mimsy and outgrabe

I'm Moving Away From Blogger, But Not From Blogging

2021-08-08T21:20:00.002-04:00

Mimsy and Outgrabe, my blog, has migrated to my website at https://www.sarahkaingutowski.com/blog. 

(Blogger stopped supporting email subscriptions. Heeeeeyyyyy subscribers! I love all eight of you!!)

Hope to see you over on the new site. 

How to Ease Away from a Particularly Traumatic Semester: Reading, Listening, Thinking, Walking

2021-05-28T17:57:00.000-04:00

This week I worked on the Prose Project even though I have my doubts and misgivings about the direction I've started on, I'm trying to be calm and just allow myself to write what may very well be nonsense. I'm trying to give myself space to try things, to fail, to start again, and to play. Particularly because -- other than reviews and this blog -- prose writing isn't usually my thing.

I finished a fiction book this week and I'm still reading Poets at Work, which is wonderful and strangely ... well, comforting, for lack of a better word. I'll be sad and bereft when I finish it. The Lowell interview is my favorite thus far, although I also just began the Walcott review -- and I love reading it because it reminds me of being in his classes, and also the few precious times I had conversations with him outside of class.

But it also might end up be my favorite because of what he says in the interview, and how it resonates alongside other things I've been engaging with, like the Airea D. Matthew's episode of the Commonplaces podcast.

For instance, this morning, I copied down this from the Walcott interview:

"What we can do as poets in terms of our honesty is simply to write within the immediate perimeter of not more than twenty miles, really."

This made me think about my own art in this context, and about how I write, and my subject matter -- which is often very much centered around my own experiences, not necessarily things that would seem universal -- and I can't escape that this is determined by my gender, my sexuality, my race, my socio-economic class, my career, where I live, etc. And then I was wondering if that's worth anything. But I don't think we can ever really know, or worry, about whether or not our work is worth anything to anyone else, unless we just want to make canned, color-by-number nonsense. We have to be honest, with ourselves and others, and perhaps in the way that Walcott suggests.

Of course, he's talking about himself as a Caribbean poet, but I found what he said, and what I was thinking about, resonating with (in conversation with?) the Commonplaces podcast when Matthews speaks to host Rachel Zucker about writing identity into our poems. She speaks about her choices to signal to the reader early in her book, Simulacra, that she's a black person, a black woman even more specifically, and about the conflict that can exist within us about *owning* who we are and how it shapes our art and the choices we make within it. In the podcast, she speaks about what we disclose and what we don't, and her personal conflicts when she considers what she can include in a poem and what she cannot (particularly, she and Zucker speak about writing about one's children and using their lives for/inside your art).

Anyway, that's what's been buzzing around in my giant cavernous head this week.

Also, I watched my friend M give a talk with her friend and collaborator D. Leavitt about a project they began during the pandemic that has resulted in some beautiful prints, two of which you can see exhibited online here and also on Instagram here. The talk was so eloquent and inspiring -- I love hearing artists discuss process and aims and this satisfied immensely.

Also also, I've slowly begun exercising again, which was difficult for the past year after suffering inflamed joints -- first knees, then feet, then hands, then elbows, then back. But I'm working through medications and treatments with my rheumatologist and trying to be a little more optimistic than I allowed myself to be over this past year. Honestly, I'm not sure it's possible to convince oneself to be optimistic or happy, but sunshine and regular walks to the water DO help provide some type of balm. (And sometimes even a walk in the cloudcover and fog is enough, too.)

My walk to the beach early in the week. I'll take any beach, sun or no, but especially an empty one.

Once More Into the Fray: I Revive the Blog and Once Again Accost the Internet with Nonsense I Can't Just Keep in My Damn Fool Head

2021-05-21T12:33:00.001-04:00

After abandoning the blog during the pandemic year, I'm ready -- I think -- to return to it. My year has been no more fraught with ugly change and professional and personal turmoil than anyone else's -- and, as the pandemic has wrought across the world some pretty devastating consequences, from job loss to the loss of loved ones, my year has probably held a good deal less trauma than many other people's.

Still, I wasn't in the frame of mind to report on the banality of remote teaching, sheltering in place, homeschooling, grocery delivery, and endless dishwashing. Nor was I quite ready to spill my innards onto the proverbial page about a newly developing chronic illness, or a tired drama that began two years ago with family members and climaxed in the most devastating and humiliating way last December.

Even writing those last two sentences makes my stomach turn. So that's all I'll say about any of that, for now at least.

In an effort to reclaim something of my former self, I'm embarking on not one, not two, but three writing projects this summer. Well, two of those projects have been "in process" over the past year, but moving at a slug's pace because of the ... remote teaching, sheltering in place, homeschooling, grocery deliv-- you get it -- and so I'm striving to finish them over the next three months. A 90 day plan -- that's what I've come up with. Or really 98 days -- and why yes, I did demarcate the project tasks across the days on a color-coded printable calendar, because I am nothing if not a too-the-tee Virgo and a huge nerd.

The third project is something new and strange to me and also something that I guess I won't speak aloud or write down here just yet -- mostly because I'm superstitious and don't want to jinx it, but also so that I can get some momentum going and avoid making a fool of myself. I will at least say that it's a prose project, not poetry, and so maybe that's what I'll call it for now, Prose Project, and that will help me describe some of the ups and downs in its creation without completely embarrassing myself.

I mean, who knows? I may abandon the project by next week. But I've used part of this week to plan out its creation across the entire summer, more or less working on it daily. I have no idea if that's conceivably possible -- the kids are in school for only one more month, and I will try to make the most of the few precious hours I have to myself and the time inside my (admittedly) cavernous and disorganized head. Once they are all home for the summer, quiet time will be less available -- but a girl can hope, right? My kidlets are older. after all, and this summer might be a little more *open* socially than last summer. So we'll see.

It's stupidly ambitious, I'll admit.

In addition to those three long-term projects, I have a very large stack of books and literary journals to read. Some will be rereads, for reasons having to do with teaching, and some will be for book reviews that I've been planning to write for the past year but couldn't finish (because of COVID in March 2020 and January 2021, chronic illness, family trauma/dram -- you get it).

So this is all to say that in the absence of Things to Look Forward To just landing in my lap, I'm trying to create Things to Look Forward To all on my own, and when I write Things to Look Forward To, I mostly mean Things That Will Distract Me from Thinking About the Things I Don't Want to Think About Anymore.

And if you're a writer and reading this, you'll know that's a laughable goal, because if I write anything I'll probably be Writing About Something I Think is Completely Unrelated to Things I Don't Want to Think About Anymore But is Actually a Loose Metaphor or Allegory for Things I Don't Want to Think About Anymore.

I think I'll end this *stunning* reentry into the world of blogging (please note: *exaggerated eyeroll*) with a short list of things I'm reading and listening to right now:

BOOKS

Poets at Work: Interviews from The Paris Review, edited by Vijay Seshadri

This is such a joy to read. Because I'm nothing if not perpetually nosy. The Pablo Neruda interview, which I just read, is a particular gem. History has not been kind to his political views and reveals some major missteps in his judge of character. (Looking at you, Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh!) And also there's the usual Pablo Neruda that we love and worship who gives out stunning bonmots that somewhat alleviate the shock of his support for genocidal autocrats.

Made to Explode by Sandra Beasley

This is one of those books that I'm going to review for the New York Journal of Books, which I've recently been invited to join. So I won't say anything here -- I'll save it for the official copy.

Stoic Classics Collection: Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, Epictetus's Enchiridion, Seneca's On The Happy Life, translated by George Chrystal, George Long, and Roger L'Estrange
- I started this during the pandemic and, admittedly, I can only read so much at a time. Those stoics aren't exactly Pollyannas, which is exactly why I picked up the book, in an effort to remind myself about resiliency. From what I can tell, however, resiliency to a stoic means that you should find joy in the fact that you truly own nothing, sometimes not even your own mind, and that we're all going to die and end up eaten by the universe. So... sometimes this is a difficult one to start the day with, especially since early morning is generally when I have time to read the material I want to actually *study*.
The Hotel Neversink by Adam O'Fallon Price

I heard about this novella on an episode of my new favorite obsession (see below). It's a mystery and I've been reading about a chapter a night. I was interested because it was conceived as a novella-in-short-stories, and so even though I've consigned it to "night reading" I'm kind of studying its structure and how Price is connecting the stories with a mystery through-line.

PODCASTS

I'm a Writer, But . . . hosted by Lindsay Hunter and Alex Higley

This podcast is funny and informative and conversational and I wish I'd discovered it sooner, but it's bringing me much joy now. I love hearing about each visiting author's challenges, writing practices, obsessions, and influences (again, because I'm REALLY nosy) but also the visiting author always reads from new work and sometimes the hosts ALSO read from work-in-progress and I find this practice inspiring and freeing and really interesting.

Did I say this list would be short? When have you known me to be brief about ANYTHING??

To wit, I'll leave you here with this image of my perpetually tired dog rolling in your head: (You're welcome!)

He's had *such* a hard day. (It's 10:30 a.m.)

2020 Quarantine/Social Isolation Report That Again, No One Asked For

2020-04-24T07:48:00.000-04:00

Inside The Grind
When I first learned we were moving our classes fully online, I thought, "no big deal -- so much of my material is already up on Blackboard," but this was a false sense of security and possibly excessive pride, because this has turned out to be very untrue.

I mean, yes, my materials are up on Blackboard, but they are not necessarily useful in terms of *teaching* -- discussion boards have to be created, and slide presentations need supplementary voiceover in the form of screencast videos, which are not necessarily difficult to create but *do* require me to have a quiet room to myself for at least 30 minutes per video -- usually more, because sometimes you mess up, even when you create a script. And the creation of the script itself takes time, as in at least another half hour, and creating these scripts when I'm interrupted by other members of my household every 15 minutes makes all of this course prep *while the class is already running* much like navigating an obstacle course, albeit a mental one. And, of course, it's not just one class that I'm doing this for. And then there are the emails. So. many. emails.

