The V-Spot

Glitter Tongue

2012-02-14T14:05:00.000-07:00

Just in time for Valentine's Day, the online anthology Glitter Tongue has launched. Glitter Tongue is a collection of Queer love poems by thirty queer and trans poets, launching Valentines Day 2012. It grew out of a collective writing effort among Margaret Rhee, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Tamiko Beyer, Oliver Bendorf, Meg Day, and Ching-In Chen, and then expanded to community.

Click over now to read marvelous poems by: ari banias, ellen bass, oliver bendorf, tamiko beyer, micha cárdenas , mark anthony cayanan , ching-in chen , jaime shearn coan, kim crosby, meg day, r. erica doyle, biswamit dwibedy, monica a hand, alec hershman , joseph o. legaspi, philip matthews, kristen e. nelson, hannah oberman-breindel, roy pérez, leah lakshmi piepzna-samarasinha, rickey laurentiis, d.a. powell, minnie bruce pratt, jacques j. rancourt, margaret rhee, kevin simmonds, kristen stone, tc tolbert, july westhale, and valerie wetlaufer

I'm thrilled to be a part of such a fantastic collection of work.

Come See Me Read!

2012-01-23T22:16:00.002-07:00

I am reading, along with some colleagues, at the Art Barn on Thursday at 7pm. Come listen if you're in the area!

Quarterly West

2012-01-07T18:45:00.000-07:00

Another wonderful issue of Quarterly West has been published, featuring poems by Carl Phillips, Krystal Howard, Ash Bowen, Alice Bolin, Gillian Cummings, Keith Montesano, Leslie Adrienne Miller, Gary L. McDowell, and Austin Hummell, plus many wonderful pieces of fiction, nonfiction, new media, and reviews!

Check it out!

Monsterpiece

2012-01-04T15:47:00.002-07:00

For awhile now, I've been referring to my second manuscript of poetry as my "monsterpiece" since my focus is on "monstrous" bodies: not literal monsters, but those bodies deemed deformed, queer, dirty, strange, disgusting by society. I am interested in bodies, in their pain and pleasure. I knew about the Muppet usage of the word monsterpiece, but I was delighted to come across it in Jack Halberstam's book Skin Flicks. The title of the manuscript is actually Bloom & Scruple, but I think I'll always think of my book this way, and it was a felicitous moment of realizing the entanglement of m exam reading and my writing.

In other news, I became an aunt in November, my manuscript was again a finalist for several contests (always a bridesmaid, never a bride...pretty soon I'm going to want to eschew matrimony altogether), I gave a reading in Salt Lake, continued working as a poetry editor at Quarterly West, adopted a puppy named Spondee (see below), and read 104 books in 2011. I celebrated the holidays with my parents in Iowa. This coming semester, I'm teaching two classes, one comp and one creative writing. I'm very much looking forward to teaching poetry again.

Now I shall return to reading gothic novels and scheming.

Happy New Year!

Reading in Salt Lake

2011-11-28T18:35:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is my Golden Birthday (I turn 29 on the 29th) and then Wednesday I am reading in Salt Lake City at Ken Sanders Rare Books with Lisa Fay Coutley and Timothy O'Keefe, two colleagues from my PhD program, and fantastic poets. The event is at 7pm, and you can read more about it at the bookstore's website.

It will be strange and wonderful to emerge from my exam reading cocoon and read poems aloud to others again. I'm looking forward to it, and I hope you can make it!

Planted & Blooming

2011-09-14T20:25:00.000-06:00

(source)

There has been so much debate lately about MFA programs and where to apply and wherefore, and I'm not interested in throwing my hat back in the ring of that debate, but I will say that it has always been my philosophy that I will bloom where I'm planted. I'm an Iowa farm girl who learned to ride horses on my grandparents' farm before I could walk, and I'll take the mountain peaks over the sky scrapers any day, but I've lived in a city before, and various mid-size cities and towns and rural areas, and while I've certainly been happier in some places than others, I think I've learned how to thrive wherever I decide to be.

I'm not saying I'd turn down a job at Columbia if they came calling, but the most important thing in this academic job market is to learn to make your own happiness. Build the community you want and find things within your own power to sustain you. Mine are playing the piano, growing succulents, and watching Battlestar Galactica and Mad Men. That's in addition to my academic and creative pursuits, of course.

Utah is literally the last place I ever thought I would end up. Vermont spoiled me with its Green Mountains, radical pedagogy and aurora borealis, and Florida wooed me with the ocean and Spanish moss and tiny lizards on the patio. But I was sick of red states, and the fights my then-partner and I had over where we would (and wouldn't) even consider living (aka applying) were knock-down drag-out. But I got nervous during the nerve wracking PhD application process, and I threw Utah on the application pile. Imagine my surprise when it became my favorite by far. I am happier here than I've been anywhere, and a program that funds all its PhD students is a program that values its students and tends to them. I feel like SLC is a hidden gem that's so much more wonderful than anyone can imagine that it stays weird and wonderful because most people are too wary to try it out.

I've been reading about ten hours a day when I don't teach, and I feel like the luckiest bookbat alive that I've been granted a year to revel in Anne Carson, Plato, Levinas, Maso, and bunches of Anglo Saxon literature. Lucky lucky. I am blessed with lovely friends as well.

I have the above print hanging in my den and I look at it when my eyes need a rest from reading. It's a skill I've mastered, blooming wherever I've decided to plant my feet for awhile. I want to give that advice to my friends applying to grad schools: don't discount places just because they scare you. It's up to you to thrive and make sure you have what you need. If you still end up in a city, that's fine, but don't let location be the only factor. And pack some fertilizer.

Review of Bad Wife Spankings

2011-08-24T21:01:00.000-06:00

Thanks to Twitter, I found a review of my chapbook Bad Wife Spankings on the Lambda Literary Foundation's website, written by Julie Enszer!

Thanks, Julie & LLF!

"Will Ever Have Wisdom Like This"

2011-08-24T18:58:00.000-06:00

I spent the summer reading for exams, letting myself delve deep into ancient epic poems, devote far more time than I know I typically can with these texts. I developed a taste for peach tea and gardening—I prefer to cultivate succulents in this heat. I read Homer and Ovid, and, for a twist of something different, Frankenstein and Dracula. Now I return to chronology and I am reading Sappho's fragments, translated by Anne Carson.

I first read this translation in 2005, during an independent study. I wrote a poem, published in Bloom, using the line "the one with violets in her lap" from fragment 30. It is those poems of which the fewest words remain that move me the most. Three words: "you burn me," (38) or five: "as long as you want" (45) stand out from the more complete poems. I find I still remember lines like this, simple though they may be, even six years later, just as Homer's lines remained in my memory since junior high when I reread The Odyssey in June.

The process of reading for exams is both maddening and exhilarating. I'm trying to keep a good pace, yet go slow enough that I still enjoy it. So far it's working. Check back in February.

Exam Reading List

2011-05-04T21:51:00.000-06:00

Today I had my list meeting with my fabulous committee. I really feel blessed that all the professors I asked were available to serve on my committee. One commented it was a "powerhouse of women." That's the kind of vibe I like to surround myself with. I remember when I first started graduate school as a baby MA student, looking to my doctoral friends and thinking, maybe someday I'll be able to do that! That being read 120+ texts and be grilled on them to prove you're worthy of candidacy. Ready or not, here I come.

I've finished up my coursework forever, and now I am embarking on something both new and familiar. I've been reading since I was four. That's twenty-four years of literacy, yet this list of texts feels so much more daunting. And terribly exciting. I've spent most of this year thinking and writing about what I want to focus on for my exams and, then for my dissertation. I paid attention to what themes have been taking shape in my critical work and my poetry. What lines of inquiry am I unconsciously trying to follow.

This is what I came up with. This is what I will be spending the next year or so doing. I plan on building the extra bookshelf this weekend to house all this stuff.

Alterity & Representation:

Queer Embodiment in Literature

My overarching theme for this reading list focuses on representations of alterity, particularly as expressed through writings about queer bodies. I am using the term Queer as a broader category for what is also known as the Other; for the purposes of this list, Queer encompasses homosexual bodies, transgendered bodies, disabled and diseased bodies, and occasionally even bodies that are pregnant bodies figured as Queer in their particular context.

While the majority of texts concern themselves with forms of corporeal otherness, I have also chosen to include some texts, like John Clare’s asylum poems, or Sylvia Plath’s Ariel that engage with forms of mental disability, which, I would argue, profoundly affect the physical state. As Eli Clare writes, “I want to write about the body, not as a metaphor, symbol, or representation, but simply as the body. To write about my body, our bodies, in all their messy, complicated realities. I want words shaped by my slurring tongue, shaky hands, almost steady breath… Words shaped by how my body—and I certainly mean to include the mind as part of the body—moves through the world.” While the mind and body are frequently opposed, I am curious about the ways in which they are deeply connected. A devalued body generates deep ontological anxiety, for queer bodies are not viewed only as inferior and subject to subordination, but they are also grotesque objects of fear and repulsion.

In compiling my historical list, I have sought to strike a balance between breadth—the list extends from 850 BCE to 1897 CE—and depth, with my primary historical focus on the Romantic and Victorian period in the 19^th century. I have included largely traditional works and authors, such as Homer and Beowulf, as well as several texts that reflect more recent changes in the canon like Charlotte Smith and Dorothy Wordsworth. I have tried to include major poetical works that align with my overall theme, as well as a few key prose works like Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, and Villette in the hopes that strong foundations in each of these categories will aid me in my future teaching of Romantic and Victorian literature, as well as provide a better context for my own research. Of particular interest to me within this period are Gothic texts. The uncanny and sublime operate alongside monstrosity and the grotesque in works like Dracula and Frankenstein, but also in works like Frances Burney’s description of her unmedicated mastectomy and Charlotte Smith’s elegiac poems for her dead children.

The historical list provides the opportunity to study the repression of homosexual desire, representations of the monstrous as metaphor for disabled and diseased bodies, the figuring of the female maternal body as grotesque, and the greater influences of war and social change on the body, through Whitman’s anxieties about dead Civil War soldiers to growing feminist sentiment that emerges in women’s writings, and seems predicated on the notion that the female body and reproduction is itself gothic.

