I was driving in what was clearly Washington's fifth congressional district--relatively flat, arid land with few markers to cue me in.
After about three hours of aimless driving, I realized that I was traveling in the wrong direction. Rather than head back in the correct direction, I instead looked for a roadside motel.
From the motel, I remember seeing dust clouds from a car on the road, and I remember calling my family telling them that I would be late.
Then I woke up.
Huh?
***
Week 8 of the academic quarter. Rainy. People with colds. Children with colds. Me with a cold.
***
Poem? Boy, I've got ideas for poems . . . lots and lots of ideas.
***
Current spin:
For some reason, Lykki Li was in my brain this morning.
So, suddenly I'm remembering my dreams. In the past, I could never recall them, but lately I've been remembering a number of them. Last night, I had a wild one:
I was standing in a very long line at Golden Apple Comics in Los Angeles, after having picked up The Watchmen, and a plastic ninja sword.
The line was not moving. Off to the side, a woman was operating a seismograph on a cart that is very similar to the carts at my university used to wheel around Audio/Video equipment. I thought about telling her how foolish it was to be operating a seismograph on something that had wheels.
And then I woke up.
Weird.
****
Week 8 of the academic quarter out of a total of 11 weeks. It is at this point in the quarter that I actually start loving the quarter system.
The wee one has a cold. It's his first cold which means he's completely miserable, cranky, and not sleeping. Which means that we his parents are miserable, cranky, and not sleeping.
***
Still not writing, but that's okay. I had quite the summer. I don't foresee any bursts of creativity in the future. I'm just not moved to go to the writing desk these days because of all the stuff that's out in front of me.
Thank you for the kind notes of concern. The toddler is fine. It wasn't anything vigilance and a bunch of Benedryl couldn't solve. We now know baby is allergic to sesame oil and will be much more selective about what he eats.
***
Nothing much to say, other than I'm working my tail off . . .
Horrible night this past Friday. I was cooking up some potstickers in a pan with about a tablespoon of sesame oil to give them some flavor. I served it to my son and about twenty minutes into the meal he started to grow irritable. Meredith noticed a raised spot on his eye and it looked like he had gotten a mosquito bite. Well, that raised bump moved over to the other side of the bridge of his nose. Then his eyelids and face started swelling. He was having an allergic reaction to something and we figured it had to have been the sesame oil, because we had served the potstickers to the boy before, but they had been steamed and not fried in oil on that previous occasion.
So this is the moment when living so far out in the country really sucks. I had to drive around looking for Benedryl. None of the local gas stops had any Benedryl for children, so I had to go nearly into town which is about twelve miles away but takes almost twenty minutes to reach.
When I got back to the house, the hives had radiated all throughout the boy's body. His face was plump and it looked like he was having trouble seeing out his eyes. All along his diaper line, he had beet-red rashes, and he seemed extremely uncomfortable. The poor kid.
We made the executive decision to go into town and stay with my parents. I just felt more comfortable spending the night in a pediatrician's (semi-retired) house.
L's okay. He never swallowed the potstickers. I think he had just gotten a bit of oil on his fingers, touched his eyes, and the rest is history.
***
The allergic reaction didn't deter him from dressing up for Halloween and visiting the local merchants. By the end of the day, he was a natural--grabbing single pieces of candy and thanking the merchants with a "quack." I dare say he was quite cute.
***
Changed all the calendars in the house and set the clocks back. I want to say that we'll be gaining an hour of sleep in the de la Paz household, but this I know to be a lie. The toddler is like the birds. He wakes up when he feels compelled to wake up. His usual time has been 6:45AM. I fear that he will now be waking at 5:45AM.
It's my last teaching day of the week. I've been sleeping very little the past few days, partially because I've been having odd anxiety dreams about money and other things.
I woke up this morning at 1:40AM after having a very vivid, post-apocalyptic dream. I was carrying my son, piggyback, while a tremendous pair of tidal waves was about to engulf the entire continent, caused by, of all things, a nuclear warhead. Much of the dream was me running through a runway strip of land as the curl of some breakers was about to crash into that small dry spot.
After, I couldn't get back to sleep. I was jacked up on adrenaline. I swear, I am my mother's son. She is the same way. A light sleeper. And like her, once I wake up from sleep, I have a hard time getting back to sleep. I contemplated grading but instead I read the 2009 Best American Short Stories--a story about a boy who was half human and half horse, and his parents who had gotten into an argument about his "deformity." Not exactly a good thing to read after bad dreams about parenting (if it was in fact a dream about parenting).
***
And the truth is I worry about my future. For the longest time, I worried about my own writing and what will happen to my work. Not so much anymore. Most of my fears are financial and family-related. I suppose it's a sign that I'm growing up, yeah?
***
Speaking of growing, my little guy, whom I dream about at night, is now saying "no" to things as he shakes his head. This is a development. At first, it was an event. It was something that was "cute." Sometimes it still is cute, but more and more he's asserting his displeasure. A myriad of things seem to displease him.
***
One thing that displeases me greatly is this accursed 8AM teaching schedule. Thankfully it's a two-day-a-week schedule, but the commute is what kills. I have to be up by 5:45AM if I want to shower, eat, and prepare for my day. I've been counting the number of days left in the quarter. Thankfully that number is getting smaller and smaller: 6.
***
Today, not so in love with the prose poem. Especially since I have to provide annotations for 20ish pieces.
I think I've mentioned that we're doing some major excavation on our property. Two months ago we hired a local lumberjack to cut down and sell several large trees that were on the verge of falling on our house. It seems the previous owner of our property had clear cut swathes of trees, thus damaging the root system of the very precarious Douglas Firs and hemlocks throughout our land. The thing about the root systems of these trees--they grow laterally as opposed to downward, so they rely on other trees to support them. So with all the damage done from the previous lumber harvest, we had a lot of very tall trees that were in danger of falling on us.
