We who love to be astonished

Celeste is TWO!

2011-05-20T10:44:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

Dusie article is out!

2011-02-08T14:03:00.001-08:00

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

lacuna

2010-01-22T13:28:00.000-08:00

a Haiti poem

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

This year's job market

2009-11-24T15:50:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

The end of Aunt Flo

2009-08-19T12:04:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

A new purpose

2009-08-17T09:47:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

I'm reading in Loveland, CO

2009-08-13T10:07:00.001-07:00

Poetry Reading by The Alleged Poets Society

Thursday, August 20 7 p.m.

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

Karla Schorzman. Introductions.

Selections from

“Musings of the Magdelena”

Larry Grieco. “Of Baseball and Buddha”

Mackenzie Carignan. Selections from Metaphors for Miscarriage

Very Special Guest: Selections from Magmaphonic Poems

KK Shores. Selections from Van Gogh’s Kaleidoscope

Free and Open to the Public

Refreshments will Be Served

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

2009-08-12T09:37:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

Feeling bad about the swing

2009-08-11T12:36:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2009-08-10T09:35:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Soccer fun!

2008-11-02T06:52:00.001-08:00

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

It's nice to know . . .

2008-08-21T12:38:00.000-07:00

that someone has enjoyed our project! Thank you, Eileen, for this beautiful review!

metaphor 6

2008-07-16T13:30:00.000-07:00

graph
like a precipice and ridge

spiral
not your complicated replication

apology
the tendency of fluid to move to the area of least pressure

nickel
so smooth in his hand. questions about the sky

he
bigger than the universe and arms

graph
rise beyond the paper

if
you could have held that single, multiplying cell in your hand

carnage
who knew it could be so minute?

metaphor 5

2008-07-15T14:37:00.000-07:00

hole
but no, it doesn't have sides or a bottom

organ
more like wing than spleen

cancer
the tumor is the presence, not the absence

polyp
looking like an eyeball and focusing

intestine
and all if its exchanges

ovary
when you imagine grapes

absorption
where do the puddles go? wash

Shape

2008-06-24T15:18:00.000-07:00

triangle

character style fast menu

square

twice alive not wearing monster

line

eyebrows quick like symptoms dire

point

given fireball is the collar of good

triangle

recognize in the water on the sidewalk

square

is the jar in the mirror two and four

line

from the shadow the trail leaves tracks

point

you welcome the flavor before it's gone

again

2008-05-07T11:58:00.000-07:00

from the light of that season
between winter and fall
you came and went.
your coming was never marked
by an arrival or a rush of heat.
it was the quietest stay.

your departure was marked
by a floating, swirling beam of loss.
not like losing but like becoming less
than nothing for a time. like nothing
could cover it. soak it up.

how hard we try to fill in these spaces.
caulk the leaking crevices. maybe there will be
another who comes. maybe with limbs,
a body, a mind who can think of me. Another you.
Another you who might be here already.

the significance of steam trains

2008-03-12T11:53:00.000-07:00

(I feel the need to add some kind of disclaimer to this poem, which is much more traditional than most of my current work. I feel a strong need to write this poem for a more traditional sense of "understanding" because it is for my son. When I speak to him, I am attached, unified, and sure of my trajectory; therefore, my usual sense of division and confusion is erased, of only for a moment. I want the words to carry a figurative weight of a more traditional style- more lyric in the traditional sense. Because this poem serves a specific purpose for me, it is written in a specificly direct way. Not that you asked. . .)

For Eliot

Such explosions, steam. Rising in the dome.
Turning the wheels.
For you, everything is linked, coupled,
sequenced in terms of who
carries whom. You wake up already attached
to the elements of significance:
Who is the engine? What is being carried
into this separate coincidence
we call "freight"? Who is, after all,
on the train?

Still, I'm astonished to see the dexterity
with which you connect everything. Paper clips;
silverware; books, once a pile, now lay end to end,
from one side of the house to another.
Your tracks take shape and look
both like circles and tangents at the same time.
Each engine has its place, its own power source,
and its own cars to carry.

We've read countless books about trains,
some are about arriving, some are just about
getting on. Destination and arrival. You often return
to the story of our own journey on a train, the orange engine
straining up the mountain and through heavy rocks,
tunnels, emerging into light. You slept soundly
on my lap as we descended, like a river,
into the valley. Your wheels, for once, at rest.