My contemporary list connects easily back to this historical backdrop with texts like C.D. Wright’s Just Whistle and Carole Maso’s The Room Lit by Roses, both of which are modern meditations on the pregnant body as queered and strange. Jillian Weise’s The Amputee’s Guide to Sex questions how desire and disability can coincide, and Gertude Stein ruptures traditional syntax in order to represent lesbian desire. It is in this list more than the historical that I am able to examine the idea of a text whose very form is queered in order to represent a queer body, as in D.A. Powell’s work, and a text that is disabled because of its author’s disability, as seen with Larry Eigner’s verse. Many of these texts focus on intersectionality, through voices that are queer and living with disease, such as in Thom Gunn’s The Man with Night Sweats or Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals. These speakers deal not with just one form of otherness, but a multiplicity that affords many connections back and forth through time. Whereas historical representations of queer bodies are almost always negative, it is in the contemporary texts that one begins to see an embrace of difference and a drive toward creating beauty where others find only horror.

Much of my theory list engages directly with both the historical and contemporary texts. Some focus on alterity as a broad philosophical concept, while others focus on gothic feminism or even use a particular text as a gateway into a broader discussion of the grotesque, such as Halberstam’s essays on Frankenstein and Dracula. Many texts on this list concern themselves with fat studies and disability studies as well as texts that engage with the intersectionality of difference, such as Eli Clare who examines disability, homosexuality, and transgenderd bodies, and Rosemarie Garland Thomson who studies disability, race, and gender. These secondary sources will allow me entry into the texts on my historical and contemporary lists, helping to frame guiding questions on form—how does the form of a text work with and/or against its content?; authority—who has the “right” to write about othered bodies? Must the author be, somehow, othered herself?; and fear—what anxieties and underlying philosophies guide our representations—and reactions to those representations—of the queered body?

My hope is that my engagement with these texts deepens my understanding of issues of representation and alterity in order to focus my scholarly research and my creative work, which is directly engaged with the aforementioned topics. By studying ways in which others have represented the queer body, I might find a way toward my own form of representation.

Quarterly West

2011-04-21T17:31:00.000-06:00

I am delighted to be the new poetry editor of Quarterly West, along with Lisa Fay Coutley. I've been reading for the journal for two years now, and I'm pretty excited about the gig. I am working with really fantastic people who are incredible writers in their own right and I think we will be doing exciting things in the next few years.

In other news, I have a few more poems coming out in Drunken Boat, two pieces from my dissertation very much still in-progress, and next week, I'll finish up my PhD coursework forever before starting on the long road to exam studying and dissertating.

Despite a fluke thunderstorm, the weather is mostly improving around here, and I'm working hard at my final project for my visual poetics class, which involves making a book.

Summer looms, and I have plans.

Nesting ::: White Room

2011-03-13T16:27:00.000-06:00

The latest issue of Western Humanities Review is out, and it is one of the best issues I've ever been a part of. It features my poem, "Negation of Memory," chosen by David Baker as runner-up for the Utah Writers Contest, as well as works by my friends and colleagues C.A. Schaefer, Nicole Sheets, Christopher Patton, and Timothy O'Keefe, as well as an excerpt from my favorite writer Carole Maso's latest project Mother & Child, which is just brilliant.

I am nearing the second half of my final semester of coursework (ever! forever!), and quite excited with the work I'm doing in my visual poetics and poetry workshop classes. I am sncking on chocolate-covered marshmallow eggs, listening to Rilo Kiley and reading quite a lot about conceptual writing and visual poetics.

But the majority of my time is going to compiling my exam reading list. I will spend the next year reading about 150 texts before taking my comprehensive exams after which I will officially be a PhD candidate. It is exciting. Last night I was up until ~~three~~ four (damn daylight saving time) organizing the draft of my list chronologically, which sent me searching for both authors' biography and dates of textual composition. And this was quite fun for me. Clearly I am in the right career.

Despite a snow storm last week, it is growing warmer every day, and the sun beats through my windows, bringing hope and renewal after a long winter. I am so excited to steep myself in reading and yoga this summer, as well as attending friends' weddings and the NOLOSE conference in July.

What, dear readers, are you up to, this month of lambs and lions?

Chapbook #2

2011-02-22T16:51:00.001-07:00

Today I received my box of author copies of my second chapbook Bad Wife Spankings, winner of the 2010 Poetry Chapbook Prize from Gertrude Press.

cover art by Wayne Bund

The poems in this chapbook mean a lot to me. They are some of the more vulnerable and political pieces I've written, many explicitly about same sex marriage and homophobia. Some of the poems were written when I was still an undergrad, some were written here in Utah, so its content really spans my career. Several of the poems are from my manuscript, and it's nice to see them all together in one collection. About half of them have been previously published. The title poem is the first one I wrote after finishing my manuscript and was struggling on to a new project. It is nice to see that poem and the rest of them out in the world!

Buy your own copy for $8 here.

Interview!

2011-02-21T14:13:00.000-07:00

Head on over to my friend Stephen's blog Joe's Jacket to check out the interview he did with me as part of his 2011 series of interviews with emerging GLBT poets.

I met Stephen during my MFA program, and I've been fortunate enough to stay in touch with him since then.

Forthcoming ::: Coming Forth

2011-02-09T21:12:00.000-07:00

I just received word from the fine folks at Gertrude Press, that my second chapbook, Bad Wife Spankings, winner of the 2010 Gertrude Press Chapbook Award, just arrived back from the printers! I will be getting 50 copies and a check for $100, which is the first time I've been paid for my writing in anything more than contributor's copies. I think I'll buy me a sundae.

AWP exhausted me, but it also reinvigorated me. I feel like the time between winter break and AWP was just a holding pattern, and I wasn't quite able to settle in to the semester, but now I'm here and excited about the work I'm doing for my workshop and my visual poetics class. The biggest lesson I learned about myself at AWP is that I am actually profoundly happy in my life right now. For years post-college, I couldn't say that. I don't blame my MFA program, but more my personal life and the less-than-ideal location of the northern Florida panhandle. The desert makes me much happier. But also, this place feels right in a way only my undergrad felt before. I am not a woman who feels herself easily located in her current environment, but I have made my home in the desert, and I am flourishing. (Insert succulent joke here.)

Tonight in workshop, Kate Coles said (and I paraphrase) that the only reason to be a poet is for the pursuit of pleasure and the hope that others will find pleasure in your pursuit.

Yes, oh, yes. That is why I write. And for the first time in a long while, I am finding much pleasure in the pursuit myself. It's been a rough few years in my life with breakups and diagnoses of chronic diseases, but I feel as though 2011 will be a turning point for me. If nothing else, I am more devoted than ever to the pursuit of pleasure.

On Competition

2011-02-08T17:53:00.000-07:00

To me this is pretty irrelevant. As no-one but a relentless academic could read all the material that’s now available, what does it matter? And why should you want to “stand out”? What’s so important about one’s writing? I don’t know if there were fewer writers (I suppose statistically there must have been) around 45 years ago. They perhaps weren’t so instantly visible. I’ve never found (except in the depressing “literary scene” sense) poetry to be a competition. Don’t you, if you ﬁnd someone’s work interesting, recommend it to your friends? Organic (or perhaps now viral) growth. There’s no tape you break after which you can relax. When we were doing Goliard Press we sold (not immediately) between 400 and 700 copies of each book. At that time the “real” publishers printed at most 250 copies. But we were the “small press”. I always remember something Val said around that time: “It seems to me fame is just a load of arseholes thinking you’re all right.”

—Tom Rawroth, as interviewed by Andy Spragg

New Books on the Docket

2011-02-08T17:32:00.005-07:00

Inevitably I came home with many books from AWP. I actually brought an extra bag with me for all that I'd bring home, though I didn't end up needing it. Some of these books I received as review copies, and others I purchased or traded for. I can't wait to dig in!

First of all, I am very proud to announce the exciting line up of books published by my friends and/or colleagues:

Spit is my dear friend Esther Lee's first book. Esther is a wonderful person and an incredible poet. She is a year ahead of me in the PhD program here at Utah, and is one of the few true allies. My life would not be nearly as bright if it weren't for her presence here, and her poems are moving, smart, funny, honest and blow-your-fucking-mind amazing.

Steve Kistulentz is a friend from my Florida State days. He was in the PhD program there while I was an MFA student, and though his focus was primarily fiction, his poems are full of vitality and dark, sardonic wit. I was so pleased to be able to buy his book in person at the Red Hen Press table (complete with tote bag and chocolate bar emblazoned with his cover image!) and share a congratulatory hug. Steve welcomed me with open arms and astute advice when I was a terrified 23-year-old new to graduate school workshops, and was always a champion of my own work. It is so good to see his own work get the recognition it deserves.

Danielle Cadena Deulen is another Utah colleague. She is lucky enough to have two books debuting now! (Her memoir The Riots is forthcoming from The University of Georgia Press.) While I have serious issues with her problematic poem "Stein in Love with Picasso," which recasts Gertrude Stein as a heterosexual and depicts Alice's love as inferior to anything Stein could have with Picasso in a re-writing and erasure of lesbian identity, this is still a lovely book and worth your $12, and it is such a pleasure to see the book at last. I have a feeling Danielle will become one to watch out for.

Tim's poems entice me so much so that I started reading this book on the elevator on my way back to my room after the bookfair and I missed my floor and rode all the way to the top of the hotel, having to ride back down again, so immersed had I become in his poems. Of course I have heard him read at Utah events, but as Tim is several years ahead of me in the program, I've not had the pleasure of sharing a classroom with him, so most of the poems in this volume were a delightful surprise. It is a truly beautiful book and even now I can't stop reading it, though I ought to be doing my homework!

The poetry world can be such a bitter, competitive place. We are all competing for the same fellowships and book contests, publications and residencies. It would be so easy to succumb to jealousy or feelings of spite, but honestly, I still get a giddy feeling when I hold in my hands a book written by someone I know. I remember the first time I met an author. Lynn Hall, who writes children's books. She spoke and signed books at our local library, and I was in grade school. I wanted to be a writer since before I knew how to write—I always wanted to tell stories. But to connect the idea of a book I'd read with the woman who wrote the book was magical for me. In all honesty, it still feels that way. In college, I purchased my professors' books and eagerly got them signed. As I moved up in the ranks of academia to grad student and teacher myself, more and more friends published books. It is especially a thrill to read a finished poem in a book when I've read the poem in draft form, in workshop or coffeeshop. Seeing poems born, watching them grow; this feels elemental to why I am a poet, not just for the sake of my own words, but for poetry as a cause. When my friends manage to capture something lovely on the page, how could I do anything but rejoice? There is much to rejoice over these days, with so many books from friends to hold in my hands, page through again and again and enjoy.