Anyway, we cut down a lot of trees. We had a lot of tree stumps. We hired an excavator to dig up the stumps. Our property looks completely different. I'll give you folks the before and after pictures later, but the excavator has been working on the land for the past few days and it looks like a completely different house. We actually get sunlight shining down on us. That means we can build our vegetable garden and we're quite excited about that, given the price of produce these days.
Now, don't worry . . . we intend to replant over 100 trees (we get them at a cheap rate--a dollar per sapling) in places where we want to build a screen.
***
Other things--I'm in a teaching groove now. It's week 6 of the quarter which means we're past the halfway mark, and I've got my lesson plans as well as my teaching schedule well in hand. I still hate the 8AM schedule, but I've adjusted.
The prose poem class that I teach as my multigenre class is quite interesting. I've got a number of students who are particularly resistant to assignments which drives me crazy. For the longest time I couldn't figure out why it drove me crazy, but recently, I think I managed to articulate my displeasure with such resistance during class time. I basically said that they as artists should never be afraid to try things even though they may not get the best writing.
There are always students who are resistant to being taught. That's just a given. And I suppose I should endeavor to take such things less personally.
***
I haven't written a damn thing for quite some time. That's okay. I've been busy with this killer schedule and a little boy who likes to say "Clock" and play with large Legos. A little boy who's also learning to say "no." Ruh roh.
I had a wonderful, albeit brief visit to Los Angeles this past week. I really wanted to drive up and down the I-5/I-405 corridors to revisit my past haunts, but sadly I got in late in the evening on Wednesday and left relatively early on Friday.
Things I did manage to do--I did manage to drive down to my favorite lunch-time hang-out from my undergrad days: the unfortunately named Soupplantation. Yes, I realize this is an ugly corporate franchise, but I missed having a salad buffet around. ALL YOU CAN EAT ROUGHAGE!
The other wonderful thing was that I knew my way back quickly to the hotel.
***
So, what changed? Well, my alma mater was almost unrecognizable. Where once there was a single entrance and a single strip of buildings, now the place was a megaplex full of adobe, steel, and glass. It was quite strange to walk down the pathways of what was once a small 5000 student university to what was now double, perhaps triple the student population.
***
I also realize that I can't stand the heat as much as I did in my undergrad and grad days. 81 degrees killed me. I was so uncomfortable.
***
As for the reading, there were 9 readers and I was near the end. The reading itself was lovely and each of the readers stuck to their allotted time, including myself (which is always something to be grateful for). My mentors Gail Wronsky and Chuck Rosenthal presided over the affair and beamed like proud parents. I wound up selling very few books but trading many, which I do like to do. And after, many of the alumni readers stayed a bit chatting, gossiping, drinking wine. Alas, I really do wish that I had had more time, or at least that my family had come with me so we could've stayed a bit longer, but the responsibilities of work and of parenting always bring me back.
***
Oh, and I also listened to a lot of good radio:
White Denim. Heard this on KXLU 88.9, the indie/college radio station of LMU.
I'll be heading down to Los Angeles for a reading at Loyola Marymount University, my undergraduate alma mater. The reading will take place at the Marymount Institute at 7:30PM on Thursday, October 22nd.
This is going to be weird . . . I haven't been back to LA since 1995. The place has changed. My school has changed. I know there's a whole new section of campus that wasn't there when I attended in the early 90's.
What's more, for most of my time at LMU, I was a Biology major and many of my old biology professors have retired.
Still, I suppose this trip back down to Los Angeles will be like a social anthropology experiment.
***
I decided to rent a car because I have pretty much the whole day to myself on Thursday. I think I'll go revisit my old haunts . . . maybe take a drive down to Santa Monica. Who knows. Maybe I'll write a new poem.
Other things that I may do--there's an old record store along Sepulveda that I used to frequent. I want to see if it's still there. I also want to get some KXLU swag.
I'm in the midst of finding art for my new book and its proven to be very difficult for this particular book.
Part of the problem with finding cover art for it is the book is pretty "literal." And what I mean by that is it's heavily steeped in long narrative poems. I could very well put up pictures of orchards and apples, but I don't want the cover to be as literal as the poems in the book. We'll see.
But I also don't want to have a cover like Mr. Shames's classic, Virgin Heat.
Oh dear lord.
Yes,I've posted this image before. It's too good to be forgotten. And let it be a lesson to all of you. . .
Give a hearty congratulations to Kelli for winning the White Pine Press Award!
Yay!
***
Sorry I've been adrift. Trying to catch up with paperwork, a sprinting 1 1/2 year-old, and lots of departmental responsibility.
I'm glad I sent out my poems in September because I don't know how I could possibly do it in the middle of this very busy quarter.
Additionally, I'm not liking teaching at 8AM. Oh, it's brutal. Especially commuting with the whole family. We've been leaving our house at 6:40AM. Not fun.
***
Ugly weather today. Really ugly. No walks in the park today, for sure.
***
My dog is so old. He's not long for the world, I think. Currently he's lying on the carpet in my parents' house snoring. What this has to do with anything is beyond me. Really, I'm procrastinating before I get my @$$ to they gym.
C'mon, Jake old buddy. Get up and nudge me towards the door.
***
Current Spin:
Got the new Flaming Lips album. Definitely darker than their previous two or three albums. Hard to believe this band has been around for 20 years.
The other day, someone mentioned that my newer work is much different than my previous work. Not much to say about that, other than "thank you," and "I hope so." I mean, heavenforbid all my books now and until the duration of my writing life wind up being inter-related, character-driven prose poem collections.
Really, to be honest, I get bored. I get bored of a particular style. I get bored of "doing what I'm doing." So I wind up doing something differently from project to project.
