fallen

drifts, and deep. suffocating baggage as it falls, falling. where are your green attentions among this whitewash? we can see the slant of air in brutal form, almost horizontal. almost as if you are the wind, stretching your arms on the mountain's downslope. but you are piling up. otherwise. this one's not a blizzard. all in all, I'm expecting to be covered twice.

sadness

Poet and social activist, Kari Edwards, passed away on December 2. I was lucky enough to have worked with her, though remotely, with the dusie kolektiv this past summer. I'm pretty much shocked, even though I didn't really "know" Kari. It seems to me that this is a testament to her power as a writer and as a person- that even people only loosely associated with her are astonished by her absence in the world. I came across this poem by her in Tarpaulin Sky which gives me chills- so beautiful and grating at the same time. I hope it's OK that I post it here. I extend my condolences to her friends and family.

kari edwards

let us say goodbye

let’s get serious, say good-bye, I love you, so long, been nice, someone's got to die, waiting for another on time, A-bomb. Cut off, collectively lost, as long as you believe in, as long as you think, as you believe in thinking in believing in . . . click your heels, repeat after me, we are not talking proxy portraits, or ideological traditional sophist, or single issue essential, or utopian politicians into an out of time, falling in and out of the service of “truth,” to another, for another, in love with “truth.” Repeating, you have to believe, you must believe, listen to the mother and father, read books and repeat after me, I can not represent myself, we must represent the not representative whole impossible to represent, the higher broader bigger blogger. So, let's get personal, get serious and translate violence into a form, wondering are there more morals coming? We all can not wait to read more of the same long neck gods talking to the pigs, the pigs to the horses, and the mysterious shadow making mysterious hand motions, waiting to dine. The tableau is set, you arrive, there is ample bread, plenty of plenty, translation disappears, there is no need for need, an argument begins, we all go hungry, start a war of wars, the divine majority sings creation creation songs in the celestial cathedral till dawn . . . we say good-bye I love you someone has to die.

sadness

Poet and social activist, Kari Edwards, passed away on December 2. I was lucky enough to have worked with her, though remotely, with the dusie kolektiv this past summer. I'm pretty much shocked, even though I didn't really "know" Kari. It seems to me that this is a testament to her power as a writer and as a person- that even people only loosely associated with her are astonished by her absence in the world. I came across this poem by her in Tarpaulin Sky which gives me chills- so beautiful and grating at the same time. I hope it's OK that I post it here. I extend my condolences to her friends and family.

kari edwards

let us say goodbye

let’s get serious, say good-bye, I love you, so long, been nice, someone's got to die, waiting for another on time, A-bomb. Cut off, collectively lost, as long as you believe in, as long as you think, as you believe in thinking in believing in . . . click your heels, repeat after me, we are not talking proxy portraits, or ideological traditional sophist, or single issue essential, or utopian politicians into an out of time, falling in and out of the service of “truth,” to another, for another, in love with “truth.” Repeating, you have to believe, you must believe, listen to the mother and father, read books and repeat after me, I can not represent myself, we must represent the not representative whole impossible to represent, the higher broader bigger blogger. So, let's get personal, get serious and translate violence into a form, wondering are there more morals coming? We all can not wait to read more of the same long neck gods talking to the pigs, the pigs to the horses, and the mysterious shadow making mysterious hand motions, waiting to dine. The tableau is set, you arrive, there is ample bread, plenty of plenty, translation disappears, there is no need for need, an argument begins, we all go hungry, start a war of wars, the divine majority sings creation creation songs in the celestial cathedral till dawn . . . we say good-bye I love you someone has to die.

fool

crystalline structures. she notices their girth and bites them. it sweeps her away and becomes her. this poem begins here, under the froth. calamine around your eyes and lips. you are stepping away, but carefully. not the gallop it was before. you left. we recall: I could hear it through the floor, her pitch a fallow soil. wheel wells attacked by spray. smattering of star, music, train. your lips on her but away. you ask me to cover, forgive. but no. I cannot cover the spread.

interval

bead and brighten, swaggering lifestamp. if you hate the piccolo so much, its shrill stampede of vibrato, then why have you swallowed the octave? like you had me, all inside and intonated. now barely breathing and tingled, so heavy your smallest participles. your gangly hyperboles have lost their shimmer. I’m surprised by the altitude, it’s pressure, it’s ability to change the sound of your voice. from soliloquy to monotone, heading further away.

astonishing discovery. . .

apparently if you google the phrase "I miss Chicago," my blog is the 71st result. I'm not sure how I feel about that. . .

from the dead (walking)

I finally updated my blogroll and added some peeps who should have been there all along. I still have a long way to go.

News from Scott the other day says some work form our collaborative project, "helixes" is to appear in Sugar Mule, guest edited by Sheila Murphey. I'm not sure of the details, but I think the issue focus on collaboration as a poetic genre, or something of the sort, so it's pretty exciting to be included, not to mention, it will surely be a seriously kick-butt production.

I'm lucky enough to be a featured poet on MiPoesias this month (bottom of the page. . .but don't scroll too quickly-- there's good stuff in here!). They chose some prose poems, which is very promising. Also, you can catch me reading a new poem, "fascicles," on bob macacci's poetry podcast, THE COUNTDOWN, also associated with MiPOesias. Thanks, Bob and Didi. It's great!

I'm headed to Chicago on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday to meet with teachers and see what they make of the first draft of my dissertation. I'm not sure what to expect, but hoping for the best. I'm most interested to see if they think there's a possibility that I could graduate in May. I'm pretty eager to wrap this thing up, especially now that I'm so far away (in so many ways. . .).

