-11-11T11:13:00.000-08:00

I'm thrilled that God in my Throat has found a home with Bellowing Ark Press, and I'm hoping to get on the requested revisions over Thanksgiving. I also just received word that the manuscript came in as a finalist in the Black Lawrence Press 2008 St. Lawrence Book Award competition. I'm a constant finalist over there, between my chapbooks and this collection *grin*. Ah well. I'll have to stick to chapbooks to send to them now, since my first book will be out of the gate next year. I will now be excluded from all "first book" contests. Funny how that doesn't sting at all...

I now have a serious case of the happy and will be setting aside my moodfunk. Also, Alabama poetess Jeanie Thompson has offered to give me ideas and tips on marketing for the upcoming book, and I'm excited to get to talk to her about it at my upcoming residency next week.

A Bit of This, A Bit of That

2008-11-09T11:12:00.001-08:00

I'm behind on getting my things for the MFA residency together, which is disturbing since I'm driving to Louisville Friday morning. I also just realized that my first draft of our extended critical thesis is due December 11. Eep. I have all of my sources and a good idea of what I want to write...hopefully whatever mentor I get agrees.

Just got notice that the Adirondack Review accepted a second poem - hurrah! The first one they took is out in the Fall 2008 issue, so with the quick turnaround by their staff and their editor Diane Goettel, this one may be in the very next issue.

Looks like God in my Throat is definitely a go! Robert Ward (guru and editor over at Bellowing Ark Press) sent me two titles from his backlist that I'm tucking into right now, and I like both the construction and the content of the books. They're done in simple non-glossy paperback - it's the sort of book that forces the text to speak for it, unhindered (and unhelped) by any flashy cover art. I have zero problem with fun, glossy covers, but I also like minimalist work. And I very much like the stance of Bellowing Ark on what they do and do not publish, and Mr. Ward's superprompt responses to everything I've sent him both via post and via e-mail. I'm really looking forward to learning the publishing process, and am expecting Ward's revision suggestions shortly. I'll keep you posted on how the book moves.

Forthcoming Poem in War Anthology Against Agamemnon

2008-10-30T18:39:00.000-07:00

Some wonderful news! You ever get attached to a poem that gets treated a bit like a redheaded stepchild? I have one of those - "Tysketöser." I love that poem something awful. It's not even, I don't think, the best of my work. I've revised it umpteen times. It's been ripped in workshop, and Jeanie Thompson and Debra Kang Dean both tried to help me improve it at my very first MFA workshop, but I was left with the feeling they still thought it was rather misshapen.

And still I love the thing, my ugly little progeny. It's a raw piece - pure emotion in a monologue by a Norwegian women being prosecuted by her countrymen for sleeping with German soldiers to keep her children fed during World War II. It's probably unfit for general consumption - I use the word "cunt" in it - but the poem required it for the sound of that line and the tone of the piece, and I refuse to take it out. I figured that, if not the roughness of the poem itself, would keep it from ever finding a home on its own, unless I buried it deep in a collection, away from an editor's prying eyes. It's a strong statement about the place of women, about the horrors of war, and about survival and spirit. I think it's worthy of being called a "poem." but again, on this one, I'm biased.

Which is why I am more than I am happy to report that I was wrong about her never being published. "Tysketöser" will appear in an anthology of war poetry titled Against Agamemnon out of WaterWood press, edited by James Adams. I am thrilled, and "Tysketöser" will finally be in print, where I think she deserves to be. And yes, I'm doing the happy dance :)

More Manuscripts in Progress

2008-10-30T06:03:00.001-07:00

Merrily steaming along, I have two other manuscripts underway, though neither are quite near the finished stages. One is tentatively titled Gone Things That Stay or just Gone Things (not quite sure if that's a keeper of a title yet - "Things" is a word that tends to annoy me for its vagueness - but it captures the theme of the collection nicely so far, and I hate not having a working title). The other is still very much a work in progress, there are only about 12 pieces in it so far. It's in a rougher voice than I usually use, more rhythmic and spitfire style - not sure if there will ever be a market for that one, but I figure I need to get those pieces out of my system anyway, and they may as well be collected together. No firm working title for that second collection yet, though Love Letters from a White Woman or Train Track Child Comes Home may end up the working title.

I'm thrilled at the prospect of God in my Throat coming out with Bellowing Ark, and as soon as I have more news on that front, I'll report it here.

For now, I'll leave you with a draft of "Train Track Child Comes Home." The prompt that started this one was that it had to be a love poem (with "love" defined however you wish), exactly 21 lines long, with the lines as evenly matched as possible length-wise. I took some liberties on the length of the lines and broke the prompt a bit, and I'm not thrilled with the long tercets, so the next revision will change the form a bit. (Actually, the long tercets didn't fit into this blogform well, so I've broken the 21 line rule. The wording is much the same but the line breaks are different.) I wrote a second poem that I'm not including here that is more of an actual love poem - this one was an attempt at writing a love poem for a place that I both despise and am drawn to, the place where I grew up.

Train Track Child Comes Home

I’m lucky like a quarter left on the tracks, coming back
to the dull glint of nickel, the feel of a cold, sharp coin
against my wrist, the smokestack smell of a just-passed train
and the howl of cars jolted from the safety of the rails.

Warm metal tastes like a punch in the mouth, and I’m home,
where powdered sugar from the Entenmann’s factory mingles
in morning air with cocaine and our cigarette smoke halos, back
where love is cold, hard and brittle like weak iron. Home,

where I spent years chasing dragons, held hostage by scuffed
peddlers of temptation offering spoiled salvation neatly wrapped
in Ziploc from lice-infested pockets where train cars go to die.
We were brilliant as fog, riding bareback down dirty streets,

eyes closed, arms open, serenading the homeless, singing love songs
to dim streetlights while our fathers beat our mothers in silence.
I can see the self I left here to die, a half-ghost drifting across
Brentwood Road, two blocks past the carnicería, wearing slutty clothes,

cracking cinnamon gum in defiance. She waits, chases me
around concrete corners, reminds me of old crimes, dares me
to find the milky shadows of possibility spelled out in the I-Ching maze
of track marks I let scab over when I left, when I let myself forget.

But Brentwood never forgets, she rips those raw scabs open
and they’re thirsty as soon as I cross her borders, I can feel her whisper
echo in my bones - eso si que es, mi hija, nadie puede escaparme.
Tarry rail ties stain the landscape, pointing the way out,

but the firewhistle moans that it’s too late to leave this time,
I’m home for good and she doesn’t plan to let me go. I sit like a coin
on the tracks with a needle and flame, waiting to gain an edge.

An ISBN in my Near Future!!! OMGBBQ

2008-10-26T10:07:00.000-07:00

Apologies for not having much to say lately - my creative writing has taken a bit of a backseat to life. If you follow my other blog, you know that I just accepted a new position at NC State University, and will be joining the Wolfpack in January. I've got a number of papers due (this week, actually) for the MA Lit classes I'm taking, my MFA residency is fast approaching in mid-November, and I've been trying to polish off the Lilith manuscript and form another manuscript out of some poems that seem to have a family theme to them. I spent the last week in Monterey, CA, at a librarian conference where I presented twice and was able to meet a number of my online pals in person. It's been a thrilling, if exhausting, few weeks.

Last night, after attending a friend's gymnastics exhibition (is there anything sexier than watching a buff guy carry a standing chick in one hand?) I attended a party thrown by the inimitable Sybil Baker as part of the Meacham celebration, which was great fun. I went with fun author-ly news in hand - I received an email from the editor at Bellowing Ark...and with some revisions and edits, he says he wants to publish the Lilith manuscript! A book! Of mine! With it's own ISBN and everything! insert happy dance here

From what I've found in my research, Bellowing Ark's authors love the press and its editor, Robert Ward. From looking at not only the journal but also the books BA puts out, it's a lovely - and most notably, hopeful - press, where writers push back against darkness through the act of Creation, a place of contemplation and balance. I am very much looking forward to working with Robert to get God in my Throat into print as an entire manuscript.

And once it *is* in print, I will pander it mercilessly and beg everyone I know to buy a copy. *grin*

Chapbook "Carving Your Name" is a Semifinalist!

2008-10-08T06:44:00.000-07:00

Happy news! My chapbook "Carving Your Name" came in as a semi-finalist in the Black Lawrence Press Black River Chapbook competition for the Spring 2008 submission cycle. This is the second time I've hit semi-finalist status there. Grrr. I think in December I'm going to go ahead and revise the hell out of those chapbooks and send them back to see if I can't break into finalist/winner tiers. But I'm very happy about it, as this collection addresses some personal themes, as opposed to the last chapbook I sent them which was war poetry. It's good motivation at least *grin*

Hey Now, You're a Poemstar....

2008-10-06T06:16:00.000-07:00

The lack of posting here reflects how ridiculously busy things have been lately. I am merrily finished with my second MFA semester (huzzah!) and officially halfway through the program. Party in Louisville next November upon graduation, make a note!

In addition to finishing up that semester and getting my material together for November's residency and workshop, I made some final edits to the God in my Throat manuscript and sent it off to Robert Ward at Bellowing Ark Press. He picked up nine of my pieces from the collection for the last issue, so I'm crossing my fingers he likes the entire thing as much. Cross your fingers/toes/ankles/whatever for me if you think about it. At the very least, Robert has been super supportive and happy to dialogue about my work, his own work, and the state of poetry at large, and it's made for great conversation.

Right now I'm gearing up for some conference presentations at Internet Librarian in Monterey (in less than two weeks!), but after that, I have some revisions I want to get done, and it's about time to send out another batch of submissions. Right now I'm in sort of a holding pattern until December when some pressing deadlines are past. And then I'll be hoofing it to complete my extended critical essay for the MFA...hm. No break in sight, really.

