leniency

Here is today's Tupelo Press 30/30 poem for today. Today's word of the day from the NY times is Leniency. I like how the word is hard and soft at the same time--it's like a legal, formal term, but the meaning connotes a softness, an ease, a lightening. The poem is based on a conversation that I had with my son about a course I'm developing at work about ergonomics, a topic I knew/know very little about. It unfolded into something quite wonderful (the conversation, not the poem), and it seems to fit with today's word, at least in my mind that is constantly looking for synthesis.

The poems I write for my children seem to always be a bit more accessible and possibly sentimental. It is what it is, I guess, for better or for worse. If you like it, please give to Tupelo Press! (And don't forget to put my name in the comments section.)

leniency

for Eliot

Until now, we've never really understood ergonomics, how it has to do with a body in a space, how it strives to find a fit between your body and the space it's in, the work it does. We talk about floating in water, and I imagine how his body would feel, how the space would fall in around him in cold, uncertain terms. It must be dark, I say. You see it more like an expansion, how every part of the space is accessible, how he can go up or down or all the way over. It's like you can fly, you say. Together we list how people work in different spaces: astronauts, fishermen, airplane pilots, factory workers, NFL players, software engineers, fast food workers, teachers, farmers, postmen and postwomen, chemists, the people who change the lightbulbs in the White House. Their space, their work.

You start to think about your own space, your chair at school, the slope of the playground slide, the long sessions of standing in hallways as the little kids pass by, how you sit on the floor in music class. You finally decide that you both fit and don't fit at the same time, that you have grown beyond so many of the spaces that you used to fit in, that you can even see a former version of yourself in the kindergarten chairs and jungle gyms. There are new places to climb now, you say. And now you move ahead, carving out, carving away what will be a new space for your body, your work, your mind that can't stop finding new heights.

Molt

Here is my Tupelo Press 30/30 poem for the day, which also marks the end of my first successful week writing a poem a day! It's been challenging, but I've loved every minute of it. I hope others ware enjoying it as well! On to week two, starting tomorrow. There's plenty more in store, to be sure.

If you think working a full-time job, taking care of 3 children, AND writing a poem a day is an epic undertaking, you are right. You can show your understanding of this epic undertaking by sponsoring me here! Just make a note of my name in the comments section, and the world will know that you support working mother-poets. Well, Tupelo Press will know, at least.

Today's NY Times word of the day is molt--something we have a new outlook on since adopting Korra, our Siberian Husky mix. I incidentally came across an article in the Washington post about blue crabs, from which I took the epigraph and a good bit of the really, really interesting imagery and emotion.

Molt

"During courtship, the female is molting, meaning her top shell softens as she grows a new and larger one, making her more vulnerable to predators." 

Darryl Fears, "To save their depleted species, female blue crabs go the extra mile to spawn in the bay," The Washington Post

What do we know about connection, rivers,

populations, disaster? You simplify:

It's all about the metrics, the weighing and the counting.

The total numbers. Show the bottom line, you insist.

I have strayed away. I might have even

carried you on my back,

only once in my lifetime. I was growing

new and larger. Only once. 

Why we went, fanned out like ripples, 

to the mouth of the bay.

Why I was still in the winter. Perfectly still.

Why you couldn't save me then.

Then what becomes disaster? A pile of hair,

thinning grass where I cannot hide,

a red predator who is everywhere,

a winter when you stayed but still disappeared.

Philanderer

Here is my 30/30 poem of the day. Today's NY Times word of the day is Philanderer. Another challenge from the powers that be. Often when I face poetic challenges like this, I look to other poetic, photographic, or language sources to gather words, phrases, images (which I transform) for content. Today, I came upon the Dusie Tuesday poem by Barbara Henning, which I really love. I'm going to attempt to mimic the form and flow of the poem. It's not quite there, but it's a try.

Philanderer

It’s not about where 
or why, she says.
It’s about the feel when
things start turning sideways.
She can even describe
the shapes as they oscillate
and circumscribe her.
She knows: Rhombus.
Isosceles. Quadrilateral. Quickly, now.
She hears him leave
through the back door
before he even exits.
Screen door banging. Crack.
She starts to sing
because she knows somewhere
someone wants to hear her.
He might even still be
walking across the room.
She starts to sweat,
not because she has to,
but because she thinks she should
while she sings and then
she feels so busy
because she’s doing so many things
at the same time. By the time
she finishes the song,
she’s sitting in a small puddle.
She starts to ask questions
and wonder why for
for the first time in years.