& illusion

2008-01-25T09:25:00.000-08:00

It wasn’t like
you fell
the line.
All street
backsides
plump and
scarlet. There
the moonlight
half green,
half lemon zest.

The magician
magically rises,
sure to cover
his left foot
in shadow.
In this light
it’s difficult to
know what is
happening
and what is
just poem.

This half
world can’t
recognize things
like your steadfast
eyes, how well-
worn your image
is in my own
personal equation.

(She reminds me
It’s not poetic
to always go home
with the same guy.
But you alone
are a mixture,
a hybrid
of balsam and
trajectory.) You say
you are not
complicated. Often
I find you
impossible.
How else
would we maintain
the beam
that divides
these galleries?

It’s not
a matter
of playing
along. In a quiet
moment, you
fall pale and
demystified.
But at the end
of each critical
flash, you return.
The magician
not levitating,
but standing on his
left toe. The poem
collapses. Your face
may be
looking away. There
is no more
secret. That
alone may
keep us.

& counting

2008-01-02T14:11:00.000-08:00

Gondola, red envelope. Sweet boxcutter and dandelion. She walked through the valley, undesiring. Bleu-rimmed china keeps appearing, plates flying like UFO's like salad like wheels. Once, I sat there, surrounded by quick transportation. Specifically, dragonflies and trains. Always hating the smell of cigarettes, how it meanders and rivers and zeros out the oranges. Voile. Trick ponies. The famous poet said to be deliberate. Was he set on fire? Wasn't it an unwritten rule? She argues that nothing is unwritten. She can prove it, her lacquered nails, her tobacco lips pursed. I will tell you one more time. It was red and floating. It is gone now and never did.

Unusual, her fingers twirled anxious photographs. Clearly of children. What of centuries of goddesses trying to be women? Are their bodies hardened in birth; how do they carry and bear? Aware of shrapnel. Exploded torso. Can a bone explode and become another body? World or wars. Glue or anovulatory spike? It has nothing to do with the moon.

January

2007-12-29T14:20:00.000-08:00

First poem since October

This year, there was nothing made. You can't even find
your precipice. Enter me with purpose. (no matter) I imagine my uterus
shedding like leaves from an autumn tree. Apples falling.
Such small members of disaster. Shrapnel. Discharge.
Stigma and skin. Somehow ash. Somewhere exchange.

This year I fought for crumbs.
I still do. So much of the unwanted
descends. Blood. Bananas. The birds nest, now empty.
Storms to keep you there. Pure ravaging guile.
Somewhere between August and November,

I remember losing my breath. Falling cold took its toll.
Sometimes it finds its way back. Crystalline and returning.
What to do with the warmer flow, the earth's red lava
erupting from each crevice? Let it mix with water.
It will find its way. I am not so sure.

This year fell hard on my thighs, my torso, my carrying muscles.
I expected it in my hips. I think of her, how it all backed up,
how it dried like a transplant that never took root. Not like a clipping.
Like a dragging. How she still can't look at the faces of mothers
as she strolls. How divided it makes us, this desire to make.

Euphoria of lost

2007-11-20T10:36:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm done with my dissertation defense. . .I actually have been for three weeks, today. . .but I've not really been able to get it "together" since. Being done with something that I've been working on for such a long time brings the expected feelings of relief and pride. Admittedly, it's the biggest accomplishment of my life, academically & career wise. It is the thing, in fact, that I have been motivated to achieve since I was a teenager. Here I am, nearly two decades later, doing it.

But it's not all sunshine and roses. This leaves a gap in my life that has, for the last few weeks, been filled with a sense of confusion and disorientation. What does one DO after the Ph.D? What's next? To say that this is something I should have thought about before is both true and impossible. As a mother of a toddler, part-time teacher, wife, poet, and managing everything that comes along with those titles, it's safe to say that actually finishing the Ph.D. was a feat in itself. Actually bracing for and preparing for the next step surely would have resulted in full melt-down. Now, however, the question has descended, like a villain from a fairy tale, resolved to steal whatever thunder and momentum such an accomplishment has given me.

I feel extremely lost, but not in a scared, trapped sort of way. It's more of an inquisitive, probing process of lost. There is a job or two I might apply for here in Denver at the school where I'm already teaching. There's a part-time thing here and there that I'm shoring up for. And life might just look like this for a few years until I find my niche, publish my book (please!) and build my resume. But otherwise, what am I supposed to do with myself? My highly-educated, motivated self? What is there to fill the hole?