This is the same reason I love writing book reviews. Not only is it an opportunity to delve deeply into work that I love, but I also get the opportunity to share. It is easy to become defeatist about just how much poetry is out there, unread, but I'd prefer to be optimistic and rejoice over new discoveries waiting to be made.

Here are my latest:

Mommy Must Be A Fountain Of Feathers by Kim Hyesoon, tr. Don Mee Choi by Action Books

This Lamentable City: Poems of Polina Barskova (English and Russian Edition)
by Polina Barskova, tr. Ilya Kaminsky, Tupelo Press

This Nest, Swift Passerine by Dan Beachy-Quick, Tupelo Press

Vocabulary of Silence by Veronica Golos, Red Hen Press

The Alphabet Conspiracy by Rita Mae Reese, Arktoi Books (imprint of Red Hen Press)

Rhapsody For Lessons Learned Or Remembered by Georgia Ann Banks-Martin, Plain View Press

I also brought home a bunch of chapbooks I'm excited to review, but I'll write about those separately.

What did you bring home?

(Y)AWP '11

2011-02-07T12:27:00.001-07:00

I am back from a fantastic five days in DC for AWP. The reading was a resounding success, and I had a great deal of fun seeing so many of my friends from previous lives and schools and jobs. I came home exhausted, but not hungover, having sold too few books, but acquired many I'm excited to read and review. I'm most excited about the new books from Red Hen Press, and the chaps from Argos Books.

It was a full house on Thursday night for the 3 Dollar Bill reading! Ilse Bendorf did a fantastic job organizing and arranging. The lineup went smoothly and I was overwhelmed by the talent in the room!

Here is a partial group shot of the night's readers:

And here is Tony Valenzuela speaking. It also gives you a great sense of the packed room. Thanks HRC Equality Forum, for hosting us in your beautiful venue!

We passed a hat around and collected over $500, which was matched by Julie Enzer, for a total of over $1000 for the Lambda Literary Foundation! This is how we support and grow our LGBT literary traditions!

Eileen Myles reading from her novel Inferno (a poet's novel).

And Minnie Bruce Pratt reading from her new book Inside the Money Machine. What an incredible feeling to share the stage with both of these outstanding writers. I was quite starstruck and felt very humbled to have my name in the same program with them.

It felt so good to reconnect with many of my Lambda fellows. I underestimated how emotional I would become, but we all bonded during the retreat this summer, and it felt like a family reunion. I enjoyed the panels I attended, the best one being Bodies Politic with Barrie Jean Borich, Judith Barrington, Kekla Magoon, Ann Pancake, Ira Sukrungruang, and Brian Teare. It was so well organized by Barrie and I came away so inspired to continue work on my own body-obsessed writing.

I always enjoy getting to meet my editors in person, and since it had been so long since I've been to AWP, I had quite a few tables and booths to visit to spread the literary love. It is so much more enjoyable to go to a conference like this when you know people than when you're just a wide-eyed kid who recognizes names. I haven't had good experiences at AWP in the past, always overwhelmed and ill, but this year I really enjoyed myself. I came away exhausted, but also inspired to return to my own work and to read all the books and journals I collected.

Did you go to AWP? How was your conference?

*all photos by Dan Vera, swapped from Facebook.

AWP 2011

2011-01-24T12:56:00.000-07:00

I've sadly had to skip the last two years of AWP (divorce and death will do that to ya), so I am excited to attend this year's conference in DC. The conference is always so busy and exhausting, but I look forward to catching up with old friends, giving a reading and attending panels.

The most exciting thing is, of course, the 3 Dollar Bill off-site reading.

Sponsored by Arktoi Books, BLOOM Literary Journal, Human Rights Campaign, Knockout Literary Magazine, Lambda Literary Foundation, A Midsummer Night’s Press, The Publishing Triangle, Sibling Rivalry Press/Assarcus Journal, Sinister Wisdom Literary Journal, White Crane Institute, and The Writer’s Center.

Some of the LGBT community’s most talented and dynamic writers converge in the Nation’s Capitol for a night of rapid-fire readings. “3 Dollar Bill,” the Queer Reading at the 2011 Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference, gathers thirty LGBT writers of poetry and prose who will each read two minutes of their work.

Featuring: Francisco Aragón, Ilse Bendorf, Tamiko Beyer, Regie Cabico, Cynn Chadwick, Julie Enszer, Danielle Evennou, Gina Evers, Reginald Harris, Natalie E. Illum, Charles Jensen, Saeed Jones, Eloise Klein Healy, Rickey Laurentiis, Paul Lisicky, Michael Montlack, Eileen Myles, Kristin Naca, Achy Obejas, Christa Orth, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Radclyffe, Douglas Ray, Jason Schneiderman, Joseph Shapiro, Ely Shipley, Justin Torres, Dan Vera, & Valerie Wetlaufer.

You can also catch me wo-manning the Lambda Literary Foundation bookfair table Thursday afternoon.

And these panels:

R222. Building LGBT Literary Traditions. (Julie R. Enszer, Eloise Klein Healy, Jason Schneiderman, Tony Valenzuela, Reginald Harris, Duriel E. Harris) What are LGBT literary traditions? What institutions, publications, practices, and ideas nurture and develop new writing from emerging and established LGBT writers? What strengths exist in the landscape of LGBT literature and what opportunities are there for more growth and development? From the sexy and sensuous to the mundane and sublime, this panel explores these questions and more with perspectives on LGBT literature from publishers, writers, critics, arts administrators, and activists.

F114. Arktoi Books Celebrates Five Years of Lesbian Publishing! . (Eloise Klein Healy, Elizabeth Bradfield, Catherine Kirkwood, Rita Mae Reese, Ching-In Chen, Nickole Brown) Established in 2006 by Eloise Klein Healy, Arktoi Books is an imprint of Red Hen Press dedicated to publishing literary works of high quality by lesbian writers. Please celebrate our first five years with a poetry and fiction reading from our diverse group of writers. A discussion of the impact, responsibilities, and conversations these first books have had in the queer community, and how these efforts have played out in the literary world, will follow.

F144. Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell the Workshop. (Lori Horvitz, Lee Ann Roripaugh, Carol Guess, Kristin Naca, Catherine Reid) This panel questions the common workshop practice of critiquing through a formalist lens, in which the larger ideological/historical contexts of a piece remain unspoken. What are the implicit tensions between this approach and teachers or students who perceive the workshop as an inherently political space? As queer women writers and teachers, we will discuss strategies and possibilities for raising social awareness in classroom discussions and dynamics.

F197. Bodies Politic. (Barrie Jean Borich, Judith Barrington, Kekla Magoon, Ann Pancake, Ira SU.K.rungruang, Brian Teare) The literary body is beloved, is bared, is captive, is container, is hidden, is habitat, is dissenting, is taboo, is pleasure, is change. We make literature out of the body’s clashes and communions, and our bodies together create a social mesh we write to maintain and sustain, remake or escape. This panel—a diverse body politic of poets, novelists, and essayists gathering in the political belly of America—will grapple with corporeality, community, and claiming the body for the page.

S164B. Teaching Queer Writing: Workshops to Watch Out For. (Andrea Lawlor, Samuel R. Delany, Eileen Myles, Ian Sherman, Morgan Lynn, Sara Jaffe) What does it mean to teach queer writing? Are we teaching craft, creating community, or both? What’s the best way to teach queer writing (whatever it is)? In what ways might queer writing pedagogy inform all of our teaching practices? This panel of writers who teach will share strategies and ideas based on their experiences teaching undergraduates, graduate students, and in the LGBTI community.

S204. A Reading and Conversation with Carole Maso, presented by VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. (Susan Steinberg, Carole Maso) Carol Maso is a groundbreaking novelist and essayist, whose poetic and postmodern narratives have enlarged the scope of American prose. She is the author of five works of fiction, including, most recently, Defiance (a novel) and Aureole (short fiction), as well as collections of essays and criticism. Currently a professor of English at Brown University, she is the recipient of many awards, among them a Lannan Fellowship and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Maso will read from her work followed by a conversation with writer Susan Steinberg.

One thing I've never understood about AWP is he phalanx of writers (and non-writers who come for the booze) who only want to spend time with their colleagues from their current program or job. I don't go to conferences to spend time with the same people I spend time with at home. I want to see friends from my undergrad days, my MFA program, my Lambda retreat family and a host of other friends and colleagues who I don't get to see in Salt Lake City every day. Sure, if I can make it to a friend's reading, I'll be there, but to me, it's not the time to stick with the same old crowd.

I'm also packing an extra bag for all the books I'll no doubt bring home with me.

What are you looking forward to this year?

Poetrying Your Way Through a Public Library

2011-01-17T11:09:00.000-07:00

One of my longtime friends (we've known each other for sixteen years!) is a public librarian and keeps a fantastic blog at Librarian in a Banana Suit. One day after hearing me bemoan the dearth of contemporary poetry in many libraries, she asked me to write a guest post for her blog, which I had a lot of fun doing.

So go check out my guest post, Poetrying Your Way Through A Public Library and see what books I recommended! I love libraries and some of the best memories of my childhood were spent reading my way through my small town's collection, so it is fascinating to get the librarian's perspective on things!

Thanks for letting me guest post, Rachel!

2011

2011-01-10T18:01:00.000-07:00

So far this is the year of cold hands and rushed goodbyes and long car rides and poetry.

I've written ten poems this year, and some of them are kind of silly, but I am trying to be more intentional with my daily poems, now that I am working on a specific project and have something to write towards.

This is my final semester of coursework for my PhD, and after a hectic, difficult, lovely and busy semester this fall, I am fortunate to be taking "just" two classes this spring. I'm taking a course on Visual Poetics and a poetry workshop, both of which I am very much looking forward to.

After focusing so intensely on literature--as I fully expected and wanted to do at this stage--it feels wonderful to be able to turn my attention to my writing for a semester before my exam reading year. It feels like so much else is happening even this month. I got tickets to many films for the Sundance festival, something I've been wanting to do since I moved to Utah, and then AWP is right around the corner. I'll be going to DC and reading at the Lambda reading, 3 Dollar Bill at the HRC center.