In other news, a very good friend of mine (we grew up together) just got his proof copy of his very first book of poetry, which I will splash all over this blog once it's out and available for purchase - I even got to write one of the back cover blurbs. He's a poet whose energy really dazzles from the page, and I am incredibly proud of him - expect to see more about this guy here soon.

Acceptance in Adirondack Review!

2008-09-24T12:06:00.001-07:00

I am in receipt of an email from the Adirondack Review that they want one of my pieces! *happy happy poetess dance* I've heard such wonderful things about this journal that I'm excited. Stay tuned for details.

"Poverty" Appears in Blood Orange Review!

2008-09-24T06:45:00.000-07:00

Happy news! "Reclaiming Poverty" is up at Blood Orange Review. If you like, you can read it here, as well as my bio here, which was a response to their prompt of "What keeps you moving forward as a writer?"

On the Pleasures of Reading Aloud

2008-09-24T06:03:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago, I attended a reading here on UTC's campus by one of our creative writing faculty members. Part of the "Works in Progress" reading series, Sybil Baker read from her novel-in-progress. I also had the pleasure of hearing Sybil read from her short story "The cape of Good Hope (the story will appear in upstreet 4) during the Spring 2008 Meacham Writers' Workshop.

First, let me say that it's a pleasure to hear Sybil read. Her stories are engaging and detailed, she's sprightly and energetic, and she edits through her material well to fit in the time frame for her readings (a rare feat in a writer who offers readings, and one much appreciated by the audience!).

It's been so long since I've been to a reading (months and months) that I'd forgotten how pleasant it is just to be read to, sitting back, enjoying the wash of words and the story. Now, I *love* to read. A lot. To the detriment of other areas of living an active life, really. But it is completely different when you don't have to put forth any effort but to listen and simply become engrossed, unable to cheat by scannign to the next paragraph. Very relaxing. I find it extraordinarily soothing. (Could it be because Mom used to read to me constantly as a child? I don't know.)

I still, however, can't bring myself to purchase books on tape (or CD, or mp3, or what have you). I like the intimacy of feeling the written page in my hands (one more reason why, as awesome as the Kindle is, I will not be getting one anytime in the near future, unless they can make it feel and smell like paper. There is a different kind of intimacy at a reading, surrounded by people you may not know, but suspended in the same bubble of imagination and story by the author. There is something about that sensation that I love that just isn't recreated with a CD alone in my home.

Dear everyone: if you would like to woo me, find me at a tired time, and offer to read to me on a cozy warm couch somewhere.

The result of the Prompt "Twenty Little Poetry Projects"

2008-09-22T06:36:00.000-07:00

A few packets ago, my MFA mentor sent me Jim Simmerman's Twenty Little Poetry Projects as a prompt to shake my style up a bit, since I tend to stick quite firmly to a particular rhetorical structure when I write poetry, and find it difficult to break out of it. It was mind-bending, and difficult, and interesting and fun - the best sort of prompt. (I'm actually going to send it to my online group of pals I workshop with on occasion, it was that much fun.) My result, "Brilliant as Fog," is below. it's not quite up to snuff, but I think there are some very nice salvageable gems in here.

Brilliant as Fog

I’m lucky like a quarter left on the tracks.
I was never born.
The dull glint of nickel, the feel
of a cold, sharpened coin against my wrist,

the smokestack smell of a just-passed train
and the howl of cars jolted
from the safety of the rails - - home.
Warm metal tastes like a punch in the mouth.

Talia never came back to Brentwood once she escaped.
She could never leave, either.
Powdered sugar from the Entenmann’s plant
mingled with our cigarette smoke halos

(and only punk-ass bitches didn’t smoke).
We chambered our rounds
with ruthless efficiency,
so we never feared cancer.

Bootin’ black tar heroin, held hostage
by the scuffed peddlers of temptation
offering spoiled salvation neatly wrapped in Ziploc
from lice-infested pockets

where the train cars went to die.
We were brilliant as fog –
we rode bareback down dirty streets, eyes closed,
and sang the world flat again.

Roadhouse broke all the rules – some of them twice.
She’ll always be waiting around the next concrete corner
until we answer for our crimes,
until we find the Greater Pattern,

until we find the milky shadows of possibility
in the I-Ching maze of our track marks.
Our addictions set us free.
Eso si que es, mi hija.

The tarry rail ties stain the landscape, pointing the way out.
The whistle moans that it’s too late to leave
because even now, a coin sits on the tracks
and waits to gain an edge.

Letter to Self at 14: A Prompt

2008-09-17T11:57:00.000-07:00

Hello all! Well, if you read my last post, I decided to bring the Oppenheimer poem to workshop, and it gets shredded tonight, so I'll report on how that goes. I'm revamping "Tysketoser" and will likely use that as my next piece for the class. Thanks for all your input!

We have an essay prompt due to hand in tonight, and we were to write a letter to ourselves at 14. The catch: it has to be about your 14 year old self, and not about telling them about how life turns out, so much. It was an interesting exercise - I rarely think about my high school and younger days very much, and not very in-depth. I recommend it to everyone. My result is below.

Dear Me,

This year you're starting high school - but not, really, since the 9th grade center is separate. Be careful with yourself - it's a lot rougher than middle school. It'll be okay, though - you'll create a silent little shell, and do other people's homework, and make your way through. This is your first year of entrepreneurship - you'll make your small job working in the guidance office profitable by selling lockerspace to drug dealers, keeping them off your back. It's necessary now, but you'll regret helping them later. But you already know that. You'll also make a good dollar or three doing homework for your peers, but a quick note on that: don't do it too well. You don't have many close friends, just Nishi and Jen, but you've got a rich internal life. You're already preparing for college, and have been since last year, since you figure it's your only way out. I'll tell you this much: believe in it - you *will* get out. You won't go where you had hoped, but you'll go where you need to be and finally get to be yourself without so many restrictions. You'll like the person you become, and the people who know you now as the quiet pushover won't recognize you much. You'll shed Brentwood like a snake sheds it's old, too-snug, now-dry skin, and leave it behind just as easily.

This is your first unsafe year, lost in a sea of 1600 other 9th-graders. The only thing you are good at is school, and so you'll tuck your head and muscle academics into submission. This will serve you well later, and you don't need much coaching here, other than to not take it so seriously - you don't need ulcers at 14, those can wait. This is the year you find out just how much you like having assignments, and due dates, and a nice structure that you can understand with a reward system of grades. You're not much different than a rat with a piece of cheese, you with your homework and good grades. It doesn't provide much physical armor - this is the year Yvette will be shot in the neck in math class, and no number of theorems were going to help you then. Luckily, your penchant for sitting at the front of the class - you big nerd - kept you clear of the line of fire. Don't fret over it too much. It'll make you tougher, though, and you need that. In a few years, this sort of thing will happen all the time, and people will be numb to it, and it won't matter so much. Consider yourself well prepared for the millenium.

This is the first year it actually matters that you're a girl. One boy you don't like will try to kiss you - I'm impressed by your moves as you duck under his outstretched arm. One boy you do like will ridicule you in front of everyone you know, and you'll generate the bad habit of pining over someone who isn't worth much for far too long. The teachers won't catch the boy who is lurking in hallways and shoving his hands down the front pockets of girls' jeans until he tries it on you. You're overweight, and he can't pull his hands out quite fast enough - they get stuck there, on your chunky thighs, long enough for you to twist away in disgust and break his fingers, to leave him in snotty tears in the hallway, defeated by your fat. It will be the only time you are happy with your thighs - enjoy that moment.

This year you will make yourself proud when you talk back to Daddy when he asks why you're bringing a nigger into his house as you mention Nicole is coming over to study. You thought about not saying anything, but you were tired of his talking about your friends that way. He does it all the time, like you don't live in Spanish Harlem, like *you're* not the minority in school, like he doesn't pack you off to a school where he knows damn well that 40% black and 55% hispanic means that you'll have few white friends to bring home to meet his approval. You will say all of this over the dinner table, where you are expected to be seen and not heard, and Daddy will turn a shade of brick red that scares you to your molars. You'll take sanctuary down in your bedroom in the basement and count the horrible, thudding heartbeats, waiting for him to slam open the door and throttle you like he must want to. Try to breathe. He's not coming. And your choice of friends - and the color of their skin, or the language they speak - will never be brought up again.

You should cut dad some slack, though. He was raised in a different time, in a different house. You don't know as much about him as you think you do, though mom hints at it, and will tell you later about how he used to come home from school to put his alcoholic mother in the shower to sober her up before Grandpa got home from work and beat them all. By the time you know these things, it won't matter. You'll have spent most of your life dodging his quicksilver, random bursts of anger, and being wary of his good humored moments. Do try to enjoy them - he means everything he says - at the time. Enjoy him - the weekends of watching westerns you've seen hundreds of times, the popcorn out of the old popper, learning to pour his beer with exactly three quarters of an inch of foam like he likes it. When things finally break, you won't be able to fix them - twenty one years of normal family life will be snuffed out by a midlife crisis that involves cocaine instead of a new boat. Concentrate on what dad is teaching you that you'll keep - a good work ethic. He taught you to mistrust people who don't earn their own living, that no one is going to help you if you don't help yourself, and that country justice is the only justice that counts. He taught you that a promise is everything. Some other things you don't need to keep - like the idea that depression is just a case of too much time on your hands that can be cured with getting a second - or third - job. Or the idea that you are snubbing your family when you want to build a life that doesn't belong to Long Island. Remember that the good things he taught you don't become untrue just because in the end he doesn't follow them, and the bad things are not branded into your marrow just because you share blood and his last name.