One of the things that has been agitating me for quite some time is that a Ph.D. doesn't REALLY get you anywhere. Right now, my part-time teaching job requires only a Masters, which I had six years ago. The poetry teaching jobs that I dream about require at least a first book if not multiple books. What then does a Ph.D. give you? An in-depth knowledge of which to talk about at cocktail parties? Overqualifications for nearly any other job but teaching at the college level, which you're still, somehow, underqualified to do even though most of us have been doing it since day one of our Master's degree? I don't mean to sound ungrateful-- I truly do feel that the Ph.D. experience taught me SO much about professionalization, how to speak about my poems and make them reflect my ideas, how to speak about other's poems and relate them to complex theories that I would have NEVER been exposed to in, say, an MFA. Nonetheless, here I am. Armed with the highest possible degree known to poetry, and not a single thing to do with it. Truth be told, I'm not even teaching poetry at Metro- I'm teaching composition (which I like, don't get me wrong. . .but my qualifications are obviously stronger in other areas).

I suspect I'm not the only poet in academia to ever run into this dilemma. I'm reminded of a friend who I met while working on my MA at CU, Boulder. He had his Ph.D. and was teaching at CU part-time as an adjunct. He was and is a brilliant poet, but when I would speak to him in those days, he was extremely frustrated by the exact thing I'm speaking of. He had yet to have his first book published at that point, which meant no "currency" on the job market. Now, three books later, he's the head of a fairly prestigious Creative Writing Department. Does this evidence suggest that on top of ten years of graduate school, MORE dues need to be paid before getting the "break"? I also think about the fact that this friend was a single male, not a married mother. Surely, this gives me a huge handicap.

And I haven't written a poem since the defense. Bizarre.

another frantic update

2007-10-24T14:34:00.000-07:00

The good news is. . .I managed to get tickets to the World Series! I'm excited- it took a lot of online time, multitasking (grading papers while reviewing my dissertation while the computers tried to get me tickets) and persistence, but I managed to get in. . .somehow. . .and buy tickets. It wasn't easy to get tickets- there was a huge mess up on Monday when tickets were supposed to be sold, and only 500 of the 60,000 tickets were sold. They tried again on Tuesday and I'll tell you. . .there were still issues. Once I was lucky enough to get in to buy tickets, it tried to kick me out like three times. I kept back-paging back "into" the ticket buying system, and eventually managed to get a single pair of tickets in the nosebleed section (I'm not complaining. . .but at one point I had seats right behind home plate in my basket. . .and then got kicked out because of a glitch!). It should be a good time. I'm not the biggest Rockies fan ever, but I'm a huge baseball fan, so I'm really excited.

We're going to the Saturday night game, then I'm on a plane the next morning headed to Chicago for the big dissertation defense. I'm really excited, actually, to have a discussion about my dissertation/collection and see what my committee thinks about it. I'm tying up the loose ends right now with paperwork, # of copies, etc. . .all the stuff that could screw me up at the last minute. I'm going out on Sunday, defending on Monday, and turning in the final copy on Tuesday. . .if all goes well. I'll keep you posted.

& ruminate

2007-10-03T14:29:00.000-07:00

Sequestered fibers and silhouette. Darned. Piles of bills and dollars. If this is a fabric, that is a pylon, there is a supporting beam. Feigning surprise, I realize that I never wrote about the city. Removed a year makes me twice as distant. Do we write about our lovers when we are content? Always somewhere to walk, even flowers now. He was amazed that the lake looked like an ocean. Can water strangle? Follow me to the plains? When I reach out, everything goes limp.

another word for bleed

2007-09-20T10:26:00.000-07:00

It might be a page.
Suffocated or torn.
Black boxes indicating stop.

I gather my own white garments against my chest
and picture butterflies falling from the rafters.
Drawn there, speckled.

Catastrophe. What of the orchestra?
Their attempt to blur light
with each vibration,

tongue to reed,
bow to string?
Not forgiven.

But I am careful to say who I am
because I fall too quickly out of mind.
Could I be slipping now.

It's hard to say no.
To bleed,
to come to light.

Said of blood.
Said of moving out,
plentiful flow,
a shape never taken shape.

For Tabitha

2007-09-19T09:38:00.000-07:00

Tabitha Dial, a fellow blogger and poet, has asked me some intriguing questions and requested that I post the answers on my blog. Here we go.

How do blogs and social networking sites like MySpace and EveryDayMatters inspire you?