But there's an end in sight, for my poor students and for me: Four more weeks. This deadline is both frightening and also reassuring. How will we get everything done that we're supposed to do? How will I actually *grade* items, ever again? I feel like I'm doing so much course management that I don't have time to actually review any of their work. It's a little nightmarish.

Inside My Head
Speaking of nightmares -- I've been having more vivid dreams, ones I can actually remember. They aren't even really that frightening, just stressful. Full of hallways and conference rooms, spaces I don't recognize and in real life wouldn't give a shit about -- and yet I'm really concerned, in my dreams, with being in the right place at the right time. The other day I had a dream that I was wandering around one of these mazes dressed in pajamas, not real clothes.

And then I wake up to anxiety. But I do put on real clothes. Even jewelry. Because I've been trying to make this whole work-from-home situation not be one large slide into complete sloth.

Eviscerated bunny carcass courtesy of my lovely dogs.

Inside My Home
Two dogs create so. much. dog. hair. So much.

Three children create so. many. dishes. So many used glasses with random levels of varying types of drinks. I feel like we're constantly washing dishes, putting away dishes, or talking about washing and putting away dishes.

Reading and Writing
Remember when I used to write about poetry? About reading poetry? About *writing* poetry? Yeah, me too. Good times.

Actually, I've been reading in small, stolen minutes Aziza Barnes' I Be But I Ain't. I began that book years ago when visiting Poet's House in NYC -- I found it on the shelves and began reading it while I waited to attend some reading downtown. I loved it, felt disappointed I had to put it back on the shelves and leave it there -- and so, a couple of weeks later, or maybe months, bought a copy -- and then didn't pick it back up again until just now. No idea why. It's so very good.

I've had to do a lot of rereading, too, for the classes I'm teaching, so I'm also reading things that are not poetry. The play Water by the Spoonful by Quiara Alegría Hudes. It's great, and I'm hoping my creative writing students like it. (Out of all of my classes this semester, they seem to be a group that's been most comfortable and happy with the transition to online learning -- and the play features an online recovery group, which is a kind of strange coincidence now that almost all aspects of ((social)) life are virtual these days.) For my lit class, A Raisin in the Sun. I forget sometimes how funny the play can be, in the middle of all the gravity. Small, beautiful moments of realistic humor -- sarcastic asides, jokiness between family members. Like little rays of sunshine, or furtive drafts of fresh air, through the otherwise dark, claustrophobic room of the play.

I'm kind of dreading the next assignment for that lit class. Normally I love teaching Cormac McCarthy, particularly *because* he's so dark, but why -- why -- did I have to assign The Road for *this* semester? Why couldn't I have stuck with No Country?

Similarly, my novel class is reading The Corrections, which I pair with The Sound and the Fury, and is normally a very apt and instructive pairing. BUT GOOD GOD. Assigning a book that actively works to make you loathe the characters, from which you'd very much like to *escape* the characters, just doesn't sit well with the close quarters of quarantine. I have no idea how the students in that class will take it. What a note on which to end the semester! (Because it's 500 plus pages, we're going to be reading it as our last complete work of the course).

I'm writing small, weird pieces in the mornings this week. And then moving on to emails, class prep, my kids' distance learning, etc. Eventually I'd like to play with these morning sketches and see if they can be turned into actual poems, but that *eventually* seems like a very long way off.

Still, writing *something* makes me feel a little more like my usual self. My Quarantine Self is not exactly a chick I want to be good friends with. The sooner she can move on, the better.

On Rage, Responsibility, and Resilience

2020-04-10T10:37:00.002-04:00

I'm not sure what I should write about anymore. That goes for the blog as much as for my poetry. I've been waking up each morning very early and allowing a small half hour for writing, but little has come of it. A draft revision here. Indulgent, self-pitying ramblings there. Sometimes I just stare at the page, or at the clock.

Vacillating between my children's distance education and teaching my own classes online has been challenging, sure, but I knew it would be. Yesterday was the first day I felt like we had a good rhythm going, like we were on the right track -- I had some optimism. My kids were engaged and doing what they needed to; I borrowed a Chromebook from our school district on Wednesday so that my youngest could do some of her online math and science activities next to me, while I responded to student emails and graded.

I was not fully prepared for answering quite so many emails. I don't know why -- it makes sense -- and yet it means that I haven't been able to grade quite so much. I participate in the discussion boards, but if the students don't respond to my comments I have no idea whether or not they are reading those comments, and those comments are the only supplement I have right now for lecturing and classroom discussion.

This little guy's back in my office. I actually miss my office.

Additionally, quite a few of my students haven't participated at all in the classroom activities. They haven't answered emails. I've pushed back deadlines to give them time -- I know that quite a few don't have regular access to technology, because they are sharing computers with family members or they have spotty WiFi or they are continuing to work through the pandemic, because they are employed by grocery and convenience stores or restaurants that offer take-out or delivery. Some of them have sick family members. Some of them went through surgery just before the pandemic and are in a kind of fraught recovery -- their risk of infection is so much greater, and their ability to protect themselves has become so diminished. I'm trying not to lose them, in a figurative sense as well as, unfortunately, a literal one.

And some of them are using email to ask for clarification about assignments, to get feedback for papers, and this is really great. I'm "talking" with those students perhaps more than I would have in a regular semester, and that's kind of lovely. It's one of the aspects of community college that I really value -- the mentoring, where I can see actual growth and results from my facilitation in their learning, my guidance.

But some students are more interested in working the system, and taking advantage of this crisis, than actually doing work. Those students are few and far between, but they are there, and they are a massive time-suck. They send emails and expect ... not answers, but gratification. They want the world to bend to their will simply because they desire it. I woke up at two in the morning full of rage thinking about this. These students are the ones who expect to be spoonfed learning, either because they are the tragic product of helicopter parenting, or our ridiculous public education system that celebrates students who are mildly competent and pushes through everyone who isn't. Or they've been told that their worries and anxieties, which are normal and part of growing into adulthood, are somehow debilitating and an excuse to bypass resilience. To bypass effort.

I have no idea if I'm helping my own three children meet their educational needs right now because I'm so preoccupied with my students. But I know that as I continue parenting, if anything, I would like to teach my children to see discomfort as a creative obstruction, not as a crutch. I would like to teach them to meet challenges through problem-solving, through critical thinking, without negotiation or complaint. I would like to teach them that they are responsible, too, for their learning. That they are the ones most responsible for their learning.

Because of my two a.m. wakefulness I overslept and so have my children. I have a department meeting at noon. I have so many papers to grade. And more emails to answer. I'm so discouraged right now, but I'm trying to remind myself, in the aftermath of my anger, that I need to be resilient, too. So, onward. Once more "unto the breach," the fucked up world. Summoning my best King Henry right now:

Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,

Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage

Or something like that.

2020 Quarantine Report, Or, My Futile Attempts to Maintain Focus

2020-03-29T09:42:00.000-04:00

Well this is a shit-show, isn't it?

I don't have any eloquence for what has been occurring all over the world for the past month, but it's bizarre how the past two weeks have changed our everyday routines. And by changed I mean upended. Smashed. Eradicated.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing in and of itself -- the cause is horrific, naturally, but the actual change, up until this point, for me, has been strangely comforting. When there's a terrifying physical threat to humanity at large, I've found solace in sheltering-in-place with my cubs (or perhaps more apt, piglets, because goddamn my poor house is a wreck, and it was a wreck to begin with). We've had our moments of strain, naturally -- you can't have five people in each other's company 24-14 and be happy and shiny for every hour of the quarantine. But we've tried to make the best of it. Up until now, existence has been kind of dreamlike: not idealistic, like a goal you hope to attain, but fuzzy, like something remembered after sleep. Vague. Ill-defined.

Now I'm standing (really, sitting, in bed with a dog curled at my feet) on the precipice of a big change at the college, and in the lives of my children -- moving to fully-online distance learning. Tomorrow my children begin their distance education programs as shaped by our school district. And at Stuffolk, we resume our semester after an extended spring recess. I honestly have little idea of what to expect. I've never taught an online class of 30 students, let alone four online classes at once -- I never, ever, EVER, would have desired to teach fully online -- and I know that most of my students have never even considered taking a distance education course before. Using Blackboard as a repository for PowerPoint presentations and homework assignments and handouts is very different from using it to conduct classroom interaction, and it takes a different skill set and a wholly different level of diligence.

Diligence is, of course, something in high demand right now. We're supposed to be diligent about hand-washing and social distancing, about monitoring our consumption of goods and our collective United Statesian propensity to hoard when faced with scarcity. And for those of us with children, we're supposed to be diligent about keeping them not just safe and healthy, but educated -- homeschooling as the new way of life, in perpetuity, or at least until the threat of contagion has decreased.

Diligence requires such an immense amount of ego -- described by Daniel Kahneman in his book, Thinking Fast and Slow, which is a text I use in one of my humanities classes at the college. His description of ego depletion and its role in our cognitive abilities resonated with me, and not just because I was looking for a reason, an excuse, why I couldn't maintain all of the good habits I wanted to start and sustain. But Kahneman, building on the research of his fellow psychologists, reveals that we only have *so much*. There are limits to our mental capacity for all kinds of activity. Only so much energy within each of us for creativity, logic, exercise, empathy, compassion.

So when faced with the prospect of teaching online -- my full-time job -- and expecting that I should also be facilitating, daily, my three children's continued education (being diligent, making sure they log online themselves to access the district's distance learning activities, that they're actually retaining and processing and synthesizing the information found there) -- which is also, arguably, a full-time job with overtime, considering that there are three of them -- I feel "ego-depleted" before I've even begun.

I might venture that this is not the most optimal way to begin a "return" to teaching, or interacting with the world outside our little house, even if it's virtual interaction.