Plutocracy

I continue on my poetry marathon (30/30) attempt to write a poem-a-day for (almost) 30 days in hopes of raising money for Tupelo Press. I'm using various Words of the Days from a couple of websites, including the New York Times and Dictionary.com as titles or some kind of inspirational point for the poems. Today's NY Times word of the day is Plutocracy. I'm not big on directly political poems, but I suppose all poetry has some sort of political statement no matter what we intend.

plutocracy
(or the garden)

She insists she's not here to metaphor, to lay down, or to disrupt what we already have going. I am interested in the botany, she says. The peonies. The pepper plants with their delicate white flowers. We are most disturbed by her reaction to the heirloom tomato plant, the multicolored fruits that hang like jewels because of nothing in particular we did right. They nearly sparkle. We hope she will touch them, but than again, we don't. We want her to love them, to speculate on what they would sell for at market. We want her to walk away with empty hands, wishing she could take them with her.

Chronometer

Yikes. Today's word from Dictionary.com is chronometer, which is basically a timepiece designed especially for accuracy. This is hard, people. You should definitely donate some money to Tupelo Press to reward my valiant efforts.

Chronometer

cavity
but not the sleeping hand
to wind and wind.

forms
I could only hold on for so long.
tell me of the small dress.

dark
what do you hear
when the water inches up your thighs?

glass
you, kind and plentiful limb.
a branch repeated throughout the white city.

share
legible numbers. marks, notches.
or a bell, yes. a bell.

play
hospital game, she says,
searching the city again.

tree
the bird looks for the mirror branch.
we have lost all sense of audience.

phillumenist

Feeling pretty good about getting a weekend poem written for the 30/30 project. Apparently, though, the NY times doesn't have its word of the day on the weekends, so I had to use Dictionary.com's WOtD. This is going to be a challenge. The word is phillumenist, which is a a collector of matchbooks and matchboxes. Yikes. Prose poem! Here goes: 

Phillumenist

She is afraid of the lighter, the flint, the feedback from imaginary moonshine. It is a twist of slow, icicle burns. She watches from a distance, all hot and bothered by the red glimmering exposure. She has to say strike to justify the texture, the raw the piles and stacks of potential heat. It's not unlike her own love letters, how they coil like snakes in the impossible comfort of shine.  Even she wants to show you how she waited for them to love her. Every time, they die until anther one grows. Artifacts, fossils. Bullets and moons that seem to whisper in the smoke.

Incandescent

Today's word is incandescent--not a poetic stretch for me since so much of my work revolves around light and images of light, but I'm grateful for a gimme since we are still early in the game. I tried to also play with the language from the NY times usage excerpt, which I found to be full of bizarre and decontextualized references, which I love. Today, quatrains. Some capitalization. Maybe some end punctuation tomorrow!

Don't forget to donate to Tupelo in support of this experiment!

Incandescent

Idea of
you reading in the corner in the light of similar mornings
Vision of
eyes behind you always on fire

As a result of
in the red shine you come undone
Brilliance of
the forging circles, platelets, undefined carriers

Glint of
canvas you set fire to
Landscape of
color draft feeling the blowback

Painting of
the moment you're drifting you don't even know you're going away
Opening of
why a shy ray

Possibility of
glow, she says, her back blending with driftwood
Sketch of
gold, camera, a path among the wildflowers

In the foreground of
the day when you might almost collapse, but you glisten instead
Viewpoint of
the pivotal silhouette

The power of
conflagration, the way you open your spine
The stigmatism of
the spark and the shadow always behind it

welter

For my Tupelo Press 30/30, I'm definitely approaching it as an experiment. Here's what I'm thinking:

An experiment that I do every once in a while when I want to write but have nothing to write "about" (as if . . .) is to go to a dictionary.com or other definition-type place to find a word of the day. I will then latch on to the word in whatever fashion I can/will/do and fashion a poem around it. It's just a generation exercise.

Following the success I've had with this approach, I think I'll adopt the following process for my daily poetry experiments: I will go to the NY Times Word of the Day and use each word there respectively as the title (or maybe some variation thereof).