***
My students are so concerned about sounding like themselves. And that's okay. I was concerned about sounding like myself for such a long time. And then I changed. My interests changed. Stuff happened.
I like to think that the assignments and exercises that I give the students who take my workshop allow them to find their own "voices" on their own terms. Sometimes, though, there's just no telling. I get e-mails from concerned students who ask whether they're "doing the assignment right." This weird desire to "get it right" so often occludes the real progress that should be occurring in a workshop--experimentation, risk, discomfort . . . So often my students look for immediate praise. And sometimes I do praise them. And sometimes I tease them. Sometimes I shrug. Sometimes I scold. Mind you, I'm never mean and I don't intend any meanness. I just believe in being direct, but doing so in a tone that's effective for an individual. I think I'm pretty good at perceiving who can handle what type of response.
***
You know, if you include when I was an organic chemistry TA during my undergraduate days, I've been teaching at the college level for 16 years. Wow.
***
Current Spin:
My Brightest Diamond. A song for my Sunday chill-out.
One brain is entirely into prose poems. The other in prosody.
I always find it difficult to run workshops in a prosody course because the students are so intimidated by forms that they wind up spending so much time on the forms themselves during discussions, and so little time on the content. SO this quarter, I'm working to break that pattern by actually spending less time on critiquing the form missteps and focusing more on whether the poem is effective in the form. They're still quiet. It might just be that I've got a quiet batch.
This coming week the prosody students will be workshopping their literary ballads. I'm having them write six quatrains in iambic quatrameter/trimeter. We'll see how it goes.
***
The prose poem group . . . they're the talkative ones. Again, I think it's subject-related. They're not as intimidated by the prose poem as a form. The last piece they wrote was an imitation of excerpts from Stein's "Lifting Belly." I was really quite impressed by some of the pieces I've read. What I'm hoping is that the syntactical twists and turns in that particular assignment translate into some of their later prose pieces. I find in the prose poem class that often, students get lazy with their sentences. Also, there's a lot of over-narration. So, I'm working to confound them a little. Maybe I should have them write in anapests.
I think I'm adjusting to this wicked Fall schedule, finally. I had a mini bout of insomnia last night which really took its toll on me all day. But, after something like three cups of coffee, I think my morning workshops went fine. Whoosh!
***
I'll be teaching for Raven Chronicles & Jackstraw this Saturday. Details are here: http://www.jackstraw.org/.
***
Currently catching up on my backlog of DVR recordings. Wow. So many shows.
***
Since the start of the quarter, my relationship with my own writing has been put on hold. It happens every year and I'm okay with it. I always justify such occurrences with the acknowledgment that I write so much in the summer. But still . . . I left a few projects at stages that I feel are uncomfortably incomplete. I may revisit a thing or two in the coming months, but for now as I mentioned earlier in this post, I'm just getting accustomed to my schedule now. I haven't been blogging as much as I usually do. Oh well.
The editors are pleased to announce a call for submissions for A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry.
We are seeking poems that work within the literary tradition of persona poetry: poems written as dramatic monologues, whose speakers employ masks, or whose character and voice are different from the poet's own.
Please submit up to 5 unpublished poems. We will also consider poems whose rights have reverted back to the author.
All submissions will be accepted electronically. Please send an email to the editors at facesanthology@gmail.com with the poet's name and "Submission for Persona Anthology" as the subject line, with the poems as an attachment.
Submissions will be accepted October 1, 2009 through January 1, 2010.
Some of the newer work that I had been wrestling with this past August.
***
It's 11PM and I'm tired and hungry. I spent the better part of two hours catching up on paperwork. I think I'm caught up with most of the non-teaching stuff. The teaching stuff will have to wait till tomorrow and Sunday.
I pretty much spent the whole day taking care of a teething child who wanted to run outside in the rain. Not fun, but I can't blame him. There ain't a whole lot to do over here.
***
Heard from our lumberjack. Was that last sentence startling for you? Yes, we have a lumberjack we've hired to do some cutting around our property. He's pretty much clear-cut the trees from the front of our house, the sides of our house, and the back of our house. Well, clear-cut is a bit extreme. He's selectively cut the trees that were a danger to our well-being. It's amazing how fast they grow here in the NW. When we first moved into our house three years ago, there was a fir that was about waist high. Now it's three feet taller than me. Stuff that's too close to the house has to go, what with the crazy winds that we get between Fall and Winter.
Anyway, the lumberjack . . . he called. Seems he tore his MCL and will be out for two months. Meanwhile, the clean-up job in his aftermath is quite daunting. We'll definitely have to hire an excavator.
All this boring rural talk amounts to something--I'm clearing land for a vegetable garden and a poetry shed/office. I've had dreams of a little poetry shed, complete with a window or two, electricity, and big enough for an overstuffed easy chair, a few bookshelves, and a desk. The vegetable garden would be neat, too.
Right now I'm wearing sweatpants, a hoodie, and wool socks, and I'm typing in bed next to a just-now-sleeping-toddler. It's getting harder and harder to find time to fill the blog, and frankly my mind's been more about trying to stay on top of my ever-growing work load while maintaining a balanced life of parenting, teaching, and being a spouse.
L. is now 18 months, though he seems like he's going through the terrible two's. He's curious, ambitious, brave, and definitely headstrong. He's also extremely outgoing and he's definitely an animal lover. Because he's super ambulatory now, climbing, running, pulling, pushing, opening, and closing, Meredith, myself, and my parents have had to keep constant vigilance. So there are some things in my life that I've had to let go.
The yard looks like crap.
***
I'm in the process of filling out my questionnaire and part of the questionnaire includes spots for people to tap for blurbs. I always feel awkward about this part of the process. I know the Mr. Espada has already provided a blurb, but I've got five people I need to contact. I've already gotten a thumb's up from one. And I sent a note to one other, but I'm looking for three more. Any ideas? *sigh*
***
I haven't written a poem since August. :D
***
Current Spin:
Dead Man's Bones. Ryan Gosling's music project (Yes, the actor). Should be a fun album to own for Halloween.