I've been submitting to several places that I've been putting off for a long time, I'm not sure why. Seems like time. It's exciting and frightening to bu putting my new work out there, mostly because I like it so much, which is rare for me and my poetry. I usually see some merit in it, but don't feel a specific affinity towards it. These new pieces, mostly prose poems, are something I'm proud of. . .something I can defend and stand up for. They make up the preponderence of my dissertation, and I'm also quite pleased with the way they string together in a larger collection. I'm excited to begin assembling this collection as a book manuscript and sending it out for the November/ December deadlines. Why not, right?

fascicles

she couldn’t find it there, in the woven and swollen birch bark. damn the choosing rhymes, their flavorful, ghastly whine. buckle. three, four. she is fastened tightly with portrait stamps, wound around her knuckles. faces lost to damp adhesion. war into day. and more days. you are a different child. than the one we lost. liquefy and shed. we take drastic measures to hide those words. will I cast my lot. will it end up solid, growing and vehicular, in this, the most desperate of sunsets?

confluence

It won’t go away, she said, shirt tails dragging across her thighs. thatched dimension takes her breath away. she runs her pinkie finger over the abrasion, stimulating moisture. a ripple. paralyze. gargantuan rectangles, buttons. the star her hand makes when it spreads. off the table. leak. pickling salt. alum. caving her mouth in and scraping it dry. what about the debris, the excrescence, the carbuncle alive in the constellation? vacuum tight. she will always be reminded of him. radiance. bellicose snow, rapture.

aware of the seamlessness

As I continue my dissertation project and attempt, over and over again, to articulate my "poetic goal" in my dissertation prospectus, I become more and more aware that my poems lack a central subject, making it very difficult to put them "together" in any form of a collection. Surely in PhD dissertation defense, someone is bound to ask, "What are these poems ABOUT?" Truth is, I have no idea. And I don't mean this in a cosmic, metaphysical way that proposes me as some sort of conduit of the gods, channeling all things poetic through me ala Plato. No, I mean that I seem to be purposely avolding a tangible subject so as to let amore general-ness of the poems open up. I'm trying to articulate a specific sadness that is inherent in femininity, perhaps, or at least a sadness that I often find in my own femininity, whatever that looks like. They seek to explore something that in fact has no center, or perhaps multiple centers, that fracture, that refract. I don't want my poems to point to one specific thing. I want them to open instead of close. This is problematic when faced with building a "collection," though. How does something with no center relate to other things with no centers? What can be the binding fdactors? Their essential non-centrality? No, that's too vague. The imagery and how it often centers around nature and bizarre relations to it? Maybe, but imagery is not necessarily the central trope in my poetry.

I'm kind of stuck, but in a good way, I think. I mean, this is what it's all about. I'm dpoing this whole PhD thing in order to speak more eloquently about these things. To situate my own work among other poets with similar trajectories and ideas. More soon. . .I welcome feedback. . .

drizzle

drizzle

the fat rain has gone;
seasons ricochet and rest.
you. grab me and
boomerang every notion
of gray. we once held
scampering aphids,
let them dart
into our skinfolds
and out again. then into fire.
popping. small explosions.
go now. I am caustically awake.
unfold the velvet of my lungs.
you snore rhapsodically.
I am in another room,
another hemisphere,
like my mother who swatted
so frantically
at the termites.
they scatter. clouds.
generic formation.
outline your hip,
hinge, so far away.
once I pressed my cheek
against that palimpsest of flesh.
smooth flexor and pulse.
decade to imagine
a more germinated moment.
fly, now, into the dust.
I sent you there.
It began with a
slippery tongue kiss
against a fence. crackle.
I said,
“put your hand here. push.
feel it drop.”
you gave in.
imagine my surprise.

farm

sideways moon. arms always on angle. he carried me through the patch, the blue evening brown. he knows about the vines, how they run in circles, how they strangulate the cornstalks and potatoes. maze and stuffed bodies. only shadows. not real. this time, I’m not on the floor. hold me until it stops. the pacific. but I am needing. bulbous pulp split. hatchet. I come open, untwined. sunken and gushing but right on time.

forecast

the new chill blends with the dark fibers on the wall. manifestation and arrow. cornucopia. cowlick my phobias and the way you move the captions. a silo, a basket. a green and yellow. strapped like an objectionable perfume. why is she slumped so sideways, her limbs parted from the deluge. for your ear, I reach in. some say it was the recognition and all of the vaginal bleeding. I go the other way, searching for unexpected colors. Black pumpkins. purple corn. hanging pendulum, the autumn lights. this one comes over again, a river. a generous song to harvest.

Pumpkin picking fun

This weekend was great. Check out the photos from our first ever pumpkin-picking excursion here in the sticks. This is DEFINITELY something you can't do in Chicago.

pumpkin picking

Oct 7, 2006 - 31 Photos

Redundancy: on turning thirty

Image: noon’s electric red leaves, verging
on purple. Splinters of light, ending. Each
decade, stratified on my body like

crust. My lilting lithosphere. Open with
walls. I sing for you too long, the trees have
decried. We speak this instance. Window, space.

What is the dilemma of your catch-phrase?
Today is a beautiful day in the
echoing chasm. Balmy fluorescence

casts its shadow long. Gust. Brazen and shift.
Gather wood chips, floral notes. Taste the wine,
blushed so hard it’s nearly black. Go as far

as your triumph allows. Vision: trembling
pink hyacinths terrified of wind. You
come covered in it. Festooned like a room

for a funeral. Imagine the stems.
Legs. Swirling wine drags on your lips. Sometimes
catching up is all about color. Hue.

You know how to leave. We ended up here,
one color in the brocade, tangled,
too heavy. My years hang on me today,

more like a suffix than a bauble. More
like a hyphen than a charm. The line breaks
hard. Fwack. A sound without your signature.

pictures

Happy Birthday to Eliot! He's two!

While he loved all his gifts, the red fire engine really made him smile.

Eliot and his friend, Sophia at the park in for their last playdate also pictured. (boohoo).

The big birthday excursion was to go see Thomas the Train (yes, life-sized-- it was way cool!) at the Railroad museum in Golden. From left to right, Barbara (my mom), Me, Eliot, Brian, Bill (Brian's Dad), and Barbara (Brian's Mom). It was really a lot of fun, but as you can see, also very windy.

As promised, I'll post some pictures of the house as soon as I take some. Stay tuned.

Third Monday

It's our third Monday in our new house. I'm beginning to settle in, but only beginning. I'm still far from comfortable here, which is unexpected. People are less friendly than I expected. Friends are more difficult to make, though I'm certainly blessed by a clique of friends that I've somehow managed to hold onto since last time we lived here, and for them I am very grateful.

It was a weekend of parties: Saturday, the big t-w-o for Eliot. We made it a brunch pot-luck type of thing, and it turned out to be fabulous. I highly suggest this route for toddler birthdays, especially if you're pressed for time. All we had to do was clean and make the kitchen available for others to cook, prep, etc. Fun times.

On Sunday, I was told there was to be a small family dinner to celebrate my big 3-0, which is on Friday. It was at my in-law's house. To my awe, it was in fact a surprise party forME, which I certainly wasn't expecting. A lot of the same wonderful people (who I'll never tire of!) but a few who we've yet to see since our arrival. Another great time. And so begins the week of festivities leading to the demise of my 20's. Alas.