I'm not a big myspace fan- I think it's a place more suitable for 14 year olds looking to hook up with sex offenders. . .I prefer facebook myself, and it seems that several poets with whom I align myself aesthetically dig it as well. It's allowed me and other poets to create communities and more firmly establish groups of poets who have similar poetic ambitions. I'm a firm believer in community as an essential part of a poet's professional development. I have to say, though, that I had most of the "connections" that I have now on facebook before I registered on facebook. . .but it's still good, clean fun. Well, mostly clean.

How does this technology educate you?

I'd have to say that the social networking stuff doesn't educate me much at all. Blogs, on the other hand, are a definite source of education. I like to poke around, read Ron Silliman's daily sermon, visit my friend Mary Biddenger's blog, see what Scott Glassman's up to, and see where that may take me for the day. I do that probably once a week, if my schedule allows. I learn a lot there, especially because those blogs usually take me to other places, which take me to other places, and I never know where I may end up.

How do you use these technologies -- for networking, publicity, honing your craft, broadcasting news, etc.?

I use my own blog mostly for posting my poetry. Barely anyone really reads it, but that's OK. There's something about putting it out into the world, making it public, adding it as one grain of sand to the infinite dunes of cyberspace. There's a vulnerability to it that is enticing to me, and most of the work I post there is actually created in the blog space itself- it's NOT a polished work at all. It's as rough and unfinished as it gets. But it's THERE, committed to existing, committed to speaking whatever it has to say to whomever might happen upon it.

Do you feel the Internet is a helpful media for artists and poets?

I guess I would say that I don't think the internet can be characterized as a "media" unto itself. When I see, for example, what an artist like Geof Huth does with the his space on the internet compared to what I do with mine, it's really not the same thing. . .though there are obviously some connections there. The internet is full of dozens of different forms of media, and I would say that the internet both helps and hinders serious artists who attempt to use the internet to promote their work. At the risk of sounding like some kind of artistic elitist, the internet doesn't discriminate between hack artists/poets/musicians and people who have actually committed some genuine thought to their artistic endeavors. All artists are treated equally, allotted as much of cyberspace as they feel the need to fill. The cup, perhaps, is overflowing.

Have you made new contacts with like-minded people through the Internet? How has this changed your identity as a creative person?

I made one very special friend through my blog that has resulted in many wonderful projects and publications. Scott Glassman found me one day a few years ago and we hit it off immediately. It was a wonderful collaboration and pushed my poetry to an experimental place it probably wouldn't have otherwise gone. My work with Scott was, in fact, the point of origin for my newest and yet-unpublished collection of poetry. The prose poems that make up the majority of the collection came from an experiment with him, and I just kept writing them.

It also allowed met to reconnect with a teacher I had as an MA student, Lorna Dee Cervantes. She's an amazing poet whose sheer energy acts as an inspirational force.

How would you define your blog -- as an archive, a letter to the world or something else?

My blog is, at present moment, a mess. I have not, in the last year, given it as much time and attention as needed. It's definitely intended to be a commentary on poetry through both prose and my own poetry, but it's been lacking as of late. This is, in itself, a commentary on my blog, though-- that I feel some sense of obligation to it, that I take it very seriously, and that I am very concerned about it's present state. I definitely see it as a reflection of myself, and as my recent slip into the bowels of corporate america had sucked my slate clean of any real inspiration (a cliche, I know, but extremely true), my blog and lack of postings reflected this. When I moved to Colorado and found myself completely poetically and geographically displaced, i was confused both about who I had become and about what to post to my blog. While some people would use their blog to air their frustrations with these situations, I have retreated and hung back, as they say. In this sense, my blog is, to me, a sacred space of clarity.

Do you think poets or visual artists make more use of these media? Why and how?

I don't really feel informed enough about the visual world of the internet to answer this. . .sorry.

Who are some bloggers that you think exemplify the potential of blogs?

I will answer this quite bluntly- I am jealous of many blogs that give the time and attention to the world of contemporary poetry that I wish I could give. Ron Silliman's blog is quite esteemed and reputable because he does a good job at being Ron via blog. Lorna Dee Cervantes has a great blog which also conveys Lorna very well-- her commitment to certain causes, her passion and verve for life and poetry, her overall positive energy that she channels into real change. K Silem Mohammed has some amazing things to say about poetry and the world.

More to come . . .