Mood. (Photo taken after a day of ineffectual panic.)

And then I read about, and think about, all of our medical professionals -- techs, PAs, LPNs, RNs, MDs, DOs -- and the horrors they are facing -- so much suffering, so much death -- and how much they are doing right now, how much they are required to do -- not just from a sense of responsibility to their career or an obligation to duty, but rather from a place of compassion, from a call to their humanity -- and that they are doing this work beyond the point of ego-depletion, and I tell myself to shut the fuck up.

Shut down the neuroses. Just hunker down, and push through.

And it's going to be a push. I don't anticipate the next two months going well AT ALL in terms of my classes, in terms of my own kids' education, and I wish I could apologize sincerely to them, my students and children alike, but all I can do is kind of virtually shrug, and literally shrug, and say, I'd like to do my best, but I don't know if I have a best to give, at this point.

It's Been A Time: The Six Months Recap No One Asked For

2020-02-21T11:33:00.000-05:00

It's been seven months since I last posted to the blog. A lot has happened since then -- some good things, some bad things, but a lot of *life* things that more or less elbowed out the time I might take for reflection in a blog post. To be honest, I'm not quite sure I've gained that time back at this point, but I feel the need to do this kind of writing again. We'll see how it goes -- I don't know if I'll post regularly or on any kind of a schedule. I'm just going to focus on this one post right now.

My last post (from July 2019) was about the absolutely wonderful, and successful, Artist Residency in Motherhood (ARiM) that I shared with my friend and colleague M.S. The week after the residency I participated in a project run by ARiM's creator, Lenka Clayton: she asked for mother-artists to submit a record of a single day, July 15, 2019 -- and she said that she would select a number of them and compile them in a book that would be part of the inaugural exhibition at the University Art Museum at New Mexico State University. My selection -- about a day which started on a comical note, chasing our hound puppy around the neighborhood, and then ended on a somber note, with news about my aunt's passing -- was chosen for inclusion in the book. I'm pleased to be part of an art exhibit, which is something new for me, and eager to read the rest of the entries. (There's a PDF version available here but I'm waiting for my physical copy to arrive.)

(Photos: Jennie Anglim)

In August my first full-length collection, Fabulous Beast: Poems, was published. This was, as you might suppose, the realization of a long-held dream and the culmination of many years work writing, revising, and submitting. The first of two launches/release parties was held at Bard's Alley bookstore in Vienna, Virginia. It was small and intimate, like the book store, but filled with so many faces I was thrilled to see again after half a lifetime of residing in New York.

The night was shadowed, however, by my brother-in-law's recent admission to the hospital -- we'd just returned from a family vacation to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and in the week that followed he and my sister spent almost every waking moment packing up their old home so they could move into a new one. It turned out that he caught strep at the beach, which was complicated with walking pneumonia. Coupled with a handful of sleepless nights and stressful days, he turned septic, and the following weeks were, well, rather agonizing for our family. We almost lost him. Thankfully the doctors eventually found the drugs that eliminated the sepsis, but he spent literal weeks in the hospital. Probably the most important of the "bad things" I mentioned above.

Me, introducing A.P., at the September book launch

I'm not going to recount the entire half year in this post -- but I'll end with some of the good things: A second book launch in September on Long Island, on my birthday, with friends and family. A trip to Austin, Texas with our children -- the first time we'd attempted any kind of family vacation like this -- which coincided with the Texas Book Festival, where I signed some books and met more members of Texas Review Press. And a return to the Pen Parentis Annual Winter Poetry Salon, this time with the full-length Fabulous Beast (the last time was with my chapbook), which was celebratory and gratifying and an excellent introduction to some new (to me) fellow parent-writers.

I'm writing new poems and slowly editing my new manuscript, and also applying when and where I can to post-publication awards. I'm trying to support the book and promote it whenever possible without being obsessive and unbearable. The difficulties in securing reviews is a little depressing, but that's offset by the fact I've received some lovely feedback recently -- informally and mostly from strangers, but cherished all the same.

Isn't that really why one writes, and then publishes? In the hope that someone out there is listening?

At the Pen Parentis Winter Poetry Salon in January 2020

Artist Residency in Motherhood 2019

2019-07-15T07:14:00.001-04:00

The following is a day-by-day log of my progress and thoughts throughout last week, as I completed an "Artist Residency in Motherhood" with my colleague at Stuffolk, and frequent collaborator (in teaching and in art), visual artist Meredith Starr. During the week I worked on revising a poetry manuscript and finishing one of my plays. M.S. has a year-long painting project she's been working on, and she spent the week catching up/getting back on track with that series.

This log makes for a long blog post, which may not be everyone's jam, but since I keep this blog more or less for my own edification, I thought I'd include this disclaimer at the top. If you like to read about other artists' processes, read on. (And, I highly recommend Daily Rituals: How Artists Work and Daily Rituals: Women at Work, both by Mason Currey both of which I read in the first weeks of this summer.)

Playwriting photos are not very exciting, admittedly.

If you're just here because of a mild curiosity about the Artist Residency in Motherhood, or what I was up to last week (after being bombarded with daily pictures from my Instagram and Facebook accounts), here's a summary:

We reserved a small studio apartment in downtown Patchogue via AirBnB, not far from the camp where my three kids (and one of M.S.'s) were enrolled for the week. Each morning we dropped them off at 9 and then drove 5 minutes to the apartment. We'd spend a few minutes catching up and talking about our goals for the day while setting up (painting supplies for M.S.; laptop and notebooks and drafts for me), and then we'd get to work. We worked more or less without speaking, but we did listen to music -- something I don't normally do while writing in a private space, but which isn't too distracting when I'm writing prose. (I can find it very difficult while writing poetry -- if I do it has to be some kind of song on repeat, where the music is soothing but the lyrics kind of dissolve and become nonsensical with the repetition). We'd stop for a half hour or so for lunch around 12:30 or 1 p.m., and then resume until about 3:30, when we had to clean/pack/organize ourselves for the next day and then drive back to pick up the kids at 4.

For us both, it was a transformative and exceptionally productive week. We're wondering why we never thought to do this sooner. It seems so foolish to have never attempted anything like this. I mean, one applies to formal residencies and writing retreats because one requires the time and space to create, but also because -- when you are awarded one -- they grant you also a certain amount of prestige. Prestige & acknowledgment is wonderful -- I'm not knocking it -- but the real point is to write: To work earnestly and productively and with relatively little distraction. So if you find yourself closed out/rejected by those formal residencies -- they are so competitive, especially the ones for parents that either grant childcare or are more amenable to parents, requiring one or two weeks away, and not one or two months) -- I highly recommend this workaround.

M.S. making her beautiful paintings based on time-tracking

Granted, I'm coming from a place of privilege. While I wouldn't go so far as to say I could afford this -- the cost of the AirBnB plus camp tuition for three children was no small amount -- I know it's not going to break me or my family financially. There are other writers and artists who cannot afford to take this kind of monetary risk, or who may have children so small they can't be away for 6-8 hour stretches, or who may not be able to spend that much time away from their other career or job.

But giving oneself permission to dedicate serious time and effort towards one's art is so important. If you are curious about this kind of self-granted, self-directed DIY residency, and have more questions, please feel free to ask me.

Also: maybe read these poems in the Los Angeles Review: I like especially what McCadden is doing structurally in "reverse overdose" -- it's very effective, moving. Although as I read poems now, particularly one with formal elements, I'm thinking about what Cage says in "Composition as a Process: Part II" (from Silences: Lectures and Writing) about composition as a moral act, and how he views highly formal art as inhumane. It's intriguing -- I don't know if (I doubt) I agree with him -- but it's interesting.

Monday, July 8, Day One:

Pandora Music Station: Vampire Weekend

Woke up, walked dog, prepared kids for first day of camp, and just as I was leaving the house I began having those little squiggly visual disturbances that signal a migraine.

As Little Miss Talkalot II would say, "not gweat."

Still. I popped three ibuprofen immediately, and the visual disturbances disappeared within about 1/2 hour, replaced by a strong but workable headache. I could drive with a headache -- so I dropped my kids off at camp, met up with M.S., and we drove to our AirBnB for the week -- a small studio apartment in Patchogue, within walking distance of Main Street, and set up our very own "camp".

I spent most of the early part of the day reading -- screens hurt my eyes too much. I read from John Cage's "Silence: Lectures and Writings" and also the latest draft of my play, making notes. Then I spent the last part of the day writing email to different literary magazines and web sites, soliciting book reviews.

None of the solicitation for book reviews or readings at book fairs or book stores feels particularly great. It's so humbling and sometimes humiliating. I can take humbling -- the humiliation when booksellers or venues are less than gracious can be really tough to stomach. But I didn't spend a better part of the last decade writing and then submitting this book to publishers only to ignore it completely once it actually gets published. And with so much noise on the internet, and so few book stores, it's really necessary to do this work if you desire an audience for your writing. Which, I do. Otherwise, why publish?

Anyway. Day One was not the ripping success I wished it to be. But I think I salvaged it from disaster.

Tuesday, July 9, Day Two:

Pandora Music Station: Radiohead

My workspace

Wrote just over 1300 words of the play, which is nothing short of miraculous, particularly when I consider how I read my pages yesterday and felt stuck, like I didn't know how to progress further.

I began with a kind of epiphany in, naturally, the shower. Don't good ideas always happen in the shower?

Actually, sidebar: I'm reading John Cage this week, his Silence: Lectures and Writing, which I loaned from my local library, and he has this little narrative about ideas:

Dad is an inventor. In 1912 his submarine had the world's record for staying under water. Running as it did by means of a gasoline engine, it left bubbles on the surface, so it was not employed during World War I. Dad says he does his best work when he is sound asleep. I was explaining at the New School that the way to get ideas is to do something boring. For instance, composing in such a way that the process of composing is boring induces ideas. They fly into one's head like birds. Is that what Dad meant?