Sunday began with a long trail run in familiar territory (North Boulder) with a familiar running partner (Jen Hansen, who has pretty much been my running partner off and on since we met 8 years ago). It was an amazing feeling to be back on those trails, which are so beautiful and simultaneously difficult. I miss N. Boulder very much. Out of curiousity, we stopped by a house for sale in the Wonderland Lake area and picked up a pamphlet about the house. 2,500 sf, $850,000. Astonishing. No wonder we live 30 miles away in Broomfield. And our house is much bigger and newer. But we're not in Wonderland.

Eliot is battling daycare again today, and we'll see how it goes. I'm hoping for good things.

A conversation with some friends at Eliot's birthday party may have landed me a job at a local company doing some marketing work. I don't know-- we'll see. I've submitted my resume for their perusal. The teaching market out here is dry as a bone, so I figured I might as well keep my options open. It actually sounds like a lot of fun, as far as 9-5's go, anyway.

could it be?

Could this really be my third post today? I don't believe it. after the long lapse, I'm back in the saddle. A differend saddle, a saddle of suburban quiet and mountain vievs, but a saddle nonetheless.

The new house is nice, to say the least. It's BIG. I have my own office! Our bathroom is bigger than our bedroom in Chicago.

I'm not nearly as content as I imagined myself to be out here. The distance from school is very disconcerting and the fact that I'm not teaching and don't know when I'll be teaching again is really, well, sad. I am pretty sad, though I'm not really sure why. The weather is already turning autumnal. I miss Chicago more than I expected. I am more afraid of my existence here than I imagined. I'm really just not sure what to make of it all.

But, as you can see below, I have actually written some poems. Attempted to, anyway. I'm eager to get reading again and I gor some really good suggestions from Christina Pugh, my dissertation liason at UIC. Anyone heard of Elizabeth Willis' The Human Abstract? It's on the list. Christina is a rock star, really. Check out her book, Rotary. The title poem is a knockout.

Anyway, I hope to be blogging again more regularly, if anyone is still visiting. And more poems, too. Possibly more angst about living in the middle of nowhere even though this is exactly what I thought I wanted. So it goes.

picara

it begins more like a splatter than a sample, all over the room. unleashing. appreciate the suggestions; they might get you loosened. it doesn’t have to take to root, she said because of the brown spots. you gather me up like a picaresque and carry me through. I am brown here. I misread my own desire to drown. enough about the soil. it is mostly clay and compost. fall, first snow in the mountains. forget the asphalt, the tingling lips in the sun. you caught my sly angular noise like a pilot and flew. away. where am I. contained, ineffectual. damp with lacquer. when will we get on with it. damp.

alumni

slope black fog. her straddle opens pinafores and reservoirs to contemplation. what she means is escape. I recognize her scraps, the parchment fibers clinging to her lips like cilia, filtering. galvanizing. I didn’t expect her uneasiness about the alabaster icon. breasts heavy like wet snow. heaving lilac like cement. I don’t know her, but she is. me(n). she doesn’t know anybody, which makes her mysteriously translucent. run to meet her. meet her. swimming in pulp, swimming disaster so difficult to read.

home sweet home

We're moved in, loosely speaking. Things are in shambles, I'm completely exhausted, but we're in the new house. I'll post pictures and possibly a poem soon.

mission accomplished

We made it here alive. . .to Denver, that is. Technically, Wheat Ridge, CO for now with my in-laws, then to the new house in Broomfield.

Reasons I'm glad to get out of Chicago

1o. It stinks. While we lived there, I gave it the nick-name "Shit-cago," and it stuck.

9. It's dirty. You can never wear white becausae by the end of the day, it's a faint shade of grey. Or brown, depending on the neighborhood you're hanging in.

8. It's crowded. You're never alone with your thoughts. No wonder there are so many crazy people there.

7. It's noisy. Tranis, planes, honking cabbies, busses, screaming people. It wears on a calm, quiet person after a while. I'm afraid I'm neither calm nor quiet anymore.

6. Everything you do is complicated. Grocery shopping is an event, not a chore. You can't just "go out to dinner" without reservations to any place worth eating (there are a few exceptions, as always). Take out food, delivered, takes at least an hour, even if they're just up the street. Finding parking in most neighborhoods is as stressful as going to the dentist, sometimes worse.

5. People are cranky. It's as if no one really wants to live there. People are just mean to each other, and that's the way it works. I've been very uneasy by the warmth and friendliness I've recieved from the residents of this here town in Colorado. It creeps me out when people are nice, thanks to my rudeness training in Chicago.

4. There's a lot of crime, and chances are good you'll be the victim at some point. We lived there for four years and were the victims of three criminal acts- all theft: one identity, once my wallet was stolen, and one just plain stealing our stuff. This is not to mention the crimes we witnessed, which I won't even get into.

3. It's not family-friendly. As much as people tout the city for being family-friendly, I'll tell you plain and simple, it sucks. There are things that are good about it, like there are a lot of parks, b ut they're always crowded, especially the ones thet aren't in the ghetto. Brian got assaulted at the grocery store for letting our 2-year old son scan a candy bar because "it's not a playground." People who don't have children don't have patience for children, or parents for that matter. Here, well, pretty much everyone has a family, so it's not really an issue. I far prefer it so far.

2. People don't recycle. I know, it's kind of a small thing to be so high up the list, but I'm kind of a freak about recycling. In Chicago, you have to put your recycled stuff in the infamous "blue bags," which you have to buy and keep a stock of. Then you have to wait and wonder if it really gets sorted; of course, you have no way of really knowing. Out here, the extreme falls on the other end of the spectrum. If you don't recycle, you're a social outcast. I far prefer this paradigm.

1. People poop and pee in the parks. It was rare, in fact, that we could find a park without the smell of urine or an evident pile of human feces spotlighted on the jungle gym, etc. When people ask me why I don't like Chicago, this is what I say: "People pee and poop in the parks. . .where our CHILDREN play. Fine, not everyone has homes and bathrooms to relieve themselves. But there are bushes right over there, where there are no children playing. Can you pee there? Can we at least keep the parks clean?

So that's that. I;m not a big blog list-er, but I've been working on this one for a while.

I'm planning to write some more poems soon, as soon as the haze lifts and I can settle in, if only a little.

make up and moving

In one week, I'll be on an airplane to Colorado (yikes, double yikes as of yesterday!). I'm getting a little anxious.