& if I can find my pen

2007-09-13T12:52:00.000-07:00

The summary was a new type of writing. They splintered as they swam, swollen like a humidity-injected plank of cedar. I began to word so hard it came out as a word, which was unexpected and trite. Bearing down, they peeled the pieces, the pages, the awkward dust from the book, which may as well have been a dictionary. He does not know how to use the phonebook and is lost in its heft. None of them look at the camera. None of them put their names at the top of their papers. None of them list their satisfactions, their new ability to define.

& what weighs

2007-09-11T11:26:00.000-07:00

Could have been goblet, sulfur stink, the antelope's porous antlers. Bifurcation. In the new chill of morning, she noted how the roots of that flower were lifting themselves from the ground and sprouting new shoots, blooms. As it also grows deeper. But the geranium's second bloom is now shriveled and scab-like. A different interaction with the season. Your name, like an emblem, across the spice garden. We are saving the system, lifting our roots. With this, we will grow lighter and crawl.

Aside from the garden, I notice her weight distributing in the middle. Pooling around her wrists and hips. Inside the book, someone else's dedication, dripping with intention. The "y" as big as my pinkie. "L, to the one I'm loving. Yours. C." It is a gift, it is a death. The man on the phone knew my grandfather, and was sorry for his passing. Then he sold me a newspaper, which will come only on Sundays.

Fall and 31 are close at hand

2007-09-05T13:57:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm not quite back into the swing of daily blogging, but the first few weeks of the semester have hit me harder than I expected. My new job as a part-time faculty at Metro State
is going very well, but even though I've only taken on two classes, I'm swamped. Tying up loose ends from the old job, working on the dissertation, being a mom, finishing my chap for the Dusie project (yes, it WAS supposed to be done in June. . .) I feel like I've been hit by a train. I'm not the spry twenty-something I used to be, and alas, 31 is literally right around the corner. For god's sake. Make it stop.

I'm loving being back in the classroom again, and although it's been a sink-or-swim reentry into academia, I think I'm swimming strong at this point. After reading Mary's lament about having 17 uncirculating poems, I'm astonished at the fact that I must have at least 30 that I've never even printed out, no matter sent off for someone else to read. I guess it's about time to do this. I feel extremely out of practice, having not really submitted anything in nearly a year. And my printer is out of ink. Hmm. That's not a good enough excuse, is it?

The good news is that the dissertation is nearly done and is awaiting one more final approval from my main faculty advisers and I'm pretty much good to defend sometime in October. Yes, that's next month. Probably early next month, too. Um. . .did I mention that my printer is out of ink? Yikes. What did I get myself into.

And in the interest of not being completely self centered, September also marks another big birthday-- my little Eliot, pictured here with me. He'll be three, if you can believe it. I can't.

& dust & ashes

2007-08-16T14:44:00.000-07:00

Following the fossils. Trace their bony limb. This one, a plant, perfectly straight and fern-like. Have you tempted this fate? Asked yourself why you are so afraid of being trapped without air? Why should we hope for the miners, buried for 10 days, so many miles under? I would rather be crushed. Mortar and pestle. My body become a rock, petrified, hardening more with every touch. Like the miners: the closer they are to being rescued, the further they fall from the opening.

Winds of Change

2007-08-09T13:27:00.000-07:00

I thought it was about time for a post, seeing as I haven't posted in two months! Work, family, and making a house into a home have all been extremely taxing and time consuming lately, and I'm glad to announce that I'll soon be giving up my current corporate-type job for a more suiting job, teaching composition at a local college called Metro State College of Denver. There will be one week of overlap- last week fo work, first week of teaching, but I'm sure I can handle a week. This new situation will open my time up for more writing, reading, preparing for my dissertation defense this semester, and, well, hopefully much more blogging. How I've missed the blogging.

I'm working on my syllabus right now and am realizing how difficult it is going from one school of through/ pedagogical approach to another. . .I'm trying to figure out how to NOT create an entirely new syllabus and writing assignments, but at UIC it was all context-based writing, and at Metro it's more about the research and process. Really, they are two completely different approaches. The books are different, the assignments are different, and, of course, the campuses and schools are 1000 miles away from each other, both literally and figuratively. I'd be amazed if anyone still reads my blog, but if you do, I welcome any suggestions on this topic. I'm a little stuck as of now!

I'm also wrapping up production of my second (well, actually. . .third, since I did two last year!) dusie kollektiv e/chap for this year's project. I'm WAY late, but not dead last yet. I'll be using a lot of the poems in conjunction with my friend, Felicia's, photographs, for the projects. It's pretty awesome. I'll let you know when they're completed-- we'll certainly have plenty extra for distributing.