You are strong enough to stand up for what you want, as well as for what you believe in. Just remember - your dreams may change. It's not good, or bad, just natural, so don't marry yourself to one idea of happiness. In your haste to get out of new york, don't forget that there are still people you'll be connected to for life - try to heal things with Meaghen, or she'll be as much a stranger to you in eleven years as she is now, and that's not right for sisters. Thank Mom as often as you can - she does most of the work that keeps your life running smoothly, much as you resent her for staying in this place, she's made her choices for reasons you know nothing about. You'll understand more as you have to make your own choices. Most of all, don't be so self-centered - if you pay even just a little attention, you'll notice that everyone else has their own sorts of pressures and stresses that they're dealing with. You're not the only one three steps away from blowing a gasket. I won't tell you to slow down, because I think your intensity is your ticket out of where you don't want to be, but try to enjoy it more. You don't think so now, but occasionally (even if only VERY occasionally) you'll miss this and the simplicity of it all.

Love,

An Aside

2008-09-10T12:09:00.000-07:00

Hi, all. Apologies for being away so long - with the beginning of the semester, I haven't been doing much creative writing. But, I have workshop this evening, and am torn between two poems. Which should I turn in? The options are "Tysketöser" and "Dear Doctor Oppenheimer." See below, and vote away!

(* Tysketöser – Norwegian women who slept with German soldiers during World War II. They were denounced as traitors by the Norwegian government, arrested, and sent to labor camps after the war.)

****Edit: Poems have been removed due to their pending publication

Birmingham Arts Journal FTW!

2008-08-22T06:45:00.000-07:00

I am pleased to report that the Birmingham Arts Journal has just notified me that they'll publish my poem "Things I Learned When You Left" in their January 2009 issue. Hooray for poem placement! Hip hip hooray! This one was workshopped at the Spring 2008 residency (with Greg, again - he's my lucky charm).

Prompt: Political Love Poem

2008-08-21T11:45:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the first meeting of Earl Braggs's poetry workshop here at UTC, which I'm pleased to take again. The prompt? Write a political love poem, however you may define 'political' and 'love.' I thought this would be a great opportunity to re-cast my poem "The House That Falls Down," the title piece of my chapbook of war poetry. It's a piece I wrote while my brother was at war as a marine, but I needed to recast it because originally, there was no soldier, and there was no "I" personality to the poem. The rewrite turned out to be pretty long, but I'd love to get some feedback on this draft:

Edit: Poem removed due to submission for publication

Blood Orange Review Takes a Poem

2008-08-21T11:44:00.001-07:00

Merry news! Blood Orange review took my poem "Reclaiming Poverty," one of (I think) the sassier pieces I've written. More news on this once I know which issue it'll be in!

Concho River Review Also Decides I'm Worth Publishing - W00T

2008-08-15T06:46:00.000-07:00

Quickie update on this one: if you decide to subscribe to the Concho River Review, you'll see a piece of mine in the Spring 2009 issue. Thank you, Jerry Bradley, Poetry Editor. You just made my Friday! If you were closer than Texas, I would buy you a beer.

Update (Again): Bellowing Ark

2008-08-11T18:09:00.000-07:00

These past few days have really been a whirlwind. Placements in Gentle Strength Quarterly and in Paradigm, as well as another solicitation from Bellowing Ark to round out their selection of my Lilith pieces for the Feature section of the Fall 2008 issue. I also just got notification that a grant proposal I wrote to help me get to a library conference in October was approved to the tune of $1000. As a pal on Friendfeed mentioned, it is raining awesome all over me.

Anyway, in addition to the general awesome mentioned above, I just received the latest response from Bellowing Ark. In addition to the pieces they've already accepted ("The Book," "God in my Throat," "Retrieval," "Drawing Board" and "Original Sin" from the Lilith collection, and "I Want a Man," "July Night in Hoptown," "Ice Storm" and "Flash in the Pan"), to round out the feature of Lilith pieces, they've chosen "Occupying the Children," "I Will Not Lie Below," "Temptation" and "It Would Not Have Been Well."

A deserved shout-out to Greg Pape, this semester's poetry mentor, who has seen and commented on all of these pieces. Dear Greg: at the rate the revisions you suggest are getting accepted, I will totally owe my first book deal to you. I hope your wife doesn't mind if I say I love you.

Anyway. Yes, woo for the coup at Bellowing Ark - I was really concerned that these poems wouldn't find a home, being such a related series. I am *so happy* that Editor Robert Ward turned out to be a fan of this sort of exploration of traditional roles and of a female speaker who refuses to fit into those preconceived roles. It's been a very personal journey for me (and one that's not quite over, I think), and I've been hoping that someone would see the value in the collection.

Imagine how thrilled I am to get a request for the full manuscript.

Oh, yes. You read that right.

A request for the full manuscript once I read the journal and see how they do their thang. Go ahead and gimme some intarweb high-fives, people. Poets go lifetimes without getting that sort of affirmation. And if it doesn't pan out, someone still asked for it. I think that's a thrill that will never go away.

Another Publication: Paradigm

2008-08-11T05:24:00.001-07:00

W00t, yet another e-mail in my inbox that sparked the Happy Dance. The editors of the online quarterly Paradigm have picked up my poem "Unwanted," which is the very first of the Lilith poems. (I think it kicks off the collection nicely). It should appear in the Fall issue of Paradigm - once that issue is up, I'll be sure to post here about it so you can read it.

I'm really thrilled the Lilith pieces are finding homes - I was beginning to worry that they wouldn't. Thanks, all you awesome editors with good taste out there!

Holy Shite: Bellowing Ark Update

2008-08-09T19:00:00.000-07:00

Can I get a quick "Holy Shite" from the world? An email from Bellowing Ark's editor just informed me that he'd like a bevy of those solicited non-Lilith poems for a future issue of Bellowing Ark, as well as some more of the Lilith pieces to round out the selection of my pieces that will comprise the "Featured Poet" spread in the upcoming issue.

Forgive me while I do the Big Yee Haw Funky Publishing Dance of the Poet. *does ridiculously unflattering and un-coordinated body-jerking dance*

Ahem.

So yes, Bellowing Ark will be publishing a great deal of my poetry. The titles accepted last time around were "God in my Throat," "Retrieval," "The Book," "Drawing Board," and "Original Sin" - all pieces from the Lilith collection (which I've tentatively titled God in my Throat). This time, the editor has chosen (from my non-Lilith selections) "I Want a Man," "Ice Storm," "July Night in Hoptown" and "Flash in the Pan." These are, except for "Ice Storm," all pieces from my first semester when I was working with Jeanie Thompson, and she has to get credit for taking these from the pretty rough places where they started to the nicely revised, publishable pieces that I'm really proud of. "Ice Storm" I have to thank Greg Pape and the folks in my second residency workshop for helping me revise - their feedback and suggestions were very helpful.My faculty mentor-poets and my writerly colleagues (both students and non-students) have really been an invaluable resource in helping me refine my work.

Expect a post soon on my opinion on the value of the MFA in Creative Writing - it's a hotly debated topic with a lot of naysayers, and being the opinionated minx that I am, I'm darn well going to have my say about it. As soon as I know which Lilith pieces will round out my "Featured" section in Bellowing Ark, I'll post on that, too. (Is it inappropriate to promise an editor a big wet kiss if they've already accepted your work?)

Good News from Gentle Strength Quarterly

2008-08-07T18:15:00.000-07:00

Happy news! I just got an e-mail from Leilani Squire, editor of Gentle Strength Quarterly saying that they'd like to pick up a few of my pieces, and are trying to determine which issue they'll appear in. Yippee! I'm excited about this placement, particularly because I sent them three pieces I like a lot: "A Visit with my Mother after the Divorce," "Recovery," and "The Labor of Birthing and Burying my Sorrow." They're all really personal pieces written after I had major surgery and during my parents' breakup. I also worked very hard on these revisions during my first MFA semester while I was working with Jeanie Thompson, who helped me grow tremendously. Because of all the work Jeanie put into these with suggesting revisions, as well as the work I put into them, I'm thrilled about this set getting into print.

Happiness. Every day should end this well. I'll post again on this as soon as I know for sure what will appear where. Until then, come. Share in some Happy Dance!

Revision of "Dear Doctor Oppenheimer"

2008-08-07T07:39:00.000-07:00

Revision is my weak point - I generally find it difficult to re-conceive a poem once I've got it down on paper, and generally what i do is "edit," not really re-envision a totally new writing of a piece. This one is a poem I like the idea of - it's a letter from Lilith (though it could be anyone, I suppose) to Dr. Oppenheimer - the one who invented the atom bomb, who tested in the desert and is reported to have said "I am become the destroyer of worlds."

I received packet 2 back from my MFA mentor last night and he had some good critique for the original version, so I gutted it and started over. There are a few lines that I held onto, but for the most part it's a complete revision. I'm digging it, though it's still in draft form, and am looking forward to working with it a bit more. here you go:

Dear Doctor Oppenheimer

Edit: Poem removed due to pending publication

Unsent Letter to a Love

2008-08-05T09:02:00.001-07:00

This is something I've been meaning to do something with for a good long time. I had intended to turn it into a poem at one point, but never got around to it - it was originally written as a letter. It's not particularly good. It's not particularly "new" or original image-wise, but when I wrote it, I meant it. Looking back on it and reading it, it's still powerful to me even if it *does* read like any angsty woman's diary entry. No, I never did have the courage to say any of this, much less send it as it was written. It makes me happy to read it even as it's still a little bit painful - mostly because I meant every word, and it was nice to feel this sort of thing. I hope the next time I feel something similar for someone, I have the courage to say it. Until then, let all my former loves tussle over who gets to be the one I loved this way *grin*

You showed me where to put my arms so I wasn’t all strangulated. Warm and safe, I would have given you space – but you pulled me closer and wrapped me up, stroked my skin softly until I couldn’t stay awake to worry about squashing you, if my rolls were showing, if I should pull the blanket up higher to hide myself.

Remember the first time you stayed the night?

You kissed me to sleep. Didn’t slink away when morning came – pulled me close for a bit, smiled, everything was okay. Still not mine, but that was okay too. Since then, the occasional night, you stay. It’s not odd, and I don’t have to lie awake wondering when you’ll push me away.