I just put on make-up before 6pm for the first time in like three months, so I thought I'd take a picture. Yes, I'm a dork. I have a meeting with my psuedo-dissertation advisor (long story) to talk about what I've written so far for the first time. I'm a little nervous. Pretty much the only people who have seen any of these poems are the peeps who read my blog. And yalls crazy, yo. We'll see. I hope she notices that I put on make-up for her :)

Moving sucks

I know, it's no earthshattering revalation. And all things considered, I'm happier about this move to Broomfield, CO than I've ever been about a move in my life. It's amazing, then, how much moving still sucks the life out of me. With a toddler who is constantly at your heels, packing is a trick. I average a box or two a day, if I'm lucky. It's definitely more of a marathon than a sprint, for sure. I feel like we've been moving for two months already. I just can't wait till it's all over.

Then there is the anxiety about leaving UIC, where my PhD and dissertation are still in progress. I have yet to fully assemble my dissertation committee, although my dissertation is nearly half-way done. And I'm theroetically entering the job market this fall, though my opportunities will be severely diminished because of my new location. Yes, there's CU, Naropa, U of Denver, Regis, Metro, and several reputable community colleges in the area, but there are also a lot of highly educated people in the Boulder-Denver area looking for the same jobs I am. I'm contemplating putting my resume in for some High School teaching jobs, just to see what happens. They have a certification program there that's a sort of certify-as-you-go deal, and it wouldn't be all bad, I suppose. I know I'll miss teaching. I miss it already and the summer's not even over!

I haven't written a lick of poetry in weeks. Packing all of my earthly belongings (the ones that weren't stolen!) into boxes not to be seen again for at least a month, puts a damper on my poetic spirit. Usually being disconcerted brings out the best of my poetic personas. Not now. I'm over the edge on this one.

APB

Someone stole my jogging stroller this morning out of our secure foyer. Let me know if you see a crack hoar in Wrigleyville peddling a $350 stroller. I'm pissed beyond compare.

return of the verse

it's a short one, but sometimes that's what it takes to break through. . .

cross

one line over
the other missteps
misfires the thought
of lord and paper
stranded you place
the card here for

me to read burn gold
foil embossed forget
about the fold it stands
hurting my teeth
just looking at it

Wicked Awesome

This is an honor and pleasure. Perhaps my last tribute to Chicago as home. Thank you, Kristy.

Birthday Blowout

This is a picture from Brian's birthday extravaganza at Tru restaurant in Chicago. It was VERY fancy and very tasty. A good time was had by all, even Brian's 80 year old grandma, who cracked some funny jokes about the fancy (almost silly fancy) food.

Eliot playing in the water

mumbo jumbo

I have been posting mostly poetry lately, but thought it might be time to give an update of more personal nature (though it's arguable which is more personal-- the poems or the attempt to bear effects of personal matter). Anyway, Here's a go at it.

We have officially sold our condo in Chicago. But we are, in fact, still living in it. The buyer is nice enough to be renting it back to us until our new home in Colorado is at least close(r) to completion. Our planned moving date is August 22. I've only packed six boxes.

I'm jobless as of now (though if we weren't moving, I would of course keep my fellowship teaching at UIC) and can't seem to be able to find anything, even adjunct work, in Colorado. As my husband reminded me this morning, "Now is not the time to be on the job hunt," and of course he's right. The academic market booms in October, though I'm also looking at High School jobs as well as jobs in the business/ private sector. I'm pretty much looking for anything I'm qualified for that won't bore me to death or cause me to be away from my family more than 40 hours a week. You'd thinnk this would be an easy order, but alas.

I've recently recieved some beautiful publications that I'm honored to be published in, including the Briar Cliff Review, Fourteen Hills, and Alligator Juniper. The Briar Cliff review is a really striking publication; very artistic and professional. Fourteen Hills features many of my favorite poets, including a collaborative piece by Marilyn Hacker and Gabrielle Althen. The Alligator Juniper is more of a student publication, but extremely professional nonetheless. The fiction that I've read (only a few pieces) seems to be quite good.

Eliot is talking like crazy, saying words like "gorilla," "scissors," and "go walk". He amazes me on a daily basis. His most current word is "bus," which he says every time he sees one or hears anything that resembles the squeaking of the bus brakes. Living in the city gives him plenty of occasions to show off this new word.

I am training for another marathon. I'm thinking I might do the Boise "City of Trees" marathon in early November. It looks like a lot of fun and it's SMALL. After battling the groups of runners training for the Chicago Marathon every Saturday morning, I welcome the quiet, rolling hills. Training in Colorado at altitude will be a challenge, no doubt.

The prose poems keep coming, though I'm not sure how they really hold together as "a collection" at this point. Soon I'm going to have to stop moving forward and look at them as a group, then write some "connective material" to make sure they hold together. Because I'll have to defend this "collection" as a cohesive unit, this is something I'm definitely focusing on. Truth is, though, I haven't written in verse for several months now, and I'm a little worried about going back. The prose form has become very comfortable for me. I've been doing it for over a year. Another thing that concerns me is the elusive "dissertation prospectus" that I have to write over the next several months. I planned to write it over the summer, but seemed to have lost all academic motivation after the dreaded exams. I think I'll be ready to hunker down once the move to Colorado is complete and things have quited down to a dull roar. Hoping, at least.

Hopefully more poetry to come. Maybe even a versed piece!

hiding

we don’t understand how you can lose a man, his body, his appendages crammed with moving juices. bloated in the salty sea. floating on asphalt. dark hair hiding him in the garage. among the power tools and storage racks made of metal scraps. moving between stilettos and innuendos. we are sure he is not in a box because he speaks to us regularly. from his travels. his memories are composed of tricycles on sidewalks and red oily lipstick smears on his hip flexor. the occasional brass pedestrian. you still say he must be lost. We can hear him, we say. we scream. scream. don’t let go. he keeps his secrets. inside. away from. us.

oracular

shunt the fog, simple bud. green capsule torn and trampled. peeking petal slide and scent of gardenia but gone too soon. fiber of branch, eloquently woven. ties together the atmosphere but daggers the footprint. there in the ash. you have covered yourself in it. ear. spoken to, eaten. window and drum. moved from the pinna to the skull, and rested there. we try to forget her name, hiding it in the bushes. we are. laughing again. too soon. and running. for our lives

abundance

partition your extremities. she fights for her spine, which coils around his thumb. like predator. angry for space. you know that I hide in the second hand. the afterbirth spoke of two heads, one mouth open. left there. some women eat their own placentas. museum for such fine decisions. maybe he flinched when she bit his fingernail. how could she. stop herself. you are more like decay than abundance. who wouldn’t want another tongue, designed to taste the sour fire.