Here's today's poem: (also available at https://tupelopress.wordpress.com/3030-project/)

welter
for Violet

she will have been
the multitude
scroll of fractal cloud, wisp
the lift
tossed from glitter-skin folds
the place
to the softest cusp of arms
the reconciliation
how we couldn't go there anymore
the smallest explosions imaginable
slate blue like the corners of ocean
the curve
alive and strings and bare and open
the scrutiny
she is the slightest form of day
the cleanest version of immersion
she will fall into you
the sphere
the storm
the space you didn't know you had between your thoughts

The 30/30 Project

I've been selected by Tupelo Press as a better-late-than-never contributor to this month's 30/30 project. I will write a poem a day, and the poems will be published on the Tupelo website for all to see. I plan to use the blog space, though it has been dormant for a while, to promote the project, my poems, and others involved. I hope to talk about the poems I created and give a bit of insight about my approach to the project/experiment. I will approach it as more of an experiment than a project, but I'm very excited about the prospect of reigniting my blog habit while being productive and hopefully raising money for a press that does a lot of good for a lot of poets.

Celeste is TWO!

I've been a horrible blog slacker, but I feel inspired today to share my excitement about my little girl turning two today. In the chaos that is our life--identity theft, job interviews, long commutes, rain and more rain, sick dog, business trips, and so on and so on--it feels pretty amazing to take a minute to just pause and think about Celeste.

She is the kind of child that just makes you smile. Unlike Eliot, who was so serious all of the time, Celeste is hilarious and constantly making jokes. It's like she feeds off of your smile and it makes her happier. She has the most amazing belly laugh that I've ever heard. She truly is an astonishing child.

Recently, I had the chance to visit her school and watch her in action for a short amount of time. I would dare to say that her favorite activity is the trampoline. It's a small, one-child activity and has what looks like handlebars for the child to hold on to. Then they just jump and jump and jump. Celeste, all 21 pounds of her, jumps like her life depends on it. Watching her jump on this thing gives you a sense of exactly who my child is--fearless, determined, athletic, but with a free spirit that allows her to jump higher and higher with every spring-loaded jump. She is truly at home on this trampoline--truly in her element. Of course, she's fallen. And again this is a testament to who she is. She has, in fact, launched herself into the air and fallen on her bum. And then what? Tears. Love. And then right back on the trampoline, but jumping higher this time, eager to break new boundaries. She is a force to be reckoned with, and I already know that this child will teach me things about my own limitations as time goes on--how to challenge myself, how to break through, not only how to get up after I fall, but how to use the fall itself to gain momentum for the next step forward.

It's hard to believe that two years ago today I was laying in a hospital, worrying about my newborn girl in NICU, wanting more than anything to just touch and hold her. A new scar on my abdomen. The love inside, which I thought had reached maximum capacity, doubled in an instant. The happiness balanced with the grief balanced with the stress balanced with the instant inability to remember what life was like, just yesterday, without her in it.

Happy Birthday, Sweet Girl! You are an incredible force of nature!

Dusie article is out!

The article the Marthe Reed and I wrote for Oppened Zine is out and pretty sweet. It tells all about the collective as well as provides many mini-reviews of past chaps. Check it out!

lacuna

a Haiti poem

as observers, we stitch together reels of tape to form memory. she says they showed a picture of the mass grave, mounds of dark skin melting together like swamp water. we've all seen the dead covered in sheets. in aftershocks, new holes are made in roofs, windows; crevices too small to enter become doorways. observing. it’s difficult, we say, to put our finger on exactly. through someone else’s lens. we watch them scramble in, leaving a hole in the street where they slept. giving water to thirsty babies, taking water from thirsty babies. each shifting leaves more holes. cavities. blemish on the earth, visible from satellites. now, a week later, they pull more children from the rubble. one is alive, bleached white with dust and arms open to the sky as if he is floating out on water.