& repair

2007-06-06T13:08:00.000-07:00

For Brian

In your absence, there are tendrils. Leafy curls that reach for you. They have always been there, looking more like spiders than trees; feeling more like bristles than flowers. So inconspicuous. Delicate chains, hidden buds. A chaotic wisp brought us here, where there is no mythology. The bird’s new nest above the porch, an uncontrollable pile of junk mail. Your ability to forgive, erase. Shriveled, my hair and scalp in the tree. Chasing us out and away. Epiphyte. I cover you. I will chase. Longer then. And repair. And spread. I am here to grow with you.

& persona

2007-06-05T13:18:00.001-07:00

Murmur. Strands of hair woven in tulle. Her pear tree, nascent and removed. It is a cage, we argue, this swallowing center most illuminated by nests. What song? The woman you heard me saying me saying. What tine? Initial clap of the bell. You descend on me, still falling, still hovering. Perched. Who sings? Don’t answer so quickly. Standing among my others. Which one of me is being lost? On occasion, I call myself “her” because she is a multiple of three. Capture me moving, you can see the trinity. Beginning to shudder.

& lens

2007-05-10T20:50:00.000-07:00

Your coming here, pure accident. Dodging. The barometer was wrong; it promised grey and wet. Heavy skies. Instead, it is black and on me. Some sun in my ear. I feel it in the back of my eyes: the confusion to focus. How close? How much to get closer? How many slowly rolled before you said “Come here. You’re getting too wet.”

Maybe you’ll always see a window. I can't stop myself from looking, and looking again. And maybe again.

& fingers

2007-05-08T20:44:00.000-07:00

There’s something about the lacing. Touch and twine. The mixture of slice and rub. Muddled spark, all downhill. As if we are rolling, we follow the lines. Closeness, more of a blur than miles away. He is here, in this moment, overlapping each segment of digression. How many do you have? How many more can you touch me with? Hundreds? Thousands? Snakes in the rocks? Your thumbs again, holding every thing in place.

& subtle

2007-05-06T14:30:00.000-07:00

Split me into three. Braid. You’ve wound me too hard. Up the hill, the sidewalk crumbles. I can’t follow you there. Collapse. Like a glaring light on my cornea. My always-red eyes look for you. It’s time to shred this colorful blossom. You say, “We must use our thumbs.” The veins in your hands that only I want. I will take this and go. A trail of scalp & petals. Snow in Spring. You have already gone, speed and sweat, up the hill behind me.

& sun

2007-04-22T15:21:00.000-07:00

How to say the simplest thing. Clearly. What might happen in the shade of forest. Nude. Or night. What if you did touch me, exaggerating my sadness. Dark side of foliage. You cannot look at my face, the place it will take you. The rain coming down on our mountainous drive. Or distant. I want you to be there, waiting, but not knowing why. Or what you are wearing. With you, the most dangerous ride. A backdrop dies to be created. (maybe stairs, their angular slope, their ability to hold us and bring us up. . .down.) I can’t give you any hope. We are both steeping in that water, and despite its sting, we swim and swim.

& rope

2007-04-22T15:13:00.000-07:00

& rope

Hands elevate. Angle from below, the silent fall. What was hanging. You whisper around me. In a circle the voices drop. Swear to me, this is your battle, this is your tire swing. I crave the swing of the pendulum, the way it used to bring me to you. A climate that frays and tugs on the end. Sweet daffodil, I have tied you and tied you again.

Hopes

2007-04-22T14:57:00.000-07:00

Well, Colorado seems to have sucked the blog-desire right out of me. It could also have something to do with the full-time job and the monstrous house to take care of. I do have high hopes of getting back into writing here, though as well as checking up on other bolg-buddies better. I've been a bad cyberfriend.

The new job has it's ups and downs, and I suppose it's not so new anymore, as I've been there almost 4 months. It's safe to say that I like the people more than I like the actual work, but it's challenging and I'm learning a lot of useful things. So it goes. I miss teaching a ridiculous amount, and have floated my resume around a little, just to see if there's any hope of ever teaching again. It's definitely a missing piece of the puzzle right now.

I'm officially one step closer to the PhD completion- I defended my Prospectus (critical paper proposing the theoretical framework for your dissertation) and since the dissertation is mostly done, this is fab. If all goes well, I should defend the dissertation next semester and be a doctor by Christmas. Yes, what a gift that will be. And what a party.