arthropod

careful of sway. its direct reflection of raw wind. coup d'etat. swift route of monsoon and drift. maybe I cancel your words, already dripping with bounce. is that what you are. afraid of. the tides. horseshoe crabs and their dinosaurian spines. you dream of them, stretched and shiny like spun sugar. pulled sugar. the sweetness irreverent but bright. where do we find them. but on coasts. debris. my own placenta was not my own and now. even this. is elsewhere claimed. what is under the shell. but a mass of jointed limbs. stink of seaweed. moving on and out.

aperture

portrait like a swerve into your cornea. unobtrusive vibration and violet edge. capturing. where. history. particular glance on the way out. but you were never there. strange likeness to a daiquiri but pineapple face. your story about curfew and snowballs constructs a new image of your white body. psyche about sight. when I lose my version of you, I will have to kiss my own photograph. stage, curtain, comma. leave a mark. of saliva on me.

for you who wonders if its for you

your name is an elixir, a panacea, a placebo for my lesions. wait for it, the call. beckoning bayonet from the other side of the forge. it will come if sequestered. I desire to history you, plump you up with my multiple lips and tongues, ejaculate your scented fog so lost in humidity. isolate your kiss. one more time. what I like to hear is the dripping, warm concoction flowing south. the squeaking weathervane turning, collapsing. why I can't say it. giving way to the wind. as soft as drive.

circulary

brilliant know, the sleeping slow limbs. catching high eyes. shed your gold stamps into shallow fish pond. why do you walk so quickly away from this reason? must be vascular. we begin to ask about the child, his falling exempted and quelled. christened plank, veins under the skin of a clementine. like corn silk. yes, we dread the seasoning, the wax and even festivity. your exuberance is teal and billowing. shifting breadth. how far do the layers reach, their circulation varied, their feeder vein to the sky pumping and fresh.

amendment

once you sang back. ununderlined. said you were on your way. to where. I was. if you were broken, I was fused. unequally lined. if I waited, I was in the lawn and you were on the telephone. you always. muffled your screams. pressed me into the formica countertop. able to steady. myself. until later when the texture resembled stone. you wouldn’t. give it up. this isn’t for you. like you think it is. answers your question. from years ago. again but better.

scapilary

recovering you is a traumatic fragrance. there in the thistles. stagnant diatribe. is it strange that I feel the structure twirl around me like a pinwheel? going somewhere. in relation to a fixed point, you are upside down. your scrawl should reveal your yearning, prescriptive. we settle on the topiary, its drastic bellows of foliage, it's scrawny limbs atwine. standing water. going somewhere? dangerous insects, skating on your flesh. this move, through stapled territory, is your design, is your lesion.

your heart is always talking

(Title taken from an email from my gym)

give protection to the room, the permeable walls. is it a muscle or an organ, we continue to debate. it has a mouth and lips that isolate the striated sphincter. crowded hallway. blow sweetness in a push of spicy juice. why. do you feed it words? this is why. during the equinox, you were expelled. platelets and all that jazz. mosaic underwall. gently, the ventricular message lands upon you. galvanized like a pinwheel controlled by breath. you don’t like it when it arrives, slippery and the color of water.

New Beginnings of the best kind

My friend and fellow poetess, Mary Biddinger, welcomed her first son into the world yesterday morning to join the family. He arrived on the birthday of his older sister, Gabi. A happy day for all. What a sweet little bundle.

bread and butter

Perhaps I mentioned that my husband got a new job some months ago working for a start-up web company. Well, after all of their hard work they launched their product yesterday. It's called "naymz." It's free, yippee. It's also could prove to be very, very helpful for poets who want to "professionalize" themselves, get their name out there, and make sure that people searching for them on the internet see what they want them to see. What it does is create a central web page that links all of your tertiary and associated pages together, so that a link to your blogger account, your resume link, links to your poems, links to your photograph accounts, etc all show up on the same page. Also, you can subscribe (like $5 a month) and when people google your name, your name appears as a sponsored link in the right margin. That link connects to your naymz page, which has all the information you want people the see. Pretty cool if you ask me. It only takes a minute.

In other news, I officially began compiling and adding to my dissertation on Tuesday. It's pretty exciting and I'm loving what it's looking like so far. My first official task of the dissertation process is to write a prospectus. . .but this is a new requirement for creative writers, so I'm shooting in the dark here. As far as I know, noone has written a prospectus yet at UIC for a poetry dissertation. Lucky me. I get to be the first. If anyone has any insightful advice about this process, I sure would appreciate it. I don't really know where to begin. It's one thing to be able to talk abotu a collection after it's finished. . .it's another to be able to talk about it before you've started! I'm sure I'll figure it out, but an example sure would be helpful.

My husband, son and I were in Colorado for a week attending the funeral of Brian's grandfather. He was a much loved member of the Denver community and will be greatly missed. I've never seen so many old men crying. It was very moving, and the images have already crept into the manuscript. So much death in such a short amount of time (my own grandfather passed only two months ago). So much mourning.

things on the floor

Gone long, I wonder about piles. How they form. How long it takes without you. Where is the news, the wringing kudzu vines that spell out a curse from blocks away? I feel a small slice of you from here. Incomplete but sharp and penetrating. But listless. But a jingling tassel from your ankle. Begin here, you ask, more like a limb than a branch. What where. You finally say you want me. But I wasn't. Listening. Piles of scraps of thoughts of you. Of water of lakes. Of pieces but small and collaged. Where do we get together? Where do we stack our bodies in the fields and hide among the wreckage?

Eliot & stuff

My brother, Chris, requested new pictures of Eliot. Considering most of what I do these days revolves around Eliot, it seems appropriate. My chapbook project with Scott (including a fine digital art piece by said Brother, Chris) is done, so that's nice. Not done, printed, but done, laid out, etc. Also working on like 100 other things, including an epic birthday project for my husband, who's turning 30 next week. But I can't tell about it here. . .I may ruin the surprise. Selling the house is a lot of work, but just may be worth it all in the end. The new house in Colorado has actual siding on it, windows, a door, and stairs inside! So exciting. Just can't wait to move. Chicago has run it's course. . .I'm so done with this place.

I'm running again, I guess I can say, and it feels SO good to get back into some semblance of shape. I ran 6 miles today, which is probably the furthest I've run since the marathon in October! Aaaah. Feels like home.

