A Poet's Ponderings

The Poet & Technology

2012-01-30T10:42:00.001-05:00

There are many ways that technology makes the life of a poet better and more interesting. Such as:

Writing blogs & reading blogs about poetry
Poetry websites
Instant access to inspiration whether it is art, music or other writers
Instant sharing of positive poetry news (a friend gets published, a new book comes out or someone wins a prize)
Drafting poems is often helped by word processing
Loosing work is less likely as long long as you remember to back up said work on a variety of devices
Electronic submission managers cut down on the cost of postage and the response time is faster
It is easier to read a sampling of journals online because of the archive system
More new journals are coming onboard using the internet as their platform
More poetry gets out to a broader audience via the internet
It's easier to collaborate with other writers
Procuring an MFA is easier than it used to be in terms of scheduling because of low residency programs with an online component

I'm sure there are other benefits that I have not listed, but I think these hit on most of the main points. So three cheers for technology, right?

Well...

I think the downfall of all this great technology for the poet is that I constantly feel like I'm not doing enough. I'm a slow writer to start with and I also teach five classes a semester. This is not a dig at people who do not work, or who have a 3/4 load, or whatever your situation might be but this is my reality and I find my reality frustrating in terms of the writing life. This is especially the case when it comes to bullet point #4.

I revel in other poet's success because it's not only good for them, it's good for poetry in general. Whenever someone wins a prize or a grant or gets a poem published or finishes a book, that means that there is an audience out there reading, thinking and supporting poetry. I find this very encouraging. On the flip side, sometimes it can be discouraging when you are sending out work constantly and not getting a response. This probably sounds whiny, and it isn't meant to be but I think it is probably how the majority of writers feel most of the time. I won't lie and say that this rant wasn't prompted by a recent round of submissions I sent out. I received some of the fastest rejections I've ever gotten and that always kind of sucks. This is another downfall of technology, the submission process it much more streamlined than it used to be so sometimes you can send a few poems out and three days later there is an email in your inbox wishing you better luck next time.

None of this information is anything new. Submitting is frustrating and that's just how it is. Why keep doing it? Well, I believe I've written some good poems and I'd like people to read them because I think they could get something out of them. How does that make me different than every other poet on the planet? It doesn't but I'm going to keep trying.

Photo #3

2012-01-27T09:23:00.005-05:00

Mural behind Lazy Daze Coffee House 10 Johnson Avenue Indianapolis, IN 46219

Observations from the Gym

2012-01-25T08:00:00.049-05:00

As part of my goals for 2012, I've been hitting the gym five days a week. It has taken some effort but I am feeling better and it's gotten me to be more creative with my workouts, which is always a good thing. Working out more means that I've started to pay more attention to the general "goings on" around the gym. It may also be important to note, that when I say gym, I'm talking about the Y. Here are some observations in no particular order:

1. People should not stare at other people while they are working out. Personally, I'm not very self conscious at the gym. This doesn't have anything to do with my physical condition. I just don't really care. We are all sweaty and red faced and if you're not, well that's cool but you're probably not there to work out anyway, so whatever. However, you should not stare at people who are busting their butts on the treadmill. It's rude.

2. If you are a dude, you should not creep around the glass door to the aerobics room during the women's step class. Seriously? I mean there are a few guys who glance through the door on their way to the weight room, but today while I was getting ready to run I observed three grown man gawking at the women's cardio blast class through the glass door. Creepers, go work out.

3. There is no need to throw the free weights. Some people may think I'm picking on the dudes, but I'm not. Women do this too. The long and short of it is, you don't need to throw your weights down so hard that the floor shakes. You're strong. We get it.

4. I don't get the concept of "reading and highlighting a textbook" while on the treadmill or elliptical machine. If you are one of these people, I mean no disrespect but I honestly don't get it. I mean, when I'm on either of these machines I'm sweating like there is no tomorrow. I am certainly in no fit condition to read anything, let alone highlight something.

5. If you can talk on your cell phone while doing cardio, you're not going fast enough. I don't mind people taking a quick call, but if I can hear you telling your best friend about the guy that you hooked up with and how you are pissed he didn't call you back through Nikki Minaj, well, there's a problem.

6. Proper workout attire is important. Enough said.

Thrifting

2012-01-23T21:18:00.000-05:00

This past Saturday I went "thrifting" with some girlfriends. It was awesome. We started out by having breakfast at a local east side favorite:


Diners, Drive Ins & Dives visited awhile ago. It is delicious.

Then we started making our way through some east side thrift stores. We all found some treasures and we all spent under $10. In fact, we all spent more on breakfast than we spent shopping (and breakfast was not expensive).

This is my haul from a day of thrifting.

Materials for a future crafting project.

Awww...

Vintage children's books.

Why "thrifting" is awesome:

1. I spent $8.50
2. I bought five vintage children's books for $1
3. I found three tea cups for a future craft project
4. I found a Charter Club Jacket for $5
5. I found a ceramic bunny and squirrel
6. I had a lot of fun with my girlfriends
7. I got to run around the east side

I will definitely be "thrifting" again and you should all go too.

Photo #2

2012-01-20T08:00:00.001-05:00

Jack & Jill Antiques @ 5501 E. Washington St

A Few Of My Favorite Things

2012-01-18T13:35:00.000-05:00


Delicious & hearty.

I love these crackers with cheese, meat, peanut butter, apples and the list goes on. They are so delicious and reasonably healthy and filling. You should go out and buy some right now.

Vena

Babette

Shoes. I love shoes. These are two pairs I recently purchased on sale. I think the Vena is arriving today. Good times.


Letters!

Receiving and sending letters is wonderful. I love arriving home to find a letter waiting for me and I love being able to sit down at the end of a long day and write to someone.


Good books.

Right now I am reading this collection of short stories by Joyce Carol Oates and I'm really enjoying it. Look for a future blog post once I've finished the book.


Best show ever.

If you have not seen this show, you need to watch it. It is on PBS Masterpiece Classic Sundays @ 9:00 PM. It is amazing and as my husband says after every episode, "this is the best show on T.V.!"


Warrior Pose.

I started yoga last week and I love it. I take my yoga class once a week at the Y and I always feel 100% better after I complete the class. Try yoga. You'll like it.


Poetry is good for the brain.

I've gotten back to writing after the winter break and I love it. I've been waking up with ideas for poems lately and I hope it is a trend that continues.

Five Reasons I Love My Finches

2012-01-16T08:00:00.001-05:00

We've had our finches, Calliope & Humphrey for several weeks now and they are fun, busy little birds.

Reasons why Calliope & Humphrey are awesome:

1. They like to nest together. We have these two thatched houses that we bought at Pet Smart because the "pet specialist" informed us that finches like to nest. For awhile, our finches didn't seem too interested in the nests, but then we moved them for better access, and the other night they were both peeking out of the nest. They were adorable.

2. They like to groom each other. Our finches definitely have a morning routine. I come down and uncover their cage and they begin to chirp and bounce around the cage. After a few minutes of flying about, they settle on a perch and begin to clean each others feathers.

3. They love to play with hay. We have a hay ball, another suggestion from the "pet specialist" and the birds love to pull all the hay out of the ball and they carefully pick specific stalks and use it to pad their nests.

4. They eat together.

5. When they get tired, they sit very close to one another on a perch and snuggle. Love.

Photo #1

2012-01-13T08:00:00.010-05:00

Irving Theater 5505 East Washington St.

Guest Blog: A Letter To My Community College

2012-01-11T08:00:00.000-05:00

I'm a guest blogger over at A Librarian's Lists and Letters. Here's an excerpt from my post. To read the rest, check out Shannon's blog.

To My Community College:

If you had asked me ten years ago as a graduating senior from a private liberal arts college what I knew about community colleges, I would have said absolutely nothing. However, this would not have been a true answer because I knew one thing about community colleges: I knew they were looked down upon. How did I know this? Because occasionally when I would tell people unfamiliar with Allegheny College where I went to school they would pause and then say, "Oh," you go to CCAC." CCAC stands for Community College of Allegheny County. The first few times this happened, I corrected the questioner but didn't think much of it. I didn't know anything about CCAC and I'm not a native of Pennsylvania, so whatever. They were confusing one school for another. Who cares, right? I was quickly set straight when the same mistake was made in the presence of a friend of mine from Pittsburgh. "No, no, no," she interjected quickly, "we go to Allegheny College not CCAC. That's a community college." Then she laughed and made a face, and I started to get the picture.

Read the rest here.

A New Office for the New Year

2012-01-09T08:00:00.001-05:00

Over the winter break my community college packed up the Liberal Arts & Sciences department and moved us over to our new building, currently named Illinois/Fall Creek (these are the two streets it sits on). When I arrived Tuesday, things were a bit chaotic. There is still a lot of construction going on, so there was plenty of dust and power tools and men with hard hats. Our offices were in a state of disarray with extra furniture and cube walls that were not in the right spots. Luckily, by Wednesday the extra furniture was gone, our computers were up and online, our spiffy new phones worked and the cubes were all the correct size.

My cozy cube.

My new window! I brought two plants in immediately.

This view from my window shows the front of the new building. If you look off to the right you can see downtown.

I'm very pleased with my new office space. I currently share it with two other professors and they are awesome. There is a lot of natural light and the air quality is much better than where we were before. The building as a whole is gorgeous and will be even more so once it is completely finished. They are letting students in on Monday. Let the spring semester begin.

Photography Project

2012-01-06T08:00:00.003-05:00

Driving home one night during the last part of 2011, I started looking around my neighborhood. We moved to the east side of Indianapolis two years ago and up until our realtor brought us over to this side of town, I had no idea it existed. The east side is an interesting place. I've heard people use the following adjectives when describing it: transitional, run-down, up & coming, forgotten, inventive, new, old, historic, renovate, rehabilitate, poor, economical, creative, friendly, hostile, energetic, and the list goes on. Maybe it is because I have a thing about underdogs, but I really like our neighborhood. I love our cozy, old bungalow, I love Irvington, I love 10th street, I love Woodruff Place, I love the Y, I love the food co-op, and again, the list goes on. Our neighborhood isn't perfect. There is poverty, dirt, crime, and abandoned buildings but that's what makes it a real place to live.

I was thinking about all of these things while driving home and that I wanted document this place that we live in. I like to take pictures but I don't pretend to have any real skills in photography. I just love my Nikon D40, so this brings me to my photography project idea for 2012.

I am going to take my camera out into our neighborhood and take a ton of photos. I don't know what the photos will be of but I'm not limiting myself, so they could be of buildings, animals, plants, people, whatever. The only parameter for this project is that the photographs will all be from the east side of Indianapolis. I will pick one photograph each week and post it with a location and brief description. My plan is to post these weekly entries on Friday. I hope to stick with it and I hope to learn more about my neighborhood in the process.

The first photo will be posted next Friday. Stay tuned.

Gnomes

2012-01-04T08:00:00.001-05:00

I really like gnomes. When I was a kid, my mom owned this book:

To say that my sister and I were obsessed with this book, is an understatement. We read the entire thing cover to cover about a hundred times and then we set out to look for gnomes. Our favorite gnome hunting grounds was at my grandparents house in New Hampshire. They live up in the mountains near the Canadian border and every picture you take looks like something that belongs in The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit. We used to look for "gnome holes" in the trunks of trees for hours.We would scour the ground for "signs" of gnome activity and every now and then we would swear we saw a flash of a red hat.

Gnomes was not the only source of information for our obsession. We also watched the television program "David The Gnome" religiously. If you did not experience this program on Nickelodeon growing up, you missed out. Here's the intro to the series:

The second clip is from the series finale. As my sister said, "I wept like a child." Well, we were children.

After all of this, it seems fitting that for Christmas my sister gave me a giant, red ceramic gnome. We also received not one, but two of these:


We now have three Steeler's gnomes in our yard.

Finches!

2012-01-02T12:11:00.000-05:00

To say that I am an animal lover would be an understatement. I've had dogs, cats, horses, rabbits, chicks, ponies, fish and now birds. I started eying the Zebra Finches at PetSmart about a year ago. I love song birds and the busy little finches were really fun to watch. I didn't want a parrot or a parakeet or a cockatiel. I wanted to little finches, so I started reading about them and talk to RJ about them, and yesterday we brought two male Zebra Finches home:


Welcome Calliope & Humphrey to our home.

As is the case with most pets, birds need certain amenities to make them happy:


Our cart at PetSmart.

Finches like to build nests, so we needed hay and little nesting houses for them. We also had to buy finch food and a cuttle bone. The cuttle bone is literally a bone that the birds can peck on throughout the day. It provides them with calcium. They like to have several different perches at different levels in the cage and they like to bathe, so we bought them a little bathtub. After their cage was properly outfitted it looked like this:

Lucky birds.

While at PetSmart, the young lady helping us made the remark that our finches were "lucky birds." If you know anything about our dog or cat, you know that we're professional pet spoilers, so I don't know why the finches would be any different. We were careful to buy all the necessary accessories, we read up on Zebra Finches online and we chose a perfect spot for the cage. However, we failed to get one key piece of information. How do you get the birds from this box:

Like a mini cat carrier.

Into the cage. We figured we could slowly open the side of the box and hopefully the little finches would fly right into the cage. Well, finch #1 definitely flew out of the box but he thought our kitchen looked much nicer than the cage. After a minute of carefully following the finch around our kitchen, we were able to catch him and coax him into his new home. Learning from our mistakes, we just reached into the cage and scooped up finch #2.

Safely in their new home.

I love to watch them and listen to their little chirps. They seem to be settling in nicely and I'm sure there will be more finch stories to come.

Ringing in 2012

2011-12-31T12:12:00.001-05:00

2011 was a hectic year. Here's a list in no particular order:

I got married.
I went to Seattle.
I went to New Hampshire.
I read more books in 2011 than I did in 2010.
I returned to blogging.
I started lifting weights.
I ran 3 5k's.
I spent a lot of time in my garden this spring, summer & fall.
I started writing letters.
I worked on my poetry manuscript.
I discovered I love Twin Peaks.
I cooked some new recipes (soup, cookies & pasta).
Our family dog, Basil, died December 23rd.
A friend and colleague died in Madrid a few weeks ago.
My husband found a job & lost a job.
I took my students to the IMA and the IRT.

In 2012 I'd like to:

Write more poems.
Take up yoga.
Own some Zebra Finches.
Go on a trip with my husband to a state other than IN or PA.
Cook more vegetarian meals.
Plant more flowers/shrubs.
Read more books & magazines.
Complete my promotion portfolio to Associate Professor.
Improve my teaching & be more creative/innovative.
Work on a photography project.
Join a neighborhood book club.
Keep working out & run some more 5k's.

I'm not big on "resolutions" because I think it puts unnecessary stress on people which sets them up for failure. I prefer to think of my list as an ongoing list of goals that I'm continuously building on.

I wish you all the best for the remainder of 2011 and I'll see you in 2012.

Letter Writing Kits

2011-12-30T08:00:00.008-05:00

This Christmas my family put a spending limit on gifts. I was in full support of this plan because I already had brilliant ideas for Christmas for several members of my family. This idea came to me awhile ago when I was thinking about how I used to write letters as a kid. This particular memory of letter writing happened to coincide with meeting a new friend from Chicago who is involved in something called The Letter Writers Alliance. This all occurred a few years ago and it got me to thinking that I should start writing letters again. However, as usual, life got in the way until a few weeks ago when I could finally start putting my plan into action.

I wanted to write letters again, but I also wanted to people to write letters to, so that's when the letter writing kits came into being. I thought they would make perfect gifts for my sister, my mother & my best friend for Christmas this year. I would assemble the kits and postmark their first letter on December 22, 2011 so they would receive them in the mail shortly after Christmas. Then they could pen their response to me using their new kit.

What goes in a letter writing kit? Well, this is where the creative side of my brain begins to have fun. Here I give you a list of what I included:

1. Stamps


I bought these little boxes at Michael's. Digging in the bins to find the right initials was fun.

2. Gold Seals.


The shopping gods were with me. I found all the right initials. Again.

3. Whimsical note cards (whimsical is such a great word).


Who doesn't like wine or clocks?

4. A membership to the Letter Writers Alliance & a starter kit


Courtesy of The Letter Writers Alliance.

5. Good pens.

6. A beautiful box to house all of these fun items in.

These are the letters I wrote to my sister, mom & best friend

I did the stamping to make envelopes look prettier. I forgot how much I loved stamps. Those are gingko leaves on my sisters envelope. By the time this post goes up, they will have received their letters and hopefully will be writing one back to me.

Christmas Back East

2011-12-29T18:31:00.000-05:00

Pike family Christmas tree.