I'm definitely still writing, even with the chaos of family, work, running, etc. Right now, I'm collaborating (surprised?) with a friend of mine who is a photographer, and some really amazing things are coming about. (Check out her photo blog here: http://stillh20.photobloggers.com) I'll post a few of the poems that have come about so far, but since I plan on using this for the dusie chapbook project, I don't want to give too much away. Got to save some for the paying customers, as they say.

New work coming out in ACM soon. And finally. It's going to be a whopper of a mag- well worth the wait and the $$. Haven't submitted much lately, but hope to change that at some point.

Hope to also get back to blogging about things that interest me and more involved in some sort of discourse about Contemporary poetry. I miss this outlet, whether or not anyone actually reads it.

Still kicking

2007-02-16T07:29:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd let anyone who might still be tuning in that I'm still alive. I've taken a full time job working for a company who creates and suppoerts educational products, and I'm doing a lot of writing for them. It's surely paying the bills, and I'm enjoying it a lot. Not much time for writing, as you can probably tell. I'm still working on the PhD, if I can squeeze a minute here and there to work on it. The prospectus is still kicking my butt, and I'm not done with it yet. The actual dissertation is pretty much done.

Looks like I'm lucky enough to be part of teh dusie kolektiv again, which is super wonderful. I'm in need of a project like this to spark my creative fuse. I'm also looking forward to making new friends in the network- it proved to be a wonderful tool last year. I have no idea what I'm doing yet. Hopefully working with a photographer friend of mine (Felicia) to create something cool.

I've been really bad about submitting anything. I have an upcoming pub in ACM, but that's from almost a year and a half ago. Something in Sugar Mule as well, not sure about those details. I need to send some stuff out. Is anyone else really been affected by this bizarre season of disfunction? What a strange winter.

egress

2007-01-11T12:39:00.000-08:00

for W.S.

the stations we march from are only guides. shallow markings. you are concerned about how and where we flow. from where the destination comes. how we can share and still move. away. out. osmosis of terrifying particles. I cannot breach your walls, your skin. I cannot calm your lenient slide, your best guess. I'll give you one if you take it. but where. do we go from there?

fallen

2006-12-28T16:30:00.000-08:00

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

sadness

2006-12-04T08:50:00.001-08:00

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

kari edwards

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

sadness

2006-12-04T08:50:00.000-08:00

kari edwards

fool

2006-12-03T15:26:00.000-08:00

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

interval

2006-11-18T19:38:00.000-08:00

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

astonishing discovery. . .

2006-11-15T16:49:00.000-08:00

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

from the dead (walking)

2006-11-15T16:24:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

fascicles

2006-11-07T14:36:00.000-08:00

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

confluence

2006-10-19T14:32:00.000-07:00

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

aware of the seamlessness

2006-10-12T14:07:00.000-07:00

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

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

drizzle

2006-10-12T13:57:00.000-07:00

drizzle

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

farm

2006-10-09T12:33:00.000-07:00

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

forecast

2006-10-09T12:16:00.000-07:00

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

Pumpkin picking fun

2006-10-09T11:22:00.000-07:00

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

pumpkin picking

Oct 7, 2006 - 31 Photos

Redundancy: on turning thirty

2006-09-29T14:23:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

pictures

2006-09-27T12:12:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday to Eliot! He's two!

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

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

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

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

Third Monday

2006-09-26T11:15:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

could it be?

2006-09-21T14:27:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

picara

2006-09-21T14:20:00.000-07:00

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

alumni

2006-09-21T13:43:00.000-07:00

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

home sweet home

2006-09-13T13:10:00.000-07:00

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

mission accomplished

2006-08-26T14:59:00.000-07:00

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

Reasons I'm glad to get out of Chicago

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

make up and moving

2006-08-11T10:02:00.000-07:00

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

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

Moving sucks

2006-08-09T10:34:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

APB

2006-08-07T12:38:00.000-07:00

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

return of the verse

2006-07-25T10:00:00.000-07:00

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

cross

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

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

Wicked Awesome

2006-07-21T12:08:00.000-07:00

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

Birthday Blowout

2006-07-20T10:09:00.000-07:00

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

Eliot playing in the water

2006-07-20T09:51:00.000-07:00

mumbo jumbo

2006-07-20T09:24:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

hiding

2006-07-18T10:07:00.000-07:00

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

oracular

2006-07-14T11:24:00.000-07:00

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

abundance

2006-07-11T13:50:00.000-07:00

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

arthropod

2006-07-10T11:46:00.000-07:00

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

aperture

2006-07-06T13:23:00.000-07:00

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

for you who wonders if its for you

2006-06-29T10:42:00.000-07:00

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

circulary

2006-06-28T12:43:00.000-07:00

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

amendment

2006-06-22T12:17:00.000-07:00

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

scapilary

2006-06-22T11:51:00.000-07:00

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

your heart is always talking

2006-06-14T14:02:00.000-07:00

(Title taken from an email from my gym)