Wish I had more time to keep recent stuff here. There's just too much going on, loose ends, la la la la. Mostly cleaning, I suppose. I complain about a 1300 sf condo. . .imagine a 5 br 4 ba house! With the mess spread out, it won't seem as bad. . .this is my hope.

W(t)F

I have to say, the weather out here has been so bad this past week, I can barely stand it. My hubby Brian gets to go to San Francisco for the week for a conference. . .and I get to stay here, cooped up in this condo while it rains. . .some more. No fun. I'm feeling extremely in-between right now, between houses, between locations, between jobs, between exams and dissertation, between semesters, between buying and selling. . .it's all very unsettling. I'm looking forward to being rooted down somewhere, anywhere, really, for longer than a few years. Feels very much like what I imagine purgatory is suposed to be like.

I don't have a whole lot of interesting blog-worthy things to report, but I did have a terrible trip to the Lakeview Whole Foods store today. I think I may have been there once when I was pregnant, but I don't usually shop there. BUT, Eliot's recent obsession with Goldfish (which my pediatrician called "junkfood" and told me to go to Whole Foods and buy him hotdogs. . .yeah! For real!) has pushed me over the edge. Because Brian is out of town, I have the car, so Eliot and I ventured out. First of all, it was raining (no kidding, it has been for a week!) so I decided that parking in the garage was the best bet (yes, it's a big city, and most grocery stores have garages). We parked, took the elevator, grabbed a cart, and hit the aisles. Well, this place is tiny. There is barely room for two abreast, even in the produce section. We ended up doubling back for tomatos on the way out because there was, literally, no way to get to them without waiting for like 10 minutes for people to get out of the way. And I'm not really the kind of person who minds waiting (another of the 100 reasons why I don't belong in Chicago) but Eliot has a patience span of about 8 minutes, so shopping needs to be quick. In a new and unchartered store, this was a challenge.

The aisles were so thin that I had a hard time passing other people if they weren't pressed up against the side of the aisle. Traffic jams everywhere. Lots of women with babies, but all of them were rude and at least three of them huffed at me for looking at the cheese for too long. I wasn't aware that there was a time limit. Yes, the food is healthy and it's nice to know that mostly everything you pull off the shelf is not going to rot out the insides of my child. But at what price? My sanity? It was terrible.

Then when I checked out, I asked about taking the shopping cart up in the elevator. "Not allowed" they said. We bring to food to you. What kind of car do you have? See you in a minute. That was it. I assumed they brought the food to your car. . .I didn't have any other information to go on, not to mention Eliot had expired long ago and was screaming. So I forgot to get my parking ticket validated, went up to the car, and waited for the grocery guy.

So there I was waiting, Eliot having a great time running around a mostly empty floor of the parking lot (I had a hold of his hood, of course. . .) waiting, waiting. Then I realized I didn't get parking validated, so we went back inside, down three flights of stairs, to the Customer service desk. "I'm waiting for my groceries" I said. The guy (also white) looked outside at the curb. Is your car there? he asked me. Where? Out there in the loading zone. No one told me there was a loading zone. Oh, he said. There is. Right there. He stamped my ticket. Back upstairs we went to drive back down and finally get my groceries (which I paid a fortune for, by the way. I don't think anything in that store is actually on sale. . .). I pulled up and loaded up. "We thought you went home" the bagger/loader said. "I wish" I said. What a nightmare. I'll never go there again.

What I also found interesting is that we have almost the same assortment of organic foods at my Jewel store down the street (which I can walk to, by the way). What a rip off. What a token city experience. I hate this place.

When all else fails, do it yourself

Just when I thought the difficult tasks were over, we've decided to attempt to sell our own condo. We're doing the buyowner thing, which will be great if it works, but expensive if it doesn't. (You can check out our place if you're curious.) Cleaning up this place was no small feat, but I think it looks great now, and hope we get some people to come look at it soon. The waiting game is not one I play well.

I turned in grades yesterday, which was sad because there is no potential teaching job on the horizon in Colorado. It is clearer and clearer to me every day that I love teaching, especially teaching beginning creative writing. Over the years, I have managed not to let the challenge overwhelm me, and now it's just plain exciting. I hope I can find something, even an adjunct position, in Colorado next year. We'll see.

I am officially working on my dissertation, mostly just thinking about it and what it might actually end up looking like. I'm thinking I will concentrate on these strange and columnar prose poems I've been working on here and string them together into a longer sequence. I really love how they seem to float and evaporate. Of course, inevitable, I will be asked the ever-stupifying question "What do the mean?", to which I will have to say, "I don't know. ..you tell me." Anyway, I'm writing the "prospectus" which is a bizarre document for a poet to conceptualize, and was characterized aptly by my friend Anna Marie yesterday as "something useful for a theoretical project but just wierd for a creative one." How do you pre-view your own poetic and creative project beyond ten feet in fromt of you? I'm a little perplexed and a lot stifled, but maybe it will prove to be valuable in the end, in nothing else to be able to talk about the collection.

I recieved my beautiful Briar Cliff review yesterday, in which my poem appears on the last page. I never know what to make of that. The grand finalie? A trifiling afterthought? I'm not complaining, especially because the magazine is just so stunning. And it's a poem about my mother, which is coming out just in time for mother's day. How swell.

I hope to be posting more now that the house is clean and we're on the market. Some new poems, if I can pull it off. Maybe even a series. We'll see.

I've been working with Scott Glassman again on another collaboration, this time as a participant in Dusie's chapbook collective project. Exciting stuff. So far, it's pretty intense and charged, but we're only about halfway done. . .

little thing

the decorum is about to bobble. hold on, she says, teeth clenched and chattering. the veneer of thrust is behind us now. he is a strange sort of confidence, shredding the given sun. diorama. your clavicle turns like a harpsichord, finding its key. playing shadows. come here. you are about to lose your ribbon, nobody said. to me. you are about to be lost. nobody. said nobody, all of them alive with red poesies. hyacinths. cats curling like yellow fog in our guttural speech. bauble. all of us bobbling. take it down from there, little thing. it has been too long. thread. aviation. soon the weaving. soon the weaving will be done.

ABD

ABD
It's official. Now I can say, "Kiss my ABD butt." It does not, however, mean I can get my book published or find a job any easier.

The exam process was so excruciatingly painful. There were so many things wrong with the way it went down that I'm going to hold off on posting anything till I cool off a little bit. Let's just say that I sucessfully played the game, but I'm unsure of what I ultimately gained at the end. Perhaps I'll comment more later, or perhaps I'll just move on and chalk it up to Academic politics.