This year's job market

Well, all signs point to the fact that academia is facing its most difficult times ever. The protests, the tuition hikes, the faculty job freezes- all of this in light of the highest enrollments in most schools' history. It's an extremely strange paradox that sheds light on how important the government is in funding education, and a lesson to be learned about what happens when government decides not to fund it any more. From my own personal experience, my visiting professor line evaporated into thin air in exchange for several more adjunct positions at Metro, and this certainly isn't an anomaly. It's a crisis, and I'm afraid of what the trickle down effect of this is going to look like. In lieu of hiring highly qualified, well educated teachers and giving them benefits, etc, schools are hiring adjuncts who teach 8-10 classes a semester in order to be able to pay their bills, and some are definitely more qualified to teach than others. At a school like CU, Berkley, I'm sure students will end up paying more for less qualified teachers, as I believe all state schools in California have had a hiring freeze on faculty positions for quite some time.

Again, in my own experience, the job market is extremely brutal this year. The MLA reports that jobs are down in English studies by about 25%, an unprecedented downturn that mirrors the global economic downturn. I'm putting myself out there this year, applying for jobs that look to be a good fit, but have absolutely no expectations of making it to the top of the pile. The piles, after all, have hundreds of applicants in them for each position. I suppose the right experience, a writing sample that catches their eye, or the right turn of phrase in a cover letter might give anyone an edge, it's quite a jungle this year in the job market. It's kind of laughable, actually. With 1 in 4 jobs completely eliminated and even more people out of work seeking jobs, it becomes a complete crap shoot. You have to wonder whether or not the hiring committees even read through all of the cover letters/ CVs, etc.

I'm not sure I really have a point, except that to be an academic right now probably means to be unemployed or looking for a job. Those with jobs are overworked or are being stripped of benefits or asked to take paycuts. I'm interested to see what next year will bring, but this year is pretty much a wash. Nightmare? Insanity? Pretty much.

The end of Aunt Flo

Let me immediately clarify: Aunt Flo is NOT a euphemism for my period and this post is NOT about pregnancy or menopause. It's about my husband's real, true Aunt Flo who died early this week here in Denver. She was a cool lady and apparently in her day, a real socialite. She will definitely be missed.

When I entered my husband's family landscape about 10 years ago (then as the "girlfriend"), Aunt Flo was an interesting family fixture. She seemed even at that point to be on death's doorstep, at least at first glance. Bit when you talked to her, she was alert, and as soon as she smiled, it was obvious that she was very much alive, despite the fact that her body seemed to be completely giving up on her. Since then, she has been on a slow decline, but much slower than many of us anticipated. This woman is a fighter, and according to family who were with her at the end, that spark burned brightly till the very end.

I had the pleasure of looking through some old family photo's yesterday as the family gathered to comfort one another. She was a beautiful young woman with an uncanny resemblance (IMHO) to Tori Spelling. She lived till the ripe age of 89, so there were plenty of pictures, but the oldest ones were the most interesting. I got to see pictures of my husband's great grandmother who was 100% hispanic/ native american. I heard stories about how Aunt Connie, Flo's sister, worked for JFK in the White house (there's a picture of her, in fact, documenting this fact which is quite fascinating). Flo had four sisters, in fact, one of which is Brian's grandmother, Fifi. These women are true forces to be reckoned with, no doubt. Fifi, at the forever-young age of 87, wakes up between 4-5 am and goes to the pool to swim several miles every day. From there, she goes to visit her husband, who is buried at the Fort Logan military cemetery.

Until Flo's death, four of the five sisters were still living. All four of them have outlived their husbands, some by decades. It's quite a legacy.

My heart goes out to the family she leaves behind, especially her children and grandchildren. If the pictures of her life showed anything, it was that she lived a full and gratifying life- most of us can only hope to be so surrounded by love.

A new purpose

As someone who had been either a student or a teacher in academia since I was four years old, the end of August marks a specific timecode for me: the start of school. In whatever capacity, I have returned to school in the fall for the past 29 years of my life, with the exception of the year I took off between undergrad and grad school. And this year, of course. And it's weird.

I'm not entirely sad, but I have an inkling that I will miss the students, which are my favorite part of teaching. Each one is unique and a little odd, which I absolutely enjoy. I will miss talking about the things I'm passionate about, especially Creative Writing. I will miss being part of a campus community, which I really enjoyed last year at Metro. I will miss the paycheck and benefits.

I know that I'm far from being done; in fact, I joke with my husband that my career will probably not start till I'm over 35, so in the reality of this context, I really haven't even begun. I'm still waiting for that job that's worth missing- the complete package- and I'm willing at this point to wait for it.