As any good procrastinator knows, the condition of stress, one's own fight-or-flight response, can induce ideas, too -- perhaps as your body is preparing for flight, that's when they arrive. Because after waking up late, walking an undisciplined hound dog for thirty minutes, making lunch, and having only 10 minutes to clean and dress before taking one's kids to camp -- I was ready to flee. And an idea came.

Anyway. So my idea was that my play, Accountability Partners -- while in terms of plot, ostensibly revolves around porn addiction -- is actually, essentially, about the seductive nature of narrative: how we are pulled in by other people's stories, aroused by them, changed by them. How we try to adopt narratives, live inside them; how narrative sometimes saves us, but often fails us.

Having this little idea helped with my characters' dialogue today. What stories did they want, or need, to tell? And what would be the consequences of those stories -- as lived, and having been told?

Wednesday, July 10, Day Three:

Pandora Music Station: Beck

M.S.'s workspace

Spent the morning revising four of the poems in my new manuscript/collection. Then went to lunch with M.S. at a restaurant, partly to celebrate our DIY Residency, but also to scout the location for a September book party/launch for Fabulous Beast: Poems. Then, came back to the apartment and spent the last hour sending out more book review requests.

I think today gave me some breathing room from yesterday's work on Accountability Partners, and after rereading the newest pages, I think I'll have a good starting place for tomorrow's work on the play.

I feel good having worked more on the poetry manuscript, too. My goal is to have the revision finished by the end of the summer.

Thursday, July 11, Day Four:

Pandora Music Station: Jeff Buckley, then Pearl Jam, then a return to Radiohead

When I left off on Tuesday, I was at 88 pages with Accountability Partners. Today, I did a lot of cutting -- taking out cringe-y dialogue and unnecessary exposition -- with the first third of the day, and shaving the draft down to roughly 86 pages. (Tracking revision with pages is easier than tracking with word count). Then I moved to actual writing, and wrote about 600 words (moving the play to 90 pages) before M.S. and I broke for lunch late in the day. Then I revised poems. 2 of them. So it was a good day, with small but important progress made on both projects.

I don't want to jinx myself, but I think I'm very close to finishing my first full-length play.

(I've probably just jinxed myself.)

Last day celebratory drinks and tacos at Rhum

Friday, July 12, Day Five:

Pandora Music Station: Vampire Weekend (This station proved to be less "sad-bastard" than the others)

OMIGOD I finished it. My first full-length play. I mean, it still needs a helluva lot of revision. But it has a beginning-middle-end! I mean, there's something ACTUALLY THERE to revise! And there are a couple of parts I even like! So exciting.

Micro-Sabbatical/DIY Starbucks Residency 2019: Take Two

2019-06-14T13:57:00.000-04:00

I know! Two in one year! It's a small miracle!

Day One, June 10, 2019: Okay, I didn't follow my plan very well. I DID make it out of my home and to Starbucks but I didn't reread my play there. Nor did I read or revise any of the poems from the new manuscript. But I was productive. I submitted Fabulous Beast: Poems to a book festival, and then I revised a review and submitted it to a journal for consideration. These were necessary things. I consider today a warm-up for getting back in the game of writing every day.

Day Two, June 11, 2019: Rained-Out. (A joke. I had a sick kid at home. I know. In June. Jury's still out about whether or not she was actually sick.) I did manage to work on poems from my manuscript, but basically the end result was figuring out what I definitely DON'T want to do with my poems going forward. Not exactly time wasted, but I don't have much to show for today's work.

In the absence of actual productiveness, I give you: Our new rescue pup, Lutz. (He's a Plott hound! Before him, I didn't know that was a thing!)

Day Three, June 12, 2019: Made it to the Starbucks without incident, and I even found a corner seat -- which is probably most convenient for writing without distraction. I started to revise my poems again, and settled into a beat-per-line form that will -- I think? -- work nicely. At any rate, it's making my language more tight & precise . . . again, "I think." Obviously, it's too early to say, because I'm reluctant to state anything definitively. But whatever. It's giving me a focus at the moment, and it feels like progress is being made.

Also, I've attempted giving these poems titles, which I'm far less confident about. One of the things I stress to my creative writing students is the importance of using titles, and yet when it comes to practicing this particular tenet I'm really awful. Also these titles might be really awful. Anyway. At least I'm trying. I can always strike them later.

So, poems revised: 4. Poems needing revision: 82. *sigh* It's a long row to hoe, people.

Day Four, June 13, 2019: Worked from home today because I needed too many materials that I didn't want to drag into the coffee shop (books, notes, folders, etc.). Today was spent doing book promotion stuff -- not uncomfortable, humiliating, hey-can-you-throw-me-a-bone stuff, but follow up with editors at magazines where Fabulous Beast poems have been published. I spoke with almost everyone at AWP this year, but I didn't have any press release or official information to give them at that point. Now I do, though, so I spent the better part of the morning writing letters and attaching the press release and book cover and taking them up on their offers to spread the news about the book.

This is a very nice part of publishing and thus creating & maintaining a literary community -- people who are happy to spread your good news and treat it as their own good news (which it kind of is, since they were the first places to publish the poems).

Also I received an unsolicited invitation to read during the summer at a writer's conference, which is a bit of a milestone for me.

And -- not to get too braggy and boastful -- but I reread my revisions from yesterday and I suspect they don't completely suck.

All in all, not a bad day!

Day Five, June 14, 2019: Did I say I liked those new drafts? Phbbbbtttt. I spent today reworking the original four, and then working on two more, and then trying to psych myself up for a third or fourth. But Starbucks was freezing, and I found myself distracted by ALL THE INTERNET THINGS, which is dangerous and I should probably get one of those internet-blocking apps for my laptop and ALSO probably lay off the coffee IF my absence of periods in this paragraph are any indication of what it does to me on an empty stomach.

But one of the good things about my internet distraction is that this morning I read this beautiful new/old poem by S.P. (I believe it was written a while ago, but it's something unpublished as of yet) and that restored a little bit of my faith in the poetry universe. NYRB is actually publishing long poems! NYRB is actually publishing poems! By someone I know who really deserves it!

Yeah, I should probably lay off the caffeine.

Anyway, now that I'm at the end of this really weird, kind of half-ass mini-sabbatical (I did NOT stick to my plan), I'm considering extending it. Like, I might try to take 2-3 mornings a week to escape the house, hole up in my corner at the coffee shop, and work on this manuscript OR MAYBE EVEN ONE OF THE PLAYS I KEEP TALKING ABOUT FINISHING.

Also I'm avoiding work email like a mofo. I know there are things I should answer in there. BUT. I. DON'T. WANT. TO.

Next week, I will have to. But for now -- I think I'll go read a little, and have lunch, and then use some of this coffee-fueled nervous energy to do something productive for my household, like fold laundry. Have I mentioned my house is back to disaster mode? Here is an actual picture of me & my homelife:

I mean, things could be better on this end. But we can't have everything, right?

Returning to Blogging, More Bathroom Renovating, DIY Residency Planning, and a Cover Reveal

2019-05-03T08:33:00.001-04:00

I haven't written here in quite a while. I've liked the silence. (I'm sure you have too!) After writing a post a week, more or less, last year for the Poetry Blogger Revival Tour, I felt a little burnt out.

Since my last post, I've worked very sporadically on poems -- written maybe four of them. Much of my morning writing time has been used to grade, or answer emails, or prep for a class. That last part annoys me because I've really tried to get the classes to the point where I have everything done before the semester begins, but sometimes I make changes to the schedule that seem really necessary and then that means more mid-semester prep.

At home we're renovating the second bathroom in our tiny cape, so that means everything from that bathroom is spread out around the house and there's a fine film of sheetrock dust over everything -- mostly because I haven't had time or energy to thoroughly dust and vacuum like I probably should. (Renovating the bathroom at the end of the semester was a fine idea. I'm. a. genius.)

This week I submitted a proposal for AWP 2020, which will take place in San Antonio, TX. I haven't had a panel picked up for the conference in a few years, so maybe I'm due. I hope it's accepted -- it gives me a chance to collaborate with a couple of my friends: one from college, J.C., who is a playwright and TV/film writer and essayist who lives now in Los Angeles. The topic is on DIY residencies and retreats -- granting yourself time and space to write -- and she's been doing these kinds of things for years now; also with C.Y.M., who completed an Artist Residency in Motherhood a short while ago.

M.S. and I have been planning, and putting the final necessary pieces in place, for doing our own Artist Residency in Motherhood this summer, for a week in July. We have all of our kiddos signed up for day camps, and we're renting a tiny apartment not far from the camps. We're going to use an apartment booked through AirBnB as a joint workspace. The plan is to use 3-4 hours in the morning for work on writing and art-making, break briefly for lunch, and then either go back to work or go on some kind of excursion we wouldn't normally be able to do with three kids in tow. Also, our work, our writing and art, will be focused around a joint theme -- so that possibly we can exhibit or publish it somewhere together. Or maybe we won't. We're trying not to put too much pressure on the week -- just enough to provides some focus or direction.

Cover art: Ellen Gardens

Also, presales for the full-length Fabulous Beast began this week. It's available to order via the Texas Book Consortium and Amazon. I have to admit that it's pretty exciting to see the cover and the preorder buttons -- it's not about the sales, which will never garner me fame or wealth, but rather about the way this makes it feel "official", even more so than signing the contract back in January.

Also also, something that makes this whole thing even MORE official is receiving the proofs this week from the copy editor. I'll be working on those for part of today, and tomorrow, before sending them back to the copy editor on Sunday. There aren't many changes to make or resolve: mostly formatting of the acknowledgments page for consistency, and some stanza break/page break issues with the long poem in the middle of the book.