Yes, Fall is in full swing. We've turned the heater on and the maples are starting to turn near my mountain home. That means lots of things to me . . . namely the rhythmic cadence of teaching, prepping, grading, and commuting is now in full swing. Yet this year I feel really off balance.
Part of it might be because the commute with the baby is really tough. Especially dropping him off before work when he's much more aware and feels the separation more vividly than he had in the past when our neighbor babysat for us.
Today he cried a ton when we handed him over to my parents. Ugh. Not fun. Still, I think the rhythms will become seamless soon. I just need to get over this damn cold.
***
I'm meeting with Cara Jaye Thursday, to pick her brain about possible covers. She mentioned she may be interested in producing one specific to Requiem for the Orchard which would be really cool.
My dad and I are headed down to Seattle to watch the Seahawks play the Bears. It's amazing how expensive an NFL game can be. I tend to think that it's actually a better game on television . . . especially if you have a large screen HDTV. Regardless, it should be a fun day, despite the parking headaches.
***
Other things--just got back from Snohomish, WA, where the Artist Trust was having their 1st quarter board meeting. I read a couple of poems and talked about how the GAP grant benefited my career. I was happy to make the trip.
One thing the board members seemed to wonder was how to reach more artists. There are a ton of artists in Washington state, and it seemed like they felt they weren't reaching enough artists.
My deal is I'm pretty independent about researching these sorts of things. I know where to find stuff, and the web's pretty good about helping me find stuff. One thing they wondered was why artists weren't members. My thinking--well, there's a membership fee and so many of the events are in Seattle, not everyone will actually benefit from a membership.
The first day of teaching for me. Lots of the same students from my previous classes, so I must be doing something right, since they keep taking my courses.
***
I had to wake up bloody early this morning. 6AM. It turns out I was right about my travel estimates--it takes me approximately 45 minutes to get from my doorstep to my parents' doorstep in Bellingham (they're babysitting L.). From there, it takes approx. 15 minutes to get to my office. And then my classes are all on the fourth floor across the quad, so by the time I've hit all the crucial points I need to hit prior to my teaching times, class begins.
Yes, minutiae, but I hate being late for things.
***
My first class was my prose poem/short-short class. I spent the morning confusing students about genre . . . confusing myself, even.
My next class was my prosody/forms of verse class. The two courses couldn't be more different.
***
I'm doing a big happy publication dance today.
***
Current spin:
Ra Ra Riot. Love the skateboarding. Makes me feel nostalgic.
I have never skateboarded in my life, but the very act makes me nostalgic for a past I've never had. What does that say about me?
First, there's this picture taken of a can of lard in my sister-in-law's house in SF.
***
Sorry I've been away. Very busy these days, what with the new quarter upon me and my tenure and promotion stuff coming due.
I managed to fill two three-ring-binders full of evaluations and other goodies. And my chair stressed that I "streamline" the file, so it only represents the five years I've been at WWU and not the four years I had been at Utica College. Hell, if I included that stuff, the file would be five binders thick. I remember how evaluation-happy that place was.
I had two teaching evaluations every semester on top of my 4/4 teaching load at Utica College. Yeah . . . five binders would be about right.
***
I'm back from San Francisco. It was a lovely visit. I got in touch with many fabulous Kundiman poets as well as Barbara Jane, Oscar, Craig, and Javier. And it was also good to see D.A. Powell at the PAWA reading.
***
Two classes this Fall: ENG 453 (which I teach as a poetic forms course) and ENG 460 (which I'm teaching as a prose poetry course).
I just finished up and printed the syllabi. Wish me luck.
Here in San Francisco for the pair of readings listed below. Not much time to blog, but thought I'd leave you with a sweet picture of the fab poet, Joseph O. Legaspi, and my rugrat with hummus on his face.
Come & hear beautiful poetry, libate, and mingle with an all-star line up with Kundiman poets, the first time together on the West Coast! This special collaboration with Achiote Press and Kundiman is a special opportunity to fundraise for Kundiman, a dynamic arts organization dedicated to fostering Asian American poetry. As part of their mission, Kundiman provides a retreat for emerging Asian American poets at the University of Virginia every summer. This reading celebrates the publication of “Here is a Pen:” An Anthology of West Coast Kundiman Poets, a chapbook anthology published by Achiote Press, edited by Ching-In Chen, Margaret Rhee, and Debbie Yee. Chapbooks will be available for purchase. All proceeds go to Kundiman.
We look forward to seeing you!
Where: UC Berkeley at the Barbara T. Christian Room, 554 Barrows Hall
When: Thursday, Sept 17th Time: 11:30: Chapbook & Book Sale and Light Reception
12 – 2: Reading
Readers:
Joseph O. Legaspi is the author of Imago (CavanKerry Press), winner of a 2008 Global Filipino Literary Award. Born in the Philippines, he currently resides in Manhattan and works at Columbia University. A graduate of New York University’s Creative Writing Program, recent works appeared in Callaloo, North American Review, Poets & Writers, New York Theater Review, Crab Orchard Review, Gay & Lesbian Review and the anthology Language for a New Century (W.W. Norton). A recipient of a poetry fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts and an Urban Artists grant, he co-founded Kundiman (www.kundiman.org), a non-profit organization serving Asian American poets. Visit him at www.josepholegaspi.com.
Oliver de la Paz is the author of three books of poetry, NAMES ABOVE HOUSES, FURIOUS LULLABY (Southern Illinois University Press), and the forthcoming book REQUIEM FOR THE ORCHARD which was selected by Martin Espada as the winner of the 2009 University of Akron Poetry Prize and will be available in the Spring of 2010. He is a recipient of grants from the Artist Trust of Washington and from the New York Foundation for the Arts. He teaches creative writing at Western Washington University and is the co-chair of the Advisory Board for Kundiman.