But it is a bit surreal, says my biological clock, that it's fall and I'm not stressed out about syllabi, class lists, first assignments, etc. On the other hand, it's my biological clock that presented me with the ultimate imperative, who is turning three months in three days, named Celeste. And my poetry calls to me desperately: nurture ME. Publish ME. Make more of ME.

My mother described it today as a "melancholy" emotion, in the context of watching some element of the world move on without you. I think this is a wonderful adjective, especially as it applies. We always want to be an important element of something, and when that something moves on, seemingly unscathed, without us, we wonder about our purpose in both the large and small scheme of things. Purposes shift, though, and embracing this will surely be my saving grace.

I'm reading in Loveland, CO

Poetry Reading by The Alleged Poets Society

Thursday, August 20 7 p.m.

Foote Gallery/Auditorium -- Loveland museum 503 N
Lincoln Ave

Karla Schorzman. Introductions.

Selections from

“Musings of the Magdelena”

Larry Grieco. “Of Baseball and Buddha”

Mackenzie Carignan. Selections from Metaphors for Miscarriage

Very Special Guest: Selections from Magmaphonic Poems

KK Shores. Selections from Van Gogh’s Kaleidoscope

Free and Open to the Public

Refreshments will Be Served

Cleaning out my desk. . . sort of. . .

So my position as "visiting asst. professor" has come to an end at Metro, partly because they didn't renew my contract in a timely manner and partly because I'm just nowhere ready to hand Celeste over to a stranger quite yet. I sent the email several weeks ago announcing my decision to take a semester off, but haven't made it to campus to clean out my desk. (I've been battling with mastitis for a few weeks, among other things.) When I arrived today, my office had been torn asunder, personal belongings were missing, and all of my (remaining) stuff was in boxes. It was quite obvious that I had overstayed my welcome and that the powers that be were ready for me to go.

Usually the challenge comes in getting closure in a situation like this, but I'm experiencing more closure than I ever thought I would. I left the door open to possibly adjuncting next semester, but as I drove away from campus today, it felt much more like "goodbye" than "see you soon". I was cataloging the things I've contributed to campus, the students I've made extra sacrifices for, the extra hours I put into grading, the general level of my energy and dedication and suddenly felt very betrayed and ungratified. I've thought for two years that Metro and I were a good fit, but suddenly it seems all wrong. As I pushed Celeste in her stroller down the hallways, I couldn't help but feel that she was the reason I've been cast away like yesterday's newspaper, like I no longer have anything to offer this place. It was not the experience I was expecting, but then again, most of my experience at Metro has been unexpected.

Perhaps I'll pick up a class or two next semester, but as I reflect back on last year's full-time work load (teaching 4 classes per semester, 99% of them writing classes), it was a big factor in my lack of publications and creative production. I had very little space to write and reflect, which I'm excited about once again.

I also feel a big shift in priorities happening inside of me, which I'm not sure I EVER expected. I've always been so focused on my career, on getting that tenure track job, on forging my place in academia. . . but now I think I have some work to do before I'm ready for that. I have a lot of reading to do, poems and manuscripts to publish, and a name to make for myself in the poetry world before I move back into academia. If I've learned on thing in the past 10 years teaching college English, it's that it doesn't matter how good you are at teaching. To get a job, everything else matters more, like what discipline is attached to your Ph.D. or when your next book is coming out. It's time to work on this for maybe a year or two and see how the job search shapes up. I want to be part of interesting and provocative conversations about poetry, and very little of that is happening at Metro.

I'm shocked to say that I'm very content with my decision to say "farewell", or at least " see you when I see you". It's bittersweet, but much more sweet than I thought it would be. And I can't help but read more and more into the gesture of having someone else pack my boxes for me. No matter how much I wanted Metro and me to be a fit, they literally sent me packing. Our priorities, quite obviously, were not in line, regardless of my dedication, and that's just reality. I have a new reality, and she needs me more than any freshman writing student ever will.

Feeling bad about the swing

For the past five minutes or so, as I've been hacking away at months of unanswered email, Celeste has been "speaking" to me from her swing. Not crying- mind you- but vocalizing her desire to be held as opposed to, well, swinging.