Kit Kat is 17 years old.

One of my favorite decorations at my parent's house.

A giant amaryllis bulb. I cannot wait till it opens.

Presque Isle.

The is the first time in five years that we have not had a white Christmas in Erie.

We took their bed...

How my husband feels about walks.

A windy day in Pittsburgh.

Beautiful homes in Virgina Manor.

We don't have these in Indiana. Boo!

For Basil

2011-12-27T10:47:00.000-05:00

A Dog Has Died

My dog has died.
I buried him in the garden
next to a rusted old machine.

Some day I'll join him right there,
but now he's gone with his shaggy coat,
his bad manners and his cold nose,
and I, the materialist, who never believed
in any promised heaven in the sky
for any human being,
I believe in a heaven I'll never enter.
Yes, I believe in a heaven for all dogdom
where my dog waits for my arrival
waving his fan-like tail in friendship.

Ai, I'll not speak of sadness here on earth,
of having lost a companion
who was never servile.
His friendship for me, like that of a porcupine
withholding its authority,
was the friendship of a star, aloof,
with no more intimacy than was called for,
with no exaggerations:
he never climbed all over my clothes
filling me full of his hair or his mange,
he never rubbed up against my knee
like other dogs obsessed with sex.

No, my dog used to gaze at me,
paying me the attention I need,
the attention required
to make a vain person like me understand
that, being a dog, he was wasting time,
but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,
he'd keep on gazing at me
with a look that reserved for me alone
all his sweet and shaggy life,
always near me, never troubling me,
and asking nothing.

Ai, how many times have I envied his tail
as we walked together on the shores of the sea
in the lonely winter of Isla Negra
where the wintering birds filled the sky
and my hairy dog was jumping about
full of the voltage of the sea's movement:
my wandering dog, sniffing away
with his golden tail held high,
face to face with the ocean's spray.

Joyful, joyful, joyful,
as only dogs know how to be happy
with only the autonomy
of their shameless spirit.

There are no good-byes for my dog who has died,
and we don't now and never did lie to each other.

So now he's gone and I buried him,
and that's all there is to it.

~Pablo Neruda

Basil during Christmas 2008.

Holiday Greetings from 22 N. Bosart

2011-12-23T08:00:00.005-05:00

We're heading back east today to visit family for the holidays, so I leave you with a photo montage from our home this Christmas. My next blog post will most likely come to you from Erie or Pittsburgh. Stay tuned & save travels to all!

My friend from work made me a snowflake on a particularly gloomy day last week. She rocks.

Zombies love Christmas too. See whose name is on the ornament?

Paperwhites from our wedding.

Fir boughs from our Christmas tree.

This year I kept the outside decorations simple.

Candles and evergreens.


This would look better with some snow...

We did colored lights this year. Again, snow is needed.

The Birds Have Returned...

2011-12-22T08:00:00.001-05:00

New bird feeder.

Recognize your birdhouse, Grandpa?

And with the birds come the squirrels. Looks well fed, eh?

Holiday Mail

2011-12-21T08:00:00.002-05:00

I bypassed sending holiday cards to the masses this year for a simple reason: I got married. Between my save the date cards, wedding invitations and the the thank you notes (that just went out less than a month ago) I figured that everyone had heard enough from me. However, I did take part in a Holiday Card Swap for fun and this weekend I received my first letter from my pen pal.

Last week I received this in my mailbox:

Hooray!

I sat down right away and penned a letter to my new pal.

A few days later this appeared:

I love Tiger Lilies.

So this weekend, I wrote to my second pen pal. I was full of holiday spirit having just finished a batch of grading, so in addition to to a letter, my second pal received a paper snowflake and a scented pencil that smells like a candy cane.

After receiving my first letter in the mail, I have to say I am completely thrilled with the feeling I get when I get to open a real live letter.

In other news, cards from my Holiday Card Swap have been rolling in:

A sheer bounty of cleverness.

I love receiving mail over the holidays. Support the post office and send letters!

Holiday Card Swap

2011-12-19T08:00:00.011-05:00

My friends, Donovan Beeson and Kathy Zadrozny over at 16 Sparrows are extremely talented and you should all go look at their blog and buy their products. They are also the founders of The Letter Writers Alliance, whose mission statement is "...dedicated to preserving the art of the handwritten letter, neither long lines, nor late deliveries, nor increasing postal rates will keep us from our mission."

I used to write letters when I was younger. When my dad lived in Erie, PA few a few months before my mom, sister and I followed him out there, we used to exchange letters weekly. He wrote his notes on this stationary that had little tanks on the front of it and the inside of the card read "Many Tanks." He always crossed that line out. I also wrote to my best friend, Jo-Anne Venezia, after we left Hartford, CT for Erie, PA. As is the case with most things, I stopped writing letters because life got in the way blah blah blah...

Anyway. Donovan and Kathy are inspiring me to begin writing letters again, which has lead to a couple of projects over the past few weeks. However, while reading the The Letter Writers Alliance blog, I stumbled across this: The 5th Annual Card Swap. I love this idea, so a few weeks ago I made my cards.

I'm not an artist but these were really fun to make...

Noticing a theme? I really like this stamp :)


I also really like water color pencils.

This was a fantastic idea and I just received my list of recipients tonight. I can't wait to write my greetings and get these out in the mail.

Amusing Happenings at the Mall During the Holidays

2011-12-16T08:00:00.004-05:00

At the risk of sounding a little grinch-like, I'm not real big on the mall during the holiday season. This is because on most regular days during the non-holiday season, I feel pretty good about humanity. I don't mind navigating people to park my car or to look for a new sweater or return a table cloth. However, when the holidays roll around, all bets are off. It seems that in name of Christmas, seemingly normal people turn into raging, greedy consumers. Call me a wimp, but I'd rather just avoid seeing that side of people all together.

All of this being said, a few days ago I found myself here:

Indianapolis Fashion Mall.

I had some errands to run and I am pleased to report that during this trip to the mall I did not lose all faith in humanity. In fact, rather unexpectedly, I got some free entertainment. Below are some of the hilarious things I witnessed while moving among the masses at the mall:

1. While at Anthropologie*, I overheard the following conversation between a group of middle aged women:

Woman #1: I have these weird red splotches on my cheeks. I just saw them in the mirror.
Woman #2: Do you have dry skin? I have some moisturizer in my purse. [Digs in her purse].
Woman #3: Your skin can get chapped from the cold. I heard that on the Today show. Did you see it?
Woman #1: No, it's because I've been drinking. I have this problem where my cheeks turn pink after I drink wine.
Woman #2 & #3: Are you allergic?
Woman #1: Maybe. There's something in wine that makes my cheeks turn bright red. I shouldn't drink while I shop.

*I am not making this up. Also, it was 1:30 in the afternoon and finally, do you think that the mysterious substance that turns your cheeks red could be oh, I don't know, alcohol?

2.Yeti boots are making a comeback in a big way. If you are not familiar with "yeti boots" see the picture below:


What makes this really funny is that I thought I coined the term "yeti boots." But a Google search proved otherwise. Although, if you're hip, you spell it "yeti bootz"

3. At The Gap a very pretty young woman and her husband have the following conversation:

Woman: Babe, I need some new jeans.
Man: OK. What kind?
Woman: I'm not sure...[she pauses to look through a pile of jeans]
Man: How about these? [he holds up a teeny tiny pair of leggings]
Woman: NO! No, no, no, no...[voice is rising in pitch]
Man: OK [he drops the leggings and backs away from her]
Woman: I can't wear these! When have I ever worn a size 4? [voice is still rising]*

*I walked away at this point. There's only so long that you can watch a train wreck.

Also at The Gap I realized that they still have Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You" on the Christmas soundtrack, except in an attempt to show diversity, it is now sung in Spanish? Yeah, I don't know.

4. At Crate and Barrel there were two little girls wearing these:

They were dancing, and I mean for real dancing, in the middle of the store to Jingle Bell Rock. It was awesome.

5. Outside Saks Fifth Avenue some dude says into his cell phone, "Just what the f*ck is a pashmina and where do I buy one?"

Merry Christmas!

A Letter

2011-12-14T08:00:00.007-05:00

To the Group of Teenage Girls at Subway:

You are loud. Your voices ring through Subway like a hundred chattering birds. Snippets of conversations rise above the hum; "Are you taking my picture? Don't post that on Facebook!" "What's you favorite song right now?" "You like onions? Ew." Your voices are light, airy and full of confidence. Your mouths are full of bread, lunch meat and veggies. Pieces of food stick to glittery pink lips. You'll have to reapply after this meal.

You must be part of some team because you are all wearing the same purple hooded sweatshirt. The sweatshirts are royal purple with white lettering. Some of you push up your sleeves and some of you pull the sleeves way past your fingertips, warming your hands. A few of you push handfuls of hair behind your hoods but most of you leave your heads uncovered. Intricate braids, cornrows & simple ponytails bind blonde, brunette and black hair. These colors are not natural. You are starting this ritual of coloring early, and more than likely you will continue to do it but not because you want to.

You are all beautiful. Your eyes are quick and ravenous. They take in everything. Your bodies are lean, each limb tucked neatly into dark denim. Fingernails painted in glitter, scarlet, purple and turquoise. You are bursting with energy.

To the group of teenage girls at Subway, I ask you to please be kind. Do not roll your eyes at the soft spoken, dark eyed subway sandwich artist. Do not snicker in disgust when a large, overweight woman in a stained sweater bumps into your chair. Do not watch a teammate, clad in royal purple, walk to the bathroom and then whisper about her behind her back.

I ask you to be good to yourselves. Do not pretend to eat your six inch subway sub and then throw it away. Do not stare into a compact mirror and scrutinize yourself day after day after day...Do not define yourself by other people, not even those clad in purple.

I ask you to be graceful. I ask you to be genuine. I ask you to be gentle.

I ask of you all these things because today, while watching you laugh and eat and flutter your eyelashes, I realized that I would, someday, like to have a girl of my own.

All my love,
Bri

Happy Holidays from McSweeny's!

2011-12-12T08:00:00.000-05:00

If you have not ever looked at the McSweeny's website, you're missing out. I was first introduced to this website by my husband, who also encouraged me to read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by David Eggers. This is part of the blurb on their website:

McSweeney’s began in 1998 as a literary journal, edited by Dave Eggers, that published only works rejected by other magazines. But after the first issue, the journal began to publish pieces primarily written with McSweeney’s in mind. Since then, McSweeney’s has attracted works from some of the finest writers in the country, including Denis Johnson, William T. Vollmann, Rick Moody, Joyce Carol Oates, Heidi Julavits, Jonathan Lethem, Michael Chabon, Ben Marcus, Susan Straight, Roddy Doyle, T.C. Boyle, Steven Millhauser, Gabe Hudson, Robert Coover, Ann Beattie, and many others.

These are some of my holiday favorites (new and old):


Stopping By Woods on a Bro-y Evening


The Twelve Days of Christmas*

The Corporate Christmas Party As Told By My Cocktails

Staff Editorial from the Who-Ville Picayune, January 1958

Donner Looks Back

Hilary Knight's The Twelve Days of Christmas* is one of the best versions in print.

A Green Christmas

2011-12-10T15:52:00.000-05:00

Paperwhites from our wedding. I have about five vases of these growing right now.

Our beautiful wreath that we got for free.

This is called a kissing ball and my grandpa made it because he's awesome.

I kind of have a crush on our tree this year. It's a Douglas Fir and I love it.

Pomegranates

2011-12-09T08:00:00.004-05:00

On Monday I made these centerpieces using some hurricane jars we received for our wedding:

Easy, cheap & very pretty.

As you can see, I used all sorts of fruit. I was only planning on using cranberries, lemons & limes, but when I went to the grocery store, they had pomegranates on sale four for five dollars. They're pretty fruits cut or uncut, so I thought I'd give it a shot. While cutting the pomegranates for the centerpieces, it dawned on me that a). I've never eaten pomegranate b). I had no clue how to eat a pomegranate. So what did I do? What every American does when faced with a problem. I googled it.

It turns out that with pomegranates you eat the seeds, and let me tell you, they are delicious. Now, I have never met a fruit I didn't like but when I popped a handful of pomegranate seeds into my mouth, I was amazed. They are so good!

Anyway. This got me to thinking. One of my favorite poems of all time is called " The Pomegranate" by Eavan Boland.

 The Pomegranate

The only legend I have ever loved is
the story of a daughter lost in hell.
And found and rescued there.
Love and blackmail are the gist of it.
Ceres and Persephone the names.
And the best thing about the legend is
I can enter it anywhere.  And have.
As a child in exile in
a city of fogs and strange consonants,
I read it first and at first I was
an exiled child in the crackling dusk of
the underworld, the stars blighted.  Later
I walked out in a summer twilight
searching for my daughter at bed-time.
When she came running I was ready
to make any bargain to keep her.
I carried her back past whitebeams
and wasps and honey-scented buddleias.
But I was Ceres then and I knew
winter was in store for every leaf
on every tree on that road.
Was inescapable for each one we passed.
And for me.
                    It is winter
and the stars are hidden.
I climb the stairs and stand where I can see
my child asleep beside her teen magazines,
her can of Coke, her plate of uncut fruit.
The pomegranate!  How did I forget it?
She could have come home and been safe
and ended the story and all
our heart-broken searching but she reached
out a hand and plucked a pomegranate.
She put out her hand and pulled down
the French sound for apple and 
the noise of stone and the proof
that even in the place of death,
at the heart of legend, in the midst
of rocks full of unshed tears
ready to be diamonds by the time
the story was told, a child can be
hungry.  I could warn her.  There is still a chance.
The rain is cold.  The road is flint-coloured.
The suburb has cars and cable television.
The veiled stars are above ground.
It is another world.  But what else
can a mother give her daughter but such
beautiful rifts in time?
If I defer the grief I will diminish the gift.
The legend will be hers as well as mine.  
She will enter it.  As I have.
She will wake up.  She will hold
the papery flushed skin in her hand.
And to her lips.  I will say nothing.

~Eavan Boland

*A Few Interesting Facts About Pomegranates:

1. The name "pomegranate" derives from mead evil Latin pōmum "apple" and grānātum "seeded."

2. Loaded with vitamins and antioxidants.

3. Pomegranates are native to Iran.

4. The pomegranate has been traced back as far as 3,000 B.C.

5. King Tut was buried with pomegranates in hopes of a second life.

6. Pomegranates are mentioned in Homer's Odyssey, and Juliet tells
 Romeo the night is young since it is the nightingale — and not the lark
 — that is "singing in yon pomegranate tree."

* I got this info from Pomegranates: Jewels In The Fruit Crown.

Still Life with Pears and Pomegranates by Paul Cezanne.

The Mermaid Chair

2011-12-07T08:00:00.002-05:00

Over the summer my mom and her friends threw me a shower. The theme was a literary tea, and it was awesome. As favors, we got to pick a book to take home. I picked up The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd. The books were all donated, so I don't know whose book this was, but once again I was intrigued by the art on the cover*.

I also have a thing for mermaids. When the Disney version of The Little Mermaid came out, my mom took my sister and I to see it twice. I knew all the words to "Under the Sea" and "Kiss the Girl" and Ursula scared the living hell out of me. When I got older, I read Hans Christian Andersen's original version, and I cried. When my family and I go to the Outer Banks in North Carolina on vacation, I always pause over the mermaid knick knacks. I even bought a beautiful handmade card with a mermaid on it. I still haven't sent it to anyone. Needless to say, it is not surprising that a book titled The Mermaid Chair caught my attention.

For those of you who read my posts about Juliet, Naked and The Girl in the Garden, you probably think I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but yes, friends, I liked this book too. Once again, we have a strong female lead and once again, she is flawed and confused. She is really confused. This is also a love story. There is a love triangle between the main female character, Jessie, her husband, and Jessie's lover, Brother Thomas. That's right, he's a monk. That is the first twist of a few that come in the story.

Admittedly, the plot is laid out neat and clean for us right from the beginning as Jessie narrates in the prologue:

In the middle of my marriage, when I was above all Hugh's wife and Dee's mother, one of those unambiguous women with no desire to disturb the universe, I fell in love with a Benedictine monk.

I always admire when novelists pull this trick out of the hat early on in a story, because when you reveal your main conflict this early, you have to have some pretty stellar writing stashed up your sleeve to maintain the reader's interest. Kidd does a good job of filling in careful, necessary details about Jessie, her husband Hugh, and a string of other important characters, including Brother Thomas. She also sets the story in the lush, ethereal albeit fictional, Egret Island. If you've spent anytime in North or South Carolina, you're going to feel at a sense of familiarity immediately. If you have not spent anytime in North or South Carolina, you're going to want to go immediately upon finishing the novel.