We let our hands roam for hours, you never push; I’ve never been given such freedom, such a gift. Foreplay isn’t always foreplay – sometimes I just like the feel of your limbs, the crisp hair on your arms, the warm heavy weight of you against me.

You made me feel beautiful, wanted, lovely, and cherished – what the movies promise that never really happens. Most of the way to thirty years, I had let go words like ‘lovely’ and ‘cherished.’ I put them to rest, at least as they applied to me. You gave it to me honestly, no ‘forever’ promises. I could wrap myself around you and nestle my nose in your shoulders.

I woke up and we were holding hands, back to back, asleep, I could have cried, but my heart was full and I didn’t feel the need.

Still, you weren’t mine to keep, just to hold, and I made that enough. I tried to.
When you touched me, the simple light touch of your hand on my thigh, the run of your fingers down my throat awakened my senses, and I drowned in you. I rarely feel like a whole woman, power and softness; you coaxed that from me. Your touch is an affirmation.

I wanted to ask if you wanted more, to let you know you were welcome to stay not just for the sex, not just so I could hold your hand and take you and touch you and want you, but just to come and stay and be,to lie there next to someone in the darkening shadows, just you as man and me as woman and nothing else much mattering.

I wanted to ask you if you ever get lonely.

Sometimes I get lonely with other people an arm’s length away, so that I just want to hang my head and cry. Occasionally I come into contact with someone who reminds me why I should care, but I have no great anchor – nobody I can go to and say, “Hold me, and I will hold you, and let’s be solid together for a bit.”

You’re the one I’ve wanted to crawl to when I wanted to be held, and you’re the one I wanted to see when I wanted to lavish affection, when I was pleased with the world for what it was; when I was pleased and wanted to let a man know I appreciated him, it wasn’t a movie star, or a rock star, or someone famous or artificially beautiful I wanted to run to and wrap up in my arms and kiss and maybe laugh with, it was you.

I never told you these things; I never will in my lifetime. We’re not that close.

But it hurts to think of it, because you should know.

You should know that someone notices that your eyes can go from black to chocolate to tawny brown depending on your mood.

You should know that your face is just right –for frowns, and smiles, and talking and kissing and sleeping.

You should know that you can cause a thrill by just holding someone’s hand, that you are strong enough that you feel like shelter, and human enough that someone likes to hold you tight and wish she could shelter you from the storms of the world.

Someone should tell you the timbre of your voice is just right for whispering or speaking or anything; that your hands are as kind as they are deft, and that you smell good – like clean man, no cologne stench, just you.

Someone should tell you this, but I don’t think I can.

Of Poetry and Research

2008-08-05T06:47:00.001-07:00

I submitted a paper to the 2009 AWP Pedagogy Forum. I figure it's as good a way as any to break into writing and presenting in English/Writing in addition to librarianship. I hadn't actually planned on going to AWP in Chicago next year, but I figure that one, my little brother now lives just outside of Chicago, and it would be a nice way to combine business and a visit; two, if I am going to take my career as a writer and teacher seriously, attending only librarian conferences will be severely limiting; and three (and perhaps most important), it provides the impetus I need to work on combining my interests in writing and librarianship into something with a decent agenda to it. Creating a confluence between these two interests helps me out tenure-wise if I can start getting published and presenting, and it also makes me a more attractive candidate once I decide to apply to adjunct some English classes.

Other than cost in terms of time and money, there's really no downside, and this is exactly the sort of thing that manages t reflect my myriad interests in such a way as to benefit me both as a writer and librarian. (That's the hope, at least.)

The title of the paper I submitted (which is short, at one page per the requirements) is "Poets Rewriting History: Researching for the Authentic Persona Poem." I think it's a nice introduction and activity demonstrating how research skills and information literacy are important even (and perhaps especially) to creative writers. There seems to be this idea among students that because poetry is "creative" it should all be done sans research. I would argue that in order to have a compelling, authentic persona poem written about a character from the past or a particular locale, about the past, etc., you have to do research. I'm not talking a full-on dissertation style research habit, but if you decide you want to write about Persephone, you'll want to read not only the myth that features her most prominently, but also how her character has been treated by other authors, both ancient and contemporary. This broadens your view not only of the character, but of literature's treatment of her character, and may open the window for you to find a gap, or what you consider a misunderstanding, and give you as the writer a foothold to essentially rewrite history - or legend, or myth - to reflect how you think it would read if told from a differently conceived perspective.

It's not enough to be creative. Writing is rewarding, but it's also hard work if you want to do it right. Katy Yocom, discussing her research for her novel Tiger Woman, mentioned at Spalding University's last residency that she felt she could hardly write convincingly about India if she had never been there, and so she got a grant that allowed her to do some traveling. It's the same for writing from the perspective of a particular locale, time period, or historical figure: to be authentic, you have to do some research. Not only because the critics will pick you apart for anachronisms and things you get wrong - the primary motivation should be that you want it to be the best writing you can produce. Given that so many libraries have literary criticism, historical databases, biographical dictionaries and even special collections containing manuscripts and letters (as well as photos and more), there's no reason that writers should not take advantage of such treasure troves.

All of which is the long way around of saying that I've found a nice way to combine my love of librarianship and research with my love for writing and teaching. So if you know someone on the AWP Pedagogy Panel, let them know you're intrigued to see my paper, and that you hope it's one of the papers that makes it into The Best of AWP The Pedagogy Papers 2009 *wink*

What's in a Name

2008-08-03T18:18:00.000-07:00

Thinking about things tonight instead of writing an essay on Jane gentry's book Portrait of the Artist as a White Pig. I don't find this collection particularly impressive, though there are a few poems I think are stellar (like "The Concept of Morning"). It's just uneven - many leave me flat, uninterested, and walking away thinking, "So what?"

Which is, in my opinion, the worst sort of reaction.

Anyway, I'm also reading Maxine Kumin's How to Make a Prairie, which is an interesting collection of interviews and essays and such. In one of her answers in an interview with Virginia Elson and Beverlee Hughes, Kumin says, "Naming things is a way of owning them, I guess" (page 5). And she's right. In a world where we are all too stressfully aware that our "things" can be destroyed, repossessed, or lost, the writer - and I would argue, particularly the poet - has a special power as a Namer of Things. There is a comfort that comes from the ownership of language to the degree that you can take a thing - any thing - and slap a moniker or description onto it that works just as well, if not better, than the original.

I've been trying to think of examples of this, and the first thing that comes to mind, for me, is fog. Fog appears in innumerable poems, I'm sure, but I remember two poems describing it so vividly that I cannot think or hear the word fog without them coming out to peek from my memory. The poems are Carl Sandburg's "Fog" from his Chicago Poems:

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
on harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

Admittedly, I only actually immediately recall the first two lines and had to look up the rest. But still, it is a poem that stuck with me. The other fog mention in a poem is, of course, T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock" and can be found in his The Waste Land and Other Poems:

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the windowpanes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle upon the windowpanes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep. (pages 3-4)

There is a power in naming a thing so well that upon calling a thing by its name, someone remembers your description of it. There is an immortality in that. And there is a power that comes from the hubris of deciding to re-Name a thing yourself. It is a matter of imposing your will onto the world. Besides, the question "What's in a name?" does have an answer. Everything - and nothing. "Colleen" works if you know me, because it offers a bit more of the whole of me. "Librarian" leaves a good deal out, but so does "poet," and "daughter" and "lover." There is infinite room to re-Name things, including people.

It's a godlike power, because naming a thing is, in essence, re-creating it. God, after all, made the world by speaking, didn't He? It is a comfort when you cannot afford to buy a country or an island, when you cannot command an army, and generally when you can't make the world bend to your will. And I am always thrilled to find a writer who accepts this mantle of power and uses it well. I aspire to be one of those writers, and I wish you all well in becoming one of the Army of Namers.

On Angels and Long Lines

2008-08-01T12:31:00.000-07:00

For a poet who usually hates working with the long line, I sure have spent some good time steeped in it these past few days. Maybe it's like exercise - it sucks the first few times you do it, but eventually you become okay and even comfortable with it, and maybe - eventually - good enough to do it in full view of a gym full of beautiful people and mirrors without looking like an absolute moron. Sort of a convoluted metaphor, I guess, but there you go.

The long line is a really nice tool to let me wander in my own mind and get very think-y about things instead of worrying overmuch about rhythm the way I do in more short, clipped lines (which I still consider cleaner). But it has been interesting, since working with the longer line makes me think more in terms of telling a story, and gives em the mindspace I need for thoughtplay, where I really just want to wander and see where certain ideas go.

This time around, I was thinking that the angels pre-date the Making of the world, since they were already around and singing God's praises. (You can also make the argument that if the Snake in the garden is Lucifer, then Lucifer - who was an angel - had to fall before the whole Garden mess, *still* predating Creation.) Which means, if you buy the Christian myth, that the angels were around to watch the whole shebang - God making the world, God creating Adam and Lilith, Lilith leaving. God also sent angels to fetch Lilith back after she left Adam - Sanvi, Sansanvi and Semangelaf were the angels' names that cajoled and threatened her to return. I'll likely get to those fellas later, but just think: if you were an angel, who had just spent literally countless years (because there *was* no time) singing God's praises...how would you feel if He felt the need to create himself some new pets?

Anyway, that was the impetus for this one, though I feel the lines are so long they lose some rhythm, and I'm going to have to work with some of the images to polish and tighten them up. The other problem with the long line is that I let myself get sort of fast and loose with language, and it takes discipline for me to tighten it if I'm not working the short line. (Mind you, this is actually in tercets, but some of the lines break due to the restricted space of the blog. My apologies for not knowing how to fix this!)