Also also also, a million years ago (okay, like a month or two ago), I came across an article that spoke about this documentary, The Last Person Made Famous by a Painting, about Andrew Wyeth's secret muse, Helga. It's pretty fascinating. Thought I'd share.

Martha Graham Martha Graham Martha Graham

2019-02-16T09:16:00.000-05:00

M.S. and I are teaching our Creativity class again this semester. It's funny -- not in a haha way, but in a how odd way -- how much questioning I do every time we return to the course and the material.

Of course, maybe it's also cyclical, as we're in the heart of winter and low temperatures also do something to keep my mood low, my mind disquiet. But I think it might be the tenets we teach in the class, tenets M.S. and I created together, agreed on, tenets we wholeheartedly believe -- and the way I have to face them again, and in their light confront my own creative practice, see where it falls short, where I might be phoning it in.

And once I do that, I hold myself up: I confront my own identity, how much I've tied it -- with stubbornness, with obstinacy -- to art-making and creativity. I hold this image of myself up to the weak winter light coming through the window, and I examine all my inconsistencies and flaws.

It's necessary, I suppose. It speaks to a kind of rigor, perhaps, if we assess our creative selves every once in a while and see what we might to differently. But it feels invasive, too, even if I'm the one doing the interrogating.

Anyway. Not sure where I'm going with this post. Just want to say that I'm trying to return to the idea expressed in the following quote, which I found on the Poets & Writers site for our Creativity students. It was shared by author Karen E. Bender, and comes from a book by Agnes DeMille but is ultimately from the mind and mouth of Martha Graham, who was marvelous and someone whose work and ideas strike such awe in me:

‘There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it.

It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.’

This post hasn't been particularly upbeat, so here's a little (related) clip to lighten the mood:

The Full-Length Fabulous Beast is Going to Be a Thing in the World. Which is Pretty Cool.

2019-02-02T09:30:00.003-05:00

Waaaaaaaayyyyy back in September of last year, I wrote:

OH. And I kinda-sorta have the best news in the world (for me, right now) but I can't post anything until I know more/confirm said best news in a legit way. Anyway, that's vague, but pretty accurate. When I can, I'll spill.

And then it took another four months to actually confirm the best news. So THAT was pretty underwhelming. But now I finally feel more comfortable sharing the following:


I signed a book contract, ya'll!

In September, I was notified that my full-length manuscript, Fabulous Beast, was the runner-up for the X.J. Kennedy Prize and that it was selected for publication in the fall of 2019. The contract didn't arrive until January, but it's finally signed. (Yay!) And now we're moving into book cover stuff and that's making everything feel more real.

Most of the first section of this manuscript was published as a chapbook by Hyacinth Girl Press in 2015, as Fabulous Beast: The Sow. Having that little book out in the world has meant so much to me -- Margaret Bashaar, the editor, creates beautiful books and supports her authors with a tireless energy. I've been so grateful to be a Hyacinth Girl author, and I've been introduced to (both in-person and electronically, over social media) a supportive community of fellow poets through the press.

But now it's really exciting to think of the second section, a ten-chapter fairy tale written in Spenserian stanzas (hahaha, it sounds AWESOME, doesn't it?) and the third section, poems employing the imagery of Norse and Greek myths, being out in the world, too. I worked so hard on this manuscript, and put so much time and energy (and yes, money) into submissions to various awards and calls for publication, it's really gratifying to know the entire book will be a real-life object soon.

Also ... I've wanted to be an author since I was 12. At least. Having a book in print isn't just the realization of several years' work, but the realization of an ambition I've fostered for most of my life. Granted, my life and/or career isn't going to shift dramatically because of this publication and few poets earn a ton of money or accolades from their books, but that's not why I did this. I did this for 12-year old Sarah, who, for some reason, really really really wanted to do what her heroes did. So here's one major (for me) step in that direction.

Micro-Sabbatical 2019

2019-01-25T11:10:00.001-05:00

My first post for 2019 is about my third complete micro-sabbatical. It's nothing short of a miracle that it occurred, too, considering that my family traded viruses and recovered from illness for no less than three weeks following New Year's Eve. For real, peeps. It was gruesome. But it's over now (knock wood) and we're moving forward. Kind of. I mean, everyone's sniffly or coughy, but roughly back to our normal schedules.

So anyway: micro-sabbatical. It was really micro this year, as I could only spare mornings for the writing. I had to use my afternoons to prep for spring classes. But I kept a log each day inside this blog post, after I worked toward each day's primary project/aim, and here's what happened. Essentially:

Day One: Tuesday, Jan. 22: I used my early-morning writing hours to read and also write my micro-sabbatical plan. I am nothing if not last-minute, as the rest of this sentence will prove: after putting the kids on the bus (and doing dishes, and showering, and packing up all my shit) I loaded myself in the car, drove to Starbucks, and proceeded to work on my NYFA grant application for 3+ hours -- BECAUSE IT WAS DUE THE VERY NEXT DAY.

Boom!

Still, it was a successful day one. As is typical, going differently than I intended (I arrived at Starbucks a lot later than I wanted), but whatev. I checked something off my list, man! I finished something! Woohoo!

Day Two: Wednesday, Jan. 23: It was warmer outside compared to the early days of the week, but the interior of Starbucks was freezing for some reason. Wearing a winter coat while writing is not the worst, but also not the best, phenomenon. Also I *almost* fell down a rabbit hole in Twitter after going to look something up, but thankfully remembered to crawl out before more than five full minutes were wasted.

Times are rough, ya'll.

This day's goal was to write the first draft of a review for Hope Maxwell Snyder's new collection, Esperanza and Hope. I wrote the end first -- because I knew that I wanted to close the review with a comment on how the publisher overstepped the bounds of good taste and shoehorned his own crap poem into her book. 600 words later, I've yet to write the beginning -- but I enjoyed writing non-blog prose again, and frankly, being a little mean. In revision some of the more "mean-girl" criticisms will be almost completely edited out in the name of, not surprisingly, good taste, and also so I don't undermine what I think are pretty valid points about mentoring and publishing.

***

Note: Anyone who would like to create their own mini- or micro-sabbatical and would like to use the Micro-Sabbatical Plan (which I appropriated from the college/union and changed to suit my personal needs), click HERE to see a Google Docs version.

***

Day Three: Thursday, Jan. 24: This day began later than the others thanks to a dentist appointment. (Apparently, after 40 everything falls apart, even if you've been taking relatively good care of your teeth.) I could still sip coffee with half my jaw shot up with Novocaine, so I trekked to Starbucks despite the late start.

Sure, it's totally a cliche to be a writer working in any coffeehouse, let alone Starbucks, but cut this working mom of three some slack, okay? At $6 a day for coffee and a bottle of water (+ tip), with free WiFi and a corner seat next to an outlet, plus the ability to focus for three solid hours without the distractions of home or the office, it's probably the most convenient and cheapest residency a poet-mom can get.

And even -- or maybe because -- I'd arrived later in the day, I stayed later too, (the Starbucks baristas must love my loitering ass) and finished a solid draft of the review. I concentrated on the beginning and writing about all of the parts of Esperanza and Hope that make it worth reading and found quotes to demonstrate and by the end of the day I was over-caffeinated, under-fed, and more than a little grumpy as a result, but very satisfied that I finished the week with a completed piece of work.

Now revision, and then submission.

Day Four: Friday, Jan. 25: The last day of the micro-sabbatical was truncated, and conducted at home, since I have too much to do before my eldest brings home a flock of her peers to "get ready" for the middle school dance.

Yes, I'm *that* mom.

*Sigh*

Anyway, I spent this morning revising my review. In the end, I think it's good. I hope it's good. I'm not really used to sending my prose out into the world, at least in the traditional seeking-publication way, so my gauge is not a good one. Hopefully it will get picked up, though. It would be demoralizing to spend so many hours drafting this thing to have it just sit and collect dust -- and the book I wrote about deserves more attention, more readership. So, here's to hoping. Knock wood, cross fingers, all that jazz.

As is typical, I put more than I could manage into my "plan" for the micro-sabbatical, but I'm okay with only accomplishing a fraction of my list -- at least I accomplished something! And if I hadn't set aside this time, I wouldn't have written the thing. And now I can go into the new semester knowing that I dedicated a good amount of time to writing over the break, and so I shouldn't be resentful when I have to grade papers. (HA!! I will *ALWAYS* be resentful when I have to grade papers. Who am I kidding?)

Mother of the Year, Teacher of the Year, and Other Awards I'm Not Earning

2018-12-16T10:39:00.000-05:00

I solidified my Mother of the Year status by forgetting I'd volunteered to help at the Holiday Cookie Decorating Party in Little Miss Talkalot II's kindergarten class Friday morning. BECAUSE I'M A GENIUS AND A GOOD PERSON.

She wasn't traumatized. I think that by now, at the wise age of 5, she recognizes that everyone else's mothers are far superior, better and more capable of this parent-y stuff, than her own mama.

The missed cookie appointment put an appropriate cap on a very very very tiring week, as I attempted to manage my own anxieties about the end of the semester and also talk my students off of various metaphorical ledges.

One of the more mystifying aspects of this semester is finding out how many of my students just didn't bother to submit major papers. Like, finally going through the grades and seeing the holes, and then going back to those students (who are usually "good" students in the sense that they keep up with reading and participate in class) and telling them, "just turn in something, because anything is better than a zero."

And that's where I am as a teacher right now: "Just do the bare minimum -- hell, give me a thin approximation of the bare minimum. Okay, bro? Okay. Good game."

This time of the year can be so demoralizing.

I might have caught this earlier and been able to triage more efficiently if I'd completed Mid-Semester Academic Alerts, but I was overwhelmed and behind and didn't have time to do Mid-Semester Academic Alerts for a hundred or so students.

Also, back in the Dark Ages, when I was in college, we didn't have anything like Mid-Semester Academic Alerts. BECAUSE WE WERE CONSIDERED ADULTS AND RESPONSIBLE FOR MONITORING AND CLEANING UP OUR OWN SHIT.