Here's the list of readers:

Francisco Aragón, Ilse Bendorf, Tamiko Beyer, Regie Cabico, Monica Carter, Cynn Chadwick, Sela Chavez, Julie Enszer, Danielle Evennou, Gina Evers, Reginald Harris, Charles Jensen, Saeed Jones, Eloise Klein Healy, Rickey Laurentiis, Paul Lisicky, Michael Montlack, Eileen Myles, Kristin Naca, Achy Obejas, Christa Orth, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Radclyffe, Jason Schneiderman, Joseph Shapiro, Ely Shipley, Griselda Suarez, Justin Torres, Dan Vera, & V Wetlaufer.

It's a truly spectacular lineup, so I hope you'll make it out. (Also can I admit just how fucking thrilled I am to share the stage with Eileen Myles???) I haven't been able to go to AWP the last few years, and I'm really looking forward to reconnecting with my friends.

Other than that, my life is simple. Yoga (I am finally starting to practice in studios, instad of just following along with DVDs in my living room and it's much better), poetry, winter sunlight and lots of tea.

I hope your new year is shaping up to be simply lovely as well.

2010 List of Lists

2010-12-31T12:07:00.000-07:00

Borrowing the idea from Christopher Higgs at HTML Giant, who writes of the difficulty of choosing a best-of list of books read during the year when one is a PhD student and reads such a vast amount of text every month, I've decided to put together a similar Best-of compilation.

10 Books I Read for Class That I Hadn't Read Before That I Enjoyed

Querelle by Jean Genet
This Connection of Everything with Lungs by Juliana Spahr
Book of the Dead by Muriel Rukeyser
The Pupil by Henry James
The Nun by Denis Diderot
The Grasmere & Alfoxden Journals by Dorothy Wordsworth
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Gifts of the Body by Rebecca Brown
The Father Costume by Ben Marcus
Microscripts by Robert Walser

10 Books I Read for My Own Research That I Enjoyed

Zero at the Bone by Stacie Cassarino
Nox by Anne Carson (this was also a text assigned for two classes, but I read it for myself first)
The Fashion System by Roland Barthes
A Gathering of Matter/A Matter of Gathering by Dawn Lundy Martin
The Ms of M Y Kin by Janet Holmes
The Salt Ecstasies by James L. White
Museum of Accidents by Rachel Zucker
A Monster's Notes by Laurie Sheck
I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl by Karyna McGlynn
Displacement by Leslie Harrison

5 Books That Someone Else Recommended That Makes Me Want to Kiss Them

Interpretive Work by Elizabeth Bradfield
The Green Lake Is Awake by Joseph Cerevolo
The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest
Jane Austen, or The Secret of Style by D.A. Miller
Kora in Hell by William Carlos Williams

5 Books I Read for my Doula Work That I Recommend to My Clients

The Birth Partner by Penny Simkin
Ina May's Guide to Childbirth by Ina May Gaskin
Hypnobirthing by Marie F. Mongan
The Doula Guide to Birth: Secrets Every Pregnant Woman Should Know by Ananda Lowe & Rachel Zimmerman
The Complete Book of Pregnancy and Childbirth by Sheila Kitzinger

In 2011, I will read an astounding number of books, as I begin studying for my prelims. I'm already working on the list, and I couldn't be more excited.

What are some of your favorite books from 2010?

365 Poems

2010-12-31T10:58:00.000-07:00

I did it. I wrote 365 poems in 2010. I finished early as a Christmas present to myself. What started out as a desire to make poetry a daily practice morphed into just trying to get to the magic 365 number. Some days it just didn't feel realistic to write a poem, while other days I wrote twenty in a row. It evened out, and I went with it, but I am continuing the challenge in 2011, and I want to make sure to stick to my original idea of being with poetry for at least ten lines each day.

I started the project as a way to help myself move beyond my typical content, to take more risks and to push myself to discover something new in my work, which felt directionless since finishing my manuscript. I wanted to be more playful, grow unafraid of imperfection and most of all, I wanted poetry to become a habit. It worked in some ways and not in others. Most of all, I am proud that I stuck to it, even when Tumblr was down and wouldn't let me my scribblings, even when I wasn't happy with what I wrote, even when I had ten thousand other things to do. It was so comforting to know that, if nothing else, I wrote something that day.

I learned a great deal about what inspires me, and I feel like I can make a poem out of almost anything now, but my best poems come from reading things that inspired me. I made found poems out of texts for class, wrote odes to main characters in Bronte novels, played around with forms and pushed myself to say things I'd been afraid to say before in poetry. My favorite moments were when I was reading poetry by someone else and I had to put the book down and write a poem. Those are the times that I most love being a poet. And I believe that, though writing is difficult and frustrating much of the time, if you don't love the process of being a writer, it's not the right gig for you.

Some of the poems that started off as poems of the day will be in my dissertation, and some are in my second chapbook manuscript. Some were just for fun, and others will be used as spare parts for other poems.

The process of writing a poem a day definitely changed the way I wrote. It made me much less afraid of the empty page, and that alone makes it a successful experiment, I think.

2010 Check-Up

2010-12-29T18:29:00.000-07:00

2010 has been a very lucky year for me, writing-wise. This year, my poems have been published in Drunken Boat, Main Street Rag, Word Riot, Bloom and Western Humanities Review. I wrote two reviews for Poets' Quarterly. I saw the publication of my first chapbook Scent of Shatter by Grey Book Press and my second, Bad Wife Spankings, win the Gertrude Press Chapbook Contest. I was fortunate to be a fellow at the Lambda Literary Foundation's Emerging Writers Retreat this summer, where I met so many incredible writers and new friends, and I gave a reading with my best friend Chandler Klang Smith at the KGB Bar in New York.

The manuscript I am submitting was a semi-finalist and finalist in several contests, some which I cannot yet disclose, and though it's always frustrating not to be chosen, it feels as though I'm on the right track and it is only a matter of time until I am chosen from among the finalists.

Also, I succeeded at writing 365 poems in 2010, a challenge I plan on continuing in 2011.

Perhaps most exciting for me is that I've begun work on the poems that I hope will become my dissertation. Since I finished my first manuscript, the project I started working on in 2005 and which became my MFA thesis and, many revisions later, the manuscript I'm submitting now, I've felt a bit at sea, unsure of where I really wanted my writing to go, what I wanted to write about. My coursework for my PhD, my mentorship from professors, my collaborations with friends, and my time at Lambda this summer have all helped me clarify my writing goals, and I'm really happy with the new work I've been doing.

In 2011, I want to continue writing a poem every day and focus on revising the 365 poems I wrote this year. I will finish coursework next semester, and begin reading for my exams this summer. This, to me, is the most daunting and yet most exciting part of PhD school. I'm excited to make my way through my reading list, and eager to see how these texts will shape my writing.

I would like to write more on this blog, possibly using it as a venue for capturing some thoughts on my reading list, though I have started a tumblr to capture miscellany related to my exam topic.

I would like to try recording podcasts of my poems as my friend Stephen does. I always love listening to his podcasts, and I think it would be good for me to practice talking about my work more.

Also, I want to write at least a sentence or two about every book I read, particularly for my exam list. I think best through writing about something, and I hate how forgetful I get about books I read at the beginning of the year.

Of course I want to keep publishing my work, and I would really love 2011 to be the year that sees my book accepted for publication. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Wishing you much poetry in your life in 2011! Happy New Year.

Happy Holidays!

2010-12-24T15:44:00.002-07:00

Meditation on Imaginary

2010-12-12T19:04:00.000-07:00

You ask me what I see happening with my project on the body; where I want it to go from here. I tell you I don't want to give so many secrets away. There are some things I've written that I need to take back. Some stories are not mine to tell. We talk of mothers and sisters. Say we make the mother a twin sister instead. Degrees of distance. Seeing trauma in a body that's yours but not. I tell you my strange history with twins. How as a child, all the girls in my playgroup were twin sisters, and I felt such a piece missing.

In my mind when I am writing, I see parts. Hands holding. A shoulder. The curve of a cheekbone. Knees. Toes. Breasts and ass. A tattooed back lying on its side.

There is nothing to do now but wait. Tomorrow I will drive across a frozen landscape, trying to get home for the holidays. I imagine I hold something small in my hand, enclosed loosely in a fist. Slowly my fingers part and the something flutters, flies away. Like a moth, but words.

Synesthesia. Disfiguration. Disease. Disability. Embodied Poetics: Queer Bodies in Literature.

I picture myself on a train. We are girls. Our legs swing. We wear skirts, knee socks, maryjanes. We braid one another's hair. I imagine our arms entwined, crosswriting down the page. Which words are mine and which are yours?

You say Poetry Is Not A Project, and I agree that it shouldn't have to be. But for me it always is, and that's okay too.

I imagine a woman walking swiftly down the street. She limps. Her gait stutters. I picture pregnancy, sex, birth, disease, death. I imagine words that do something to you when you read them. I imagine you biting your lip and turning the pages.

What am I writing? Where do I want my writing to travel?

Literature in Conversation

2010-12-08T12:37:00.000-07:00

One of the best assignments I've done all semester was for my 18th century women writer's class for which we were asked to imagine how we might teach Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. I am lucky enough to be on fellowship right now, which means I haven't been teaching in a year and a half, and I miss it so much. Frankenstein has been one of my favorite books since I first read it in a British Literature class in high school, and I was excited for the assignment because this summer I read Laurie Sheck's incredible book A Monster's Notes, which was just published in 2009. I love the idea of reading books alongside each other, because, as a writer, I see literature as a conversation. Books speak to other books, sometimes explicitly, as with Sheck's text, sometimes just along similar themes. I am working now to compile my exam reading list, choosing the texts that will obsess me next year. As I consider what texts to include for my theme of embodied poetics: queer bodies in poetry (Frankenstein makes the list, of course), I search for themes, tease out similarities, differences, interesting additions to my idea and desire to explore the idea of corporeal alterity, using a broad definition of queer to explore how we regard, represent and inhabit these bodies.

This section from Frankenstein, in which the creature discovers a satchel of books, accurately describes how I feel about discovering texts to add to my list. (Well, not so much the dejection, thankfully.)