The main conflict in this book is really the internal turmoil that Jessie feels. What Kidd does so well is she gives words to a fear that I think a lot of women feel once they've settled comfortably into their lives and I think that's the fear of losing oneself. We all spend a lot of time when we're teenagers standing in front of the mirror and asking "who am I?" This continues into college when we stand in front of the same mirror, although this time we're inebriated on cheap beer or box wine. I don't think this question ever goes away, but we learn to avoid it or even scarier, we talk ourselves into the fact that we've figured it all out. Jessie thinks she knows who she is until something happens that just blows that identity all to hell. I found myself relating to her early and at the same time thinking, dear lord, how do I keep that from happening to me? But therein lies the rub because you can't prevent it, so you might as well try to learn something from it, which is exactly what Jessie does.

This is the part of the blog post where I wave at my new husband and say "Don't worry, honey. I'm not going to run off with a monk!" I mean, this isn't the Thornbirds. However, it did get me to thinking about other books that I've read where something similar has happened to a female character. The first one that comes to mind is the mother in the novel The Lovely Bones (another good book). After the death of her daughter, the mother seemingly abandons her family for a period of time. However, I think the term "abandon" is a cynical term. She does leave her husband and two surviving children but not because of malice, but because of guilt. She failed to protect her daughter and that failure haunts her for the better part of the story. You could say that Jessie abandons her daughter and husband as well, but I guess what Kidd points out, and this is true of all stories fictional or not, is that it is never that simple.

What I also liked about The Mermaid Chair, is that it examines the idea of grief. There is a lot of loss, new and old, in this book and all the characters are grieving and recovering at their own pace. Healing is a long process and this book demonstrates just how long it can take someone to forgive not only another person, but also to forgive themselves.

Add The Mermaid Chair to your reading list. It's a provoking and engaging story and it will make you think.

Why Are Poems About Winter So Grim?

2011-12-05T08:00:00.004-05:00

I like to peruse the websites of The Academy of American Poets & The Poetry Foundation on a semi-regular basis. A lot of the times I just click on random links and read whatever pops up. Sometimes these are familiar poems but often I stumble upon something new.

Lately, I've been thinking about the impending winter season. Almost all of the leaves are off the trees, Thanksgiving has come and gone and the squirrels are burying their bounty in my backyard, so when I looked at the above mentioned websites this morning, I clicked on poems about winter. After reading several older and contemporary poems, I came to an important realization: winter poems are depressing. Now I know that symbolically speaking at its best winter is associated with sleep/hibernation and at its worst it is about death/decay. Pair these themes with Season Affective Disorder (SAD) and well, I can see why the poets have trouble working up any enthusiasm. I thought if maybe I narrowed my search to "Christmas" or "holiday," things might perk up. Realization #2, poet's have a harder time with Christmas than they do with winter in general. The reasons for this seem obvious and understandable, to me at least. Christmas is the land of cliche and materialism. In a sea of Hallmark cards, what self respecting "poet" is going to try and pen a few verses about the joy of evergreen trees or hanging Christmas lights or basting a turkey? Don't get me wrong. I love Christmas. But write a poem about it? No way in hell.

Anyway, I did discover a few winter poems I really liked:

Winter Twilight

On a clear winter's evening
The crescent moon 

And the round squirrels' nest
In the bare oak 

Are equal planets.

~Anne Porter

Winter Trees

All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.

~William Carlos Williams

Toward the Winter Solstice

Although the roof is just a story high,
It dizzies me a little to look down.
I lariat-twirl the cord of Christmas lights
And cast it to the weeping birch’s crown;
A dowel into which I’ve screwed a hook
Enables me to reach, lift, drape, and twine
The cord among the boughs so that the bulbs
Will accent the tree’s elegant design.

Friends, passing home from work or shopping, pause
And call up commendations or critiques.
I make adjustments. Though a potpourri
Of Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Jews, and Sikhs,
We all are conscious of the time of year;
We all enjoy its colorful displays
And keep some festival that mitigates
The dwindling warmth and compass of the days.

Some say that L.A. doesn’t suit the Yule,
But UPS vans now like magi make
Their present-laden rounds, while fallen leaves
Are gaily resurrected in their wake;   
The desert lifts a full moon from the east
And issues a dry Santa Ana breeze,
And valets at chic restaurants will soon
Be tending flocks of cars and SUVs.

And as the neighborhoods sink into dusk
The fan palms scattered all across town stand
More calmly prominent, and this place seems
A vast oasis in the Holy Land.
This house might be a caravansary,
The tree a kind of cordial fountainhead
Of welcome, looped and decked with necklaces
And ceintures of green, yellow, blue, and red.

Some wonder if the star of Bethlehem
Occurred when Jupiter and Saturn crossed;
It’s comforting to look up from this roof
And feel that, while all changes, nothing’s lost,
To recollect that in antiquity
The winter solstice fell in Capricorn
And that, in the Orion Nebula,
From swirling gas, new stars are being born.

~Timothy Steele

Snowflakes (1st stanza)

Out of the bosom of the Air,

Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,

Over the woodlands brown and bare,

Over the harvest-fields forsaken,

Silent, and soft, and slow

Descends the snow.

~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A List Of Reasons Why You Should Take Walks Outdoors

2011-12-02T08:00:00.003-05:00

If you read my earlier post about my curiosity jar, then you know I like to take walks outdoors. As the weather begins to turn, I have to remind myself why it's good to get out of the house, even if it's cold and snowy. Below are the reasons I like to walk outside no matter the season.

1. Fresh air. Winter brings the return of closed windows and the furnace. This is all well and good, as I like a toasty home as much as the next person. However, it also brings stale air and dust.

2. Exercise. I, like most red blooded Americans, have a hard time resisting the urge to take up residence on my couch, under a fleece blanket with a box of cookies and call it good until April. The hibernation instinct is strong when it gets dark at 5 PM.

3. Good conversation. I've had some of the best conversations of my life while walking.

4. Inspiration. For better or worse, I'm a writer. I like to write about the outdoors but not exclusively. I get ideas while walking (I had one today). It's good for my brain.

5. Treasures. See the curiosity jar post.

6. Stay up with the neighborhood. You get to see whose raked their yard, who put up their Christmas lights way too early and just who the hell decided that "electric blue" was a good color to paint their house.

7. It's quiet. This may seem odd to some people who know that I live in an urban environment. However, especially in the winter months, snow acts as a good muffler and I'm always struck by how quiet it is after a significant snowfall.

8. It's scenic.

9. You meet your neighbors. They know you're out and about. You chat about your gutters or pesky squirrels. It's social, people.

10. It keeps you in the moment. If walking does anything for me, it's that it gives me an opportunity to stop and just take in my surroundings for a half hour. Again, good for the brain.

The Girl in the Garden

2011-11-30T08:00:00.006-05:00

I don't usually pick books by their covers because that's no way to pick a good book. There are plenty of compelling tales that don't have particularly interesting covers. Catcher in the Rye, The Bell Jar, Beloved & Breakfast of Champions are a few of my own books that come to mind. Great stories but the covers (at least on my editions) are not that exciting. However, when Borders announced that it was going out of business and started to close stores in Indy, my husband and I began to circle the shelves with all the other book vultures. We made several trips to several different Borders in the city and the result of one of those trips was a hard cover copy of The Girl in the Garden.

As I type this post, I just am now realizing that when I bought this book, I was listening to Florence and The Machine's album "Lungs" pretty much non-stop. My favorite track on the album is #12 "Blinding," which contains the lyric "No more dreaming of the dead as if death itself was undone/
No more calling like a crow for a boy, for a body in the garden." I know that this is not exactly the title of the book, The Girl in the Garden, but that might have had something to do with the purchase. The second reason was the cover:


Peacocks are lovely.

The third reason is that the book is set in India and is written by an Indian author. I happen to have read every word Jhumpa Lahiri has ever written and I went and listened to her when she gave the keynote address at AWP last year. I love her beautiful descriptions and her interweaving of Indian culture into her stories, so I thought I might like Kamala Nair's debut novel.

At the risk of sounding cliche, I couldn't put this book down. I started it Thursday night around 8:30 and I finished it Friday night around 9:00. The imagery is gorgeous and if you're a sucker for that kind of writing, which I am, you're going to eat this up. Trust me. From the beginning of Chapter 4 when our narrator, Rakhee, and her mother arrive in India:

I stayed close to her side as we wove through the sweaty throng to identify our baggage so it could be transported to our connecting flight. Children darted by swift as multicolored arrows. Unsuppressed body odor invaded my nostrils. All around us, barefoot women dressed in identical saris swept the dusty floors, stopping over their long bristled brooms like agile, purple winged insects.

And later, when Rakhee and her mother arrive at the family home, Ashoka:

Rough weeds rose from the earth and encircled my bare ankles as I tumbled over the wall and landed on the other side. I brushed the dirt from my knees and got to my feet. It was not so scary now, in broad daylight. The trees and bushes shone an electric green. I glanced up. The branches of the tallest trees bowed under the weight of their leaves, forming an arched ceiling above the forest floor, and I felt as if I had entered a church. Through the intricate, screenlike pattern of leaves I could see patches of bold blue sky with not a cloud in sight.

The story is also intriguing. There are a lot of characters to keep track of and at first that can be a little overwhelming, but Nair does a good job of balancing narrative with all of this beautiful imagery. As our protagonist, Rakhee is compelling and we are immediately endeared to her brave, wise character. She is smart and perceptive and incredibly frustrated with the adults in the story. This is a plot built around secrets and they reveal themselves slowly, so it makes it extra hard being a child narrator. However, the story is not all doom and gloom either. This is a story about love, specifically about the love between families and how it has not only the power to destroy relationships, but also the power to heal them.

It's a beautifully written book and a fast read. If you like stories about families and strong female characters, check it out. And it has a great cover.

From Shabby to Shabby Chic

2011-11-28T08:00:00.000-05:00

I come from a line of painters, fixer upers & crafters. I enjoy a good do it yourself project as much as the next person, but I have my limits. For example, I don't mind painting a bookcase or even a room but I draw the line at knocking out walls or ripping up floors. I like to think that my attitude is the healthy medium between my father, who likes do rip up and demolish (he is an engineer) and my mother, who likes to paint and decorate. When we bought our house, I was specific that I wanted something "old" with "character" but not something we were going to have to spend every weekend working on. I think our house is the perfect balance.

So back to the painted furniture. A few years ago (two maybe?) we helped two good friends of ours move from one apartment to another. As is the case with moves, when you are faced with moving furniture you start to do some serious reevaluation. The "awesome deal" that you got on that "wood" entertainment center at Big Lots seems less impressive when faced with actually lifting the damn thing. Therefore, after we had moved said friends into their shiny new apartment we found ourselves with a new/old dresser and bookcase. I looked at these two pieces of furniture and saw potential for painting and refinishing. The bookcase underwent it's makeover fairly quickly. This was mostly because, if you know us, you know we have about 1 million books, so it was more necessity than anything else. It is sitting proudly in our dining room doing its job:

This color is called Barn Red from The Mark Twain Collection. Seems appropriate.

The other piece of furniture, a dresser, stayed down in our basement for about a year. I would go down and look at it sometimes but I couldn't decide what I wanted to do with it and so it sat. And sat. And sat. After the wedding, I took on the job of cleaning my closets and discovered that I would need some more storage space. That's all the motivation I needed. Over the next few days I researched painting techniques and made several trips to Ace Hardware. This is is the finished product:


Not too shabby!

I painted the entire piece with Krylon spray paint (glossy white) and then I bought some glaze at Lowes. The glaze was heavily tinted with black, so it makes it look worn and old. I think it turned out remarkably well considering I didn't know what I was doing. It's amazing what one can accomplish when properly motivated.

Gobble, gobble, gobble...

2011-11-24T07:00:00.008-05:00

This is the second Thanksgiving that RJ and I are spending together but not with our respective families. The first took place in Texas in November 2003. I was attending grad school and RJ was driving all over hell for his consulting job. We sat in my little studio apartment eating steak and drinking beer. Eight years later we will be spending Thanksgiving with other friends in Indy who have families in distant states like New York, Pennsylvania and yes, Texas.

This morning I will be participating int this event:


I feel a 2.5 mile run justifies the food I will consume later on.

To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, 
  Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless 
  With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, 
  And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; 
    To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells 
  With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees, 
Until they think warm days will never cease,
    For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? 
  Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, 
  Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, 
  Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
    Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep 
  Steady thy laden head across a brook; 
  Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
    Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? 
  Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, 
  And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn 
  Among the river sallows, borne aloft
    Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; 
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; 
  Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
  The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft, 
    And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

~John Keats

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to officially say goodbye to autumn. I always feel that after Thanksgiving winter is whistling in the eaves and I can already feel the temperature dropping. Fall is my favorite season and this fall was especially lovely, so a few images to send fall out on a good note. See you in 2012.

Squash blossoms.

Pumpkins at the orchard.

Goldenrod on a walk in our neighborhood.

Ashley likes cider. Also, you should read her blog.

Juliet, Naked

2011-11-23T14:31:00.000-05:00

I like it when people give me books to read. I especially like it when said book proves to be as enjoyable/inspiring/well written as the recommender has promised. I've become a bit weary of recommendations as of late just because I've had a few duds. However, last night I finished reading Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby and I think it has restored my faith in book recommendations.

My sister* lent me this book and inside she wrote the following note "Washed up musicians and quirky British characters. One of my favorites." Have I also mentioned I like it when people write notes in books? It's neat. This is why I like buying books from second hand bookstores but I digress.

Most people are familiar with Nick Hornby because of the movies that have been made from his books. These include High Fidelity and About a Boy. I enjoyed both of these films and I've read a couple of other of Hornby's pieces, so admittedly I had some expectations.


Cool covers are a plus.

I'm like most readers in the respect that I like characters I can relate to. I also like smart, funny writing. I think Hornby succeeds in both these areas in Juliet, Naked. I was immediately endeared to the main protagonist, Annie, when a few pages into a description of Annie's long term relationship, we get this nugget:

The decision not to have children had never been made, and nor had there been any discussion resulting in a postponement of the decision. It wasn't that kind of sleepover. Annie could imagine herself as a mother, but Duncan was nobody's idea of a father, and anyway, neither of them would have felt comfortable applying cement to the relationship in that way. That wasn't what they were for.

I like the frankness of Hornby's writing and I like when author's write about flawed relationships in a way that doesn't make the reader cringe, but instead makes them want to read more. While it is true that there is a fair dose of melancholy in this passage, there is also some irony. They don't want to cement their relationship? They've been together for fifteen years. At this point was isn't left to cement? Well, it turns out quite a lot as the story goes on.

I also love smart, humorous writing. I tell my creative writing students that humor is the most underrated tool among authors. Everyone wants to be so serious all the time and talk about "what does it all mean?" You are certainly allowed to do that and Hornby tackles some tough issues in this book: motherhood, romantic relationships, dysfunctional families, deadbeat dads & alcoholism just to name a few. However, all of these issues are surrounded by a hilarious, obsessive narrative about a washed up rock star. The book opens with Annie and Duncan taking a pilgrimage to honor this "star," Tucker Crowe. The opening scene begins with:

They had flown from England to Minneapolis to look at a toilet. The simple truth of this only struck Annie when they were actually inside it: apart from the graffiti on the walls, some of which made some kind of reference to the toilet's importance in musical history, it was dank, dark, smelly and entirely unremarkable. Americans were very good at making the most of their heritage, but there wasn't much even they could do here.

As an American who spent about six months in England, I also appreciate the slight jabs that Hornby makes at our great nation. They're not mean spirited but the fact that the biggest f*ck up in the book is American is amusing in and of itself. Then there are just the little gems that make me snicker out loud. This was one of my favorites:

The night before, Duncan had come home late and smelling of drink; he was monosyllabic, curt even, when she'd asked him about his day. He'd fallen asleep quickly, but she had lain awake, listening to him snoring and not liking him. Everyone disliked their partners at some time or another, she knew that. But she'd spent hours in the dark wondering whether she'd ever liked him.

Does it get much more relatable? This story is interesting and quirky and the characters are kind of hopeless but their story is not. Despite all of their hangups, and believe me there are a lot of hangups, you will laugh with them, you will sigh for them and ultimately you will hope for them.

*Thanks Ash!

A Night At the Art Museum

2011-11-22T08:00:00.001-05:00

In Indianapolis we have the pleasure of a wonderful art museum that is free to get into. The Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) is amazing on many levels but I think what I like most about it is it a good museum to just hang out in. There are plenty of places to sit and sketch or take notes or just zone out. It is a very people friendly museum and I think that is an underestimated characteristic when it comes to public space in general.