Edit: Poem removed due to pending publication

The Softer Side of a Brazen Woman

2008-08-01T05:55:00.000-07:00

Women are complicated creatures. I feel I have the right to say this, since I *am* one. Yes, certainly, people are complicated creatures, I don't mean to leave out the men, but in my female friends, acquaintances, and relatives, there is always this varying degree of tension I feel from them - the clash between who they want to be, who they used to be, who they have become, and how they want to be seen...it's a lot to carry around in a small little person-package.

Working on the Lilith collection has me thinking about this as I realize I was focusing on one small facet of Lilith's character - that of the angry woman still a wee bit pissed about the whole Adam thing, about the whole God lettign her leave and never coming after her thing, about the whole permanent exile thing while God's other children are offered forgiveness on a constant basis.

I've been struck by wondering about her other selves, though - you know, we all have more than one. I mean, I'm a librarian - and a poetess, and a sister, and a daughter, and a survivor of my particular high school. I'm a hardnosed badass (sometimes), but I also cry at the occasional well-timed hallmark commercial, and am a sap for furry things and a soft word from the right man. Think about it in Lilith's spot: she was born into the Garden of Eden. it couldn't have been *all* bad *all* the time, even though she left shortly after her arrival. She's bound to have her share of sappy, good memories that leave her in tears, even if she is a big, bold woman with more than her share of chutzpah. It's something I've been thinking about as I remember that for my own self, even in the case of exes that I wouldn't like to be in a room with now, there were really good times. Eradicating those to focus on the strength and power of anger - which I do tend to find preferable - is unfair, and portrays the past as one-dimensional. I wanted to try to capture some of that wistful memory of Lilith's.

The Remembering

Edit: Poem removed due to pending publication

Of Love and Loyalty

2008-07-31T11:39:00.001-07:00

Reading Merwin had me wanting to play around with the long line, since I ordinarily despise it so much. This is more of an exercise than a poem I'm planning to keep in the collection, though I *am* interested in comparisons between God's children: Lilith, Adam, Eve, the Jews, Jesus. Heh, given that sort of company, no wonder Lilith feels like an outcast.

Of Love and Loyalty

Edit: Poem removed due to pending publication

Contemporizing Language

2008-07-30T10:30:00.001-07:00

One of Greg's concerns with the pieces I sent him from the Lilith collection was that the language was too mythic/biblical for a contemporary audience, and that I should throw them a bone every once in awhile to keep them interested.

Admittedly, my first response was a snobbish, "Well, if they can't remain interested in an awesome female character who *is* mythic, they can bite my left buttcheek. let them read Shel Silverstein if what they want is rhymey babble." (No offense meant to Shel Silverstein, whose work I enjoy quite a bit.)

Then I looked at it as an opportunity. I mean, if I contemporize the language a bit, I can let Lilith take what she wants from *all* time periods, which could be sort of fun. I'm having trouble making this happen in the pieces that rely on the mythic tone for their delivery (like the rewrite of the Hail Mary and of the Apostle's Creed), but in other places, it's a fun experiment, like in the the piece below, "Lilith: The Interview":

Lilith: The Interview

We didn't have proper clothes
back then. But I'm a fan of black
leather, purple eyeshadow,
and sky-high fuck-me pumps.
I like to appear taller than men.

No, I don't eat babies. I'm not
a succubus (don't you wish!).
I do enjoy a rare prime rib,
paired with a delicate cheesecake.
Ooh, and a nice, bold red.

I have no problem with Eve.
I think her taste in men is poor,
but the woman's got spunk,
eating the fruit God forbade.
I like women who break rules.

If by "rutting with demons"
you mean fun sex with men
who let me be on top
and enjoying it immensely,
then yes, mark me as guilty.

Well, God made me, after all.
Perhaps we should talk less
about bowing to human judgment
and more about accepting the demoness
God himself allows to roam free.

Letter from Lilith to Eve

2008-07-29T19:16:00.000-07:00

This is the poem I've had the hardest time starting: a letter from Lilith to Eve. Is she condescending? (The poem sort of starts out that way, with the "I hear you bought into the rib tale".) Forgiving? Does she understand why Eve made the choice to stay and play the role of subservient helpmeet? Is she proud of Eve for tasting the forbidden fruit and showing some spirit even as she stayed in voluntary servitude that Lilith herself wouldn't have stood?

I conceived it as a letter from a rebellious older sister to a more obedient younger sister - a few secrets about hidden pleasures, some advice, some respect, and a grudging admission that their roads are likely permanently divergent, but a raw reminder that they're not so terribly different. And yes, this is definitely informed by my relationship with my sister, from whom I'm pretty much estranged. My hope is that the complicated relationship between sisters - the frustration, the love, the envy, and the tenderness - all shine through. A tall order, I know.

Update: poem removed because I've sent it out for competition after some additional revisions. If interested, either comment or email me and I'll shoot you a copy!

The Lilith Collection

2008-07-29T10:03:00.001-07:00

The Lilith collection is coming along. Greg has had some great critique that is helping me with revisions, as have my buddies in the SWING writing group. Drew in particular, who really pushed the idea of creating a collection and encouraging me on the project, has been a great help. happily, now that the creative juices are not as blocked, I've been wrestling with a few new pieces. I started out with the impetus of "What stories would Lilith want to tell?", and that engine has slowed a bit for me. Now, I'm turning more to "What would I ask her if I had the chance?", and that's where this new one comes from. I mean, talking to the first woman, wouldn't you wonder what the first man looked like?

Still not certain about keeping it in tercets, though I think it works well enough to propel the poem along. I sort of like this one, because I know I've caught myself remembering a loved one and been somewhat horrified that I could have forgotten the details of their face.

Update: the poem "The Forgetting" has been removed because I've sent it out. If interested, comment or email. (Yes, I know that's a pain in the butt, but if it appears on a blog, it is considered "previously published" for a lot of lit journals and they won't consider it.)

Harnessing the Power of the Line Break

2008-07-29T07:08:00.001-07:00

One of the fun things about working in poetry as opposed to prose is that you have the opportunity to harness the power of the line break. I find it very frustrating when folks read straight through a poem without any (even minor) pause at the end of a line. It's a poem. If it were meant to be read without paying attention to those breaks, you may as well just chunk it as prose. The line break is essential to a poem - it creates a specific rhythm (truly - read Nikki Giovanni and then read Merwin. The difference is startling, and it's not just because of the difference in subject matter. The length of the line makes a great difference in the delivery of a piece and how you must breathe to get through it. Yes, you may be reading it to yourself, but the true experience of poetry is aural, and you should think about that that as you read, and even read some pieces out loud to yourself to see how they work with your breathing rhythm.) Anyway, yes, a giant peeve of mine is folks ignoring the break.

The line break. It provides the opportunity for the poet to not only play with rhythm, but to play with language as well. I attended a small group discussion led by Trish Jaggers, a Kentucky poetess and soon-to-be Spalding MFA grad, where she discussed syntactic doubling, or creating multiple meanings through judicious use of words at the end of a line. I find myself fascinated with line breaks, and how those breaks create multiple meanings within the language. I'm currently working on a piece I'm not certain about keeping, but have been really enjoying working with the line breaks to create something more powerful. One of my favorite lines is "God says I am" followed by the self-affirmation of "worth more than rubies. I am" - but of course, I'm biased. And this is a new piece, so I couldn't even tell you if it's worth keeping yet or not. For your critique (and hopefully your enjoyment), I offer "I Am":

Edit: Poem removed due to pending publication

Chapbook Semifinalist and More

2008-07-28T17:28:00.000-07:00

More news! (I do love it when the news starts coming in - even if it's rejections, at least it lets you know the wheels are turning and something is happening.) I received an email from Diane Goettel, editor of The Adirondack Review, to let me know that my chapbook manuscript Warsongs came in as a semi-finalist in the Fall 2007 Black Lawrence Press Black River chapbook competition. I also made semifinalist for the Spring 2007 competition with The House That Falls Down. I'm particularly pleased because they're both collections of war poetry, which I know is sort of a no-no for a non-soldier chick to write about. But I did make sure to vet them through my brother, who is a U.S. Marine who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He shared them with his buddies (without my knowledge or say-so) and said the guys thought they were good...and if it's good to the folks who experience it, I count them as not half-bad.

But yes, two semi-finalist position for the chapbooks, so I feel like I'm close. Unfortunately, hand grenades and horseshoes and all that. Either way, it gives me the gumption I need to actually work on revising those pieces, and I believe I'll send a bevy of them to Greg in my next packet along with some Lilith pieces. Poor Greg. I hear of other people who struggle to fill a packet with 8 poems, and here I am sending the man chapbooks every time. Ah well, if he wants a break, I do hope he'll let me know. I should be getting packet #2 back from him any day now, as I'm due to mail packet #3 out next Friday.

I should also be hearing from Diane Goettel again soon, since it says the Spring 08 competition should be judged (or at least the finalists announced) by July 31, and I did submit three different chapbooks for this round. sheepish I know, I know. But, I mean, I have a number of chapbooks, and it does me no good to have them sitting and collecting dust instead of out at a publishing house. And semi-finalist status made me think maybe they like me. (Unless they only had a handful of people in the competition and everyone who didn't make it got called a "semifinalist." But let's not think that way.)

So yes. Plans include polishing up the Lilith collection, hoping to hear back from Bellowing Ark (I just sent out those solicited materials), going back and tearing through the war poems to get them hale and hearty enough for journal submission, and getting through the rest of the MFA semester, which is rapidly drawing to a close.

I have also been considering approaching the woman who directs the freshman writing program - apparently in the MA program you can adjunct and teach a course if you have 18 hours in. I was biding my time since I'll only have 9 hours of MA work done by the end of this semester, but I forgot that I've already finished 16 hours of MFA work (and it'll be 32 hours in October). I wonder if that'd count and they'd let me teach, given that I already have the MLS and can teach the kids not only how to write decently, but how to do research as well. Must ask, and then must run it past boss to see if I'd even be allowed. But I think it would be a great idea to have a Literary Librarian teaching the incoming kids.