“…I found on the ground a leathern portmanteau, containing … some books. I eagerly seized the prize and returned with it to my hovel. … they consisted of Paradise Lost, a volume of Plutarch’s Lives, and the Sorrows of Werter. The possession of these treasures gave me extreme delight; I now continually studied and exercised my mind upon these histories … I can hardly describe to you the effect of these books. They produced in me an infinity of new images and feelings that sometimes raised me to ecstasy, but more frequently sunk me into the lowest dejection. In the Sorrows of Werter, besides the interest of its simple and affecting story, so many opinions are canvassed, and so many lights thrown upon what had hitherto been to me obscure subjects, that I found in it a neverending source of speculation and astonishment.” (Shelley 167-168)

I was delighted to discover this excellent interview with Sheck, where she discusses a lot of these ideas. I love her point of the writer as curator, which is somthing I've always thought to be true. Sheck's book is much like a commonplace book, gathering together notes about a variety of subjects, which is exactly how I see the process of studying for exams.

Next semester I will meet with my supervisory committee, a group of incredible women who challenge and inspire and support me, and we will finalize the list. Perhaps I will change my mind when it comes to exam time, but this is why I wanted a PhD. This is what I've been working toward for so long, to engage in an extended inquiry on a subject that obsesses me. I feel so fortunate that I end each semester excited by the work I'm doing, and, though exhausted and stressed, eager to do the work I must do and grateful for the opportunity to do it.

Winter Reflections

2010-12-04T22:55:00.003-07:00

So much has happened the last few months! I've been busy as ever with schoolwork. This is the last year of coursework for me and it's packed in tight, with four classes this semester. I've done some of the best writing of my life in my experimental forms workshop, which I think will become my disseration, I've written fifteen new poems in my poetry workshop, fulfilled my theory requirement for the second time and renewed my love of 18th century writing. Whenever I get to read Jane Austen or the Romantic poets for school, I remember how lucky I am to have this gig. I've formed a supervisory committee for my comprehensive exams next year and begun to develop a theme. Next semester will bring even more poetry, as well as a film class. I'm finally getting to the point in my PhD education where I am feeling confident and excited about the work I'm doing. Is it crazy that I'm actually looking forward to my reading year? I've missed teaching, and finding a focus for my studies is both daunting and exhilarating.

This semester has also contained sad moments, however. My friend and fellow Lambda fellow, Laura Hershey passed away on the 26th of November.

(Photo courtesy of the Denver Post)

Laura was am amazing woman and she was a great reader. I know I still haven't processed her death. I miss her all the time and feel so lucky I was able to know her for the short time I did. My thoughts are with her partner and their daughter.

In better news, David Baker chose my poem "Negation of Memory" (a poem I just wrote this semester, in my poetry workshop) as a runner-up in the Utah Writers' Contest (my second year in this position), and he had this to say about it: "For the other submissions I have selected a single poem to stand for – and stand out from – a batch. I note the purposeful tropes of randomness in many, the looping back of strange rhymes and haunted images. “Negation of Memory” pushes us increasingly sideways, splitting open from the “old” efforts of family and damages of real warfare (the pastoral and urban – lilies and white rooms)."

A lucky poet am I. The poem will be published in Western Humanities Review.

My birthday was last Monday, and that, coupled with the end of the semester and year makes one reflective. For now, I will just say I am lucky for the friends and colleagues I have, fortunate for the ability to spend this time in graduate school and dazzled every day with the beauty of the state I am in.

Happy Holidays!

(and now, back to writing final papers.)

Poetry Doesn't Matter?

2010-11-11T10:12:00.000-07:00

It seems to me that a lot of interesting debates get conducted on my Facebook newsfeed, which tells me not that Facebook is so great, but that I have a lot of great friends.

Anyway, recently a former colleague of mine posted this status message:

"I am shocked by the number of literary people who can't scan verse."

Several people replied assenting and adding their own expressions of shock, including me. Recently in a class on 18th-century women's writing, my professor gave us a lecture on the importance of understanding prosody, and that it was not an unreasonable expectation for all graduate students in literature to understand prosody. We were discussing Charlotte Smith and Anna Letitia Barbauld, and it was shocking how many people didn't know anything about poetry. After years of having people who write fiction or study the novel denigrate poetry to me and go on and on about how they don't see why they would ever need to learn this, I was thrilled to have a professor echo my sentiments and even give them a bit of a guilt trip. No one should be able to study literature at the graduate level (or at the undergraduate level, for that matter) without understanding prosody. You should not be able to receive a PhD in literature without having taken poetry classes and developed an understanding of prosody.

My friend's Facebook wall turned in to quite the heated debate, with several people insisting that poetry didn't matter since they "never planned on teaching poetry." I'm interested to know what exact focus this person had that would allow them to choose exactly what they taught and avoid and and all intro classes. Not only did this person claim not to know it, she kept insisting on how unimportant it was, saying "I have never ever ever been able to do that. it feels like algebra or something. gross."

Obviously [or maybe not?!] as a poet, prosody and scansion is something I enjoy and deem valuable, so when someone repeatedly refuses to concede that it might have some validity in a course of study at the graduate level, I get a bit enraged. I responded on Facebook that it is a huge problem, that it's possible to get a PhD in English w/o knowing how to scan a poem. I know many people do get PhDs and never take a poetry class, and the fact that so many people don't think it's worth learning is very sad. I worry about people who don't know this someday having to teach poetry. Will they teach their own students to totally ignore this aspect of poetry because they don't know it? I think it is shameful to claim to be a literary scholar and not understand prosody. There are plenty of things I need to study more indepth, and I would not claim to be an expert on anything. Obviously this is a symptom of the system. I am the last person who would argue for required classes and such, normally. I went to Bennington. We didn't have majors or a required course of study; we designed our own educations. But when you reach the graduate level, you are saying you want to specialize. You want to become an expert in literature. At this level, I think there are certain things that everyone should now. As my friend who instigated the aforementioned discussion said, not knowing how to scan a poem "would be like someone trying to teach the novel and not understanding what point of view the story was in."

I understand narrative structure. I have taken many, many classes which focus on prose, because there simply aren't very many poetry classes offered at the institutions I've attended--and that, too, is shameful--but also because I think it's valuable and necessary to know at least something about literature outside of my speciality. Everyone wants to specialize so early and never take anything outside of their particular time period or genre, and they're worse off for it. I'm sure many people would actually like to take poetry classes if they were offered, but sometimes I fear poetry professors are a dying breed. Most people I know who focus on novels, for example, don't even see the value in poetry. Sure, sometimes I like the allue of being a poetry who does something obscure and incomprehensible, but in reality, it pisses me off.

I understand that some people don't like poetry. I don't understand why (I suspect it's just laziness or a refusal to understand it), but there's a difference between liking something and seeing its value as a subject of study.

There is never enough time in the world to read all the things it seems we should read for our exams, our dissertations, the classes we are teaching. But I would think it shameful if I graduated with a PhD in Literature without understanding narrative structure (hence why I took a narrative theory class my first semester) and I think it is shameful for anyone else to graduate with a PhD in Literature (or hell, even not, just be a writer or other literary type) and not understand prosody. If you think it couldn't possibly relate to you or to your prose writing, you are wrong. Understanding the way sound and rhythm work is just as important for prose writers as poets.

So much news!

2010-09-06T23:58:00.000-06:00

The reading in NYC was fantastic. My best friend Chandler and I read to a packed room at the KGB Bar. Many good friends and old friends came. I kept joking that it was an episode of "This is your life..." because I had friends from so many different times in attendance. But! There were people there who were simply fans, which was a pretty cool experience. It was my longest reading and a great chance to explore presenting a broader selection of my work to an audience. Chandler read the opening to her novel-in-progress and it was fantastic. A celebratory dinner in Chinatown followed along with fourteen of our friends. Our friend Penn was kind enough to record parts of the reading, so I will try to figure out how to post that soon.

The reading was followed up by the fantastic news yesterday that I won the 2010 Gertrude Press Chapbook Prize. My chapbook Bad Wife Spankings will be published in 2011. Honestly, I am still a little in shock about this. I just finished promoting my first chap in NYC and revelling in the power of the queer literary community at Lambda's Retreat, and here I have been lucky enough to have my work chosen by a fabulous press devoted to showcasing and developing the creative talents of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer-identified, and allied individuals. At a time when I am beginning to more clearly articulate why we need queer spaces for our work, this feels like a great affirmation that I'm doing something right.

Also, my poem "Make You Feel My Love" was just published in the latest Drunken Boat. You can even hear me read it! This is one of the poems of mine I love the most. I worked on it for years. It is the first poem in my manuscript and the last poem in my now-forthcoming chapbook. I'm so happy it found a home at DB. It's a stellar issue, too, including two poems by my friend Rebecca Hazelton.

Thanks to everyone who came to the reading and all of you for your continued support.

Blooming

2010-09-02T21:24:00.000-06:00

The new issue of Bloom is here! It arrived in my mailbox today, and I couldn't be happier to see it.

When I first started writing poetry and reading lit journals, Bloom was my holy grail. Gorgeously designed, chock full of the best writers out there, not just the best queer writers, though the queer focus of the magazine was definitely part of the attraction. So when I graduated from college and had a few poems I thought were pretty good, I sent them to Bloom. To my shock and joy, they accepted my poem "The One with Violets in Her Lap," one of my favorites from my manuscript. It was my first acceptance, and it came the day I moved to Florida to start my MFA. It was a long wait (4 years!) between acceptance and publication, but it was worth the wait. There I am, on page 162, in the same pages as Mark Doty, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Catherine Opie, Reginald Shepherd...and the list goes on.

It is so exciting to have this journal in my hands at last! I encourage you not just to buy this issue, but to get a subscription. As editor Charles Flowers wrote in his editor's note:

The reasons I founded Bloom are still relevant: there are few places where explicitly queer material will be published. There is still a need for a forum where LGBT writers and artists can create what they want to without pressure to conform to strict and limiting notions of queerness and beauty.

We have to support these rare places that do value our work, that are unequivocal in their support of queer voices (another I might suggest, if you're looking to send in work is PANK, which has always been vocal in their willingness to publish queer writers). And if you want to read good literature, Bloom is an excellent publication to support. Every issue has featured stellar writing and art, and they consistently present a mix of established writers and emerging ones.