Also also, get off my lawn, you young whippersnappers.

There's something about having no time to write that makes writing the thing I ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO DO RIGHT NOW and that's part of the reason I'm still behind with the grading. I wrote just over 1100 words of "Accountability Partners" this week, and I completed and submitted one residency application. (To be fair, the deadline for the application was this weekend, so I kind of had to take a time out to complete it; also, I'm trying to meet a deadline in early January that requires a complete full-length play, so.)

On the left, what I want to be working on. On the right, what I'm actually working on.

Whenever I'm writing I'm also fully, hyper-aware that there are other responsibilities I'm ignoring; at these points, I try to remember all of those interviews with writers and artists I've read (and taught!) that stress the necessity of making your writing time "intractable and nonnegotiable."

This semester, I've been MUCH better about keeping writing time sacred, but once again everything fell apart at the end of the term, from writing to exercising to eating well to getting enough sleep.

One more week, tho. And then final grades in, and then holidays and some travel to Virginia, and then maybe, maybe, writing and running and rest. Maybe.

And on a last note: This is my three hundredth post for this blog . . . since. . . 2011? I'll have to fact check that. Anyway. I don't know what that means. I whine at the internet a lot, I suppose. Thanks for absorbing my panic and myopia, Interwebs! Yer the best!

Germs and Grades and Emails, Oh My!

2018-12-07T05:53:00.000-05:00

This week featured only one day of teaching, thanks to a fantastic virus that struck Little Miss Talkalot II. I guess her body was already kind of run down from having that 24-hour stomach virus the week before, because she came down with a fever on Monday and it didn't leave until yesterday. 72 hours of fever is a little extreme in the kid-world.

After a week with me, she's ready to return to school now.

As a result, I've worked a little bit on my play (reformatting, mostly, into an old-fashioned standard script form -- which is really, really counter-intuitive and highly fucking annoying, but necessary if I'm going to start submitting the thing) and very little on poems. The rest of my time has been divided between running between the kitchen and the living room for Little Miss Talkalot II, who -- despite being feverish and congested and generally miserable -- still had an immense appetite, and sending and answering emails in an effort to keep the last weeks of the semester from turning into a complete tire fire.

Also, some grading. Grading Lite.

It always happens, too, at the end of each semester, that I begin compiling a list (usually in the Notes function on my phone) of Things I Will Do Differently Next Semester, where I imagine revisions to my courses that will result in better student learning and more efficient teaching on my part. I have these "brilliant" ideas and then later I'll try to incorporate them. Sometimes this works out and sometimes it's not-so successful -- the key, I've found, is to make those changes small and incremental. If you go big, i.e. The Complete Overhaul, it usually results in The Complete Disaster.

One of my aims for future semesters is to create less grading on my part. The particular challenge is to make it necessary for students to read before a class, so they're familiar with the material. I usually give quizzes or reading responses, but that's one of the things that creates a backlog of grading. Another is to make writing assignments as productive as possible, in terms of what the students learn, so that there can be fewer of them.

And just to head off this question: when you have 30 students in a writing course, and when 75-100% of what you teach is writing, then yes, fewer writing assignments IS a practical and necessary goal.

Anyway, this is just to say that I've had to revise the schedule of final assignments in all of my classes this semester, since I'm so behind with grading AND I've had to take almost an entire week off at the end -- and while I'm trying to triage what's left of these courses, I'm also looking to the future and trying to find ways to avoid this happening again.

So, you know, same old story, different year, here.

Also also, it's really depressing knowing that most of the academic world is DONE with finals and grading by this point, but at the community college, our grades are due on Christmas Eve. WTF, Calendar Committee?

Writing Practices, Processes, and Productivity

2018-12-01T08:49:00.001-05:00

Kristy Bowen, founder, editor, and publisher of dancing girl press, wrote this blog post about her writing habits since earning her MFA, and even though Bowen and I lead very different lives in terms of particulars, I found this passage resonated with me especially:

Other related things were happening during this time--girl show, my thesis mss, which was rendered adrift when Ghost Road went under in 2010, was picked up by Black Lawrence and slated for publication. Noctuary solicited shared properties... and released it in 2013. The JF poems were a huge success when Sundress published them as an e-chap. All of which drew me out of the funk I'd been in for awhile and made me less likely to doubt my commitment to sparkle motion. I felt more like a poet again--so I guess I started to act more like it.

But even still that pace, since around 2013, has been much slower and less productive than this year all by itself, and I feel like it's for a very simple and rather uncomplicated reason. I spent years, my days filled with so many other things--commutes and studio work, the library, then home, then sleep and the whole time writing was this thing that I MIGHT get to before bed, but sometimes exhaustion or distraction won out. It was also hardly the idea brainspace for concentration or creativity. It rarely happened, or if it did, it was uninspiring. More often the productivity came in spurts around my own deadlines for things when I buckled down and devoted panicked chunks of time to things. I'd then end up writing like 10 pieces in 3 days, and entire chapbook series in a week. All [very] nice, but not very sustainable.

It is so very much easier to "act" like a poet or writer once you feel like a poet or writer -- i.e. when you have the external validation of publication. I wish that wasn't true, but it is. Of course, in some ways, it's the easy way, the "lazy man's way" of writing. The external validation is a shortcut in the path to self-esteem that's large enough to incorporate a regular writing practice. Honestly -- I'm beginning to think that I resisted setting up a regular writing practice -- these morning writing sessions -- because I didn't feel like I deserved them. Sometimes I still don't. But lately I tell that part of myself to fuck off and I go back to the page.

It's a joke! (Kind of)

This week was a bit weird in terms of writing. I did some revision, a little bit of drafting, but zero new poems were written, which might be the first week that's happened since this summer. (Which signifies . . . something? Nothing? Not sure.)

And yesterday's Long Form Friday began a bit late and involved more research than actual writing, but it was all in service of my play so, in the end, at least good work was done there. I even reread the first pages of my play and discovered a necessary character change, which is a "big" moment in the writing process and will help determine the end of the plot, so that's kind of an accomplishment, too.

My attempts to keep my writing-during-the-semester on track seem a bit thin and flimsy, though; grading is encroaching in a big way, and it's frustrating because I can't get work back fast enough to satisfy either the students OR myself but I also don't have new poems to show for it. I think it's making me cranky.

Today I'm taking Little Miss Talkalot the Second (Formerly Known as Vampire Toddler in this blog) to Kindergarten Basketball, which is absolutely as ridiculous and adorable as it sounds, and later going to a bookstore event in Southampton (in a furniture shop? Hamptonites are so weird) for A.P., who is reading from his gorgeous new book of poems, Talk of Happiness. Somewhere in between there, some grading. And, perhaps, figuring out the mysteries of Microsoft Word and how to add Act, Scene, Page to my document (also something that sucked away time on Long Form Friday).

Blergh and More Blergh: Notes from the Week

2018-11-17T11:51:00.003-05:00

11.13.18: Just logging this here, as one does when one keeps a blog that tracks one's writing process: I've reached a weird, uncomfortable place with the poetry manuscript. Here's a list of my ridiculous fears/problems:

I fear I've jinxed myself by calling this collection of poems a manuscript.
I've written myself into a weird space with the narrative arc. I don't know where to go next.
I'm not having as much fun writing the poems, which tells me they probably aren't good.
Part of this is because my mind feels pretty divided. Feeling like I should be grading instead of writing really squashes creativity.
Blergh.

Little Miss Kindergartner is learning to write.

11.15.18: Feeling better. Did some whining in the above notes, got that out of my system, and then managed to write another two poems I kinda like. So. In one of my "I-don't-know-what-to-write-lemme-look-over-what-I-already-have" moods, I noticed that since September, I wrote about 9 poems in one two week period, then 6 in the next two weeks, and then 9 again, and then 6 again. In both of those 6-poem periods, I was nearing the end of a section in the MS. I haven't given much thought to what that means. But it probably indicates something, right? (Like, maybe, how I avoid grading AND writing by making random observations about my practice . . .)

11.17.18: Long Form Friday was a complete fail this week. It involved a number of false starts and having to run errands for my family (*cough* the teenager *cough*). By the time I returned home after running all over this godforsaken island, I was more or less shot. Also, I woke up this morning with a massive head cold, so the fact that I was coming down with an illness probably had something to do with my lack of motivation and focus, too.

Anyway, I'm going to focus on grading right now; it would be nice to get papers back to students this week, before the Thanksgiving holiday. I managed to get a good deal done on Wednesday of this week. Maybe if I can maintain that momentum, and get most of this crap back to the students, I'll clear up enough head space to focus on my writing. And maybe I should just acknowledge that the last one-two months of a semester are never, ever going to be especially fruitful or productive when it comes to my writing.

Double Blergh. Blergh blergh. Or something.

Voting, Writing, Grading, & the End of Soccer Season

2018-11-10T07:31:00.002-05:00

Welp. This week I voted -- not that it did a damn bit of good on a -- baffling -- dominantly Republican Long Island, but it happened. I'm thrilled with the bulk of the changes that took place across the U.S. but wish that locally the Democrats had made more of a dent, even if I'm not wholly in love with the Democratic party. Our current House Representative for our district engages in a kind of conservatism that attracts the racist and the anti-feminist, which I find utterly demoralizing (it's so difficult to have neighbors that find that shit acceptable), and his campaign was rife with typical Trump-era fear-mongering, but I SUPPOSE I should find some encouragement that he won by a 4% margin, which is a clear win but by no means a landslide.

I try not to wax on about politics in this blog because that's NOT its primary purpose but it's difficult to ignore the state of this country sometimes. The latest with Jim Acosta has me so angry -- but nope. Not gonna do it. Not gonna engage.