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

New Beginnings of the best kind

2006-06-13T15:08:00.000-07:00

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

bread and butter

2006-06-09T07:36:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

things on the floor

2006-06-05T13:38:00.000-07:00

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

Eliot & stuff

2006-05-23T12:32:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

W(t)F

2006-05-15T11:17:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

When all else fails, do it yourself

2006-05-09T09:31:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

little thing

2006-04-22T09:44:00.000-07:00

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

ABD

2006-04-19T12:16:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

shorn

2006-04-13T08:59:00.000-07:00

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

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

On the verge of ABD. . .

2006-04-11T14:10:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

a sad time

2006-03-13T05:38:00.000-08:00

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

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

Migrane

2006-03-06T08:22:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

the perfect use of a semicolon

2006-02-28T09:54:00.000-08:00

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

Consistently Astonished

2006-02-10T14:38:00.000-08:00

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

Same as it ever was. . .

A quick update

2006-02-03T07:47:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

not having much to say but talking anyway

2006-01-14T08:16:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

to be back

2006-01-09T08:44:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

interesting

2005-12-13T07:00:00.000-08:00

Right now, I'm awaiting the departure of my husband and son to Colorado. They're flying there today and leaving me here to my own devices for a few days-- I'm looking forward to some concentrated study time for sure. I haven't read a thing in almost a week and a half. I haven't been alone like that for years, though, and sit here wondering what it will be like. Hmm. I'm excited.

I've been thinking a lot lately about a distinction that I tend to make in poetry, dismissing poetry that is traditional and boring as being "bad" poetry. Poetry not often worth reading. I think this is a misstep on my part, and I feel the need, mostly for myself, to clarify something. This internal struggle began when I made a comment about Mary Oliver a few weeks ago and many people commented that thay appreciate her poetry for various and different reasons. For me, this was a valuable exchange. I personally find Oliver's work to be redundant and boring, but there was a time in my life when I appreciated her poetry for the things it does well. Her poems do some work on some level and therefore may be interesting to some people at some times in their lives. Right now, I find her work un-interesting. For me, this is the most important quality of a poet's project-- or, even in some cases, do they have a project? Is their project just to tell a story? Or is there something about the disruption of the narrative or rearrangement of time or something about the telling of that story that makes it into something I would call interesting? By all means, I am not the authority on interesting or uninteresting poetry, but a poem should do new work, be taking a step in one direction or another. I'm a firm believer in the poet's role to innovate, even on the smallest level. I feel like a lot of contemporary poets are in a rut, stuck in the same lyric patterns we've been in for 20 years, writing the same uninteresting poem about the same uninteresting things over and over, and because the poetry world is comfortable living in this paradigm, these are the totem voices of contemporary poetry. Meanwhile, I'm excited about poets of my generation who are embracing even the slightest bit of innovation and living it, saying it. The wonderful women in my poetry group are a testament to this fact.

I feel like I should be more specific, while at the same time I am reluctant to hold someone up as "my ideal of interesting" and the antithesis. Maybe I'll rhuminate some more and post again later. I do have four days to think about poetry! Such an exciting prospect!

Gearhead

2005-12-05T08:25:00.000-08:00

Eliot has entered the information age at only 14 months old. He looks like a 15 year old here, and yes, he really was listening to music on my ipod, though he's only now learning how to program. We have to hide our digital comera, laptops, cell phones and ipods because he's addicted. So bizarre. What did kids do before the computer age? Play with twigs? I remember playing with ants in the dirt. And that was in the early 80's.

Check this out!

2005-12-02T07:34:00.000-08:00

Check out Scott Glassman's podcast on 30 days. Awesome. I definitely would do some dancing if Eliot wasn't sleeping in the next room. My favorite part is what he does with "makeup line (abyss edit)"-- funky and obsessive, as every good poem-jam should be :). I definitely enjoyed this. Where does he find the time?