I took my creative writing class to the museum to do some writing and while they looked for art that inspired them, I got to walk around and look at my leisure. Here are two paintings I wrote about in my journal:

Hotel Lobby by Edward Hopper


The House of the Deaf Woman and the Belfry at Erangy by Camille Pissarro

These are the journal entries about the two paintings. They're pretty fragmented, but I think there are some poems brewing in there somewhere. From The House:

1886, Camille Pissarro, oil on canvas. When I think of Pissarro, I think of green. All different hues of green: yellow green, forest green, spring green, light (almost white) green & blue green. In this painting, green dominates. It is clearly the point. Trees, grass, shrubs, very few flowers. The woman is small, deaf to the rustling of all this green. Hunched over, knees deep in green, hands hidden. Weeding? It would be pleasant to feel if you could not hear. Could you feel young, new, sun, grass, green? Could you feel green? There is a belfry and a belfry equals bells but she cannot hear. When she lost sound, she lost God? Is she trying to find God again in the green? Is she trying to find life? She seems so far away from the church. Isolated in this field of green.

From Hotel Lobby:

Oil on canvas. "Though this looks like a scene from a story, it's not clear there really is one." Two women and two men. Two older and two younger. Point of view seems to be from the doorway. Hopper's paintings are always "busy" in terms of people but they are so lonely because the people always seem to be ignoring each other. Even in conversation they are lonely. Women are always young, blonde. There is a darkness in terms of color that seeps into the atmosphere as if something horrible is just below the surface.

My Curiosity Jar

2011-11-21T08:00:00.007-05:00

I like to collect weird little things from the outdoors. I picked this quirk up from my mother who (if I remember the story correctly) kept mice in a shoe box under her bed when she was a kid. Where my my mother and I differ, is that I don't collect live things. However, since the age of about seven I've collected up rocks, feathers, shells, leaves, husks of seeds, etc. and kept them in various jars & boxes. This habit happens to drive my husband bat sh*t crazy. He doesn't like much of anything about nature. He will tolerate it for the sake of a game of golf or perhaps a barbeque but otherwise, he'd rather stay inside the safety of our home reclining in front of the television. In the spring and summer I like to sit out on our back porch to work, blog or read and when he comes out to say hello, he squints against the sun in pain and the scurries inside like some sort of overgrown mole. It's charming really.

Anyway. He finds it odd that I collect these little treasures from the outdoors and tonight when he came upstairs to check on me*, he looked over and said "Are you building a curiosity jar?" The tone of this question was a mix of amusement and disdain as he peered at an apothecary jar that happens to be sitting on the far right corner of my desk. My response to his query was a withering look and then I returned to the project I was working on before he busted in.

My curiosity jar

I must admit that I didn't purposely "build a curiosity jar" but I like the idea of it (I don't think this was my husband's goal) and I will continue to add to it. I simply wanted a way to display some of the cool stuff I had found outside this fall, so I thought jar would be perfect. I also read recently that my favorite poet of all time, Elizabeth Bishop, also collected little pieces of interest from the outdoors. This furthers my theory that we would have been great friends if we would have lived during the same time period. Great minds...

*When I say "check on me," I mean he comes upstairs to procrastinate from writing his law school paper.

A nut shell, a ginkgo leaf, a clam shell & a few crow feathers.

Skitch

2011-11-20T12:32:00.001-05:00

R showed me this app on my phone. I had some fun with it this morning.

Where Have I Been? Well...

2011-11-19T20:19:00.004-05:00

On November 5, 2011 I was here:

Absolutely gorgeous day.

I was doing this:

That's me and my new husband.

This is not an excuse for my long, shameful absence from the blogging world but I knew I was in trouble when my mother, who was arguably more excited about my pending nuptials than I was, said to me not more than 24 hours after the wedding "When are you going to update your blog? Every damn time I look at it I see Midnight in Paris!"

Point taken & stay tuned.

Midnight in Paris

2011-06-11T10:05:00.006-04:00

I love film but I am an utter disgrace when it comes to seeing movies in theaters. The one exception to this is the Harry Potter films. This probably makes me an utter disgrace in the eyes of other groups of people. Shrug. I read the books. I have watched all the movies. I am not ashamed. However, RJ and I managed to get ourselves organized enough last night to go see a movie in an actual theater. Not only did we manage a movie, we also had dinner before hand. Thai food and it was delicious. It's amazing how much pleasure you take in the small victories as you get older...

Anyway. We went to see Midnight in Paris at the Arts Cinema. The Arts Cinema is a hip theater at the mall where you can see movies that appear in limited release throughout the country. We saw Pans Labyrinth here a hundred years ago when it came out. You can also enjoy a refreshing alcoholic beverage or two while watching your movie. Hell, there were people with buckets of Bud Light sitting a few seats down from us. It's a fun place.

Midnight in Paris did not disappoint. It is a Woody Allen film and his movies are hit or miss in my taste. Although I've discovered, with the exception of Annie Hall, that I'm actually more likely to enjoy a Woody Allen movie if he's not actually in it. Sorry man. Your directing is great but you get on my nerves. Then there's that whole you married your adopted daughter thing...

I was also nervous because I'm not a huge Owen Wilson fan and he's the protagonist in the film. However, I really liked this movie for one major reason: it turned out to be a literary fantasy. I didn't know when I saw the preview that there would be an onslaught of famous artists and writers making appearances in the movie. I also didn't know that their portrayals of said artists and writers would be pitch perfect. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald were fun, so were Gertrude Stein and Salvador Dali. My favorite above all was the depiction of Earnest Hemingway. I was not familiar with the actor, so I looked him up on IMDB. Corey Stoll was awesome. I know I'm a literary nerd, but his depiction of an intense, bullish, brilliant and constantly drunk Hemingway was hilarious and kind of scary at the same time. I think if I were Gil Pender (Wilson's character) I would have had a similar reaction to meeting him in person: admiration and intimidation.

I really enjoyed this movie. It was witty and subtle and had some great characters. I wanted to punch Inez (Rachel McAdams) in the face for most of the movie, so she was doing her job. If you are looking for a fun story that has excellent characters, check this movie out.

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I think I may have mentioned or opossum issues before. If I have not, here is the brief run down. We have a lot of opossums in our neighborhood. They like to cross through our yard. Kweli likes to kill them. That about sums it up. Now, I know that opossums do not have phones or Facebook but I would think after the wrath Kwe brought down upon one of their own (a few weeks ago now) they'd get the picture that our yard is not a safe place to be. Sadly, this is not the case. Yesterday around 4:00 I let Kweli out and when I went to let him back in, he was standing over what appeared to be the dead carcass of a large opossum. He was reluctant to leave it but I finally bribed him inside with a rawhide. I proceeded to check Kweli for bites and scratches. He was spitting out opossum fur for a few minutes but otherwise he was unharmed. While it seems like this would be a odd time to brag about our dog, I must say that Kweli is a really fast and efficient killer. I know this is weird thing to say but I actually take comfort in it because opossums can be mean if cornered and I don't want Kwe loosing an eye to some over-sized rodent. Luckily, he's quick enough where the things never know what hits them and then they automatically go into their play dead mode. This brings me to my next point.

I have now watched two opossums come out of this state and it is amazing. Yes, Kwe did not actually kill the opossum. I realized this while watching it from my dining room window and seeing that its belly was moving up and down. Slowly it moved its head and then unsteadily rose to its feet and moved off into the ferns. I was amazed and relieved. I don't like opossums but I didn't want to leave it to suffer. This whole incident was topped off by our neighbor, who apparently watched Kwe attack the opossum, and said "you've got one fierce dog." Yes, we do.

Summer Schedule

2011-06-08T13:28:00.007-04:00

The summer semester began this Monday. I was on campus Monday for most of the day; however, Monday will be the only day I'll be on campus for the entire 8 week term. Am I teaching this summer? Yes. Am I teaching a full load (4 classes)? Yes. So how did I manage this schedule? Online classes.

I received my online certification two summers ago and from that point on, I've been teaching at least two online courses a semester. Online education, its pros and cons, could be an entire post on its own and I'm sure I'll write that post later this summer. However, from a teaching point of view, I'd like to outline the basic reasons for why I chose this track for the summer semester.

Normally, I don't like going totally online. This past spring I taught two face to face courses and two online courses and I felt like this was a good balance. However, summer term is a whole other ball game. For starters, it is only 8 weeks long. When I started as an adjunct at the same campus, summer term used to be 10 weeks long. I don't like the 8 week term for a lot of reasons but most of my issues come from the way my institution has decided to organize this 8 week term. Most classes are in 3 hour blocks and meet twice a week. For example, last summer I taught two comp classes face to face and one met on M/W 8-11 and one met T/TH 8-11. This might not be such a problem if students were only taking one class but many times they are taking two or three or even four. This makes for a scheduling nightmare and it is exhausting. After teaching a 3 hour class, the last thing you want to do is turn around and teach another one and that is what many instructors are forced to do.

Also, it is not a particularly effective way to learn. Students feel pressured and if they get behind for some reason, there is virtually no room for them to move. The grading is completely insane, especially if students are writing papers all semester. It's basically a marathon and it is dreaded by most faculty in my division.

Now, online classes are not easier by any means. They are not easier to teach or grade or set up and they are not easier to take (from the students perspective). However, you can work at home, which eliminates the dreaded three hour blocks. Also, I feel already, and we're only three days in, that my feedback is much better because I'm not overtired from teaching six hours of class. I also feel like I use my time better. This morning I got up, ate breakfast, went to the gym and then came home and worked on my classes for about three and half hours. This is normal no matter if you're teaching face to face or online but because I was home alone (well, Kwe and Nimbus were here but sleeping) and had minimum distraction, I was able to move through my work relatively quickly and thoughtfully.

Would I teach an entire load online for Fall or Spring semesters? Probably not. A 16 week term doesn't give me nearly the headache and again, I like the face to face contact with students. However, I think that the flexibility of online classes also works well for our students during the summer. Students in all my online classes have to post an introduction on the discussion board and I've lost count of how many work 2nd shift, have children or grand children at home, have two jobs, don't live in town, etc. This option allows them to complete a class without actually having to come to campus.
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Our CSA started this week. Aren't they just beautiful? Kale, kholrabi, turnips & bok choy. We also got salad mix and pea shoots. I love summer.

The Great North Woods

2011-06-05T17:42:00.006-04:00

Back to the garden...

2011-05-11T09:15:00.010-04:00

It seems to be a tradition at the end of the spring semester (since we've moved into our house) for me to celebrate by going to work out my garden. This year I got a head start when RJ finally agreed to help me spread mulch throughout our flower beds. I also put in a few solid days of weeding before grades were due this week, but I think that was more like therapy. Sometimes after you've read several sub par papers, you just want to yank something out of the ground...

At any rate, the semester is over. I am glad. Graduation has come and gone and after one final meeting this afternoon, I will officially be on break for about two weeks before beginning my summer teaching schedule (more on that in a later post).

Yesterday I woke up feeling ambitious and spent the better part of four hours outdoors accomplishing the following tasks: 1) planting sunflower and zinnia seeds in a very large bed in our backyard. I planted a lot of seeds this year including sweet peas, lavender, bachelors buttons, and nasturtiums. If even half of the sunflowers grow, that back area is going to look awesome. Here's hoping. It's not a complete gamble. I planted just a few back there last summer as a test and they did pretty well.

2) Bringing up our patio furniture and assembling it. While this may not sound like a particularly arduous task, there are few things you have to take into consideration. It was 86 degrees yesterday by 11:oo am. The table, umbrella and chairs were down in the basement, so I had to lug them up the narrow, slick, muddy steps. The table was in pieces and we all know how good I am with spatial relations, so the fact that it only took me about 10 minutes to figure out how to put the legs on is a major accomplishment. But perhaps the biggest obstacle came when I discovered that Nimbus, our cat, had used the umbrella as a litter box. To say it was gross, well, that doesn't even begin to describe it. At any rate, I had to disassemble the umbrella, wash it, and then put it back together. Good times.

And finally, 3) Sweeping off our back porch. Again, this doesn't sound particularly complicated, but when you have a gigantic tree (I think it's an oak) shedding seed pods (we used to call them helicopters when we were kids) at an alarming rate, well, let's just say I don't know why I bothered to sweep.

The reward? That came in two parts but both were equally gratifying. The first part came when RJ arrived home from work (yes, he started his new job this week. Hooray!) and said, "Wow." The second part came when I came out this morning to sit on my back porch, with my tea and type this blog post. The pictures above are some of the flowers to bloom this year.

Crocus

2011-04-05T09:10:00.001-04:00

Hike at Eagle Creek

2011-03-14T19:43:00.002-04:00

How to Tell You're in The Middle of Nowhere in the Midwest

2011-03-04T14:17:00.005-05:00

Let me preface this post by saying that I don't have a problem with "the middle of nowhere." In fact, I'm pretty much from the middle of nowhere and spent many of formative years frolicking through woods and streams unencumbered by neighbors or pesky traffic. That being said, "the middle of nowhere," otherwise known as the "back woods," or "east cambum f*ck" (it's a family thing, so I'm not sure about spelling) largely defines itself by what part of the country it is located in.

I am very familiar with the New England version of the middle of nowhere, which is comprised of small houses/trailers on ridiculously large plots of land that may or may not have about 150 odd lawn ornaments decorating the front yard. These lawn ornaments range from sheep to flamingos to watering cans to (my personal favorite) the ever classy "bent over woman/man." See picture below:
The other main defining trait of New England's back woods is the presence of "tag sales." What is a tag sale? Just another name for yard sale but it seems like in New England everyday is a good day for a tag sale. Of course, it is hard to decipher what is or is not for sale among all the lawn ornaments...

I'm also familiar with middle of the nowhere Texas which is marked by wide expanses of sky and concrete. The only thing that breaks up the monotony are the occasional cattle ranch or rest stop complete with steer horns. See below:

I've also experienced the middle of nowhere in Kentucky, North Carolina and Florida. They all have their natural charms, but it seems to me that the Midwest (Ohio, Illinois, Indiana) has it's own brand of "special." What caused this meditation on rural America? Well, I'm in the middle of nowhere Indiana as we speak and today while driving, I started making a mental list:

1. Lots and lots and lots of churches. Methodist and Baptist mostly but when I say there was one about every 10 miles, I'm not exaggerating.

2. IGA. For those of you not familiar with the acronym, IGA stands for International Grocers Alliance and they are all but gone from the American landscape. In fact, the only other place I've ever seen one is in the tiny town my grandparents live in in New Hampshire.

3. Palm Readers next to law offices, dentists, tire places, etc. Yeah, I don't know either.

4. Lots of billboards warning against a) the apocalypse b) having an abortion.

5. Random "artist studios" advertising pottery, metal sculpture or wood carving.

6. Beautiful cattle and horse farms.

7. Strip malls galore.

8. Quaint names for rivers like "Squash Blossom."

9. Lots of chain restaurants.

10. Golf courses that pop up in the middle of places that don't make sense. For example, you're driving along and you pass a church, a billboard, a church, a pottery studio, a church, a horse farm, a church, and then...a golf course. Weird.

The Life and Times of an Unknown Poet...

2011-03-02T21:15:00.004-05:00

I finished electronic submissions this past weekend and I just completed hard copy submission packets for everyone else who has yet to give into the ease of submission managers. I've completed 50 submissions total and I've already received three rejections (electronic submissions can make the rejection process a lot quicker), so I have or will soon have about 47 submissions out in the world.

I've encountered something during this round of submissions that I've never encountered before: anxiety about sending poems to people I know. The universities where I received my MA and my MFA also house two very well respected literary journals and I'm a little ashamed to admit that I've been avoiding sending to them. Actually, as long as I'm being honest, I've avoided sending to any places where I know the editors are former peers or mentors. I know this makes no logical sense and it's not like I fear rejection or criticism (I mean I went to school for poetry for crying out loud) but maybe I do fear it from people I know and respect. This may be oversimplifying it a little bit. I just seem to feel a slight twinge when writing certain addresses on submission envelopes...

I'm reading two different books right now. One is Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections and the other is Elizabeth Bishop and The New Yorker. In a way, it isn't really fair that I'm reading these two books at the same time. I love Elizabeth Bishop and I've read just about every conceivable thing by her or about her. This recent edition from the New Yorker is delightful and where most people would find reading pages of letters tedious, I really enjoy it. I'm never going to get meet Miss. Bishop but I can hear her voice in her letters and her conversation. It's as close to a dialogue as I'm ever going to get, so I'll take it.