ANYWAY. Just over 1500 words of my play Accountability Partners for this week's Long Form Friday, which took place in the afternoon because I had to attend some training for the college in the morning. Also, four poems written this week, two of which I (kinda) finalized this morning. When I should have been running. *Cough*

I'm being really, really, REALLY stubborn by keeping to these early morning and Friday writing sessions, considering all of the grading I'm backed up with, but damnit, I made a commitment to my writing for this academic year, and I did it by abandoning a shit-load of committees and other responsibilities, and if I wasn't backed up with grading because of my writing at this point in the semester, I'd be backed up with grading because of all the committee meetings and driving between campuses and other time-sucks that make this job absolutely maddening.

Ermahgerd. 40+ days!!

Also: LUGGAGE RECEIVED, YA'LL. I know you're just super excited for me.

So in some ways, this semester is business as usual because I'm drowning in papers and assignments that I consider necessary teaching tools -- like, the act of doing the assignment is supposed to teach the students aspects of writing. But then I have to grade the damn things. I assign so many quizzes and reading responses, but if I didn't I don't think they'd read, and class discussion (I loathe full-on lecturing) would be flat and boring and terrible. And for papers and bigger assignments they all expect feedback, which by all rights they should, even though I would say 80-90 percent of them don't actually use or read the feedback.

Ugh. ANYWAY. What I was going to say -- before I derailed this post with a monologue about assignments -- is that while it appears that nothing has really changed, everything has changed. I am so much calmer, and enjoy teaching so much more, when I protect my writing time. (I'm also so much happier and healthier when I protect my running time, but we can't have everything, can we?)

Okay. Also, also, I watched (because I sacrificed some sleep) John Leguizamo's "Latin History for Morons," the idea of which is awesome, but the execution of which doesn't quite live up to expectations. There's a pretty apt review of the Netflix-released movie version in the New York Times (it was also a one-man Off Broadway show), although my own critique would be with some of the humor -- some of the jokes were not fresh, but rather expected, etc. -- and less with the structure of the show (although the ending was perhaps a little too twee).

But one of the things that I DID find kind of fascinating was how, in some ways, this show is such a good homage to one of Leguizamo's (white) heroes, Spalding Gray (which is slightly problematic, as he recounts in a reenacted therapy session). Spalding Gray was not -- by choice, of course -- the (highly) physical actor or comedian that Leguizamo is, but there was something so reminiscent of Gray in Leguizamo's storytelling that I found it kind of touching. And it made me miss Spalding Gray, which somehow I feel is a testament to the strengths of "Latin History for Morons." So now I have to watch Swimming to Cambodia again, which I saw for the first time in an art seminar class in college. It blew my little mind and I was an instant Spalding Gray fan.

Of course, I'll have to watch Swimming to Cambodia when I've put a serious dent in my grading . . . which somehow I'll do this weekend between the last of the kids' soccer games. (And while I love watching the kids play soccer -- YAY THE SEASON'S FINALLY DONE! It's a lot with three kids playing and practicing all at once.)

Ridiculous Extra Mid-Week Blog Post

2018-11-06T06:42:00.001-05:00

We interrupt this regular week of drowning in grading (but still writing poems in the morning, because stubborn) to make the following announcement: ALITALIA FOUND MY LOST LUGGAGE, YA'LL. IN PALERMO. SUPPOSEDLY IMMA GET IT BACK.

I mean, we'll see it when we believe it, ammaright? Or some such nonsense. I may be giddy from lack of sleep, or the adrenaline rush that occurs when one receives a call from Sicily. Anyway, that's all for now. I'll post pictures if/when the prodigal son of suitcases makes its return to New York.

Blogging, Poems, Podcasts, & Homecoming

2018-11-04T20:58:00.001-05:00

I've noticed -- maybe you've noticed, if you pay attention to when these posts come out -- that I'm on more of a biweekly schedule with the blog of late. It's not a bad thing, really. I am often negligent in posting to the blog because on Friday mornings, when I would usually write a blog post, I'm busy still working on the poem, and when 9:30 rolls around I switch to the Long Form Friday mode, and work on, well, long-form projects.

The poems are turning into a kind of long form project themselves, developing into what is undoubtedly a manuscript -- but I'm nervous about assigning anything formal to what I'm working on. Lately, I've slowed down in the poem-generation, compared to my pace in August and September. Part of this is because I see a kind of narrative emerging, and that narrative dictates certain kinds of poems that must be written; and this is kind of unfortunate, because I don't want anything to dictate any direction at this point. I like -- I've been thoroughly enjoying, reveling in -- the play, the fun of creating poems without any kind of pressure. I want to move back into that space instead of being further locked into a narrative. I don't really know if I can do that at this point . . . but we'll see. This upcoming week, that's my goal. Play more, write more, worry about the big picture less.

My pace has probably also slowed because the amount of grading I have to do right now is INSANE. Who the hell told me to assign all of this work? Honestly, taking a week off at the end of September, right as I was collecting major assignments, was most likely the thing that's slowed me down this semester, but there's no way I'm regretting that decision.

Also this week, while driving my kids to and fro and everywhere and also commuting, I've listened to two episodes of the Commonplace podcast and I highly recommend them. One is very long -- the Gabrielle Calvocoressi episode -- and the other, with Danez Smith, is shorter but no less interesting. Both talk about inventing forms and D.S. speaks about MFA programs and how they can be damaging, and G.C. speaks about the poetry grant/prize system in the U.S. and all of it is really smart and thoughtful. Plus, I'm a huge fan of both poets. Apparently, they're both talented on the page and also super eloquent in conversation, too.

In general health news, I finally (finally) went to see an orthopedic and I *do* indeed have bicep tendonitis, and now I'm on some anti-inflammatory stuff (like a stronger ibuprofen) and I have to find a physical therapist to go to twice a week. I asked the doctor if I was stupid for having run with arm weights to begin with, and he said not necessarily, but that I probably should have adjusted my gait and that I've been holding my shoulder blades all wonky and my biceps had to do extra work and that's why they're all like, "OH HELL NO" when I try to do anything now, like carry my nephew or load groceries in the car, or, you know, sleep for any amount of hours uninterrupted.

Last weekend my best friend Laura and I went back to Harrisonburg, VA and James Madison University for our 20th College Reunion/Homecoming. We arrived late on Friday and had to cash in all of our drink tickets at once, so she took this picture of me holding all the beers and also did something weird with the iPhone so the result is this super trippy photo that pretty much sums up the theme for the weekend: We're old.

Lookit my elongated dinosaur-hands, everyone!

I think that's everything accounted for. Maybe I'll have news and more play progress updates on Friday -- if not, I'll see ya'll in two weeks.

Long Form Friday Report

2018-10-19T13:33:00.001-04:00

Spent three and a half hours writing just over 1500 words of Accountability Partners today (my non-verse play). And in the morning, before the kids woke up, I wrote another poem for the new manuscript. That makes over 60 poems written since the end of June!

Sorry for the blog brag, but I had to share my good news with the universe. I'm on some kind of unprecedented tear here, and thoroughly enjoying it. I mean, not all of those 1500 words are golden, and I sincerely doubt all of the poems are publishable (certainly not right now -- most need the benefit of time and careful revision) . . . but I'm so, so happy and grateful for the generation. And, yes, relieved. Because at this time last year, I was already having serious doubts about my abilities and future as a writer (even before the bad news/sabbatical debacle). After all -- while it goes a long way toward helping with validation, publication is not necessarily the thing that makes one feel like the genuine article. It's the ability to commit and get the thing that you want to write done. And after many years of just fucking around, treading water, I'm finally moving in an actual direction. Making progress. Yay!

Sorry/not sorry for the obscenity. My play is full of them -- which makes it so much fun to write -- and it's difficult to get out of the habit.

I'm tired now, though. And oddly, at the same time, jittery and jacked up on coffee. So it's time to go home, eat something, and then tackle some grading (*groan*) before the kiddies come home from school.

Since I'm not currently on Instagram, I'll leave this screenshot of today's Poem-A-Day, by Ruth Ellen Kocher, here for your perusal. I really love it. You're welcome, internet!

Bread Loaf Sicily 2018 Recap

2018-10-12T11:03:00.002-04:00

This post comes to you from the ultra-glamorous lobby of my local Long Island garage, where the Honda is having its oil changed, so rest assured: Sicily was an aberration in the life of this gal, and things are back to normal: the suburban soccer mom gig is alive and well, my friends.

But I shall spend this post mostly in photographs, documenting the best parts of Sicily (although our running joke was about how absolutely none of these do justice to the beautiful views from Erice).

Before we get to the vacation slides, though (I'm channeling every 1950s father here . . .), I'll share that Bread Loaf Sicily was a really wonderful program. Far less formal and intense, I believe, than the regular program in Vermont, but no less useful for this particular writer. In fact, I'd venture to say -- even though I've never attended the regular program -- that it was probably far more useful than the regular program ever could have been.

I learned much from observing C. Dale Young teach our poetry workshop -- practical things (skills? techniques? I'M A WRITER!!) that I can carry back to my own creative writing classroom, and my conference with him was extremely helpful in terms of my new, emerging manuscript (there, I said it). Also: writing time! I continued with my a.m. writing sessions, albeit NOT fueled with coffee because it wasn't available that early in the morning -- and between that and the airplane travel, and even without the caffeine, I wrote 6 new poems over the course of the week.

BAM. Also, also, A. and I met some of the nicest and most charming people, which felt lucky. I mean, being thrown into these conference things, you can't trust that you're going to find anyone you genuinely like and admire, let alone a whole table full of them, but we did. Including two Jonathans, one prose writer and one poet, both talented writers, but whom A. and I sadly could not convince to fight to the death, Highlander-style. Because, you know. There can only be one.