Debbie Yee is a trusts and estates attorney, Kundiman fellow, arts enthusiast and crafts explorer. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in 32 Poems, OCHO, Fence and The Best American Poetry 2009. She received her undergraduate and law degrees from UC Berkeley. Debbie blogs irregularly at www.debbieyee.com.
Neil Aitken is the founding editor of Boxcar Poetry Review and the author of The Lost Country of Sight, winner of the 2007 Philip Levine Prize. His poetry has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, The Drunken Boat, Ninth Letter, Sou'wester and many other literary journals. He lives in Los Angeles where he is currently pursuing a PhD in literature and creative writing at the University of Southern California.
Ching-In Chen is the author of The Heart's Traffic and a multi-genre, border-crossing writer. The daughter of Chinese immigrants, she is a Kundiman, Macondo and Lambda Fellow. A community organizer, she has worked in the Asian American communities of San Francisco, Oakland, and Boston. Her work has been recently published in journals such as BorderSenses, Rio Grande Review, Fifth Wednesday Journal, OCHO, Iron Horse Literary Review, Water~Stone Review, Boxcar Poetry Review, Verdad and the anthology Yellow as Turmeric, Fragrant as Cloves. A co-editor of The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Partner Abuse in Activist Communities, forthcoming from South End Press, Ching-In is currently in the process of editing an anthology on gender, militarism and war from the perspective of women and non-gender-conforming people of color. In Riverside, California, Ching-In is a member of the Save Our Chinatown Committee, a grassroots organization focused on the preserving the archaelogical heritage of Riverside Chinatown.
Please join us for the next reading in the PAWA Arkipelago Reading Series
Where: The Bayanihan Center 1010 Mission Street @ 6th Street, San Francisco
When: Saturday, September 19, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Who: Oliver de la Paz, Joseph O. Legaspi, Mari L'Esperance, and Theresa Calpotura (guitar).
* Both readings are free and open to the public.
* Special book raffle drawing opportunity for those who go to both UC Berkeley and PAWA readings!
* * *
Last minute things before I leave for San Francisco. My tenure review file is due on Wednesday and I fly out on Wednesday, so pretty much everything is due between today and tomorrow for me.
I've somehow managed to compile four and a half years of an academic career at WWU into two very large binders.
If I were to combine all the stuff from my other teaching gigs, I would have easily exceeded four large binders. Especially since I taught a 4/4 teaching load at my previous employer for a total of four years.
I somehow feel that I've left something out. . .
* * *
Current Spin:
Headless Heroes. "Just Like Honey" (Jesus & Mary Chain Cover)
Meredith and L. are coming, so I may be a bit frazzled. I'll try to put on my game face. :-|
***
Current Spin:
Taken By Trees. "Lost and Found." If you recognize her voice, she's the female vocals in the very famous Peter Bjorn & John hit, "Young Folks." This is from her first solo album. Her new album . .. glorious. Just can't find any tracks to play for you.
I'm trying to blog with my toddler sleeping soundly in the crook of my arm. I'm finding that the spacebar on my laptop is entirely too loud. He's been asleep since 11:30AM. It's 1:39PM right now and Meredith, my parents, and my aunts and uncles have gone shopping, leaving me with L. and Jake in my parents' B'ham abode.
Uh . . . little baby twitch. I'll type slower.
***
In case you missed it, Joe and Chenelle Milford have archived yesterday's interview here. In that interview, we talk about hacking up ant hills in cubist paintings.
***
I'm feeling oh-so non-literary these days. I want to watch a lot of sports on cable, work out at the gym, and soak in these last days before school starts up again, but I realize I need to work on my syllabi for the upcoming academic quarter, so naturally my head will be thrust back into thinking about literary works that could provide good models for would-be writers.
Again I'm teaching my ENG 453 course, which is the advanced poetry course and which I always teach as a forms class. I'm also teaching ENG 460 again, which I'm teaching as a prose poem class--our ENG 460 is labeled as a multigenre course and I find teaching prose poems as a blurring between fiction, non-fiction, and poetry is a useful approach.
See . . . all of a sudden I'm thrust back into the literary.
***
Here's a non-literary moment for you--my current spin:
Yes, that's right . . . I've sent seven packets of poems out into the world. I'm not sim-subbing them because I just don't want to do all the heavy tracking that I had been doing the past year. And with a lot of the pieces being submitted electronically, there's no need because the turnaround time has been really fast.
Just a small one. Seems after all the hullabaloo, I ran out of things to say.
***
Currently in the throes of putting together small manuscript packets to send out to journals. What I'm finding is I'm running out of stuff that holds my confidence. I suppose this is natural--a lot of the stuff that has my confidence is either picked up, out, or in limbo somewhere.
So here I am, sitting with a whole lot of work that I feel needs work, or work that feels reliant on other pieces. I'll still send them out, but I need to be careful about how they go out to face the world.
***
Suffice it to say, I'm less confident about sending out work that isn't already in a pre-conceptualized manuscript form. It's just easier for me to construct packets of poems when I already know the relationship that occurs between poems. These newer pieces are new new. I barely know who they are.
***
My oddness, when it comes to submissions, also stems from my concept of a poetry book. I read poetry books cover to cover. I'm not a page flipper. I don't go after single poems, I read the whole collection. So I'd like my submissions to also provide some kind of cohesion in terms of concept. When an editor gets my stuff, I want them to think, "Ah, now here's an obsession. Here's an idea." I also compose in this way. I write strings of poems as opposed to single poems.