On the other hand The Corrections is challenging and the verdict is still out whether I'm enjoying the challenge or not. I found the beginning of the book intriguing but odd, but as I move further into the novel I'm having trouble deciding if I'm still intrigued or just annoyed. I know I missed the boat on this book in terms of timeliness. Most of my friends jumped on Franzen's bandwagon along time ago, but I'm going to finish it and then I'll comment in full.

The days are lengthening and the sun seems to be making its presence known more and more often. I noticed the tips of some green shoots pushing through the leaf beds. Spring break is just around the corner and I look forward to spending some time working on my chapbook manuscript and working through some new poems that are bumping around in my head.

Last night I didn't sleep well. This usually happens when I have a lot going on and can't keep my mind still. When I did finally slip off into sleep, I had dreams of poetry and lines and words. Spring brings rejuvenation in many forms.

A List to Sum Up the Past Two Weeks...

2011-02-23T21:52:00.005-05:00

Took a break from blogging to manage a busy week or two. During those weeks the following events occurred (not in chronological order):

1. Our dog, Kweli, suffered some terrible dog plague and proceeded to throw up everywhere. Everywhere includes a pile of old sweaters in R's closet that thankfully "were going to be donated anyway."

2. Binoculars were purchased so I could watch the birds at my bird feeder.

3. I bought my wedding dress.

4. I became newly aware that eye glass frames are incredibly expensive.

5. I discovered that my Kindle cover caused my Kindle to reset all the time. The answer? A new Kindle cover with a reading light.

6. Elizabeth Bishop had a birthday.

7. I am going to Seattle in April for a conference.

8. My sister visited. She's awesome.

9. I learned I am teaching all online classes this summer.

10. I went mini golfing with my colleagues in Liberal Arts & Sciences.

11. I went to a talk given by a survivor of one of the death camps in the Congo.

12. I ate the most amazing brunch ever at Zest & then drew all over the tables (see pics below).

13. I had a fun book club meeting where we discussed Murder on the Orient Express.

14. I attended a performance by my community college's chapter of the Odeon Society.

15. I chatted with my best friend who I don't talk to nearly enough.

16. I bought Elizabeth Bishop and The New Yorker.

17. I got my taxes done and almost had a heart attack when the accountant thought I owed $5000. Thankfully, she was wrong.

18. We began the registering process at Crate & Barrel.

19. I ran almost three miles at 5.3 on the treadmill.

20. I sent out more poetry submissions.

21. RJ and I celebrated Valentines Day with a trip to Santorini and Best Chocolate in Town.

AWP Highlights

2011-02-02T20:09:00.007-05:00

I give you my highlights from AWP, although because AWP also coincided with The Great Ice Storm of 2011, my highlights actually started before I arrived at the airport.

The great ice storm of 2011. Enough said.
Falling off of my deck while attempting to feed the birds (this happened the morning I left).
When RJ and I attempted to leave for the airport, we went out the back to the garage. When we got to our little wooden gate, we were able to get the latch open but there was about an inch and half of ice holding the door shut. See next item on list.
We had to go around the front, so while RJ walked around to get the car, I had to scoot on my butt down our front steps because there was so much ice on the steps that I couldn't walk in them.
My flight from Indy to D.C. boarded on time. Win!
The jetway was frozen to the ground, so we had to walk across the tarmac to board. This was tricky because everything metal (hand rails & stairs mostly) had about an inch of ice covering it.
Descending into D.C. and seeing the capital, the Washington Monument & The Jefferson Memorial.
My shuttle driver (who had the most beautiful African accent) asking me if it was OK if he got lost going to my hotel. I think he was kidding...
Meeting a fellow writer/conference attendee on the shuttle and having a nice chat that resulted in receiving a business card and having a new blog to follow.
Discovering that the hotel I'm staying at has a great gym and a killer veggie sandwich.
Attending a really interesting first panel sponsored by Writers in the Schools.
Meeting a group of writers from Texas and commiserating about Governor Perry.
Hearing Katrina Vandenberg read at the Fullbright panel. If you have not read her collection, Atlas, do it. It's an excellent book.
Making my first pass at the book fair and seeing old friends, making new ones and picking up free copies of New Madrid & American Literary Review (publications from Murray and UNT).
Hearing Gary Jackson, Natasha Trethewey, Rita Dove & Yusef Komunyakka read. Wow.
Hearing Marie Howe read. What the Living Do is one of my top 10 favorite poetry collections of all time.
Attending a fascinating panel about writers of color and their role in environmental writing. I usually write down all of the names of books I want to buy after AWP and then add them to my Amazon wish list at the end of each day because if I bought all the books I wanted to while here, I'd be broke. That being said, after this panel, I'm going to buy The Colors of Nature tomorrow.
Listening to Jhumpa Lahiri's keynote address.
The bookfair. It is amazing.
Going to a table at the bookfair of a journal that I've sent poems to in the past and chatting with editor only to find that not only did she remember me, she remembered my poems. Maybe I can do this poet thing for real...
Running into old mentors and friends.
Attending the two year college caucus.
Attending a panel about how to approach disturbing undergraduate writing.
Sharing a cab ride with Khaled Mattawa.
Going for dinner with Natalie & Zach and later meeting up with Michael and other friends.
Driving by the Lincoln Memorial at 6 am. It was all lit up and mystical looking. I think Abe would have liked to see it like this.
Arriving back in Indy in the midst of a snowstorm. I believe the pilot's exact words were "I just landed in a white out."
Returning home in one piece after a harrowing ride on the interstate.
Finis.

Ice Storm 2011

2011-02-02T11:42:00.003-05:00

It started Monday night and at first I thought it was just another example of how the weather forecasters here in the midwest have a tendency to overreact. Unfortunately, this was not the case. The ice started Monday night, went through Tuesday and continued through Tuesday evening/Wednesday morning.

Our backyard is a skating rink. A deadly skating rink.

This morning, when I went out to fill the bird feeder, I fell right to my knees. There was no traction and as much as I stomped on the ice, I couldn't break through the layers of ice and snow and more ice.

One Tuesday, I went out and took some pictures of our backyard. I thought the ice was beautiful. I mean, I didn't have to go out in it, so why not enjoy it? Of course, that was Tuesday morning. Tuesday afternoon, I started to worry. By Tuesday night, I was angry. Why? Read below.

Normally, I could care less about inclement weather. They closed school Tuesday and Wednesday and I would have just snuggled into my couch and worked on grading, submissions or catch up on some reading. However, this weekend happens to be AWP. I've been looking forward to this trip for awhile for a few different reasons:

1. I like AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs). It's fun, interesting and it's always in a cool place (Chicago, Denver, Austin, etc).

2. I like getting to see friends at AWP that I don't normally get to see. I've made some plans and I would like to see those plans realized.

3. I managed to convince my community college that they should cover my trip this year, so it is especially important that I make it to my destination.

4. I was really looking forward to a change of scene if only for a few days. Winter gets boring.

I'm sitting in the airport right now. As of now, my flight is still arriving on time. Apparently, the plane is here. The issue is the runways and jetways are covered in ice.

Hopefully, I'll still get out today...

Notes from a writing life...

2011-01-31T21:28:00.004-05:00

I spent my entire day on Sunday preparing submissions and doing research into contests. By entire day, I mean I got up, inhaled a piece of fresh bread smothered in Nutella (om nom nom), chugged some tea and settled into the couch with my lap top only to emerge about six hours later.

It is time consuming work to send poems to journals, although even in the short time I have been sending work out, I've noticed marked improvements in the process:

1. Electronic submission. Honestly, I'm really glad most journals have jumped on this bandwagon by either using submission managers or allowing email submissions. While it is considerably easier and less paper filled, the real reason I like it is because it is cheaper. For example, I usually send out to 30-40 places in a given period. You start adding ink, paper, postage & envelopes and it can start to get a bit pricey. I'd rather save this money for contest fees or books.

2. Lovely websites. I've noticed that many journals have really stepped up in terms of their websites. It's easier to find guidelines and contact information. It's easier to "read what the journal is looking for" when you can read back issues online instead of suffocating under a pile of hard copies. They layouts are beautiful. It's just better. Period.

3. Simultaneous submissions. I won't send to a journal if they don't accept simultaneous submissions. This isn't some snooty statement, it's just practical fact. I'm trying to get my work out there. Not being able to send it to anyone else while a certain journal is considering it is not practical. However, if I were a poetry genius I suppose I would not mind just sending to NER or Ploughshares. I love these magazines but I think it's a bit silly. Sorry.

4. Less pretentious all around. Let's face it, poetry often gets a bad wrap for being pretentious and hard to understand. I'm encouraged by seeing new journals and small presses trying to carve out their own place in the poetry world. I'm also encouraged to see less annoying descriptions under the What We Want section. In the past I would not read these sections because if I heard one more editor say "We're looking for beautiful poems that use interesting language and surprise us" I was going to scream. I mean personally, I'm looking for poems that are boring, poorly written and predictable. C'mon man.

5. New Pages. I've always loved this blog/website but I appreciate more and more as I work on submissions. I cannot imagine how much longer the submission process would take if there was not a comprehensive site like New Pages to organize listings of calls for submissions, contests and reviews.

All of this being said, I encounter the same feeling every time I put a new batch of submissions together. This feeling can best be described as exhiliration slowly giving way to panic. I used to worry more about it but now I just accept it and move on. As if submitting individual poems was not enough, I've decided to start sending out to chapbook contests. I've got my manuscript almost where I want it and as they say, there's no time like the present.

Waiting for the birds...

2011-01-31T20:34:00.006-05:00

A few weeks ago I hung a bird feeder up that my mother gave me for Christmas. It's in the shape of a little white house with Plexiglas sides, so when you pour the black sunflower seeds inside, it looks like a little black and white cottage is hanging off our garage.

Anyway.

I waited patiently for days for the birds to arrive. I peeked out the windows at every chance. I was even quieter exiting my back door in the morning (careful not to let the screen door slam too loudly) just in case a small bird was enjoying his/her breakfast. But after several days, no birds. Upon trolling the Internet and pestering my resident avian expert (my mother) I was relieved to learn that it can take up to two months for birds to discover a feeder.

Therefore you can imagine my elation when R pointed out that there were sunflower seed shells peppering the snow beneath the feeder. Shells must mean birds, right? Wrong. I was somewhat dismayed to find several large squirrels had discovered my feeder and were gorging themselves on the seeds intended for my birds.

Admittedly, squirrels are annoying. At my parents house, my mother unwillingly feeds Fox squirrels that are bigger than most cats I've known. They are loud. They are fat. They are gluttons. I swear at them. I stomp my feet. I yell and I clap. They chatter and swish their squirrel tails, which I think is a the equivalent of giving the finger.

The squirrels resiliency/stupidity/ courage was truly proven earlier last week when they were confronted with a beast whose brain capacity probably rivals theirs. Yes, they came up against our dog. In fact, one of them did not survive the encounter.

It is important to note that even before the squirrels started dining regularly at my feeder, they had a antagonistic relationship with our dog. He barks at them. He attempts to chase them and he even jumps up against the fence in hopes of knocking one off. He's not messing around. This pasts summer he managed to catch one and only dropped it when I yelled and startled, the stunned squirrel dropped from his mouth. The squirrel was easy to identify over the passing weeks because he was missing a large patch of fur from his back.

Apparently, squirrels do not have a good social network because they continue to frequent our yard, which brings us to the most recent event. Because we like to give the squirrels a fighting chance, we try to scare them off before letting Kweli (our dog) outdoors. However, Kwe is fast and agile (despite being hit by a car as a puppy) and he uses our back porch as a launch pad. All of these things combined made for squirrel carnage as R opened the door, Kweli took off, and the squirrel made a fateful mistake. Instead of making for the fence like his buddy, he scrambled back up the garage and tried to hang onto the metal hook the bird feeder is attached to. He slipped. He fell. Kwe pounced. It was over in a matter of seconds.

Some people may say, "Oh! The poor squirrel!" or "What are you doing to do?" while peering at my panting, hairy dog who is looking very pleased with himself. What am I going to do? Nothing. As you may or may not have noticed, squirrels are in abundance. More to the point, dogs kill things. Wait, scratch that. Animals kill things. My Labrador used to dig moles right out of the ground and mangle woodchucks. My childhood cat used our front doorstep to display a diverse array of noses, ears, tails, and feet (you can't eat those parts). I'm not squeamish and if you don't think your dog might do the same if given the opportunity, put it in a fenced yard with a squirrel sometime.

Needless to say, there are still plenty of squirrels in our yard. Also, because I am an animal lover, I do try to warn them before sending Kwe out to patrol the perimeter.

So, did the birds ever come, you ask?

Yes, they have finally discovered the feeder and when I looked out the window today, they were perched on the feeder feasting and the squirrels were cleaning up the seeds from below.

*I'm thinking of poems...

Some of the birds visiting today:

Reasons Why I'm Not a Huge Fan of Collected Poems and Other Reasons Why Poetry is Hard To Read...

2011-01-25T21:40:00.004-05:00

I am about to admit something that may seem sacrilegious coming from a reader, writer, and admirer of poetry, but I'm going to take a deep breath and say it anyway. Ready? Poetry is really hard to read. More specifically, poetry is really hard to read in large doses.

I was sparked to this topic by Daniel Handler's, otherwise known as Lemony Snicket, commentary in the January issue of Poetry. His short essay is titled Happy, Snappy, Sappy. My favorite part of the commentary is as follows:

"I read two or three poems by Campbell McGrath in a row, and I’m infused with joy at the enthusiasm of his breadth. I read seven or eight, and it is truly admirable that he can maintain a consistency of tone and yet always be surprising. Ten or twelve and that just might be enough Campbell McGrath for a little bit, no offense. Eighteen poems without a break and, seriously, Campbell, shut the fuck up. What to do?"

I love poetry. I love reading poetry and I will read anything that anyone recommends or lays in front of me (I used to be this way with fiction until one of my students chirped "You should read Twilight!"). However, I prefer not to read the bricks of "Collected Poems." I know a lot of these feelings stem from my academic endeavours into poetry, which started when I was in college and later in graduate school. Get ready, all you teachers and professors and poets who teach. I'm going to give you a valuable piece of advice: When your young, innocent, doe eyed students approach you after an especially thrilling discussion of Robert Lowell or Emily Dickinson or T.S. Eliot, be kind. When they ask you, with unbridled enthusiasm practically popping out of their skinny jeans (don't worry, I wear them too), what poems they should read by Lowell or Dickinson or Eliot, DO NOT recommend the collected works. Why? Read below.

There is nothing more daunting to a reader then to pick up Robert Lowell's collected works. Trust me, I'm not picking on Lowell, but I associate him with this particular subject because what I've just advised you not to do is exactly what was done to me. Naturally as a Bishop fan, I discovered Lowell and when I asked one of my poetry mentors to recommend some poems, he just said "read the collected." Umm, have you seen the "collected?" I know that serious readers and poets may scoff at this assertion. "Well, if she were serious about poetry she would immerse herself in Lowell. She would drink it in. She would memorize every poem. She would paper her walls with his words. She would tattoo "Skunk Hour" over her clavicle and revel in the pain." Uh, no.

I did copy many of Lowell's poems in my journals. I studied them. I can recall many lines. I did revel in their language, but I was almost turned off by that book. It was too big and daunting and at the time I was enrolled in a low residency program where I was teaching 6 sections of English Composition, living with my boyfriend and 4 other guys, and trying to write my own poems. Throwing the collected works of Robert Lowell on top of that was a bit of a reach.

Do your students a favor. When they come to you in love with Plath or Dove or Oliver or Frost or Wright, recommend specific poems. Hell, if you're really feeling generous, copy a few out of your books and make them a little packet. They will thank you for this gentle introduction and when they are ready, they will take a deep breath, walk into a bookstore or library and pull that brick off the shelf.

Because it is important...

2011-01-20T11:59:00.003-05:00

This poem arrived in my email box this morning:

September Elegies
by Randall Mann

in memory of Seth Walsh, Justin Aaberg, Billy Lucas, and Tyler Clementi

There are those who suffer in plain sight,
there are those who suffer in private.
Nothing but secondhand details:
a last shower, a request for a pen, a tall red oak.

There are those who suffer in private.
The one in Tehachapi, aged 13.
A last shower, a request for a pen, a tall red oak:
he had had enough torment, so he hanged himself.

The one in Tehachapi, aged 13;
the one in Cooks Head, aged 15:
he had had enough torment, so he hanged himself.
He was found by his mother.