So, yes, much on the plate, and choices to be made as to what I want to write my MFA critical thesis on - I'm currently considering doing it on Komunyakaa, but we'll see. My next post here will be an attempt to sketch out my idea for designing an independent study on national epics that read as poems - more research required on that front though.

So, in short, very happy at semi-finalist status even though in the end that means I'm just the first (or thirty-second) loser. Also happy to have solicited work out of my hands - at this point, the editor either likes it or he does not, and there's little I can do about it. And now, for the waiting...

New Draft: In the Dark of the City

2008-07-27T18:25:00.001-07:00

New working draft. It's interesting - when I write about something that turns to nature, I inevitably return to Kentucky (where I spent nearly 10 years), or to Long Island and the ocean where I grew up. And my distaste for the cramped, loud, too-much of the city always shines through. I think this one will be salvageable with some work.

In the Dark of the City

The dark has come and eaten its fill
of my familiar life. The lawn
is an oildark sea of strangeness,

and the street beyond a dimlit river
patrolled by strangers ensconced in steel
and glass. Even the safe corners

of my home are stained with tarry night,
it saps the warmth from my kitchen, seethes
under my bed waiting to slip beneath

the blankets and curl behind my knees,
a faithful hound. In the city,
the dark is thicker, stars that shone bold

in the vastness over horse farms and cows
are become shy friction sparks between
the layers of abandonment cloaking the world.

Bellowing Ark FTW!

2008-07-27T07:30:00.001-07:00

After an extremely long day yesterday, I received an email from Robert R. Ward, editor of the literary journal Bellowing Ark. It was a lovely e-mail, for a number of reasons.

Reason #1 is not just because he requested to pick up all five of the Lilith pieces I sent him (though that was enough for me to do a little dance in and of itself. Bellowing Ark does a "Featured Poets" section where they present multiple poems by a single poet, and I think I may have scored that section if they're taking all 5 - but we'll see).

Reason #1 is also not because editor Ward asked to see more of my work, though this reason is definitely #1a. That's never happened to me before, and I'm ecstatic about it. Just think! Someone soliciting more of my poetry! Excuse me while I do a happy dance here on my couch...

The nicest thing about this email is that is was just damned kind. As a writer, I work with words on a constant basis, and I try to always be mindful of the impact my words have on others, though admittedly I'm more conscious of this when writing poetry than when dashing off an email or a FriendFeed message. What I don't pay as much attention to is how much other people's words affect me. Let me share the first line of the email with you, and I hope Ward doesn't mind:

"Your poems came as a delightful surprise and brought some enjoyment to a tedious workday."

How wonderful is that to read? That is exactly how I want people to feel when they read my pieces, and I am beyond thrilled that I could engender that sort of reaction from an editor of a long-standing lit journal. It's more than that though - I am ridiculously grateful for those few words - it makes me feel as though the sweat and tears I put into my writing is worth it because someone enjoys it. And telling an author you've enjoyed their work...well, other than buying a copy of their book, if they've got one, that's just about the nicest thing you can do, as long as you're saying it sincerely.

The titles picked up by Bellowing Ark are "The Book," "God in My Throat," "Retrieval," "Drawing Board," and "Original Sin." These are all pieces from the as-yet unpublished manuscript God in my Throat, that Lilith collection I yammer on about at length. I have never even heard of anyone placing a whole submission anywhere, much less had it happen to me. Whee!

So, thanks to editor Ward and Bellowing Ark for making my weekend a very happy one. I'm looking forward to seeing these pieces come out in a good lit journal home, and will be thinking about what other (solicited!!) pieces to send editor Ward's way. Huzzahs and warm fuzzies all around!

Fastest Ever Rejection

2008-07-25T11:16:00.001-07:00

Had to duck my head in and report the fastest ever response from a journal: I mailed my submission to Beloit Poetry Journal on July 15, and received their rejection slip on July 24. Yowch. Apparently I don't just suck, I suck so much they sent me the notifications on wings.

On Loving Men

2008-07-21T16:32:00.000-07:00

Struggling to write a new piece for the Lilith collection, but hey, any start is a good start, right?

On Loving Men
Note: Poem removed due to pending publication

July Update

2008-07-21T15:15:00.000-07:00

Last week I mailed out packet 2 of 5 for my second MFA semester. I haven't gotten the chance to do any gnarly revising, but am coming to that now that the hectic traveling part of my summer is done and I can unclench my brain.

Let's see, what's new on the writing front... I'm part of a writing group that works via GoogleGroups, and that has allowed me to get feedback on some pieces that are far different from my usual writing and a bit out of my comfort zone, so that was useful - these folks don't hold back and it's the best way to get honest critique. And Greg has given me some feedback I need to get cracking on for the Lilith collection, which I've mostly been sitting on, though some new energy is now simmering for it. I've been receiving a steady stream of rejections from the pieces I sent out in April, so I sat down last week and sent out another batch to - count them - forty-one journals. I feel slightly less like s slacker now. I also applied for an assistantship for next semester, since my bootstraps are no longer quite long enough.

Workwise I've been relatively productive, too, but am mostly pleased I got a grant application in under deadline, and am praying that they approve it even though I just got a grant in April. Once I hash out my presentations for Internet Librarian (an October conference), I plan to concentrate on one article at a time until I've written the three I've got percolating in my head. Chasing the tail of the tenure dragon, yep, that's me. My creative writing doesn't count at all in this venue, but I'm really tempted to report it in the 'semester accomplishments' for faculty the University puts on the web.

In addition to the 16 hours of MFA coursework, I'm signed up to take a poetry workshop with Earl Braggs and a class on critical theory with Matthew Guy here at UTC towards the MA in Literature, which I may manage to finish the semester after I finish the MFA. (Which really begs the question, what do I do after that? The EdD? The MSCJ? So many choices...) Fall semester should be nice and busy, just the way I like it, and I'm dying to get back into the classroom. As a teacher, you smartasses *wink*

Anyway, am planning to seriously dig in on some revisions of the Lilith collection, maybe bang out a few new pieces, which are desperately needed. I feel like my blood has turned to clay in my veins when it comes to writing on this anymore. Time to ramp it up and fire the kilns, folks.

Claddagh

2008-07-13T16:49:00.001-07:00

One of my prompts from Greg was to write about an object for which I had great affection. I don't have many (I mean, I love my books, but I can rid myself of most of them without tears). The few things that came to mind were Duchess, a stuffed white persian cat my Nana got me when I was 5 (she is currently in my closet so Otto the Basset Hound of Doom does not eat her), a Claddagh ring I received as a baby from my grandfather that I never take off...I'm sure I could come up with others if pressed, but these are really my most prized possessions. (A monetarily worthless old grayed stuffed animal and an un-bejeweled ring that would impress no one, I'm sure. I need to work on hoarding better stuff, I suppose.) A bud vase I received from my father when I was very young was on this list, but it fell and smashed when I was in my teens. (And yes, I'm still devastated about that.)

This is also not to say I don't have anything else of value - my mother has given me more than I can count. Shout out to the mom-ster! Just not one particular object that holds everything she means to me.

Anyway, I felt silly writing about the cat (though the vase is likely a good idea, will set that aside for later consideration), so the ring won out. This is literally a first un-revised draft that I sat down and spat out. As always, all criticism welcome:

Claddagh

I’ve had it for as long as I can remember –

ten carat gold, no gems, diamond-cut to glitter.

He gave it to me when I was a baby;

I was too small to wear it so my mother kept it

in a velvet box in the safe dark of her dresser.

He asked about it when the cancer started

gnawing at his bones,

and I was allowed to wear it

on a chain around my neck.

I liked the weight knocking on my collarbone,

like a bevy of Irishmen

stippling a family history onto my heart,

a summons of Papa’s memory

when it warmed against my flesh.

I was proud to own something that glittered,

proud to call something precious mine,

I would slip my finger in

to the first knuckle and tug,

that reassuring circlet as good

as when Papa held my hand.

He was an O’Reilly.

The ring made me Irish, too, I was sure.

When the chain broke in gym class,

I defied the teachers and blackened my knees

until I found the ring camped out

befriending dustbunnies under the bleachers.

The very next day, I went to the kiosk

in the mall, and had it resized. Twenty years

ago, a man stretched the small band

to make a snug fit,

my flesh has had to move

to accommodate the gold,

no longer a perfect circle, dented

by softball and hard work. I can count

the number of times I’ve taken it off

on the same hand I wear it:

the skin beneath is young-girl white,

unblemished and always new.

The Poetess Works on Getting Her Groove Back

2008-07-10T16:57:00.000-07:00

So, as I sit back down to write, I find I can't start right back into the pieces I sent in my last MFA packet. At least, not right now, not on a laptop. I need to do that with paper, ink, and enough space to surround myself with copies of drafts and Greg's notes and such. By the time I got myself set up for all that, it'd be time for bed, so I decided to take a different route and leave that for the weekend. Instead, I thought I'd turn back to a project I've put on the way back burner, mostly because it's rather in a similar tone to the poem in my last post, sort of a sassy, rougher rhythm than my usual work, a little bit raw, a little bit bitchy. It's a fun way to work, if not as natural as I'd like for it to be. My best piece in this vein (in my opinion) is called "Love Letter From a White Woman," but no one has picked it up yet. I'm thinking about calling the collection "Muse Made Me Her Bitch," and that's the piece I'm working on right now.

What I'm really trying to do is get my mojo back. It's been a hugely hectic two months, and I feel completely off. I'm off my writing schedule, I'm off my sleep schedule, I'm feeling wonky and both under- and overwhelmed. So, here's to me trying to get my groove back: that's how the upcoming weekend will be spent. For now, I'm getting back to writing about my muse. And how she wears kitten heels and a purple duster jacket and keeps a bottle of Beam at hand. You know, just in case.