So now I'm back to the grind, which honestly feels like far less of a grind after taking 10 days to travel in Italy. (Even with all of the terrible things that happened during and afterwards, nationally and internationally -- North Carolina flooding, Kavanaugh, Khashoggi, Trump/Kanye, just to name a few). I am so very grateful to whatever powers-that-be for my time over there. It is a challenge, though, to get my head back in the game of class prep and grading, and so the past two weeks have been a wee bit rough.

The weather is supposed to be terrible this weekend, though, so there's a small chance that my soccer-mom gig will be curtailed a little bit and I'll have time to catch up on the grading. Which sounds JUST as thrilling as drinking wine on a cliff beside a Spanish fortress on the edge of a medieval city, doesn't it?

First day view

Second day, by the Spanish fortress


Second day, by the Spanish fortress

View during Monday evening's reading

View during Tuesday evening's reading

Lobby of our hotel (a former monastery)

Little friend on bedroom ceiling

Hotel patio garden

Wednesday/Thursday walks


Wednesday/Thursday walks

Gatto

The elusive A and one of the Jonathans

Friday's walk around the Erice perimeter

He was having a better time than this. Promise.

Friday's walk around the Erice perimeter

Friday evening's aperitivo before the reading and farewell dinner

The view from Friday evening's reading and farewell dinner

This was the second evening, and sure, I'm grinning like an idiot, but I think it sums up my experience pretty well.

A Quick Post from the Sabbatical I Stole (Kind Of) By Running Away to Sicily

2018-09-23T12:47:00.000-04:00

A. and I spent two really quick days (really more like one) in Venice, Italy and then spent most of today traveling to the medieval city of Erice, which is in Sicily.

Me! In Venice! Yay!

In Erice! Yay!

So far: Italian food is just as amazing as everyone believes, in Europe a glass of water is still more difficult to come by than alcohol, Alitalia DID lose my luggage and I've yet to hear what happened to it, AND I've written two poems on two different flights (and they might be crap poems, but at least I was writing).

Also, the view from the hotel is fucking amazing. And no, my photos don't really do it justice.

Also also, I'm running on very little sleep.

The Bread Loaf Sicily Writers Conference seems great so far -- everyone who is a part of its inner workings is friendly and helpful and down to earth. Tonight the entire program convenes together for a big dinner, and then tomorrow craft talks and workshops begin.

I wanted to get *something* written here because I missed posting last week, but mostly this is just an excuse to share some pictures -- particularly since I'm off the effbook and instawhatzit.

More at the end of the week, after things have actually happened.

OH. And I kinda-sorta have the best news in the world (for me, right now) but I can't post anything until I know more/confirm said best news in a legit way. Anyway, that's vague, but pretty accurate. When I can, I'll spill. Until then, more pics of Italy and its fab-ness.

My writing desk! In Erice! Double Yay!

The Self-Granted Residency and My Year of Being Bad: First Week

2018-09-07T07:13:00.001-04:00

Things are looking up for this old bird.

The first week of classes has come and gone and they were pleasantly uneventful, blissfully routine. I continued my morning writing ritual and wrote three new poems. And today I begin the first of what will be, with luck and perseverance and a little bit of selfishness thrown in, the first of what I'm calling Long Form Fridays. (Because, you know, like the true dork I am, I love to give everything alliterative titles . . .)

Long Form Fridays are going to entail taking my butt to the Starbucks where I wrote while the kids were in camp and parking myself at a table to write for three hours. It seems like as good a place as any -- far enough away from my house and its chaos, definitely far enough from the campus and ITS noise and chaos -- where I can begin work again on my long-form projects: first, my Accountability Partners play, and after that, the verse play that's officially in Title Limbo (one of the reasons I need to sit and work on it more).

I found this scaryass mofo at an estate sale last week. (No, I didn't buy it.)

Also this week I received the manuscripts that we'll be using during the Sicily workshop, and that was an exciting reminder of the upcoming trip. I am ridiculously giddy about this trip to Italy. Between seeing Venice (which we'll be doing the weekend before Bread Loaf begins) and then getting some feedback on new poems (I put three from the new series at the end of my own manuscript packet) and also having hours of afternoon writing time while staring at the Mediterranean -- well, I'm just SO EFFING ELATED. It's difficult to imagine coming back only one week later and picking up where I left off: teaching classes, being a kiddie-carpool/taxi driver, perpetually cleaning my Disaster House.

Of course, I will have non-tedious things to return to as well: M.S. and I met briefly yesterday and brainstormed during a quick, lightning-fast conversation SO MANY THINGS. And some of them had to do with writing and art-making! First, the Repeat Pattern project probably won't be constructed through a sketchbook. It's too rooted in art that M.S. already made and that I became attached to and wanted to explore more with poems. Also, she just bought some accordion books and wants to try combining the art and writing on one of those, so they could be displayed to an audience in a gallery show more easily. (A sketchbook can't be picked up, feasibly, and just having it sit on a podium is really underwhelming . . .)

But also we do really like the sketchbook practice, so we're still buying a Muji notebook and we plan on exchanging that, back and forth, over the course of the academic year. Just because.

Word on the street (hahahaha, what am I, an 80s drug dealer?) is that almost all colleges across the nation are going through this panic moment of OH MY GOD WE HAVE NO MONEY because they all ignored the fact that about 20 years ago people were having fewer babies, and now fewer 20 year olds are seeking out higher education simply because there are fewer of them, and fewer students means lower revenue from student tuition and student fees but we're still operating as if it's the early 2000s recession and EVERYONE and their mom wanted to go back to college because they couldn't find jobs but now the economy's on an upswing and people have jobs and, as A.P. pointed out, there's mounting evidence that having a college education doesn't really guarantee "economic empowerment" (**eyeroll**) and so everyone's saying fuck college and so BIG DEFICITS. Also also, top heavy administrations, irresponsible spending, yadda yadda yadda.

Which means that sabbaticals and money for professional development will probably, albeit slowly, dry up and disappear. So . . . self-granted residencies like Long Form Fridays and self-imposed exiles from college service and committee nonsense (i.e. My Year of Being Bad) will become more and more important to teaching artists -- and hell, run-of-the-mill academics -- in higher ed.

Welp. Writing time is coming to a close because Little Miss Teen is about to walk out the front door for school, and Little Miss Talkalot and The Boy are about the rise and require my attention, so I'll leave you with this so-bad-it's-kinda-good joke from the teenager:

Q: How do the members of Led Zeppelin like their scones?

A: Rock Hard.

You're welcome, Internet. Happy Friday!

Summer Stats and Cautious Optimism for the New Semester

2018-08-31T08:03:00.004-04:00

This is the last weekend of freedom before the new school year begins. I went into the office yesterday to clean it out -- there was so much junk stashed everywhere from last year's drop-and-run. I would come into the office with one pile of folders and books, place them on a desk or a table, and then pick up another pile of folders and books, and run off again. When I did work in the office it was often between columns of stacked files and assignments and general clutter.

I don't really want to do that again, if I can avoid it -- so I had a "purge day" wherein I went through all of the stacks and sorted through what needed to be filed and what needed to be recycled. When I left yesterday I had three or four boxes/bags of material to be recycled (which I'm doing at home because I don't trust that the school genuinely recycles -- I've watched our janitorial staff combine trash and recycling in the same cart and that's just suspicious . . . I mean, are they really going to go through it later and separate the refuse from the recyclables?) Anyway, I now also have a large pile of papers and folders that have to be filed away, and the files themselves have to be kind of worked-over, decluttered, what have you, but the space is imminently more usable and friendly.

This post is truly riveting so far.

This silver maple in front of my parents' home is my favorite tree. Ever.

My end-of-August trip to Virginia was fun and chaotic (because toddlers) and also pretty steamy -- the temps reached the 90s and it was so effing humid. But I managed to go for runs throughout the week, and I also began my mornings by writing before anyone else woke up, so I felt like there was some normalcy and productivity even in the midst of vacation.

The last three months have been really good -- one of the best summers I've had in a long time, and primarily because I didn't have a damn thing planned, aside from the kids' week at camp (glorious! oh the hours of writing time!) and the trips to see my family. I could have done with a little less depression/mood swing nonsense, but I feel like I'm coming out of that somewhat (at least I hope so -- I don't have a lot of patience with myself when I'm mopey).

Poems, ya'll!

So -- to sum up -- this summer resulted in:

16 new pages of my play, and a significant shift in its structure, from a one-act to a two-act;
30 new poems -- 23 of which belong to one emerging manuscript, and 7 which may belong to my collaborative project with M.S.; AND
10 new blog posts.

Additionally, I ACTUALLY READ AND FINISHED BOOKS, YOU GUYS. As you may remember from earlier posts, I managed to finish Crapalachia by Scott McClanahan, Bright Dead Things by Ada Limon, and The Halo by C. Dale Young. Just this past week, I finished Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado -- which I am completely in love with. It's the most gorgeous, beautifully weird, moving collection of short stories. Love love love. To the point where I probably won't teach from it because I don't want my students to ruin it for me. But anyway. GET THEE TO A LIBRARY OR BOOKSTORE AND READ THIS BOOK.

Okay. I'm done shouting now.

This weekend we have a bunch of end-of-summer-last-minute-before-school-starts tasks and activities planned, and then *groan* the year begins on Tuesday for me, Wednesday for the kids. (And it will be Vampire Toddler/the New Little Miss Talkalot's first day in Kindergarten, too, which is sad for me and kind of terrifying for her. OH. And I turn 42 next Saturday. So generally trauma all around.) I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hoping that I can maintain my early-morning writing rhythm this semester -- at the very least, for the first month -- and use blocks of time on Fridays (non-teaching days) as space to work on long-form projects, like my plays.

Because eff you, Stuffolk! If you're not gonna give me time to write, I'm going to make time. I wasted too much effort doing your service/committee nonsense for far too long.

(That's what I'd say if they actually cared to ask me. But they don't/won't.)

My associate and his ball. Behind him is the infamous Intrakat, which The Boy dubbed "InjureKat" after A. busted his shoulder on it.