The one in Cooks Head, aged 15.
The one in Greensburg, aged 15:
he was found by his mother.
"I love my horses, my club lambs. They are the world to me,"

the one in Greensburg, aged 15,
posted on his profile.
"I love my horses, my club lambs. They are the world to me."
The words turn and turn on themselves.

Posted on his profile,
"Jumping off the gw bridge sorry":
the words turn, and turn on themselves,
like the one in New Brunswick, aged 18.

Jumping off the gw bridge sorry.
There are those who suffer in plain sight
like the one in New Brunswick, aged 18.
Nothing but secondhand details.

The More I Owe You

2011-01-17T22:36:00.006-05:00

Among the many tasks I've set for myself in this new year to help me reclaim my writing life (I certainly lost track of it in 2010, especially the second half) is to read more. So far, I've done a pretty good job. I'm up to date on my New Yorkers, I'm almost caught up to the January issue of Poetry and I've read three books since Christmas. The third book I just finished not three minutes ago and I think it's worth a few words. The book in question is called The More I Owe You by Michael Sledge and I believe I heard about it on NPR several months ago. The book is a fictional account (rooted in real life events) of the life of Elizabeth Bishop and her lover Lota de Macedo Soares.

Elizabeth Bishop was the first poet that I really heard and she is a large part of the reason that I started to write and that I still write. Whenever I feel like my poets have lost the ability to see, I go back to Bishop. I love her and I will greedily consume her in any way that I can.

Reading this novel brought out the poetry nerd in me first. I loved how Sledge started weaving Bishop's work into her travel narrative almost immediately. For a reader that is intimate with her poetry, it is like a poetic treasure hunt to go through this book and pick up on the allusions and references that eventually became some of Bishop's most famous poems. At points the prose is achingly beautiful and exact, just like Bishop's own verse. I was expecting this precision in language, because honestly, I don't know how you write a book about Elizabeth Bishop without laboring painfully over each word.

What I was not expecting was the exquisite sadness that I encountered in the pages. While I admired and obsessed over Bishop's poems, I also read her personal letters and interviews. I knew she struggled with family trauma and alcoholism. I knew she wasn't perfect. I didn't want her to be. I didn't need her to be. However, this book puts a spotlight on her loneliness and then amplifies that loneliness by pairing her with a woman, Lota, who is even more lonely and even more desperate for validation then she is.

This is not to undermine their relationship. There is much joy and beauty in this novel as well, but it is always boiling with tension just below the surface. When I read the final scene when Lota overdoses, I felt my heart tighten. These women struggled and clawed and fought to find each other in the world, only to lose sight of what was most important at the very end.

This book also offers glimpses of other relationships that serve as foils for Lota and Elizabeth. The most famous seems to be Robert Lowell who makes one disastrous appearance after another until he leaves Elizabeth once again alone on a street corner in Rio.

It is a love story and a beautiful one at that. There are missteps and betrayal and rage on the part of both women, but they are also brilliant and vibrant and creative. This book makes me long to know them and go walking with them along the beach in Brazil or sit in Lota's beautiful Samambaia and drink coffee. This will never happen of course, but in his pages, Sledge is able to give a very personal, very beautiful portrayal of a woman who some accused of being closed off or removed. This novel proves that she was anything but.

Recognizing the Danger Signs

2011-01-13T14:53:00.004-05:00

The beginning of the semester arrived on Monday for the community college where I am a full time assistant professor. I teach composition and creative writing and recently have taken on American Lit. I only have two face to face courses this semester, the other two being online (that's a whole other post altogether) however it's always nice to walk into a room of fresh faces at the beginning of the term.

This morning, while I was drinking my one designated cup of coffee for the day, I came across this article in The New York Times: College's Policy on Troubled Students Is Under Scrutiny. Unless you've been living under a rock for the past few weeks, you're aware of Jared Loughner opening fire in Arizona. Among his victims Representative Gabrielle Giffords. However, what I've found particularly compelling about this story is the narrative surrounding his attendance at Pima Community College.

I know I think this an important part of the overall picture because a). I'm a professor at a community college. 2). I had my own experience with a troubled student last spring. My student was young, erratic, and physical. He was bi-polar and ex-military. His behavior became increasingly unpredictable as the semester progressed to the point where he made his fellow peers uncomfortable. What finally drove it home for me, was when he showed up one day in my office looking for me while I was off campus for a meeting. He proceeded to talk to my officemate for several minutes, becoming more and more animated and making no sense whatsovever. When I returned from my meeting, he was long gone but my officemate and several other faculty told me I needed to file complaint. His behavior made them fear for my well being. This is the part of the story that I relate to the article from the Times. When I filed my complaint, I learned that this student had had a previous altercation in Financial Aid and that other students had complained about him. However, no one ever followed up on my complaint with me or my chair or the dean. Furthermore, my student vanished until the last week of classes when I received a letter letting me know he had been hospitalized and would not be back.

In the wake of the events in Arizona and even the incident at Virginia Tech, it is obvious that our community colleges need more support when it comes to students suffering from mental illness. I'm not saying that more resources or available care would have changed the outcomes for Loughner or Seung-Hui Cho (Virginia Tech) but I think the fact that authorities know something was wrong but didn't know what to do about it is indicative of a larger problem. The only course of action seems to be to remove them immediately from the school, but in Loughner's case there is speculation that this action may have served to aggravate him further.

What's the answer? I think more education and more attention paid to students themselves. It was obvious to me that my student's situation was not a priority and that just isn't acceptable. We need a counseling center, with trained medical professionals. We need seminars for students and faculty. We need to stop waiting until something happens to take action.

Memory & Experience

2011-01-10T16:22:00.014-05:00

Generic Disclaimer: to say that I was a complete failure this past fall in terms of reading, writing and working on my own projects would be a huge understatement. I'm only mentioning this to explain why it is just today that I read the December 2010 issue of Poetry.

This particular issue of Poetry was dubbed "Q & A," so you had poets writing poems and then answering questions about those poems. Some of my favorite work in this issue included poems or quotes from Michael Robbins, Paula Bohince, Tom Pickard, Charles Baxter, and Jane Hirshfeld.

It was what Jane Hirshfield said in her two Q & A sessions that gave me the most food for thought. She made this comment after her poem "Sentencing:"

"We've all had the experience of lifting some fantastic stone out of a streambed or off a wet beach, and then finding it later, dry on the shelf, quite plain and dull. 'Why is this here?' you wonder, when it catches your eye at all. Some experiences are like that. Their full inhabitance requires the moment in which it lived." (215)

She made these two comments regarding her poem "Sonoma Fire:"

"Real beauty, for me, is never a distraction. If it were, the its not beauty-it's prettiness or decor." (217)

"...if we find fire, or tragedy, beautiful, it is because we ourselves have been, fore the moment, spared." (218).

I like the first quote because I write a lot of poetry from my experience or from the experiences of those close to me. However, I'm constantly grappling with the question of whether or not I can adequately convey that experience. Can I do it justice? Do I have the right to write about experiences that are not mine? I may think of a memory or moment in time that would make a terrific poem, at least in my mind, but then when I try to commit it to paper it jut doesn't work. It turns into that dull stone.

As far as Beauty (with a capital "B") goes, I also struggle with that definition and what it means to my work now as opposed to what it meant 5 years ago. When I was working on my manuscripts for both my MA and MFA, I feel like I had a somewhat warped sense of the world. I don't mean to say that what I observed wasn't valid but I think it was too limited. Actually, I don't think, I know. The poems I've written over the past two years or so are broader in their subject matter and as a poet (still feel off saying that) I'm less afraid to tackle topics or ideas that are not "beautiful." I'm trying to write a poem right now that kind of addresses that transition from on phase of writing to another. It's tentatively called "Out of the Woods" because I feel like for awhile my poetry has literally been stuck in the natural world, and while I will always go back to that subject matter because it is beautiful and, I believe, there are still important things to say about it, I also know it's time to move on.

The Kindle, Sexism, and Dracula

2011-01-08T09:56:00.003-05:00

I got a Kindle for Christmas. My dad purchased them for all of us (mom, sis & fiance). Opening it was a mixed bag of emotions at first. My reactions ranged from "Cool! A new literary toy!" to "Oh shit! I'm contributing to the downfall of print literature." I'm aware this is ridiculous.

The long and short of it is: the Kindle is cool. I like that you can loan books. I like that books are cheaper to download on the Kindle. I like that when I think or hear of a book I want to read, I can add it to my wish list and then download it. I like that I can make notes and annotations on the Kindle. Will I ever stop buying paper books? Does the sun shine in the sky? Please.

One of the aspects of the Kindle I like the most is you can download classics for free, so over Christmas I read Dracula. It was enjoyable; however, I was struck by the contradictory roles of women in the book. The two main female characters Mina and Lucy, are annoyingly traditional and yet interestingly progressive at the same time. For instance, before Lucy has the misfortune of becoming a vampire, she enjoys the attentions of three separate suitors who desire her hand in marriage. She talks about each of them, in detail, in a letter to Mina. Her view of them and how she handles their proposals reminds me a little bit of Sex & The City. She's an attractive, intelligent capable woman who can have the pick of the litter. However, at the same time the way the men treat her in the book is very stereotypical. It is obvious Lucy is tough. She braves the transformation of becoming a vampire, she puts up with her dying mother and she manages to deal with strange incidents of sleepwalking and waking nightmares. However, the men in the book treat her like some sort of wilting flower. I mean, she' the waking dead for crying out loud.

This is even more apparent in Mina's character. After all of the men in the book come together for the common purpose of hunting down and destroying Dracula, they realize they need to organize all of their written accounts. Who volunteers to do this? Mina. She's brilliant and as far as I can tell, a lot more organized than any of the men. However, even before she falls victim to Dracula herself, there is a constant (almost irritatingly constant) discussion about whether she should be spared the details of their quest for this fanged phantom. This is the only part of this book that I find ridiculous because it seems to me that if Mina has the strength to deal with her husband, Jonathan's, terrible ordeal, the loss of her best friend Lucy, and the ravings of Renfield, she can probably hear about travel plans.

Despite all of this, I do enjoy this book. I like the way Stoker used diary entries and incorporated different viewpoints into the story. I also love reading a book about vampires that does not mention the names Bella, Jacob or Edward. Me? I'm on team Bram.

New Year, New Space

2011-01-08T09:03:00.002-05:00

Finally, a place to work...

You may be able to tell by the slant of the walls and the overall odd shape of the space, that this not your typical "office." Yes. It is a closet. Our guest room closet to be exact, which is way too big to be a closet, so it has become my office.

I've written two poems up here so far and this is my first blog post, so let's hope the productivity continues.

Zinnias

2010-08-04T10:16:00.003-04:00

I grew these from seeds . I'm really happy that they lived and bloomed. Next summer, I'm going to plant a tone of these. They're so pretty.

From the Kitchen...

2010-07-13T21:17:00.001-04:00

Zombies, rings, 4th of July, and fireworks in a fir tree...

2010-07-06T09:59:00.011-04:00

On Friday July 2, 2010 I pulled this ring (see below)...

out of this zombie...
RJ and I are engaged. I am very happy. I think the zombie is too.
___________________________________________________________________

My parents visited this weekend and like all good parents, they did not arrive empty handed. They gifted us their original dining room set, which means now every room in our house has the appropriate furniture in it. To celebrate, see pictures below of our house with actual furniture. Hooray!

___________________________________________________________________

My garden is blooming in full force.

Addiction Memoirs and Self Loathing

2010-06-17T15:14:00.003-04:00

I don't know what is about addiction memoirs that I am drawn to. But I just finished Dry by Augusten Burroughs this morning, and it occurred to me that I've read quite a few of these types of memoirs over the past several years. Of course I'm drawn to memoir in general. My first non-fiction class pretty much solidified that on day one, but there is something about the brutal honesty of these stories of addiction that really appeal to me. I'm sure some people think it has to do with "redemption" stories, but I don't find addiction memoirs redemptive. I find them realistic. There is no guarantee that these people will continue therapy or stay on the wagon. As I mentioned in my previous post about Mary Karr's Lit, what I liked most about the book was that she's a work in progress. This is also how Dry ends. And whether you're and addict or not, well we're all works in progress.

I did not read Running With Scissors, I listened to it on CD while driving back and forth to Kentucky while I was getting my MFA. And while this may sound stupid, I didn't realize how disturbing that book was until I read Dry. As I was telling R last night, because of the way Burroughs writes, I don't think the horror of his situation sank in till I revisited it in Dry. For example, he refers to his rape and relationship with a pedophile. And while I consciously remember all this from Running With Scissors, I felt it more when I read Dry. The book is funny and heartbreaking. I read it in three days and would highly recommend it.

Dry did call something to mind that I've mulled over and will probably continue to mull over forever. What's the deal with self loathing and writers? Even as I ask this question, all these cliches come to mind. I remember all the questions I get from my students in intro to creative writing class: Why do all good writers commit suicide? Why are they all alcoholics/drug addicts?
Some of them find all of this sexy. They want to be the brooding, skinny, chain smoking cliche. However, whenever I think about the writers that I love that fell victim to their pain (Sylvia Plath, David Foster Wallace, Ernest Hemingway, Virgina Woolf, Anne Sexton and so on) I just feel sad. What could they given us if they had lived?

Baking, bouquets, and the beginning of term...

2010-06-11T15:30:00.004-04:00

This week marked the beginning of the summer semester at school. I am teaching four courses this semester but only two of them meet face to face, the other two are online. This allows me to only have class twice a week, which is a welcome change from last summer when I was teaching six hours a day four days a week.

So far my students seem friendly and energetic. My classes have already shrunk from their original twenty two. There are always students who don't show the first week, but for the most part everyone seems to be on target, so let's hope it stays that way.

I am teaching a section of creative writing online this semester, so I'm sure I'll be posting on that as the semester goes on. I've never taught the course online before, so it should be interesting.
_____________________________________________________________________

RJ and I pledged money to out local PBS/NPR affiliate this year. We watch PBS regularly and all I listen to in the car is NPR, so it's a cause I don't mind supporting. Our gift for our pledge was the cookbook All Cakes Considered, and I think it's going to successfully make me a baking addict. I already love to cook and now that it's summer and we're getting our regular CSA box, I'm back to cooking with fresh produce, which is awesome. I've made two cakes so far out of this cookbook. Last night RJ casually dropped the hint "when are you going to make another cake?" The result was the chocolate pound cake shown below:

I'm going to slowly make my way through the cookbook, so I'm sure more pictures will soon follow.

I also made almond crusted talapia last week and made a fresh salad with our CSA bounty.

_____________________________________________________________________

The rejection letters from my last round of submissions are coming in, so it's time to get going on the next round. I've put that on the agenda for next week. I always dedicate the first week back at school to school because there is usually little time for anything else. However, next week it's back to the submissions and the regular writing.

I've also finished two books in the past couple of weeks, The Historian and Love in The Time of Cholera. I'll post more about these books later, but I enjoyed both of them immensely and I hope to keep up my momentum with my reading throughout the summer.

Eagle Creek

2010-06-01T16:07:00.002-04:00

Summer

2010-05-27T13:06:00.006-04:00

It has been in the high 80's for the past week or so. We finally relented and turned on our air conditioning. Our CSA is beginning this Tuesday and I go back to teach a week from Monday. Summer is here. I have a few projects planned for the summer, some writing related. I've written a few poems over the break, and I hope to keep going with that same momentum. I've started receiving rejection letters from the latest round of submissions, so it's time for more to go out.

I've been cooking and eagerly awaiting for our CSA to start. Below are some pictures of what I made for dinner last night. It's a variation on Spanakopita.

In gardening news, I out my tomato and pepper plants outside to toughen them up. I've also discovered that I have Day Lilies and Asian Lilies in my backyard. They're beautiful, even though my dog, Kweli, has stomped over them a few times in his enthusiasm to chase squirrels. They're also apparently very resilient.

Lit

2010-05-27T12:32:00.006-04:00

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I recently finished reading Mary Karr's Lit. I discovered Mary Karr in an introductory non fiction class that I took as an undergraduate. I had never really thought much about non fiction but when I read Cherry, I was struck by how much poetry and non fiction have in common. The vivid imagery, the lyricism of her lines, and the raw emotion really struck me. I read the Liar's Club and when she came to a local university a few years ago with Franz Wright, I listened to her read from her poetry collection Sinner's Welcome.