To the Guy at the End of the Bar

2008-07-09T19:40:00.000-07:00

This poem was originally incarnated (enpaperated?) as a short, innocuous thing. Then I got into a bitchtastic mood today and pretty much rewrote it into this. Liking the rhythm & snarkiness of it, personally. What do you think?

To the Guy at the End of the Bar

look at me

look at how hot I am

sitting here

like a big plate of YES

with my legs crossed

and my eyes narrowed

in my black skirt

and my good bra

look at me

sitting here

on this fake-leather stool

tracing your name in the air

with my sharp high heel

sitting here

waiting for you

to smooth your cowlick down

to brush off your shirt

to forget how the last woman

sent you slinking back

to your piss-warm beer

and your fish-cold wife

look at me sitting here

looking just like you fear

your daughter will look

looking at you the way you fear

your daughter will look

at that guy at the end of the bar

look at me

A Great Mentor is a Great Thing

2008-07-09T18:40:00.001-07:00

I just received my first MFA packet back from Greg Pape, and it was a doozy. I sent far more original poems than I should have, and he was utterly gracious about it. Greg works by annotating the packet, sending a letter, and speaking into a cassette tape. Can I just say - - Best. Evar. If you've ever met Greg or heard him read, you know he's got a mesmerizing voice. Getting his advice both in writing (which I require for academic processing, because that's how my brain works) and via audio (which lends a wonderful personal note to the packet exchange) is wonderful.

Greg is also one of the most diplomatic workshoppers I have met so far. He manages to blend his critique (always to the point and very useful) with non-pandering praise so that you really do feel you have some worth as a writer and that there's something salvageable in whatever you sent that needs work. I sent Greg a goodly chunk of my Lilith collection, which none of the other faculty has seen yet. It's been niggling at me, and I've been stuck - something seems off, although I'm still enamored of the project, and this rut has really derailed my writing.

Greg hit the nail right on the head. I was paying so much attention to rhetorical structure, language and rhythm, I got lost and forgot about how essential crisp images are. (Um, yeah. IMAGE, Poetess. How do you forget a thing like that? Idiot.) There were other criticisms that were also on the money - like that staying too deep in mythic language without dipping into the contemporary is overwhelming, and some other things, but the overarching fixable thing is image. D'oh. Anyway, Greg pointed out some of the weaker areas that can be shored up or rewritten, and now that I have a handle on the areas of suckitude, I feel empowered and able to write again, and do some serious revision work.

I'm frustrated that it is something so obvious (though pleased that it's something fixable and not a flaw with the idea of the project itself) that has been holding me back on this. Then again, it's a nice reminder as to the importance of having an outside reader who is willing to wrestle with your work on its own terms and ferret out exactly what it keeping it from being excellent. I'm lucky enough to have not only friends who are willing to read and critique for me (and friends who write in different genres at that!) but that I've got access to great mentors through Spalding's MFA program. Every once in awhile I ponder at the selfishness of pursuing an expensive degree that doesn't net me much other than personal satisfaction and better writing...and then help like this comes along, or a kind comment from a fellow writer who understands the frustrations of being a writer, and I realize that my life is better for this.

I'll admit that my anti-hippie stance led me to laugh at all the self-actualization hooey you hear about from life coaches (and, um, Maslow). But I'll tell you what - absolutely nothing beats having a career you actually love, and pursuing the things that are important to you and make you feel whole and right. And if that's selfish, well, then let's count it a good thing that I don't have kidlets.

And back to the mentor topic - yes, get someone who reads your work. They don't even have to be a writer, or in your genre - just genuinely interested in helping. I'm always amazed at the great insights that the quote-unquote-untrained come up with. It's often more insightful than what you can get in a workshop because they're not constrained by 'rules' or what they think they should say. Go for it. Can't hurt!

Hard to Write

2008-07-06T19:52:00.000-07:00

Ugh, I've been violently ill these past few days (and this post is also being written in between bouts of unpleasantness). Been wrestling with some decisions I've made in the past, and someone I know online was also mentioning how difficult life's choices are. Good fodder for poetry, though I'm not much a fan of confessional mode. This'll likely get chopped up and the pieces used in separate poems, but here's a first shot at it.

Choices

He swept twenty-six years aside

in a bout of midlife crisis fueled by crack

but he calls every night between ten and two

in the grip of paranoia just to hear my voice

and to ask if I sent them if I sent these

low men to watch him through the walls

and every no I send hurtling over the line

gets lost in the fury in the shadow of a life

and he tells me he’s coming he’d like to

take a trip he’ll drive so when I buy the gun

he can take it back to New York with cops

none the wiser not knowing a thing

and the images of broken glass and mom

cowering in a corner while Meaghen called the cops

haunted me in the hours it took to choose sides

to place the call that made him call me

lucid enough to know what he meant

when he said aloud You are not my daughter

I stopped taking the pills from the beginning

they didn’t help the pain they dulled me

I didn’t want to be dull when you came to me so seldom

so seldom in the night when I left the candles lit

and you loved me in vanilla light

I thought maybe a miracle maybe a chance

maybe some small sign God is kind

could cure me and bind us and fix things

you kissed my throat and I wrapped my legs

tight around your waist wishing

for a different ending with tiny fingers a different

cure than tears and the great wide emptiness

and I loved you and the thought of you

as a father as mine I thought of us forever in the morning

but I bled and the doctors took my womb and you left

and now the only crying at night now is mine

III

My mother is never sick but she called

sounding like she had hauled water up a bridge

sick so sick she said she couldn’t move

when she hasn’t missed work in three years

in tears when the doctor pooh-poohed her away

but I knew I knew it was more when she was so weak

and a new doctor found the thyroid wrong

which was more than nothing but less than cancer

and she always sounded so strong I was new

at work I was broke and tired and far away

and a trip to Anaheim breathing down my neck

so I accepted her fine because I needed it

and when she had to swallow the iodine pill

that was radioactive I didn’t ask her if she dreamed

of her mother and father and uncles and aunts

and all of her cousins who died after chemo

and Anaheim called right after mom did

and she gave me the fine a bit stronger like a gift

so I could believe and I could look at myself

without too much hate that was her gift and when

I stepped onto the plane it was not to go home

Conscience: Another Rough Draft

2008-07-04T20:03:00.000-07:00

Another rough draft - am not quite sure this one captures what I'm going for. I think it's obvious what it's about, but what I'm wondering is if it adds anything new, or just rehashes what we already know in a tired way. Still not certain I'm happy with it. I'm also trying to work my way away from punctuation, and am still a bit uncomfortable without my commas and periods.

Edit: Poem removed due to pending publication

Apologies and a Draft

2008-07-04T19:57:00.000-07:00

Hey all, apologies for being incommunicado for so long. Between the MFA residency, book chapter writing, and the ALA conference in Anaheim (from which I am recently returned), my poetry writing (and blogging) has suffered a bit. I have a few rough drafts of some new pieces which I'll post on here as I'm working on them. I've got two I'll post tonight, this is the first. (Again, in super-rough shape, so any and all criticism welcome. The shallow rhyme scheme was just a tool to get me working.)

To the Soldiers of the World

Kiss your mother, soldier,

she hears mortarfire in her dreams.

Kiss your mother, soldier,

she recognizes your face

through the coat of greasepaint

and the rictus of your screams.

Kiss your mother.

Kiss your sister, soldier,

she sees tracers in the dark.

Kiss your sister, soldier,

remember how you pulled her hair

and threatened her first dates

as your bullets find their mark.

Kiss your woman, soldier,

she is as soft as you are hard.

Kiss your woman, soldier,

she sends letters sealed with perfume

that seeps into your fatigues

and often catches you off-guard.

Kiss your woman.

Kiss your children, soldier,

they recite your name in their prayers.

Kiss your children, soldier,

they are too young to know it now,

but later they will judge all men by you

and find none other compares.

Kiss your father, soldier,

feel his scars beneath your hands.

Kiss your father, soldier,

he has been where you now go,

a picture of a man who lived

through war’s hideous demands.

Kiss your father, soldier,

and head off to those foreign lands.

One Word Meme

2008-06-16T17:39:00.000-07:00

A meme that PinkandChocolateBrown tagged me with (likely because she knew I had important things to do and would be fascinated with the whole one-word thing). I have to admit that I don't find the one-word thing too challenging, since I've been Twittering so long that I'm accustomed to communicating in 140 characters or less *grin*.

Answer the following questions using one word only:

1. Where is your cell phone? …………desk

2. Your significant other?…………………nonexistent

3. Your hair? ……………………………………black

4. Your mother? ………………………………sick

5. Your father?……………………………………assmonkey

6. Your favorite thing?………………………huggles

7. Your dream last night?…………………horrific

8. Your favorite drink? ………………………free

9. Your dream/goal?…………………………ISBN

10. The room you’re in?……………………library

11. Your ex?………………………………………which?

12. Your fear?……………………………………alone

13. Where do you want to be in 6 years?……happy

14. Where were you last night?…………bed

15. What you’re not?…………………………slender

16. Muffins?………………………………………depends

17. One of your wish list items?…………moneys

18. Where you grew up?……………………BayShore

19. The last thing you did?…………………wrote

20. What are you wearing?…………………undies

21. Your TV?………………………………………smallish

22. Your pets?……………………………………bassety

23. Your computer? ……………………………dying

24. Your life?………………………………………full

25. Your mood?…………………………………cranky

26. Missing someone?………………………Mom

27. Your car?………………………………………Jeepy

28. Something you’re not wearing?……mascara

29. Favorite Store?………………………………tattoo

30. Your summer?………………………………busy

31. Like(love) someone?……………………………many

32. Your favorite color?………………………cranberry

33. Last time you laughed?………………today

34. Last time you cried?………………………months

35. Who will re-post this?……………………hunh?

On Delicious Men (and CNF, sort of)

2008-06-12T11:46:00.001-07:00

Ok, so I get a wee bit manhungry when I get to about the 6 month mark of singledom. Right now I'm at...well, a lot more than six months.