***
So here I am with a new season of submissions, and I know I've got lots of poems as individual entities, but they seem strange things to me, in light of the work that I've been doing over the past two years. Here's hoping I get to know them better.
***
Current Spin:
J. Tillman. The drummer of the Fleet Foxes who has a forthcoming album.
September marks the end of my month-long writing exercise for August. As I mentioned in the post, it was fruitful, but in different ways.
I don't think I broke any major ground on a project I felt compelled to pursue, though I did feel I continued some projects that I had already started.
****
Thanks to all of you who sent me little notes via e-mail, the blog, or Facebook. It really does mean a lot and I'm quite excited about this book prize.
It was an unusual occurrence, given this was actually the first time I had actually sent the manuscript out. I can't tell you how many times FURIOUS LULLABY got submitted, considered, and ultimately rejected. I was fully prepared to send the manuscript out for consideration like I did for my previous publications.
Anyway, I feel lucky. Blessed. All of the above. I'll say no more about this except thank you, once again.
***
I'm getting ready to make another paella--not the spinach one, a four pepper vegetarian paella. Perhaps I'll take more photos.
***
Current Spin:
Mark Kozelek. "If You Want Blood, You Got It." Heh, The Red House Painters do AC/DC. ;-)
The big news is Martìn Espada chose my manuscript, Requiem for the Orchard as the 2009 Akron Poetry Prize winner. The book is scheduled to be released in the Spring of 2010!
Thanks for reading guys. This is the last day of August and therefore the last poem I'll be posting up here for awhile.
***
Thank you and goodnight!
***
All told, I cheated once. By cheating I mean I posted a revision instead of a new product on one day. Otherwise, all the work I posted was written that same day.
I think I got some good parts of a manuscript or two in there. Nothing new, conceptually for me, just pieces that could work as transitions for manuscript projects I have here and there.
Part way through, it got a little hard to keep writing because of THE BIG NEWS that I was doing a poor job of keeping to myself.
Okay, so that's it for this round of poem-a-days. Thanks all for reading.
We hope to continue this cooperative venture for some time. If you know any Asian American poets, please encourage them to submit their manuscripts.
***
Mega Millions lottery jackpot=$333 million dollars.
What would YOU do with $333 million dollars? Me . . . I'd set up an endowment for a few literary journals and presses. I'd definitely assist in the endowment of Kundiman.
Okay, whew. I only have four more days of this poem-a-day thingy. I can do this.
***
Watched Inglourious Basterds today with my dad. I'm glad Meredith didn't go because I don't think she'd be into the revenge fantasy part of it, or the heavy violence. As ever, this Tarantino film is about film much more than it is about killing Nazis--though this happens and with great frequency. Mind you, I enjoyed myself immensely because I knew it was going to be a "cartoon," but it's not for everyone.
I'm going to try to watch District 9 sometime. Dunno when. Don't tell me anything.
***
You know how I said there was going to be a big announcement here on Friday? I lied. It'll be on Monday.
***
Current Spin:
Camera Obscura. I can't believe I heard this in an IGA Grocery Store.
The Collagist recently published five poems of mine. Here's some audio of me reading. If you listen closely, you might hear our neighbor's rooster.
***
Last day at the Camano Island Residency for this week. I'll be back one more time. I'm finding that I can only really sustain short spurts without absolutely going loopy and wanting to scrub floors or something (I am, in fact, currently doing laundry). I'm wired like my mother. I have to be constantly moving--constantly busy. Even when I'm writing poems, as I've said previously, I need to be doing something else while writing poems. That's why I listen to music when I write.
Can you imagine me at a meditative retreat? I'd drive everyone mad.
***
I'll be looking at a friend's manuscript today as my "book." I've read two books so far. Vijay Sesshadri's THE LONG MEADOW and Sean Singer's DISCOGRAPHY. I'll be reading V. Penelope Pelizzon's NOSTOS before I leave here and then my friend's "book". I've read individual poems from each collection before, but this really was the first time I've sat down and actually read their books from cover to cover. It's interesting to see how each of them have shaped their manuscripts. Vijay has a very long memoir in the middle of THE LONG MEADOW which is interesting, but for me sort of cut the momentum of the book. I loved the poems in the first half of the book, but after the memoir my attention sort of waned. It may be because I picked it up late in the afternoon. I was also surprised by how formal the book was. Lots of perfect rhyming couplets and staggered rhymes throughout the book.
Where Vijay's book was very formal, Sean's book was improvisational. Throughout he's got these wonderful dramatic monologues which remind me of my former teacher Norman Dubie. Lyrically, though, Sean's range seems much more jazzy. Don't get me wrong, Norman's musical, but it's a different kind of music--bluegrass vs. jazz. You know there's a tonal difference just by the simple presence of a banjo. Anyway, Sean has these "Singer" poems scattered here and there throughout the book which serve as an anchor for the structure of the book. I think they're necessary because the disparate monologue voices he has throughout the book could overwhelm a structure, I think.
I don't know much about V. Penelope Pelizzon apart from hearing her read (VERY well) on The Fishouse. And I'm not sure she reads much from NOSTOS on that site. What I do know is that I've had the book on my shelf for some time and had been meaning to get to it but parenting happened.
***
Papatya sent me a handful of short stories to read and I'm afraid I've only read one, but what a one it was! I thoroughly enjoyed Anthony Doerr's story "The Shell Collector". And I'm talking about the individual story, not the book. Now I'm going to have to track down that book. He's very list-y, which is right up my alley.
***
Okay, I'm through with being literary--time to goof around a bit. I posted this video on FB because I like it so much, so I'll post it for you here. Current spin:
Donora. "I Think I Like You." The hula-hoopster is Lauren. She's not part of the band.