Go subscribe today!

Ten Poets to Love

2010-09-02T14:12:00.000-06:00

There was a list over at Velvet Park on 10 Lesbian & Bi Poets to Love. It's a pretty good list, with a lot of diversity—you don't often get to see spoken word poets on a list with Adrienne Rich et al—and I like the list, and I left some further reading suggestions in the comments section.

It's always nice to see poetry being talked about outside of academic circles.

Though, as I pointed out over there, I've stopped paying attention to Staceyann Chin since she started making fatphobic comments on her Twitter feed.

Explicit vs. Other

2010-09-01T00:57:00.004-06:00

Something that's been coming up a lot for me lately as I continue to explore this issue of writing about the body, which includes writing the erotic, is where one draws the line between erotic and explicit (or, as the tone of voice implies when workshop participants sneer the word, too explicit).

Barrie Jean Borich has a fantastic essay up at the newly-launched VIDA website on writing about sex in creative non-fiction called "Where We Bump and Grind It: On Resisting Redemption in Women's Memoir."

This queer world sexual expression made by-and-for women often contains a charge that is, to us, normal—but which, seen outside of our own spheres, is often skewed as too bodied, too porno, too gratuitous, too unrepentant, too angry, too un-publishable, too un-tenurable—by too many of the venues writers depend on for recognition, validation, citizenship.

I think this essay (which you should really go read in its entirety) applies equally to poetry. And I'd like to add the concept of the un-workshoppable piece. What complicates the issue of what makes a poem too explicit is a matter of opinion. To quote my friend and fellow queer poet Ilse Bendorf,

It's sort of subjective to call one thing explicit. What I mean is, some people are offended by, and want two men kicked off an airplane for, kissing each other in their airplane seats. That's NOT EXPLICIT at all, but can be called offensive or whatever just because someone doesn't want to see it FOR A DIFFERENT REASON.

One of the things all of us at the Lambda retreat talked about is the frustrating need to spend all your time explaining the context of your work--in a workshop setting, to editors, to the literary community at large--without ever getting a chance to actually discuss the work. Content matters, for sure, but so does form. Do you really wanna ignore that deft sestina work I did there just because I wrote about two women in a relationship?

The point is, things that are not "mainstream," that are seen as Other by the majority, must do a great deal of work simply justifying their existence.

I've recently been accused of writing a poem just to shock readers by the so-called gratuitous nature of the content. The poem had its flaws--all workshop drafts do--but the fact that it dealt with queer sex that read (to my queer friends I sent it too) as mainstream for our community set off red flags of !PORNO! to heterosexual readers. I don't think poetry's job is to make readers comfortable. Sure, we all love that shock of recognition we get from reading some poems, but just because a straight white guy reading my poem doesn't feel that doesn't mean another reader couldn't. Relatability also isn't necessarily poetry's project, though, sure, it's one other reason why people read poetry.

Someone made the point the other night in my workshop that the most erotic poems are often completely subtle, relying on the reader's imagination to fill in the sexy details, but with queer erotic poems, the reader has no imaginative resources on which to draw; therefore the queer poems must be more explicit in order to paint a clear picture for the reader.

Clearly by "reader" this person meant "hetero reader" because queer readers have plenty to draw from in their own minds. And I agree that subtlety can be a highly erotic tool. But it's such a tricky balance to strike. As much as I disagree with this statement, I think it's sadly true. Too often I have attempted an erotic poem built on more subtlety and had readers (yes, straight readers) miss the point completely. It was read as heterosexual, the specific acts being described were totally unclear. I was urged to spell it out. Then, when I do try that tactic, heads start shaking. "whoa, whoa, whoa. This isn't even EROTIC. This is just EXPLICIT!" [actual quote from a workshop I was in.]

I don't know what the solution is. I just know that, as progressive as we'd like to believe our creative writing spaces are, the workshop (to no fault of the teacher, let me be clear; I adore my professors at Utah and they unequivocally support me, as do many of my fellow students) still remains the space of the Heterosexual (and usually the Heterosexual Male. And usually the White Heterosexual Male). And of course it's not only the workshop that suffers from this. It's exactly why we need VIDA. Why we need the Lambda Literary Foundation--especially the writers' retreat--why we need queer writers to step up and mentor the emerging folks.

Ilse pointed me to these upcoming AWP panels and I'm so stoked to see them on the agenda. There's so much more learning and discussion that needs to happen around these issues. I'm glad other people are talking about it too:

Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell the Workshop
Lori Horvitz, Lee Ann Roripaugh, Carol Guess, Kristin Naca, Catherine Reid
This panel questions the common workshop practice of critiquing through a formalist lens, in which the larger ideological/historical contexts of a piece remain unspoken. What are the implicit tensions between this approach and teachers or students who perceive the workshop as an inherently political space? As queer women writers and teachers, we will discuss strategies and possibilities for raising social awareness in classroom discussions and dynamics.

Teaching Queer Writing: Workshops to Watch Out For
Andrea Lawlor, Samuel R. Delany, Eileen Myles, Ian Sherman, Morgan Lynn, Sara Jaffe
What does it mean to teach queer writing? Are we teaching craft, creating community, or both? What’s the best way to teach queer writing (whatever it is)? In what ways might queer writing pedagogy inform all our teaching practices? This panel of writers who teach will share strategies and ideas based on their experiences teaching undergraduates, graduate students, and in the LGBTI community.

Reading at the KGB

2010-08-29T15:51:00.000-06:00

I can't remember if I mentioned this or not, but I'm reading in New York City (preferably said in the accent of that guy in the salsa commercial: New Yawrk Citee?!) next Saturday at the KGB bar, 7pm.

I'm in Time Out! ("Poet and recent chapbook author (Scent of Shatter) Valerie Wetlaufer reads her verse alongside KGB's events coordinator, Chandler Klang Smith.")

And here's the official events page. Hope to see you there!

I'm pretty excited.

Paying to be Published

2010-08-29T15:38:00.000-06:00

No, I'm not talking about vanity presses, but the new phenomenon of literary magazines requiring payment before they will consider your submision.

As Steve Fellner writes in his blog post:

Let’s face it: graduate students make up most of the submissions. And most of them are struggling financially as it is. To take money out of their pocket, when they’re struggling means that you don’t have a conscience. The editors of these magazines themselves should be decrying the situation. They should encourage their publishers to go on-line, perhaps. It’s not the end of the world. But taking money from hard working students is. With the current depression, it is inexcusable.

I appreciate that presses and journals have operating costs. I don't mind supporting them through subscription fees.

But I already spend a great deal of money (usually $25 a pop) entering contests hoping my book will be chosen for publication. I do it because, aside from open reading periods or nepotism, it's the only way to get a book of poems published these days. I want my book to be published. But more than wanting it, I need it in order to get a job as a professor. I've always wanted to be a college professor. You need a book to get a job. You need a job to get paid. You need to get paid to pay the bills and on and on. Since poetry doesn't make money (except for those rare exceptions), and most contest honorarims are around $1000 (which is about what I spent, with postage, printing, ink and contest fees, last year alone submitting my book), you pay a great deal more to get your book published than you make if you're lucky enough to have it accepted. It really ends up being pretty undifferentiated from self-publishing or vanity presses.

Except that if you win a contest, your book has been "peer-reviewed" and the Ivory Tower of Poetry (or, more likely, a grad student getting paid $5 a manuscript to read the slush pile and forward a few up) has deemed you worthy of publication.

It's so depressing. And of course it sets up a caste system of who gets published, whose voices get heard. We're obviously not getting to hear the voices of poets who can't afford to pay those contest fees.

So the idea that now we might even have to pay to submit to literary journals online is just odious. Online submission was a great option, because, via the library, anyone can have access to the internet, a free email account and, thus, online submission. But now Ploughshares and The New England Review are charging.

Now I appreciate the fact that it's a rough economy and journals are folding and they need to be able to pay their staff and, for some, pay their contributors. But I'm concerned that this will become a trend, that eventually we'll have to pay for each and every submission.

My fellowship stipend is about $12,000 a year. After living expenses and textbooks that doesn't leave much money for contest fees and journal publication fees. I do appreciate the response from C. Dale Young on Fellner's post. And I would not like to see any magazine go under, but as Fellner writes:

...the magazines have an ethical responsibility; they must ensure that at least 40 % (or more) of their contents include work by unpublished or emerging writers. I am defining emerging as a writer who has publications, but no book. If a magazine can’t at least meet that percentage, then they are engaging in unethical practices. Their chances of getting published should be reflected in what the charge for submissions is.

I am suspect of any magazine that does not include 40 % unpublished or emerging writers. If they are uninterested in supporting unpublished and/or emerging writers, they should not ask for submissions fees. (emphasis in original)

But Fellner makes the further point that we graduate students (who need these publications to get a book and a job) don't have a choice. We have to play by these rules.

Or do we?

Look, I actually am very sympathetic (especially after reading Young's rebuttal) to the editors' position on this. But this is why I'm such a fan of more grass roots promotion of one's work ("self-promotion" has a nasty aftertaste, but Facebook, Twitter, blogs, word of mouth are all great, free ways of getting your work out there. Or if you don't want to post your writing that way, link to yourself, tell your friends to re-tweet your posts. Support the writers you love. Publish in online journals. In this economy, especially with this advent of the "pay-to-play" system, it is ludicrous to ridicule online publication, to see it as, in any way, less than print publication. Online pubs provide free access. They have higher readership than print (I'd imagine) and they don't have the constraints of print. Meaning that they could publish long poems or several poems, electronic poems or multimedia poems that just aren't available or possible in print form.

I love my printed word, but I'm not going to let my loyalty to the physical book keep me from taking advantage of technology.

More thinking needs to be done about this, but being a grad student, I need to get back to reading Saussure.

"No more on my knees at the keyhole"

2010-08-26T13:09:00.001-06:00

Here's a video of me reading at the Lambda Fellows Reading a few weeks ago:

V. Wetlaufer, Writers' Retreat Fellow from Lambda Literary on Vimeo.

The reading was a great experience, because it was where we really got to hear how awesome everyone in the other genres is. Since we weren't in workshops with anyone but poets, it was amazing to hear all their powerful, funny, heart-breaking, intense, amazing writing. I'm so glad I got to be a part of this.