I didn't realize there's a celebrity crush etiquette. I mean, I think it's silly in general to lust after people you'll never likely meet in real life anyway, not to mention who wouldn't give most of us a second look. But when a few girlfriends and I were discussing celebrity crushes, I was informed that I should be *embarrassed* by my inexplicable affection for certain stars. Like, say, Mark Wahlberg. Or the oft-mocked Keanu Reeves. (That's right, Keanu - smooches from Chattanooga!)

I'll admit, though, that with regards to real-life men, my crushes tend to sway in the direction of Hugh Laurie and Shemar Moore (my latest tv crush) - I do love me a wickedly smart and arrogant man. That's right. The Poetess suffers from the NerdLove. (Much to her detriment - how many women do you know whose company have been turned down by a guy who preferred to spend the evening with his NightElf character?)

So, yes, I love that Russell Crowe not only looks scrumptious, but also like the sort of guy I'd like to have my back in a fight in a divey irish bar. And I refuse to hide my scathing derision for prettyboys like Clive Owen and Brad Pitt. Meh, I say. Meh. Plus, it's better to prefer slightly unpopular celebs. I figure it gives me that much more of a shot, since I'm competing with fewer women for their attention, right?

And in a vain attempt to make this post somewhat address writing, I will report that I've submitted my first CNF piece ever to Copper Nickel for their "Women Writing the West" issue due out in October. I expect them to add to my lovely list of rejections I've received this month, but that's okay. I was just proud to bust my CNF cherry. Now if only Shemar Moore or Hugh Laurie would ask me to lunch or dinner to celebrate...

Writing on Deadline

2008-06-05T06:51:00.000-07:00

I have a serious love/hate relationship with deadlines. I love deadlines because they give me a drop-dead date to get things done by. Given my natural state, I'd simply plod along revising, revising, and gettign nothing actually finished. And I hate them, of course, because they give me palpitations when I think about them looming above me with scythe-like blades.

I have a number of pre-6/26 deadlines I have to meet. (6/26 because that's when I leave for the American Library Association Annual Conference, and I won't be back until July 2.) Given that I'm still semi-wrecked from residency, and still recuping from the drive to and from Lexington this weekend (no, really. I just turned 29. I'm old, and need serious nap recuperation time), my upcoming deadlines make my head spinny.

The good news: I have already written and sent off (and made the editor's suggested revisions for) two book chapters, "MLS, MFA: The Librarian Pursuing Creative Writing" and "The Poet-Librarian: Writing and Submitting Work," that should appear in The Published Librarian: Successful Professional and Personal Writing, a volume edited by Carol Smallwood, published by the American Library Association sometime in 2009, if all goes according to schedule. Yes, those are done. Deep breath, deep bow, pat on the back, relaxation.

Now for the stress. The big chapter I need to get written and polished before I leave is "The Haves and the Have-Nots: Class, Race, Gender, Access to Computers and Academic Success," for inclusion in Gen M: A Handbook for Educators and Librarians, edited by Vib Bowman and Robert Lackie, and due out from Neal-Schuman in 2009. But I was granted research leave by my generous colleagues and Dean to get the major portion of that done, which is what I'll be doing Wednesday and Thursday of this week, and polishing over the weekend. Happily, the research for it is already done and scattered on my desk. Unhappily, the citation format needs to be in Chicago, which I've never used. Blugh.

At some point I also need to create the poster I told ALA that I would present at the Annual conference: "Academic Library 2.0: Self-Paced Guided Training for Faculty and Staff." It shouldn't be bad, I've already started it in a .ppt poster template, and should be able to upload it to Kinko's and have it ready for pickup at the convention center. God, I love living in the age of the internet.

Anyway, these are the major deadlines, though I've got others for various other workstuffs. Those I can deal with. And I'll have much time for more local projects that affect the library - not to mention my creative writing and MFA work - once July hits.

Also, Dear July: When you come, if you could be slightly cooler than June, it would be much appreciated. Love, The Poetess.

The Professional - if Pooped - Poetess

2008-06-01T18:41:00.000-07:00

Finally back home in Chattanooga after what feels like too long away. I have to admit I'm a bit of an introvert, despite my bubbly and funny social persona when I'm in a group, and being around so many people for so long has me exhausted. A colleague picked me up from the airport (thanks, Bevvie!), and dropped me at home, where I promptly did laundry, groceried, and scrubbed down the bathroom and decreased the height of a few piles of 'stuff.' All in all, relatively productive. And while I am not in the least looking forward to meeting the trainer at 8am tomorrow, I am indeed looking forward to rescuing my basset boy from the animal hospital where he's been boarding. I missed his furry little butt - he would have come in handy at the hotel, which was positively frigid. And I do love a cold room, but it's easier to fall asleep with a pupster bundled up behind your knees.

Anyway, home and looking forward to Getting Sh*t Done for the next few weeks at work. Very pleased to report that this afternoon when I got home and checked my email, I found one that included a contract from Familia Books, who picked up my poem "crochet" for their forthcoming anthology Wisdom of Our Mothers. (Please note that the contract also noted that I could collect my $100 payment upon publication, or wait until a year after publication and collect $200. Either way, this is my first paid piece. The Peripatetic Poetess is now the Professional Poetess!)

MFA Residency: Day 5

2008-05-27T18:59:00.000-07:00

Day 5 is just ending of the residency for my low-res MFA here at Spalding University in Louisville. A lot has happened so far, adn I'll cram as much as I can into this post before I feel the tug of poetry draw me back to my notebook.

I got in on Thursday night (after being completely raped by a Chattanooga cab company - $28 to take me one and a half miles to the airport! WHAT?! Mental note: call Beverly and beg a ride home from the airport on Sunday), and the Brown hotel is as beautiful as ever, and equipped with the same decadently absorbent towels. I love crossing back into Kentucky - even Louisville, though my heart is closer to Danville and Lexington. It always feels like coming home.

Residency started on Friday, and I amazed myself by remembering the map of Spalding's small downtown campus - I got myself turned around regularly in November, but now I'm pretty adept at getting around our little 4-block cube of the city, and its homeless folk. (Thanks for the catcalls, guys. Seriously. You have no idea how that makes the day of a big-bootied woman like myself. I heart the looeyville homeless!)

Coming here is really like coming home. As a writer, there's little better than finding an entire gaggle of people who understand your random frisking of yourself for a writing implement to jot down (on paper, or your bookbag strap, or your arm) a thought that you think might grow into a nifty little sapling of a poem or story. Folks who understand the devastation of those teensy little impersonal rejection slips that count as responses to your deepest secrets sent off to editors. Folks you don't feel guilty with when you press your latest pieces into their hands for workshopping, because you know they're really interested in your work, and you know you'll get honest and constructive feedback from. Smell that? That's beer mixed with artistic potential. Those stains? Ink. I love it.

So far, I have attended lectures on:

Pico Iyer's Sun After Dark: Flights into the Foreign, lyric essays on travel

Creative Non Fiction: Where the Public Meets the Private

The Life of the Place: Ko Un's Abiding Places

A Rhetorical Approach to the Sentence

There are No Zebras Among the Roses: Negation & the Imagination in 20th Century Poetry

The Art of Poetic Failure: Identification, Method & Practice

Metaphor as Analysis: Transparency, Translucence, Opacity in Language

the Shapely Poem

On Translation

Writing in Animal Time

The History of Every Country

Structural Screwity: A brief Guide to Reading & Writing Experimental Fiction

Sudden Physical Moments in Short Fiction

And we're not even done until Saturday night!

I've been workshopping daily with my small group and Greg Pape, who will also be my mentor for this upcoming semester. He's not only a hell of a poet with a real eye for the details in nature, he's also Montana's Poet Laureate and an all-around interesting guy with a really intense reading presence and a good sense of humor. (He's going to need it, with me as a student.)

Tomorrow I've got my small group discussion on syntactic doubling and line breaks, an expository writing workshop where we'll go over each other's critical essays (on a book we all hated, so that should be particularly painful), poetry workshop, a lecture on fiction for the book in common for this coming semester, and a play at the Bunbury Theater, Rabbit Hole.

All told, it's going pretty well, though not quite as gangbusters as last residency, when I seem to remember staying up until past 4am drinking beer (um, I do not even like beer), and there may have been an occasion or two where I raised my shirt above what was proper to show off some ink. So far it's been pretty tame, with folks quitting for bed before 10pm. I do hope that we end up hitting Fourth Street Live again sometime this residency, because the poetess desperately needs an excuse to shake her tucchus on the dance floor sometime in 2008. One more dance while I'm twenty-eight, before I turn the big two-nine next week.

Anyway, among the great workshopping and the notes I've made on lectures, I've also been hitting the student and faculty readings at night, which are really impressive. Last night I read "Love Letter from a White Woman," "Intercession" (a rewrite of the ail Mary prayer), "For my Unborn Son" and "Thorns," and they seemed to go over really well with the crowd. (It was getting on 9pm, so it is also altogether possible the crowd was simply pleased to be getting out, since I was the last reader.) Anyway, it was a good time, and I was re-impressed with the crop of talent in my classmates.

That's about it for now, and you likely won't hear from me for awhile, since I don't get home until June, and then I've got three book chapters and one poster session to complete before July hits. I also had a conference presentation pitch that I made with a gaggle of other librarians picked up as a half-day preconference at one of the big librarian conferences (Internet Librarian 2008, in Monterey) picked up, so the fun never stops! For now, I need to go back and make margin comments in this batch of critical essays, and try to crank out some of the poems - or at least flesh out some of the ideas for poems - that have been growing in my head. Much love from a poetess steeped in her element...