. . . a table of contents that looks something like this?:
Camera 1.doc Camera 2.doc Camera 3.doc Camera 4.doc Camera 5.doc Camera 6.doc Camera 7.doc Camera 8.doc Dear Empire [these are your beasts].doc Dear Empire [these are your canyons].doc Dear Empire [these are your dead].doc Dear Empire [these are your evenings].doc Dear Empire [these are your followers].doc Dear Empire [these are your goods].doc Dear Empire [these are your holy places].doc Dear Empire [these are your meadows].doc Dear Empire [these are your monuments].doc Dear Empire [these are your nights].doc Dear Empire [these are your orders].doc Dear Empire [these are your pastures].doc Dear Empire [these are your plains].doc Dear Empire [these are your processions].doc Dear Empire [these are your questions].doc Dear Empire [these are your ramparts].doc Dear Empire [these are your skies].doc Dear Empire [these are your structures].doc Dear Empire [these are your subjects].doc Dear Empire [these are your volcanoes].doc Dear Empire [these are your winters].doc Dear Empire [this is your aftermath].doc Dear Empire [this is your art].doc Dear Empire [this is your breeze].doc Dear Empire [this is your city].doc Dear Empire [this is your contrition].doc Dear Empire [this is your photo in the absence of flowers].doc Dear Empire [this is your product].doc Dear Empire [this is your purview].doc Dear Empire [this is your rival].doc Dear Empire [this is your subject].doc Dear Empire [this is your tremor].doc Dear Empire [this is your window].doc Dear Empire [these are your phantoms].doc Dear Empire [this is your tomb].doc Dear Empire [this is your photo].doc
***
I've been organizing a computer file-folder filled with these epistolary poems, plus a few newer things that I've been writing. The number of poems in the folder is 44. Each poem is one page, so that's 44 pages of poems. Too short, I know, but it's a draft of something. I also have in mind distributing the "Nocturne" poems I've been writing throughout this draft collection to see what they look like.
And those poems are here:
Nocturne on Good Friday.doc Nocturne in Red and Blue.doc Nocturne with a General at His Study.doc Nocturne with a Glass of Water.doc Nocturne with an Errant Horse.doc Nocturne with a Dictator.doc
The "Camera" poems will more than likely be scattered throughout, and will not remain at the front of the manuscript.
I too have tired eyes. I've been reading all morning. Good stuff, but like I said, my eyes are tired.
***
I think in the next few hours I'll try to put down some pages and try to organize a new manuscript. It's a very different manuscript--allegorical, dystopian. Not a happy feel-good manuscript, but something I've been working on for the past two years, off and on.
***
I need to look up some art. Something with orchards or apples.
My in-laws are in town, visiting from Georgia. We only get to see Meredith's folks once a year, so we've been quite busy and quite schedule-heavy the past few days.
All of us went to the Northwest Washington Fair which was quite fun, although much of our experience was going through all the animal stables and seeing the various critters. (If you follow me on Facebook, you know I am now obsessed with Pygmy Goats. I want 'em. I want 'em to clear my six acres of brush.
Anyway, L thoroughly enjoyed himself at the fair and that's really all that matters.
***
I've been working on two newish manuscripts. I just need time to spread pages across a big table and see what I've got. I'm pretty sure one's almost done and another is about half way there, but I don't have the space to spread out the pages and walk around to see how the connections are made. When the baby's around, anything on the ground is liable to end up trampled, slobbered-on, or eaten.
***
Mere's dad heads back out tomorrow, but her mom's staying for a longer spell. We'll all head down for lunch at the Camano Island Residency house and then they'll leave me there for two nights while I work on poems. I'm feeling moderately guilty about leaving them, but I also feel guilty for not utilizing this gift of a house. Such is the life of a papa poet, I suppose.
Sorry but I forgot to mention that the first issue of The Collagist is out with some of my work as well as some fabulous prose poems by fellow blogger Charles Jensen. I also dig Christina Kallery's poems. Check 'em out!
***
I am sorry, but I cannot divulge the secret.
***
I am sorry that I ate the plums.
***
Franz Ferdinand. "Sorry for the Angel." Serge Gainsbourg revisited.
The doors of the bear paddock are ajar. Having no bears to house, a door is merely part of the landscape. Therefore the landscape is wide, beyond the margins of the frame. The frame, also, is landscape and therefore no longer banal. Once, there were bears here. They were omnivorous and ate the hard ends of the lettuce thrown into their pen as well as salmon steaks. Once there were spectators on the other side of the lens. They were all beautiful and dull. Banal, despite the frame. The zoo is just a placement of doors without animals. A zoo is a frame with no subject which has the potential to be beautiful.
A little past the mid-point of the poem-a-day exercise with one slight hiccup yesterday. I'm in between projects right now, so I feel a little torn about which "voice" I'm more interested in at the moment. Then again, I think for now it's just good to write because lord knows once the academic year starts up again I won't be writing much.
***
Overheard from my mother while talking to my son: "What is that? That's a skank. Skank." she says pointing to a cartoon skunk.
So my son will be calling stinky people skanks from now on.
Here's where I've been since Monday. I can only stay for a few days this week. I will be coming back, though. Once Meredith's done with summer classes it'll be much easier to coordinate our schedules, what with the baby and all.
Either way, I've managed to read four books of poetry, write five poems (going to try for more this morning), and I plan on putting together a rough first draft of a new prose poem manuscript. It's been a productive two days. That's what happens when you're working with the proverbial gun to your head.
Another of the Nocturne pieces which are companions to some "Dear Empire" poems I had written in April. I felt I had needed something to "narrate" the epistolary poems, so here's more of an attempt at narrating what looks to be a manuscript sequence.
Spent the morning working on some revisions as well as an essay and some feedback on the manuscript of a friend (who no longer needs the feedback ;-)). Anyway, it was morning of much reading, writing, and thinking.