Writing the Body

2010-08-25T00:25:00.001-06:00

My parents frequently complain that I write too much about sex, and I completely understand where they're coming from because who wants to read something one's child wrote about sex? So family members get a free pass to lament my preferred subject matter (sorry, Dad), but I am fascinated with the subject of the body. And sex is one of the most fascinating subjects. This is my attempt to explain why.

More and more, I find myself fascinated with writings (my own and others) about the body, specifically queer bodies, which I define as anything outside of the so-called "norm": homosexual bodies, transgendered bodies, differently-abled bodies, even female bodies (I've been reading a lot of 18th-century literature wherein the female body is so strangely figured) &c &c &c. So much of my life has been spent in my mind, pursuing knowledge, degrees, searching for my poetic voice. As I get older and find myself facing chronic disease and formerly asymptomatic conditions presenting me with symptoms, as I become more involved in fat acceptance and queer activism, as I work with pregnant women and witness childbirth, I find myself more and more present in my body and curious as to how I get those ideas, this knowledge into my poems.

Of course the most obvious way is through erotic writing.

The truth is, when I first started writing poems, they were erotic poems. I think I feel so passionate and protective of poetry because it was the genre that allowed me to be free, to finally write about the experience of being a lesbian. I'd tried to before, in prose, but never successfully. With poetry, I found a way to express my longings, experiences, dreams. The genre has a long history of love and sex as subject, from Helen launching a thousand ships in Homer's tomes to the courtly love of the Medieval period, from Donne's surprisingly raunchy verses all the way through every era to the modern day. And writing about sex--whether in a coded fashion, or openly--has always been an act of defiance, revolution and liberation for queers.

To answer the question of why we write about sex is to try to answer why we write about anything at all. Sex is a part of my life that I was long taught to be ashamed of, especially because of who I wanted to have sex with. Long before I ever thought about actually having sex, I was told 'twould be a sin to act upon desires. So writing about queer sex--celebrating it--is not only a "fuck you" to anyone who believes homosexuality is morally reprehensible, but it is also an act of normalizing. Not assimilation, but normalization; making queer sex and queer bodies something that we are allowed to talk about, something that does appear in print, in the written word. This is who we are, this is what we do. We're not going to be shameful or apologetic or afraid anymore.

And while I don't think that poetry's project is to educate, I know that my poems have enlightened otherwise naive classmates about the logistics of certain acts. While the discussion that prompted my colleague to ask her offensively ignorant question was unpleasant, at least she now knows that, yes, two women can have sex. And do.

But beyond just writing the erotic, a project I am, obviously, invested in, how do we write about queer bodies--bodies that do not typically show up in poetry, not to mention bodies that are either ignored or demonized elsewhere in society? Erotic poems featuring queer bodies are necessary in part because of their defiance; bodies that are disabled or fat or genderqueer or what ever the case may be--bodies that are not "supposed to be" sexual--captured in beautiful authenticity not only show readers something new, perhaps educate them, but also add to our body of art on the human experience. "Howl" ended up not being censored because the judge believed it had "redeeming social importance." Now, I'm not comparing myself to Ginsberg, necessarily, but it is so necessary for us to stop waiting around for someone else to write those poems we long to read--the poems that capture us and our experiences--and write them ourselves. These very human experiences need to be captured. Pound wrote in--what, the 1920s? even before that?--that there was nothing new to be written. But there is. Go do it. Write the poems we're not supposed to read. Write the poems about the bodies that aren't supposed to exist.

* these are ideas very much still in formation. I hope to spend next year reading for exams under the theme of the queer body, so these are ideas I hope to more fully and more eloquently articulate throughout the rest of my PhD.*

Once More Unto the Breach!

2010-08-25T00:05:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was the first day of my last year of PhD coursework. I'm taking four classes this semester, including two workshops, and I am still riding the charge of inspiration from the LLF Retreat. I can tell my poems are getting better, that I'm getting closer to finding what it is I want to write about. As much as I always dread the beginning of the school year and the bustle and stress that ensues, my work is never better than when I'm reading a variety of materials. School gets me to read things I might not read on my own (right now it's Plato and Fanny Hill).

My LLF pal, Steven Tagle, wrote a post on the queer writers camp, as we affectionately call it, and as I said in a comment over there, he got at something I've been struggling to articulate:

You articulated so well what I keep trying to explain to people: that being with a group of fantastic queer writers meant that we didn't have to focus on the queer like we do in straight company; we could just focus on the work without having to spend the entire time defending our choice to write about queer content!

I'm always nervous going into a classroom full of unknown other writers; how will my work be received? What advice will these new readers offer? LLF gave me more courage to defend my queer poems (not that I only ever write explicitly queer poems, but, technically, since I'm queer, all my poems are, too), to stop apologizing for writing the poems I'm burning to write, the stories I'm dying to tell. I'm looking forward to the semester, buoyed up by the LLF energy. My thanks to Steven for better articulating how I feel about that wonderful week!

"You will lead the charge"

2010-08-20T16:18:00.000-06:00

I've been struggling to put down into words exactly what the LLF Retreat meant to me. I remember when my friend Esther returned from Kundiman last year; she was glowing, radiating the pleasure that comes from being with a group of people who really see you, who really take the time to learn what it is you're trying to say and help you achieve it. I was, in part, moved to apply to the LLF Retreat because of Esther's positive experience at Kundiman. If she had such a fantastic experience being surrounded by other Asian American writers, surely it would be the same for me with queer writers. Oh, I had no idea how life changing my experience would be.

There's a fallacy that we go to a graduate writing program to be in a community of supportive, like-minded writers. Coming from a liberal, queer of center, undergrad with a supportive gay professor, I naively expected graduate school to be equally stocked with open-minded, supportive peers. However, I chose schools in the deep south and Utah for my experiences, because I respected deeply the work of my professors and the reputation of the schools. And the funding offers extended to me. And, for the most part, I can't sleight my profesors (though there are certainly better ways to create a safe environment in a classroom, but that's another post topic), but I am still shocked by my some of my classmates' ignorant and offensive opinions expressed in relation to my work.

While our writing can certainly benefit from a variety of viewpoints, writing is hard, and to constantly be criticized for "always writing about lesbians" or "alienating the majority of readers" when we tell stories that come from our own lives and which, therefore, happen to be queer stories or, my favorite comment from a professor, that they, a straight reader, felt "othered by my poems," well all this negative pressure is daunting and draining. It is difficult enough to put pen to page every day and tell the stories we need to tell, we don't need other folks in our writing workshops discouraging us as well. Also, buyers of poetry tend to be a self-selecting crowd, and homophobes aren't likely to purchase my book or publish me anyway. I'm not writing for them and while I will do whatever it takes to make my work as good as it can be, I refuse to believe that means censoring myself and "straightening" my work up.

During one of the faculty readings at Lambda, Nicola Griffith, urged us not to bend to the will of negative voices telling us to cut the queer out of our writing. I had to wipe a few tears away, because I knew that no one had ever told me that before. In fact, I'd gotten mostly the opposite. Folks confused about gender, why I had to write poems with lesbians in them, why I couldn't write work that spoke to a broader audience. Because I was so busy crying and taking to heart everything she said, I will quote from her blog post about the experience instead of her talk, but she spoke about this that night too:

You are the chosen few. The new queer fiction tradition starts right here, right now when you leave this room. So what do you want it to be? What stories will you tell? What do you want the next generation to read and know and feel? It's up to you. ... You will lead the charge. Where will you take your people?

Though she speaks directly of fiction, I know she would happily include poets in there as well. My workshop leader, Ellen Bass, spoke to us about the queer diaspora and how important it was to stick together, stay in touch and be gentle with ourselves.

And it's true; being in a safe, affirming yet always intense and rigorous environment like the LLF Retreat has made me vulnerable.(It doesn't help that the Utah Pride Center was vandalized today; someone sprayed FAGS on the building. Great welcome back. Thanks.) I find myself a raw nerve, exposed and angry that I must return to a hostile environment, that my poems will go back to being critiqued not for their quality, not given advice on how to improve them as poems, but told (at least by some) how to "improve" the content by removing the queer. But I refuse. No one tells a straight white dude to make his poems appeal more to queer black kids, for example. After Lambda, I realize what a responsibility I have to write my truth, cheesy as that may sound. I owe it to "my people" and, most of all, to myself, not to shy away from writing what I want and need to write. As Nicola's partner Kelley Eskridge told us during her guest lecture, we have to make our own choices about what it means to be a writer, and all we can control is how we behave in the room of our writing. I cannot control homophobic colleagues nor their response to my poems, I can only control my writing, and it is my duty to do whatever is necessary to make my work the best it can be, without worrying about what others do.

Lambda Literary Foundation Emerging LGBT Voices

2010-08-15T15:38:00.001-06:00

I just returned from the 2010 Writers' Retreat of the Lambda Literary Foundation, and it was incredible.

My poetry workshop

I'm still processing how wonderful it was, and I know all that I learned here is still settling. I feel like this was a seven day MFA stocked only with the top notch queer writers, what I wish my MFA could've been. I'd love to spend three years with any and all of these people.

Friday night I read four poems during the second night of Fellows' readings.

Two from my first manuscript, one from my in-progress manuscript, and one written "on the land," as my poetry workshop took to jokingly referring to the retreat. The bar was set so high by my fellow poets and the need to produce a high-quality poem every day (much more intense than my ten line daily attempts have been) exhausted and thrilled me. Not only was it an idyllic setting in the Bel Air hills, but I'm inspired, recalibrated. I've come away with poems, friends, memories and drive to keep working.

Specifically, I've come away with seven poems I'm excited to work on. Though our workshop ended Saturday morning, we voluntarily gathered after dinner that night to workshop one last poem together for what we called a playshop (in lieu of a workshop).

Being in a supportive, invigorating and challenging queer space like this has recalibrated me. I feel more ready to take on the second year of my PhD program, and refreshed to keep writing poems. To be honest, I had my doubts, as I've participated in so many workshops over the course of my writing life, but Lambda really delivered. What an incredible week.

What it's like to be a poet

2010-08-07T23:05:00.000-06:00

I love this post by Kristy Bowen that really captures what it's like being a poet. My friends and family are supportive, but I wonder sometimes if they'll ever understand why telling them I'll never make money off my writing isn't being self-deprecating.