But I could spend 8 hours a day for the next who knows how many months holding her as she drifts off to sleep. . . and then as soon as I try to put her down. . BAM! She wakes up. The swing eliminates that, and it helps her get to sleep so that I don't have to.

But I have the usual and unavoidable "guilt" about the swing. Shouldn't I be holding her? Rocking her? COmforting her? Am I a bad mom for letting a battery operated contraption do the lulling for me? But I have my own work to do, don't I? Things to invest my own time and energy into? Or am I not allowed to have my own time and energy? This is an has always been my own dilemma as a mother.

It was most pronounced during Eliot's infancy and early toddlerhood when I was in the throes of my Ph.D. I remember being so angry with him when he wouldn't nap- I had work to do! I had every hour accounted for, and without his nap, I would be behind. Somehow we made it through, but certainly I could have done better on my exams and dissertation if all naps had been accounted for. Or, dare I say it?- If I didn't have a child at all.

I was having a conversation with my friend Rebecca about this yesterday. She said she didn't know how I managed a Ph.D. with a newborn. I don't know either, but as I said to her, a lot of it had to do with compromising my standards of excellence and just doing what was required. I am a perfectionist, but when your attention is constantly divided, perfection isn't really an option. Some of your energy and attention is still your own, but not undivided attention. Once you're a mother, there's no such thing as undivided attention. Your attention is forever divided.

But I've always been determined not to be one of those mothers who hides away for 18 years to raise their children and then, as they wave to you from their dorm room window as you drive away, you ask yourself, "What have I done with MY life?" I'm determined to master the fine art of attention dividing, an I guess if the swing gives me a few moments of less-divided attention, this is a good thing. I should embrace it, no? I'm still not convinced.

She's kind of asleep now, and I stopped the swing. But she's squirming a bit and probably ready to be engaged by something other than the pink butterfly mobile above her swing. One thing is redeeming, as I remember from Eliot and feel equally with Celeste- when I pick them up from the bed that they're not sleeping in or the swing that may or may not have lulled them to sleep, the moment that the weight is shifted into my arms, they are forgiven. My attention is shifted and consumed by them and there's a spot inside somewhere, sometimes deeper inside than others, that melts and softens.

This is why I've been such a slacker. . .

This is Celeste Lenore, the newest addition to the family as of May 20th, 2009. On Wednesday, she'll be 12 weeks old, which I can't believe.

It's not a great excuse for not writing on my blog; in fact, I haven't been good at blogging since my move to Colorado almost three years ago. I don't know why, except for the fact that things have been moving at a breakneck speed ever since. I've been really thinking more about it though and really want to reinvest myself. I have a lot going on that I'd like to "talk" about, though the dozen or so people who used to read my blog have no doubt stopped by this point. Perhaps I'll get some new readers someday :)

The most dramatic change, besides Celeste's arrival, is my decision to take a semester (perhaps a year) off from teaching. I was a visiting professor at Metro last year, which I quite enjoyed, but my contract was not renewed. This means I would have had to continue as an adjunct, which I was not willing to do for the money. Instead, I'll stay home with Celeste, help my husband with his business when possible, and work on my own creative endeavors in the moments between the moments.

I've become part of a new publishing consortium called Black Radish Books, which I would link to if I could, but we're still in the infancy stage of the projects. It's an exciting project to be a part of, and I'm working on a manuscript for publication with them in the far-out future. Interestingly, our group of 16 grew out of our involvement in the Dusie chapbook project, which has always been such a delightful project for me.

My husband, Brian, went out on his own in January of 2008 to start his own software and consulting business, Inversoft. He's really finding his niche now in selling his products to the gaming markets, so I'm excited to help him with copywriting and some marketing here and there.

Mostly, I'm excited about writing and reading again. It's been a while since I've actually felt like part of a writing community- like my work was part of a bigger picture and being read. (Teaching 4 classes per semester leaves very little time for anything else!)

Right now, I'm enjoying Jessy Randall's A Day in Boyland, a collection which she gave me at a reading in exchange for one of my chapbooks. I very much enjoyed meeting her and hearing her read- her sense of humor is definitely a dominant force in her poetry. I've only made it through the first few poems- I'll try to give a more comprehensive review once I've finished the collection.

So I'm hoping I'm back on the blog train. And wow, does this blog need a facelift!

Soccer fun!

Make a Smilebox scrapbook