Onward to my dissertation, where I'm sure I will meet serious opposition and be told not to write what I want to write because it doesn not fit a certain mold. Tough nuggies, as I tell Eliot. I'm moving on regardless.

shorn

A poem about drastically cutting Eliot's hair for the first time. also easter. Pictures to come. . .

you are sewn and tangled to a tree branch. we avoid. missing the glyph interpreted riteously. say stuck in an atmophere. atom. adam. hanging always in your eyes. clear. coming loose is a clean tear, follicular blossom to dust. i know you will be dust. for now. bathing, you swim in outgrowth, brambles. a thicket of hair fastens easter basket. appear as if you are replaced. you regenerate. bear my molted skin. your clippings, a bartered sense of growth. weigh. the lightness, the softness passes by and snags.

On the verge of ABD. . .

Wow, I've lapsed for almost a month. Shame on me. In my defense, it was a brutal month, and I'm glad to be on this side of the first week of April.

I have officially completed my exams-- a grueling process of four days of three hours each day of writing. . .each day answering one question from each of my committee members. It was rough, difficult, blinding, but mostly it's over. That's about al I can say right now. On April 18th I do an oral defense where I either get anihilated or praised. My guess is somewhere in between. Hopefully, though, I will be ABD in a week from today.

There is some good news on the poetry scene- I won the UIC award for poetry with my poem "Leave, light, entropy," which first appeared here on my blog! It's nice to be recognized, especially when I know exactly who my competetion was, and it's stiff competetion. I also won a competetion through UIC which results in publication in Near South-- an experiental journal here in Chicago. I get published, which is a treat. I've been meaning to submit there, so this saves me the chore! Garin Cyncholl is the editor- a fabulous poet who also reins from UIC. He has a book coming ouit by Pavement Saw press, if I'm not mistaken. Rock.

I'm way, way excited to start writing again, and my next challenge is the big dissertation. I'm luck enough to be able to do a creative dissertation, but still-- everything at UIC is about theory, as I'm sure my dissertation will have to be appropriately mapped on some theory trajectory. Such fun. I'm so sick of theory, I could spit. All four of my questions were based in theory. Ick.

a sad time

got news yesterday that my grandfather is on his final decline from cancer. We knew it was coming- we were in Florida two weeks ago saying our good byes and making sure that Grandpa got to meet his great grandson. (This picture is from June of 2004; I am about six months pregnant here. This is before his cancer got really bad.) I wrote this poem, a pathetic attempt to tie together images and emotions as well as emptiness. . .but I feel better having written something. everything is prose these days.

trickle down brown stones. walking in autumn woods. dogs, a chorus, an answer. inside, talk of winter and ash. quietly but slowly. so much so, I have to turn around. we will carry, they say, until it drops. pockets full of tissues. punctual. lighting the pilot. waiting to ignite or expose. I have kept them all, the cards. the occasions for your words. your handwriting tall and slender like spruce trees, bending in an easterly. winter wind. bending as you recline. moving backwards through the polyps on your spine. we are laughing; we are laughing with you. dog is quiet, curled like a branch. the garrulous wind. speaking sends me back. today I have read three books about reading. mustard flour, not mustard flower. i fear for your sleep, your neverwaking. hoping. impossible to go the wrong way. the precise science of death, hiding in the doghouse, is calculating your worth.

Migrane

I went to a conference on Saturday, an all-day endeavor that was meant to expose, poke, prod, reconfigure answers to the question (statement?) "How to read. What to do: The future of poetry criticism." Drawn to this event by an impressive list of presenters, including my advisor, Jennifer Ashton (others are Brett Bourbon, Stanford University, Steve Burt, Macalester College, Jeff Dolven, Princeton University, Oren Izenberg, University of Chicago, Maureen McLane, Harvard University, Mark Payne, University of Chicago, Jennifer Scappettone, University of Chicago, Gabrielle Starr, New York University), I thought it would illuminate some evidence that might help me muddle better through issues I'm having with some of my exam lists, namely my "Evolution of the Lyric" theory list. I left the event at the end of the day with a migrane. . .the first migrane I've ever had.

Maybe it was the size of the egos in the room that left so little space for my own mind and thoughts that made my head hurt so badly. Or maybe it was that people kept talking about "poetry" as if it was something we could define, something we could all agree on exactly what that meant, while there was obviously a very specific "kind" of poetry, namely old white male poetry, that is most highly esteemed. At one point, poetry was compared to a car, as a mechanism to take you from one place to another. I have to admit, this is the most vacuous definition of poetry I've ever been forced to wrap my mind around. Granted, the context was more complicated that I'm creating here, but still. It was a hard pill to swallow.

For me, the last panel was the most interesting, presenting on issues that I'm most interested in, namely, post modernism with some feminist theory thrown in. But I was even disappointed with this. Feminism seemed to be talked about as if it were a "lesser form of theory," lesser, definitely, than the ideas of Kant or Celan, whose names were mentioned so many times, I lost count. At one point, an older gentleman, the one who had been spouting about Kant earlier, asked the women on this panel, "You don't actually consider the sonnet a male-dominated form of poetry, do you?" Thank the gods for Jennifer Scappettone, who answered that though she was merely commenting on Jennifer Ashton's discussion of Rachel Blau De Plessis, she was not Rachel Blau Du Plessis. She did, however, think that women have been taught a certain tradition of the sonnet since we were young, a male-dominated tradition, shown that only males write this poem well, and therefore we have as women, stood outside of this tradition with little opportunity or models of where we fit in. I guess in a way, I felt similarly about the entire conference-- like I was standing outside of a discussion that didn't include me, that didn't value the things about poetry, myself and other's, that I hold as important, like subjectivity, poetic tension, language itself and our relationship to it in our time. Instead we talked about cars and spaceships, and whether or not a poem could drive a car to Paris, France, even if we built a bridge.

I also felt distant as a woman who believes, to a certain extent, in an essentially feminine poetics or aesthetic. Having actually carried a child in my body for nine months makes me a different animal from a man who cannot do this-- I am other, essentially(and, I would venture to guess, different from 99% of women at the conference, who are not mothers). That doctors had to cut me open to remove this baby from me has changed my entire perspective on the world. That my body produced another being, with the initial help of a lonesome sperm, yet that it was not able to deliver this being, has changed my complete belief structure, thus my relationship with language. I cannot trust my body; I cannot trust language either to deliver something or anything.I cannot trust a poem to drive to Paris, even Paris, Texas. I am left, instead, to discover the grief and simultaneous elation that language carries, complete with contradictions and erasures. This is my truth, but there was no room for it in that room.