I think the dangers in writing a memoir are many. They can come off as too precious, too much like a self help manual, especially of you're writing about overcoming addiction through a spiritual journey, which is essentially what Karr is doing in Lit. I have to admit that about halfway through the book, I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to finish. The prose was gripping, the tone seemed genuine, but it seemed lofty to me that Karr was going to claim that God had saved her. My athesist boyfriend dismissed the book before even reading it because of these spiritual revelations. However, he was mistaken and so was I. Karr is not shoving religion down our throats in this memoir, and whether you believe or not, you can take something away from the gritty prose that fills this book. It is heartbreaking but it is also relatable and I think that's what drew me in and kept me reading (I finished the book in one day). There were a lot of places where she could have fallen into cliche. I mean she's a writer, a poet, and an alcoholic. It doesn't get more formulaic then that, but I believe her joy, her pain, her struggle, and her small triumphs. She draws you into her life and somehow makes it yours.

Her relationships with her family are documented in brutally honest words, but there is also tenderness. When she describes the moment when she has to move her dying father to a nursing home is devastating, made worse by the fact that a stroke has rendered him almost speechless. When moving her mother from her disintegrating house towards the end of the book, it is a reenactmentof her father's pain. Her mother feels stripped and naked in the new, stark white condo and that vulnerability results in a painful argument between mother and daughter. Family is a central theme in this memoir and is closely related to alienation, so much so that they almost become symbols for each other throughout the text.

This memoir is not a mantra and it does not deliver some lofty message. It is a real account of a life that is still being lived. The verdict is still out on how this story will end.

A Walk in Pictures...

2010-05-19T11:17:00.005-04:00

These are pictures from a trail that I walk to by our house. It connects to one of the local parks that houses a playground, community pool, and the local farmer's market.

Rainy Days

2010-05-18T18:48:00.004-04:00

While I believe that rainy days are good for my garden, I would like to see some sun in the next day or two. I went out for a walk with Kweli yesterday morning as a sort of protest. I wanted to start a walking regimen and I'd be damned if the weather was going to screw it up. We had a nice walk but by the time we returned my sneakers were soaked through and Kwe was shaking his head to get the water out of his ears.

Yesterday I went to the store and then came home and cooked. Below are the fruits of my labor:

These are power spheres. They're made up of dried apricots, dried apples, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, peanut butter, and apple juice. They're delicious, easy to make, and a great snack.

This is honey wheat banana bread. Courtesy of my beloved bread machine. This particular bread is great with lemon curd or nutella.

This is sun dried tomato hummus. It occurred to me the other day as I bought hummus at the grocery store, that I had a perfectly good Cuisinart at home and that garbanzo beans cost about 88 cents...

After I returned from my conference on Sunday morning, RJ and I went to the Broad Ripple Art Fair. We purchased a piece of student artwork pictured below:

It is by a local artist by the name of Lisa VanMeter and this is the blurb she attached to the painting:

This is a multi-color woodblock print from a single block. The colors were printed in the reduction method on Mulberry paper.

We're going to hang it in our kitchen where we have some empty wall space. I would like to continue adding the art of local artists to our walls as we continue to put our home together.

_________________________________________________________________

Another benefit to rainy days is that I don't feel guilty about getting completely caught up in a book. I received Mary Karr's memoir Lit for Christmas this year and it has been sitting on my coffee table since January. Today I read all three hundred plus pages of it in one sitting. I read Karr's Cherry and the Liar's Club and it was her writing that sparked my interest in non-fiction. She came to Butler a few years ago to read from her poetry collection "Sinner's Welcome" and I got a chance to listen to her read her work.

Her memoir Lit is essentially about her journey into and out of madness. It's a provocative and haunting read and I'll have more to say about in a few days when I've digested it all...

End of the Semester Therapy

2010-05-12T15:51:00.005-04:00

I should have spent today and yesterday prepping for a conference I'm attending tomorrow in Chicago. This is what I did instead:

This is our new patio furniture. I love it. Now I can sit outside with my morning tea or a book or we can eat meals outdoors or...

Here are some more shots from my garden of flowers and shrubs that opened this week. I also discovered a lilly while I was weeding today...

Peonies

2010-05-05T20:37:00.001-04:00

Tomatoes

2010-05-02T17:44:00.004-04:00

I had to cut a few Iris earlier this week because of a late frost that came through. Luckily, the rest of the buds hadn't broken through yet, so they bloomed later this week.

Nimbus isn't allowed outside and he's pretty good about staying away from the doors, but he loves to sit in front of the screen and look out while Kweli and I are sitting on the back porch.

These are my Brandywine tomato seeds. I'm so pleased that they're doing so well. I've never started tomato seeds inside before, so I was a little worried. However, these little guys are growing like weeds. I hope I can keep them going long enough to get them in the ground later this summer.

Earth Day

2010-04-23T09:33:00.002-04:00

A Walk in the Garden...

2010-04-09T09:00:00.003-04:00

This is the view from our living room window. Apparently this is a "red bud" tree. Not a bad thing to look at everyday.

The Other Shoe

2010-04-04T14:34:00.004-04:00

It's been a busy week. I celebrated my 29th birthday last Tuesday. RJ and I went to Meridian, which is a very posh restaurant on the corner of Meridian and Westfield. We had a really nice meal and a quiet celebration. I don't really have anything inspiring to say in regards to my birthday. I think some people find them cause for introspection but nothing really comes to mind this year.
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National Poetry Month kicked off April 1st. We had the great opportunity of welcoming Kay Ryan through a teleconference at school. I've read a little of Ryan's poetry but it was nice to hear her thoughts about writing and poetry. She shared the poem "The Other Shoe" and the students seemed to enjoy the experience.

The Other Shoe

Oh if it were only the other
shoe hanging
in space before
joining its mate.

if the undropped
didn't congregate
with the undropped.

But nothing can
stop the mid-air

collision of the

unpaired above us
acquiring density

and weight. We

feel it accumulate.

Kay Ryan
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Our yard is continuing to green. These past couple of day s the temperature has leveled out right around 70, so the buds are really bursting.

These next three pictures are just me having fun with my camera. I always thought it would be fun to be paid to take pictures all day. Maybe in my next life...

Wind

2010-03-21T17:33:00.005-04:00

Our porch swing is doing pirouettes outside our living room window, so I think it's safe to say that a storm may be blowing in. Spring in Indiana is much more "spring like" then what I grew up with in northwestern Pennsylvania which was basically mud. However, we do get a lot of rain and I think we're at the beginning of that phase now.
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This is a picture of the bookshelf I painted and brought upstairs last weekend. The paint color is Mark Twain's House Red. I think that's fitting...

These are my wildflower seeds that I planted in my basil pot when I realized that the basil seeds weren't going to do anything. Nothing says spring like sprouts...

Finally, I took this picture of Kwe because I think it pretty much sums up Sundays at our house...

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I've put together about fifty submissions over the past month to various poetry journals. As per usual, whenever I spend a large quantity of time putting together and submitting my own work, I start to get a little punchy. Needless to say, I was a bit incredulous when I discovered that some journals are charging writers to submit online. The consistent number seems to be $3. Now don't get me wrong. I have no problem supporting literary journals. I buy them regularly. I pay the contest and reading fees willingly, but paying to submit online? Really? Needless to say, I didn't pay the $3. Why? Well, because I don't have to. While I admire the journals who are charging, I have other options. Actually, I have a lot of other options and because I'm still an nameless poet lost in the oblivion that is called submitting, the cranky part of me said "screw this."

Of course, when I'm feeling really cranky (this usually comes after I've read about ten descriptions of journals looking for "surprising poems that wow them") I feel like throwing in the towel completely. The good thing about this feeling is it is usually fleeting and replaced with an idea for a poem, which is more fun and a lot more constructive.

Spring

2010-03-17T20:23:00.004-04:00

In honor of St. Patrick's Day, RJ and I made corned beef and cabbage. It was delicious.

It appears that spring has come to Indiana. It has been in the upper 50's and sunny all week. When I went out into the yard this afternoon to throw Kweli some ball, this is what I found:

Spring Musings

2010-03-10T10:26:00.007-05:00

This past weekend kicked off my spring break from teaching and I think this might be the best spring break I've had in years. I've gotten a lot done around the house the first half of the week and plan to work on writing the second half. My sister was in town for her birthday (March 7th) so that was a fun way to kick off the weekend.

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I finished reading Shanghai Girls for our book club this month. I think it's going to be an interesting book to talk about in terms of structure and content.

My initial impressions of the book are mixed. I'm not the type of person who needs a neat and tidy ending (I won't spoil it for those of you who'd like to read it), so I actually liked the symbolism of the continuing cycle of the generations that came into play at the end of story. I also liked the story of the two sisters. I felt Lisa See's portrayal of May and Pearls' relationship was honest and candid. The two characters were written very well. However, the overall style of the writing, for me, seemed disjointed. I think because this is a historical novel, the historical parts of it seemed heavy handed at times. The balance between the narrative and the historical fact didn't always work. For example, you'd be caught up in a deeply personal scene between characters and then all of a sudden a fact about the Japanese invading China or the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor would sneak in. It took me out of the narrative. I suppose it is possible that Lisa See did this on purpose to mirror the disruption the characters were feeling in their own lives due to these conflicts, however it doesn't seem consistent enough to be considered technique.

I think my biggest problem with the plot itself is that I already knew everything about the sisters as a reader. In the final climactic moment of the story, as everything comes to a head, I already knew about their flaws, so as they revealed them to each other, I just felt bored.

I am looking forward to discussing this book with my colleagues at school. Who knows my opinions may change...
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What would you do if someone invited you to their death? When I was in 10th or 11th grade I dabbled in speech in debate for a very short time. The subject of my speech? Euthanasia. Even in my teenage years when I didn't know anything, I felt that it should be a person's right to die. This was before I watched my aunt be ravaged by ovarian cancer. Before my grandfather was diagnosed with lymphoma. Before nineteen year olds were diagnosed with breast cancer. This was before I became aware that it cost over two million dollars to treat colon cancer in this country.

Chuck Palahniuk published "Live Like You're Dying" in MensHealth. In this article he recounts attending a dinner party where he didn't know the outcome was death until the guests were asked to join hands and light candles. Check out the article. It will give you some food for thought.

A Trip Back to Erie Would Not Be Complete Without a Snowstorm...

2010-02-28T19:59:00.005-05:00

I left on Wednesday morning (4:30 am is when the alarm went off) to head back to Erie to see my family and to hear Michael Pollan speak at Allegheny College (my old stomping ground) on Thursday night. When I decided to make the trek to hear Michael Pollan, I didn't realize it would come at such a busy point in the semester. I needed the break more than I even realized at the time, and I was glad to have a change of scene for a few days. An example of how exhaustion can make you stupid came out in full force when my mom called me Tuesday morning to confirm the details of my flight. The conversation went something like this:

Mom- "I'm going to have your dad pick you up on Wednesday because I have class in the morning. OK?"

Me- "Sure...Wait. It shouldn't matter that you have class in the morning. I'm arriving at 6:40 PM."

Mom- "No, you're not. The flight information you sent me says 6:40 AM."

Me- "Are you sure? Let me check..."

Mom-"I'm pretty sure. I wrote it down."

Me- "Oh shit..."

As you can imagine this set me into a whirlwind of panic. I had to find people to cover my classes on Wed and it put preparations for my trip into overdrive. Regardless, I got it all figured out and boarded my flight promptly at 6:25 on Wednesday morning. I arrived in Erie before noon and all was well with the world.
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Michael Pollan's lecture was very good. My mom and I sat up in the balcony in Shafer Auditorium so we could see his power point presentation. He brought up a lot of points covered in Omnivore's Dilemma, so I was able to relate and follow his lecture fairly easily. I enjoyed his sense of humor and the way he engaged the audience. He began the lecture pulling out a double quarter pounder with cheese from McDonalds and asking how much energy it took to produce this one burger. He also noted that the first student to ask a question would get the burger. Of course after hearing Michael Pollan speak about food like substances, who wants to eat McDonalds?

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It started snowing Thursday night when we went down to Meadville. By the time we left Allegheny at around 9:00, the roads had deteriorated significantly. I posted some pictures of my parents house after the snow that lasted Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. And I thought I'd dodged a bullet when it didn't storm over Christmas.

My mother's amaryllis were in bloom while I was at home. It's good to have fresh flowers in the house when the view out of your bedroom window looks like the picture above.

Sunday Musings

2010-02-21T18:46:00.005-05:00

My community college is sponsoring a book discussion over Sapphire's popular book Push. I read the book this afternoon (only about 150 pages or so) and I think that it's an excellent book to discuss in a academic environment. While incredibly and graphically disturbing at points, the overall message of the book, knowledge equals empowerment, is an important one for students and professors.

I must admit that I am surprised that in a culture where we are hypersensitive to any type of sexual content in media (just think Janet Jackson's breast at the Super Bowl) that I have not heard more backlash against this book in the media. I think books like this are important because they call the issues of rape, incest, and child abuse to the forefront of consciousness and make it hard to look away. However, I also know that a vast majority of the public doesn't like to look at these issues. It is easier to look away. It calls to mind how I felt when I read The Color Purple and Beloved, and I'm glad that it has received so much attention, if for no other reason than people will read it. But it also reminds me of when I received the reading list for my 10th grade AP English class and Song of Solomon was listed. Needless to say, there were a few parents who were upset about that choice.

Every Sunday I check out Frank Warren's website to read the new Sunday secrets. If you're not familiar with postsecret, there is a link to Frank's site at the bottom of by blog. This Sunday there was a secret that made me happy:

Valentines Day 2010

2010-02-14T19:23:00.006-05:00

The following pictures are from the Valentines Day card R made me. The text is German and reads "It flies with love and sense of spirit." The "it" being the Valentines Day Condor.

Sunday Musings

2010-02-14T09:37:00.003-05:00

This Year's Valentine

They could
pump frenzy into air ducts
and rage into reservoirs,
dynamite dams
and drown cities,
cry fire in theaters
as the victims are burning,
but
I will find my way through blackened streets
and kneel down at your side.

They could
jump the median, head-on,
and obliterate the future,
fit .45's to the hands of kids
and skate them off to school,
flip live butts into tinderbox forests
and hellfire half the heavens,
but
in the rubble of smoking cottages
I will hold you in my arms.

They could
send kidnappers to kindergartens
and pedophiles to playgrounds,
wrap themselves in Old Glory
and gut the Bill of Rights,
pound the door with holy screed
and put an end to reason,
but
I will cut through their curtains of cunning
and find you somewhere in the moonlight.

Whatever they do with their anthrax or chainsaws,
however they strip-search or brainwash or blackmail,
they cannot prevent me from sending you robins,
all of them singing: I'll be there.

Philip Appleman
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Yesterday RJ and I went to Locally Grown Gardens in Broad Ripple to pick up some fresh produce. Between our CSA ending in December and the closure of most of the farmer's markets until spring, it's become somewhat of a challenge to find locally grown food. In addition to produce and baked goods, Locally Grown Gardens also offers open faced BBQ sandwiches and salmon dinners. Yesterday R and I decided on the BBQ for lunch and it was awesome. I didn't eat anything for the rest of the day. It was sweet and tangy and delicious.

Here are some pictures I took with my phone while we were there:

Snowy Saturday

2010-02-06T13:33:00.003-05:00

Here are some pictures from the first real snow fall Indy has experienced this winter. You'll note the picture of R shoveling with a bright yellow snow shovel. This is our second shovel, which we had to purchase this afternoon because someone stole our other blue snow shovel off our porch...

A Productive Evening...

2010-02-01T22:26:00.005-05:00

It is a good feeling to come home after a day at work with three key goals in mind: work out, make dinner, and grade essays. It's an even better feeling when you accomplish not one or even two of these goals, but in fact you accomplish all three.
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My amaryllis has bloomed

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I read a really interesting article in The New Yorker this weekend entitled The Dime Store Floor by David Owen. It's all about how smells can trigger memories.

The author and his sister embark on a childhood "smell tour" where they visit their old childhood haunts and see whether or not they still smell the same. I loved this article because I'm always trying to impress upon my students how important sensory detail is in writing, and this essay explores that concept in a very literal way.

This essay also made me think about smells from my own childhood and the memories they trigger. I think Old Spice must be the staple scent of all American fathers because it is a scent I associate strongly with my dad. Apparently my dad's choice of deodorant resonated with not just the humans in the house, but also the animals. This became clear when he accidentally left the lid off of his Old Spice only to have our tiny tiger cat, Kit-Kat, knock it over and rub against it until she was slick with the scent.

Some of my other "smells" are also more common. For example, the smell of cinnamon, fresh cut grass, and lilacs. However, I also associate strong memories to the smell of Listerine. My grandfather always uses the mouthwash as part of his nightly routine. I also attribute the smell of onions to my grandmother and any sort of holiday. It's a fun exercise to think about what smells trigger what memories.

How to write a poem for Haiti part 2...