I'm realizing why I have this blog after having spent the morning looking at a sampling of my poetry. This blog is my break from my poetry. I come here to be distracted because when you write so long about conflict, you want to come to a place of rest. That's more or less why I have musical links towards the bottom right of my right-hand margin.
I'm finding, also, that my prevailing impulse is towards story and a story happens when opposing forces collide. This blog has no story. The main oppositional force to my blog is my not writing in my blog.
The initial impetus that triggered my keeping a blog in the first place is to keep in touch with friends. Thus, the blog is here to ensure me that I am not my poems, though I am also my poems.
The blog, so far, has not interfered with the construction of poems, but rather, has given me the necessary rest I need so I can work on my poems.
The blog is episodic. There is no narrative to the blog.
The blog has a narrative which is the narrative towards disjuncture--to celebrate in that disjuncture.
There are photos of dogs in my blog. There are complaints.
The blog is to show me that I am still me, despite what occurs in lineation.
***
I'm here at the residency house for one more day, and then I head back home to help Meredith host company from France. I do have access to the house until mid-September, and I intend to utilize the house, which is very quiet and very very lovely. I promise, pictures soon. For now, though, I have to keep my head down at my writing desk.
I'm currently at the Camano Island Residency house. Oh my god. Photos soon. Until then, here's a video Crystal Williams forwarded to me on Facebook. I laughed and laughed:
Since many of you on Facebook were asking, here's the recipe as well as directions. I have a grill and a pretty wide paella dish, so I heat this dish up on my outdoor grill.
Ingredients:
4 cups vegetable broth 1 chopped green pepper 1 chopped yellow pepper 8 cloves garlic, chopped 1 large onion, chopped 5 cups chopped spinach 1 tbsp ground cumin 1 tsp turmeric 2 cups rice 1 cup chopped mushrooms 1 cup pimento stuffed green olives, chopped 1 tbsp chopped parsley 1 tbsp chopped basil pinch of saffron 6 tbsp olive oil 4 tbsp pine nuts
In a separate skillet, simmer the vegetable broth, cumin, turmeric, parsley, and basil and set aside for later.
In a paella pan, add the olive oil and the pine nuts and lightly roast the pine nuts. Then add the garlic, the onions, and the chopped peppers to the paella pan until the vegetables are transparent. After a few minutes, add the chopped spinach and the chopped olives and heat until the spinach is wilted.
After the spinach is wilted, add the vegetable broth mixture along with the mushrooms and the rice to the paella dish. Cook until the rice is soft.
Top the dish with grated manchego cheese and a little dash of paprika for color.
Flesh for Lulu. "I Go Crazy." Some Kind of Wonderful
****
Kate Bush. "This Woman's Work." From She's Having a Baby
Now, I know this is a pretty well known song and Maxwell is enjoying success covering Kate Bush, but did you know the song was in a John Hughes film? Easy enough to forget.
Boy, I almost didn't make it to the writing desk today.
Baby woke up at 6:30 AM and I took care of him until 2:30PM while Meredith worked. After she got back, I mowed the lawn which took 2 hours (we've got a big lawn). Then I cooked, fed the baby, gave the baby a bath.
As I mentioned in my status update for Twitter/Facebook, while Meredith was reading him bedtime stories, I was the one falling asleep.
So, yeah, I had to push myself to stick with the program today. The poem, however, wrote itself after I figured out the first few lines.
***
I've got a big stack of poetry books on my desk. Ready, set, go.
***
I think we're haunted. In the living room, one of L's toys--a puzzle that emits specific car noises when you place the correct pieces into the slots--keeps going off.
I watch too much cable. Clearly.
***
Telekinesis. I! I! I! went to Tokyo! Drumming! Singing! Wee!
I was reading National Geographic at the gym and came upon an article about the mummies of Sicily. Here's an image of Rosalia Lombardo, the mummy that's the topic of the poem. Salafia was her embalmer.
Gray day. As opposed to a grey day, which is the British spelling. I remember a particular grad school mentor used to berate people for using the British spelling in their poems. I have to admit, "grey" is sexier than "gray."
I've never had an experience with a journal editor who preferred either spelling. Have you?
****
Five more days till the Camano Island house.
****
Current Spin:
The Russian Futurists. The world is not ready for this band yet.
I feel like my summer is swiftly coming to a close, though I know I still have roughly a month and a half. Things have been busy in a domestic sense, though not in a writerly sense. With my son walking now there's much policing to do around the house. Every corner is a danger. Actually . . . he's not just walking, he's climbing, so there's that.
This all leads me to say that the poem-a-day venture couldn't be possible without the sacrifices of Meredith. She definitely deserves a shout-out here.
I'm fortunate to have two or three projects in hand, and I hope to use the time wisely up there. I've never gone away to write before (never been to a colony or a retreat other than Kundiman--and I work at Kundiman), so I'm worried that I might go a little stir-crazy. But I figure as long as I work at least three hours a day I should get a lot out of the experience.
***
What books should I bring with me?
***
I've been following the story of the two journalists who were imprisoned in N. Korea very closely. When I had cable TV, I watched a lot of the profiles on Current TV, the television station that Al Gore partially funds. In fact, the other day at my parents house, I had watched an investigative journalism piece by Laura Ling on the Narco War in Mexico. It's my understanding that she and Euna Lee were doing a piece on the trafficking of women across the N. Korea/China border. Gutsy journalists, both of them.
***
In many ways, Laura Ling and Euna Lee's story reminds me of Melissa's story.
I've been getting heckled via e-mail from anonymous posters for supporting Melissa because 1) I know her and respect her as an artist and a person and 2) I am in awe of her beliefs and her willingness to fight for those beliefs.
As I mentioned earlier, I had an hour time-limit. I definitely went over the time-limit for this poem, though not excessively so. I was chasing an ending and I'm pretty sure I still haven't gotten it.