My life, also, is so different from the majority of people in that room-- My world contains the chaos, failures, elations, and exhaustion of being a mother first and an academic/poet second. There is, for me, no other way to do it. This is why I embrace an idea I found recently in Kathleen Frasier's essay "How did Emma Slide? A matter of gestation." She proposes a different form of poetry, one so tightly linked to process as a reality for me, that I nearly fell out of my chair when I read it: "My mind was working double-time. I was thinking about childbirth, its interior unfolding process; then child-rearing and the infinite interruptions it promises. How we want them, how we don't. . .that the ambivalence for women artists around the issue of children and mates will never be resolved. I thought of the word 'gestation' in this context, and when I stood up to read, I began first to speak of our survival-as-artist needs and suggested that it was time we formally acknowledged this interruptive pattern as an exact set of movements , a newly-evolved poem model that carried its own imprint for the recognized and partly intentional nature of our lives. I named this new for the Gestate," and she continues to define it as a form that allows for a slow unfolding of thought and values detail, but also welcomes leaps in perception. I love all of this and agree with it very much, but love most the description of "the partly intentional nature of our lives." I have felt for some time that my poems do have intention, but it is not purely my own; (which was, actually a topic brought up at the conference, imagine it!) it is driven by the chaos of my subconscious as well as the absolute chaos of my life, moment to moment. I love it. It is essentialist, but so what, I guess I want to ask. I contradict myself, so did Whitman. That was his most effective poetic trope!

The moment of the conference that I enjoyed most was when Oren Izenberg's baby was in the hallway, screaming, while someone was trying to make a profound and deep point. I could see the look on people's faces, the utter terror and disbelief in their eyes. You might as well have run nails down a chalkboard. I loved it. That was the only moment of the conference when I truly felt at home.

the perfect use of a semicolon

It is billowing like a butterfly; my attention is flying.
Guarantee a snowstorm; go fishing early.
You dreamed you were on a seashore; you are really on a staircase.
The broken thought is finishing; the thought is done.
He could not handle the embrace; he would have cried and shaken.
He cried and shook; his shaking was electric.
I wish for undertones; please understand.
Undertow; under snow.
You dream you are a carefully constructed grammar; you fragment.
Finding his pulse is the hardest part; he used to be faster than seasons.
The thing you search for is here; you search for spiraling punctuation.
Please wait for the children; they are coming.
Help me; I am shaking.
Her secret is downstairs; her downstairs is a clear conversation.
I love him; he is not correct.
Go to the seashore; they are waiting for you there.

Consistently Astonished

I'm both astonished and extremely comforted by the fact that people still read this blog, even though I have been so remiss in posting. Like my own little cyber-support group. That I have been doing more thinking than writing is not necessarily a good thing, especially since the culmination of all this thinking will soon be a lot of writing-- fast, time-pressured writing-- the mere thought of that is enough to make me mad (mad in the British sense, not angry, though there is a bit of that, I suppose). This is to say that the few loyal visitors are so very extremely appreciated, and I wish I had more to offer these days in terms of profound realizations and insightful poems, but alas, all I have is astonishment.

Same as it ever was. . .

A quick update

I'm still alive, though not blogging much or really keeping up with other blogs. . .sorry guys. I'll come back gangbusters in April when these exams are over. I can;t even imagine life without the burden of studying. Aaah. Can't wait.

Looks like Scott Glassman and I will be in the upcoming edition of Dusie, thanks to Scott's submission efforts of our collaborative piece. We're pretty excited about it, especially since they responded in less than 24 hours. Scott and I agree that it's a new record, for us anyway. It should be out in mid-February, so stay tuned.

Mostly, I've been reading hermit-like and thinking about big, complicated ideas and meanwhile not able to compose a simple sentence. I'm reading my favorite book of all time, Theresa Cha's Dictee so all is right with the world :) It's even on my list!

I'm also applying to several teaching positions in Colorado, some community colleges, some Universities. We'll see if I get any interviews. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Hopefully more later, but who knows. LOTS left to read, and only two months to do it.

not having much to say but talking anyway

That's how I felt too after the holidays and spending almost three weeks at my parent- in- law's house. I'm still amazed that I survived. Eliot is just now getting back on schedule and back to some semblance of normalcy. Though for a toddler, there's a sliding scale there. . .

This was the first week of classes, which went pretty well and smoothly. I'm teaching a poetry workshop of only 15 students, so nothing to complain about- I've taught this class enough times to be able to relax. It's interesting to be simultaneously reading all of this pedagogy theory about creative writing, much of it very thought provoking. I didn't expect to be this excited about my pedagogy reading list, but it has turned out to be one of my favorite lists. My advisor on this list, Professor Ann Feldman, is so supportive as well. She's interested in the way I'm synthesizing the things I'm reading and integrating them into my own practice. This seems to me to be the epotome of a great pedagogical model- theory and practice equally balanced. It's been great so far.

I've been pleasantly surprised by some acceptances in the pase several weeks, one to Alligator Juniper in Arizona and one to the Briar Cliff Review in Iowa. I also recieved two separate letters, one form Fourteen Hills (a great, great magazine) and Folio out of American U in DC, personalized to me. These letters both say that the editors like my poems very much but that they just didn't fit in that issue. I was very excited by these letters, which both invite me to re-submit for the next issue. I had never recieved letters like these (nor had I ever really written anything exactly like them when I was an editor) and I was very touched by them, almost more than an acceptance in some ways. The effort is above-and-beyond, which I totally appreciate. I will DEFINITELY resubmit.

Well, off to read Whitman and figure out exactly how he fits into my Urban Poetics list. If anyone (Mary??? Simone??? or anyone else??? PLEASE?) has any insight on this, please let me know. And if I figure anything out, perhaps I'll post later about my findings.

to be back

We've been back for a week, but time is just not something I have a lot of right now. I'm behind on my reading for exams, weeks behind, in fact. My exams are in a matter of weeks at this point, and I'm only about 1/2 way through my lists. Unreal. I suppose this is when I start to refine my skills in skimming. . .

I've been completely uninspired to write and feel like that's OK for now.

I'm completely stressed out and want to hide under a rock. Today is the first day of Spring semester, and I teach tomorrow. Brutal. I pray for good students this semeater.

I hope to fill in more details later. . .now, I'm off to read about creative writing pedagogy.