2010-01-23T11:31:00.004-05:00

Last night I watched some of telethon Hope for Haiti which featured a variety of high profile actors and musicians. Morgan Freeman read a excerpt from this poem by New Orleans poet Kalamu ya Salaam. The poem in it's entirety is listed below. The bolded section is what Freeman read. A link to Freeman's reading can be seen here.

Tomorrow's Toussaints

this is Haiti, a state
slaves snatched from surprised masters,
its high lands, home of this
world's sole successful
slave revolt. Haiti, where
freedom has flowered and flown
fascinating like long necked
flamingoes gracefully feeding
on snails in small pinkish
sunset colored sequestered ponds.

despite the meanness
and meagerness of life
eked out of eroding soil
and from exploited urban toil, there
is still so much beauty here in this
land where the sea sings roaring a shore
and fecund fertile hills lull and roll
quasi human in form

there is beauty here
in the unyielding way
our people,
colored charcoal, and
banana beige, and
shifting subtle shades
of ripe mango, or strongly
brown-black, sweet
as the such from
sun scorched staffs
of sugar cane,
have decided
we shall survive
we will live on

a peasant pauses
clear black eyes
searching far out over the horizon
the hoe motionless, suspended
in the midst
of all this shit and suffering
forced to bend low
still we stop and stand
and dream and believe

we shall be released
we shall be released
for what slaves
have done
slaves can do

and that begets
the beauty

slaves can do

How to write a poem for Haiti...

2010-01-22T14:18:00.005-05:00

I have yet to post about the recent earthquake in Haiti. The state of Haiti was already fragile at best and the recent disaster seems to have ripped the already wounded country wide open. It may seem frivolous to think about poetry during a time where people are crushed beneath broken buildings or sleeping on the street or starving or a half dozen other horrors that are occurring in Haiti right now. However, after the initial shock of the devastation, my first thought was, who will be the first poet to write about this event?

I had similar thoughts in the wake of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. My own personal need to write, to document was surprisingly strong. I wanted to write poems, badly, about all these events but they were slow to come. In fact, some of them are still coming. I finally wrote a poem about 9/11 more than five years after it happened. These events are thorny subjects for me when it comes to getting them down on paper in a form that even begins to do them justice. I know my biggest fear, and I suspect I share it with many other writers, is that I will not accurately portray the event. That the poem will offend instead of inspire or whatever else it was meant to do.

The New Yorker has published this poem by Aime Cesaire, "Earthquake" (translated by Paul Muldoon) and it is the first poem I've seen in direct response to Haiti:

Earthquake

such great stretches of dreamscape

such lines of all too familiar lines

staved in

caved in so the filthy wake resounds with the notion

of the pair of us? What of the pair of us?

Pretty much the tale of the family surviving disaster:

“In the ancient serpent stink of our blood we got clear

of the valley; the village loosed stone lions roaring at our heels.”

Sleep, troubled sleep, the troubled waking of the heart

yours on top of mine chipped dishes stacked in the pitching sink

of noontides.

What then of words? Grinding them together to summon up the void

as night insects grind their crazed wing cases?

Caught caught caught unequivocally caught

caught caught caught

head over heels into the abyss

for no good reason

except for the sudden faint steadfastness

of our own true names, our own amazing names

that had hitherto been consigned to a realm of forgetfulness

itself quite tumbledown.

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I've spent the afternoon reading The Metaphysician in the Dark by Charles Simic. Last night I taught three poems by Simic in my creative writing class. The poems were "Watermelons", "Coal", and "Fork," and my students responded very well to all three. The essays I read this afternoon are a lot about art and its relation to poetry, which is something that's always interested me. I teach ekphrastic poetry in my classes and I like reading about how different poets are influenced by painters, sculptors, and photographers. Simic speaks of this triptych by Bosch:

He also mentions the photographer Abelardo Morell. His website can be found here. A few of his photographs below :

Some of my favorite quotes from the essays I've read today:

"Much of lyric poetry is nothing more than a huge, centuries-old effort to remind our immortal souls of the existence of our genital organs." "In the Praise of Folly"

"Empty space makes us discover our inwardness." "The Power of Ambiguity"

"I, too, wish to make contact with some unknown person's inner life. Out mutual hope is to bequeath a phrase or image to the dreamers so that we may live on in their reverie." "The Power of Ambiguity"

"The alchemy of turning what is visible to us into what is visible to others is what all the arts are about." "Verbal Image"

Bread

2010-01-19T22:30:00.004-05:00

The fruits of my labor yesterday afternoon/evening...

A Week in Review...

2010-01-18T14:07:00.005-05:00

While I think it's kind of silly to end the first full week of classes with a three day weekend, I'm not going to complain. The first week of classes was uneventful and that's just the way I like it. My students seem relatively enthusiastic, and I have eighteen enrolled in my creative writing class. My online class had a few small hiccups early in the week, but they were resolved quickly.

I've continued with the working out and eating at home. Right now I'm making some bread for the week and some bread to freeze. I haven't had a chance to fire up the bread machine since we moved into the new house, so today seemed like the perfect time. I also put the first coat of paint on the bookcase that's going to go in the dining room. It's definitely going to need two coats, but the painting itself went pretty fast, so I plan to have it in the dining room by next weekend.

I'm in the process of making plans to travel to Erie in February to see Michael Pollan at Allegheny. I'm pretty excited and it will give me something to look forward to that month. Sometimes the spring semester has a tendency to drag, so I'm constantly looking for things to break up the monotony.
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Thursday night I went to Starbucks for about two hours to read before my night class. I left Ominovre's Dilemma at home, so I pulled The House on Mango street off my shelves and read the whole book while I was at Starbucks.

I really like this book and it is a fast read. I was reminded at how the pacing and description are so prefect in how they fit the narrative. The section "Hair" is perfect when it comes to showing students how important sensory detail and image are in writing of all types:

But my mother's hair, my mother's hair, like little rosettes, like little candy circles all curly, and pretty because she pinned it in in pincurls all day, sweet to put you nose into when she is holding you, and holding you and you feel safe, it is the warm smell of bread before you bake it...

Also the section "Red Clowns" always disturbs me. Part of it is the subject matter and part of it is that I've always found something seedy and garish about the circus and don't even get me started on clowns:

Why did you leave me all alone? I waited my whole life. You're a liar. They all lied. All the books and magazines, everything that told it wrong. Only his dirty fingernails against my skin, only his sour smell again. The moon that watched. The tilt-a-whirl. The red clowns laughing their thick-tongued laugh.

Sunday Musings

2010-01-10T20:09:00.007-05:00

This week was spent mostly between work and home trying to get organized on both ends. Tomorrow is the first day of the spring semester and I expect it will be hectic, but the first week of classes is always a gradual ease into routine. This is also helped by the fact that we have a three day weekend right after the first week of school.

Winter hit Indy in full force this week. We had snow all week and while it wasn't nearly the blast that the north east received, it coated out backyard with a couple of inches. Time to break out the boots.
This week I began a journey that I suspect most people begin after the holidays are over. I started back to the workouts and the cooking at home. All this week we ate at home including all weekend (except for the salads we had for dinner last night). Saturday morning I made breakfast wraps and butternut squash "hashbrowns." It was pretty darn good.

I'm about 150 pages into Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma and it is fascinating. It's a lot denser than Animal, Vegetable, Miracle but talks about some of the same basic issues. I like the more in depth look that Pollan takes at the food industry and how it impacts Americans. If you care about what you eat and where it comes from, you should read this book.

A favorite passage from today's reading came when Pollan interviewed Joe Salatin who owns Polyfa ce Farm in Virgina:

Me and the folks who buy my food are like the Indians --we just want to opt out. That's all the Indians wanted--to keep their teepees, to give their kids herbs instead of patent medicines and leeches. They didn't care if there was Washington, D.C., or a Custer or a USDA ; just leave us alone. But the Western mind can't bear the opt-out option. We're going to have to refight the Battle of Little Bighorn to preserve the right to opt out, or your grandchildren and mine will have no choice but to eat amalgamated, irradiated, genetically prostituted, barcoded, adulterated, fecal spam for the centralized processing conglomerate.

Starting of 2010

2010-01-05T11:23:00.002-05:00

I started my week off waiting for the water company to come out and read the meter. This morning I had good intentions to go to school early but that was before our kitchen sink backed up. Now, I'm sitting in my living room listening to the plumber snake the kitchen sink and thinking about all the work I have to do for school. Oh well.

Note: I'm not encouraged by the fact that the plumber is on his third go at snaking the drain and I think I just heard him mutter "you've got to be shitting me."
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I didn't officially make any New Year's resolutions this year because I feel like mine are always the same: take better care of myself, write more, read more, and manage my time better. I'm going to just keep chipping away at these goals right now. I think they're solid.

I have a couple of poems bumping around in my head but I'm still thinking them through. I also need to start thinking about more submissions. 2009 was a pretty typical submission year. I sent out 65 plus submissions and got accepted to one journal.

I'm starting on Moby Dick tomorrow...

The Poetry Society of America is hosting this exhibit in New York City called "Portaits of Poets 1910-2010" I've been following the development of the exhibit through Facebook and Twitter. I'd love to go and see it but I think I'll have to settle for the pictures provided by the New York Times:

Artists and poets have always kept close company, and the alliance becomes a celebratory bash in “Portraits of Poets, 1910-2010,” an exhibition presented by the Poetry Society of America at the National Arts Club beginning on Tuesday. The kickoff event of the society’s centennial year, the show brings together more than 150 portraits of 20th-century poets, many by well-known artists, and the guest list is formidable.

And the drain is fixed...

Reading Musings for the New Year

2009-12-30T10:24:00.002-05:00

I think accomplished a fair amount of reading in 2009, however I'm sure more committed folks would disagree. However, I read a lot of books that I wanted to read and managed to keep up with Poetry. I fell woefully behind in the New Yorker and even brought several of the issues on vacation with me in a half-hearted attempt to read them cover to cover. However, at this point I'll probably just throw in the towel and begin again after the first of the year when I return to Indiana.

I'm returning to Indiana with the following books: The Omnivore's Dilemma, Lit, and Moby Dick. I think the last entry on the list will probably hold me for awhile. I heard a piece about it on NPR and decided that I'd reached a point in my reading life where I probably have the patience and the attention span for it. So I plan to start on it shortly after the first of the year.

A Little Over a Month Musings...

2009-12-29T14:56:00.003-05:00

It occurred to me the other day as I was teasing my sister about how she hasn't updated her blog in about two months, that I have woefully neglected mine. I was doing pretty well up until we moved into our house and then Thanksgiving came and then finals and Christmas and....you get the idea.

I'm back to it now. I'm not going to apologize for my absence or say that I will post regularly from now on because I may fall into a lapse again, but for the moment I'm newly committed.

I'm currently traveling through the great state of Pennsylvania for the holidays. We were in Erie for a few days before moving onto Pittsburgh, where we will be through the new year.

Here are some recent pictures taken in Erie. I may post again while in Pittsburgh or I may wait till we return to Indy....

22 N. Bosart continued...

2009-11-14T10:12:00.005-05:00

A few more pictures I took while Kwe and I hung out at the house yesterday...

Friday (22 N. Bosart Ave) Musings

2009-11-13T10:40:00.009-05:00

The first of many pictures to come of our first home. We picked up the keys yesterday, and the "big move" will commence next weekend...

The kitchen is one my my favorite parts of the house. I can't wait to have a place for all our pots, pans, and cookware. I like to cook and it will be great to actually have room to have more than two dishes on the counter at the same time.

*Note the exercise bike in the corner. It was left by the previous owners, and it appears to be in good working order. It will be joining the elliptical down in the basement (aka. the laundry room/gym)
The dining room. This is a first for us. We don't even have any furniture for this room. Yet.

The living room. Lots of light and that beautiful hardwood detail.

The guest bedroom. This room is the brightest room in the house because of the direction it faces and the yellow paint on the walls. It has a nice cozy feel to it. Perfect for guests.

Walk in closet in the guest room. I think we'll be using this as a work/reading area of some kind.

Master bedroom. I was going to paint it but I think the blue is growing on me.

The upstairs bathroom is the second bathroom in the house. There is also a half bath off the kitchen

One of the two walk in closets in the master bedroom. This is also one of my favorite parts of the house. I love the exposed brick and the fact that RJ and I won't have to share closet space anymore.
There will be more picture coming later this weekend. I plan to take Kwe over to see the place (well, the yard really) after his appointment at the groomers. We're having it cleaned Sunday and then the move begins.

Monday Musings

2009-11-09T11:42:00.003-05:00

When I arrived at work this morning and got out of the car, the sky was radiating crimson and pink. When I arrived in my office a few moments later, I realized I'd left a part of James Joyce's poem "Chamber Music" on my desk. The first few lines are very appropriate given the sky this morning:

Chamber Music

2

The twilight turns from amethyst
To deep and deeper blue,
The lamp fills with a pale green glow
The trees of the avenue.

The old piano plays an air,
Sedate and slow and gay;
She bends upon the yellow keys,
Her head inclines this way.

Shy thought and grave wide eyes and hands
That wander as they list--
The twilight turns to darker blue
With lights of amethyst.

James Joyce

Also, on my desk this morning, a poem from "Cora Fry's Pillow Book" by Rosellen Brown. This poem made me laugh, mostly because I was just telling someone the other day about our cat, Nimbus's, secret plot to kill me, so he can take my spot in bed next to RJ, his one true love.

From "Cora Fry's Pillow Book"

I hate to think how we make do: It's me and Prance the cat.
I love the little cat--that's not the point.

But all the warmth a woman wants
seems to be less the work of pile-up quilts,

let alone husbands whose legs entangle ours,
than the weight of the curve, the fur, the flick of whiskers

humped rumbling in the middle of the arctic bed.
Nothing's more loyal, more quiet, more contented

than this smallest lover, this tender sac of bones and blood,
this delicate listening head.

A Poet's Ponderings

The Poet & Technology

Photo #3

Observations from the Gym

Thrifting

Photo #2

A Few Of My Favorite Things

Five Reasons I Love My Finches

Photo #1

Guest Blog: A Letter To My Community College

A New Office for the New Year

Photography Project

Gnomes

Finches!

Ringing in 2012

Letter Writing Kits

Christmas Back East

For Basil

Holiday Greetings from 22 N. Bosart

The Birds Have Returned...

Holiday Mail

Holiday Card Swap

Amusing Happenings at the Mall During the Holidays

A Letter

Happy Holidays from McSweeny's!

The Corporate Christmas Party As Told By My Cocktails Staff Editorial from the Who-Ville Picayune, January 1958 Donner Looks Back*Hilary Knight's The Twelve Days of Christmas is one of the best versions in print.

A Green Christmas

Pomegranates

The Mermaid Chair

Why Are Poems About Winter So Grim?

A List Of Reasons Why You Should Take Walks Outdoors

The Girl in the Garden

From Shabby to Shabby Chic

Gobble, gobble, gobble...

Juliet, Naked

A Night At the Art Museum

My Curiosity Jar

Skitch

Where Have I Been? Well...

Midnight in Paris

Summer Schedule

The Great North Woods

Back to the garden...

Crocus

Hike at Eagle Creek

How to Tell You're in The Middle of Nowhere in the Midwest

The Life and Times of an Unknown Poet...

A List to Sum Up the Past Two Weeks...

AWP Highlights

Ice Storm 2011

Notes from a writing life...

Waiting for the birds...

Reasons Why I'm Not a Huge Fan of Collected Poems and Other Reasons Why Poetry is Hard To Read...

Because it is important...

The More I Owe You

Recognizing the Danger Signs

Memory & Experience

The Kindle, Sexism, and Dracula

New Year, New Space

Zinnias

From the Kitchen...

Zombies, rings, 4th of July, and fireworks in a fir tree...

Addiction Memoirs and Self Loathing

Baking, bouquets, and the beginning of term...

Eagle Creek

Summer

Lit

A Walk in Pictures...

Rainy Days

End of the Semester Therapy

Peonies

Tomatoes

Earth Day

A Walk in the Garden...

The Other Shoe

Oh if it were only the other shoe hanging in space before joining its mate.

if the undropped didn't congregate with the undropped.

But nothing can stop the mid-air

collision of the

unpaired above us acquiring density

The Corporate Christmas Party As Told By My Cocktails

Staff Editorial from the Who-Ville Picayune, January 1958

Donner Looks Back

Hilary Knight's The Twelve Days of Christmas* is one of the best versions in print.

Oh if it were only the other
shoe hanging
in space before
joining its mate.

if the undropped
didn't congregate
with the undropped.

But nothing can
stop the mid-air

unpaired above us
acquiring density