And how many times have I considered more practical employs like library science or law school? Oh, darling, too many to count!

Emerging LGBT Voices

2010-08-06T23:07:00.001-06:00

This weekend I'm headed to Los Angeles to take part in the 2010 Lambda Literary Foundation's Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices. Even though I only just returned from vacationing with my extended family (after a 20-hour drive back to Utah!), I'm eager for the retreat, most of all for the chance to meet other queer writers of all genres. There are 32 other great writers (including another doula, Miriam Perez, who recently featured me on her website Radical Doula) attending. A friend and colleague who was an LLF attendee in the past had an incredible experience, and I am very grateful for the scholarship that enabled me to attend.

I think we sometimes take for granted what it's like to be in a room with other queer writers. Just as Cave Canem and Kundiman have done for African American and Asian American writers respectively, so, too, can Lambda create a space where queer writers can connect and benefit from putting their work in front of people who approach it with a certain basic knowledge of where the voice is coming from. My work has always been successful when I've submitted to queer journals, and, though I don't write work that could only be appreciated by a queer audience, poetry and sexuality are connected for me.

After years of workshopping my manuscript full of poems about a lesbian couple in the late-nineteenth century American Midwest, I grew weary of having to explain things that seemed, if not simple, self-evident, to me, like butch/femme dynamics, the concept of stone sexuality, female masculinity, queer sex and myriad other issues. Not to say I've always had a perfect draft, but some readers are just not willing to read something with which they're unfamiliar. A safe space for queer writing doesn't mean that one can write anything free from critique, but it means that the writers feel safe to take risks they might not be comfortable taking elsewhere.

I'm always shocked by how resistant professors and classmates are to queer themes in poetry, whether they would admit to it or not. I know for a fact some people I've worked with pride themselves on being straight allies, but have cautioned me to stop writing about sex or to change a character's gender to make it easier to understand.

I am so looking forward to the chance to be in a room with other queer writers, to read their work, gain inspiration and feedback from them and have some fun.

In a nutshell

2010-07-24T23:01:00.001-06:00

I decided to run my current manuscript-in-progress through Wordle and came up with what is probably the most accurate and hilarious arrangement of my most commonly-used poetry words. I guess my dad is write; I really do write all about sex. Also, I'm using the line "girls hand inside make tongue one" in...something.

200 days

2010-07-24T22:58:00.000-06:00

I've finished my 205th poem of the year. Only 160 remain. I have written more than I must write before the year is through. Seems strange.

It has been a difficult process, though one I'm still grateful for undertaking. I don't censor myself. I try things I'd never try before. I write about things I'd never have considered writing about before. Current events. Family. Celebrities. I have more fun with my poems, and I have come up with more poems I like than I expected. A new manuscript tentatively titled Bloom & Scruple is emerging.

It seems unbelieveable, actually, that 200 poems have left my pen this year. I still have so many days when the task feels insurmountable, especially when I'm traveling. I find it almost impossible to write in my notebook and not on a computer (not true just of the poems-a-day, but any writing), though I am getting better at noting down ideas on my iPhone using Notes or the Voice Recorder (as lines sometimes strike me while I'm driving.

What is most interesting about this whole process of writing a poem every single day is the peek into my composition process. Writing always seemed sort of mystical before. Don't mess with it, just let it happen! And it never failed me. Whenever I needed a poem (for class or my thesis), I wrote one. This was one element that contributed to being what I thought of as "good at poetry." But then I finished writing my first book and, being someone who works best when writing toward a specific project, my muse failed me. I was taking a breather, going through the breaking up of an engagement, moving across the country, two timezones away from where I'd lived for the last eight years and starting a rigorous PhD program. I couldn't write. When I sat down to craft a poem, nothing happened. This is bad when one is in a workshop environment that demands a poem a week. I struggled through one semester and then decided on the poem a day project. I still write in fits and starts. I will sit down one weekend and compose a dozen poems, but then struggle Monday morning to spit out my poem for the day. And some of my poems are just awful. I do zero editing before the poem is posted, with the exception of trying to make formatting consistent, but that's difficult with my limited HTML skillls. Anyway, I might have suspected that the poems that were the hardest to compose would be the shittiest poems, but that's not always the case. Sometimes I labor for hours over a poem and end up typing up something mildly inspired by whatever the hell I'm looking at in the room and it ends up getting culled from the mass for my future collection.

I can now sit down and write a poem every single day. And when I take the time to revise the poem, I'm able to do something with it sometimes, which is just awesome. Especially considering I have two workshops this fall, which means two poems per week. One is a typical poetry workshop and the other focuses on experimental writing, so I'm excited two explore simultaneously writing in very different modes.

Here's to the big 200. 300 is coming far too quickly. I believe I shall continue this experiment in 2011.

Vacation

2010-07-13T14:17:00.000-06:00

I am on vaction with my family in Northern Minnesota. It is heavenly. So far, I've read a book a day. Many books I hope to write about later, when I have more time to reflect.

This has always been a spot where words come easy. I wrote most of my first book here, over the course of several summers. We live in a forest, on the shore of a lake. We see deer often and our animals love it. I am starting to understand where my work is trending toward, what I want to study.

Today I have come into town to use the internet, buy bread and eggs. I brought my Juliet tomato plant on the cross-country trip with me. There are a lot of tomatoes, still green and growing. Being in school is hard. Not having a published book is frustrating, because I feel like I can't move on to the second book until I find a home for the first. Like a relationship.

Still, it is only mid-July. There is so much time to figure all this out. Today I am greatful for books and sun and the wind on the lake.

Undressing Billy Collins

2010-07-07T19:25:00.000-06:00

There was an interesting discussion today on a friend's Facebook page about the awful poem by Billy Collins "Undressing Emily Dickinson." CAConrad really gets to the heart of the debate in this brilliant post (entitled "lesbians don't want to be fucked by Billy Collins"). And even if Dickinson wasn't a lesbian (I really don't think anyone could doubt she was queer in some way, but more on that later), nothing about the poem seems consensual to me. It's disgusting and another example of how male writers, when they feel threatened by a female poet's talent, almost always revert to sexualizing her in order to gain power and control over her. Since Collins is so often accused of being a bad poet, it doesn't surprise me--though it does disgust me--how he dominates Dickinson in this poem.

It really makes me think, too, how I was recently in a class where we studied Dickinson and we were discussing the letters and I brought up Dickinson's letters to her sister-in-law, Susan and talked about how Dickinson was a very important queer poetry mentor for me when I first started writing poems (and I was blessed to study her for the first time alongside Susan Howe's My Emily Dickinson in a class taught by Mark Wunderlich. We also studied Whitman in that class. It was one of the best classes I've ever taken). Anyway, my professor became furiously mad and said that there was no way Dickinson was even bisexual and that to say so was ridiculous and offensive and that if she found out that Dickinson was a lesbian, the poems would be ruined for her. This was a self-professed liberal teacher, of course.

Some day I will cease to be amazed by how upset some straight people get at the thought that someone they love might be tainted with teh gay. Their indignance is so unbecoming and infuriating. And, frankly, irresponsible, particularly when they know they have queer students in the classroom. Part of me says, no, biography doesn't matter, you can love an artist's work in spite of, despite, because of their biography and that's all fine (though with fascists and the like, I think it's good to at least be aware), but it's not like I'm the only one who has ever thought Dickinson might be queer. For someone to refuse to allow another person to explore their heritage is just ridiculous. It's just the same as Collins saying, "She's not a lesbian, and even if she is, I'll give her what we all know she really wants." Ugh. Just disgusting.

Apocalyptic Swing by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

2010-07-04T23:18:00.002-06:00

Gabrielle Calvocoressi is by far one of my favorite poets. Her first book The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart: Poems absolutely influenced the shaping of my first book. I read it over and over again and made everyone I knew read it, too. So how it's possible that I hadn't yet read her second book, and didn't, in fact, know about it until Stephen wrote about it on his blog, I'm not sure, but I finally picked up the book today and I literally didn't put it down until I finished.

My non-writer friends always ask me "What's it about"when I tell them about a book I love and urge them to read it. This book is about the Body and Faith. Through poems about boxing and boxers to hate crimes to church bombings to love and sex and family and home. This is such a beautifully crafted book. It feels both highly official and formal and casual, everyday as well. The speaker goes for a run, sings along to slow jams, makes love to a woman, leaves home, prays. But all in such highly articulate and artful language that is never ostentatious, never pressured. It feels just right. Like a table setting so lovely you don't want to disturb it. But these are not delicate poems either. They are violent, physical. You feel the punch the speaker takes, you see the blood on the mat.

Also, maybe the greatest testament to any book a writer reads: this book inspired ten poems of my own. Directly, indirectly, just a shadow of a glimpse sometimes, but my favorite books to read are the books that send me to the page myself.

Some poets just resonate with you. When I try to think about what it means to be a queer woman poet, and how to shape my work...how to be a queer poet who isn't just that, who can also just be a poet, full stop, I think of Calvocoressi. Who also has pretty much the best name ever.

I can't wait to see what's next from her.

Zero at the Bone by Stacie Cassarino

2010-07-04T19:26:00.000-06:00

I was delighted to read the results of this year's Lambda Literary Awards, because the winner of the Lesbian Poetry category was a book I had actually read! Being in school, I don't have as much time as I would like to read contemporary poetry, hence my binge of it this summer.

Zero at the Bone is a fantastic book, definitely deserving of its critical acclaim. I kept finding myself folding down pages and nodding my head at certain lines. It's just such a tight book, I wish I could quote the whole thing. I'm not going to quote anything, because I don't trust myself to refrain, but trust me, it is fantastic.

I read a lot of books, as PhD student, as a poet, as a friend who reads her friends' books, as a lover of literature, as a diversion. I read a lot of books, and I like a lot of books. But there are only four or five books I honestly wish I had written. Not just because they are fantastically well written, but because the content and language converges in such a way that I feel intimately connected to the text. Sure, part of it is subject matter. Not to be reductive, but there are a lot of "breakup poems" in Zero at the Bone, and I just finished putting together a chapbook manuscript that also fits that description, so obviously I have a personal interest in these poems. But also, I think that it is difficult to write a good breakup poem. A professor once told me not to be afraid to say, simply, "my heart is broken," but it's more complicated than that. So is this book.

I only just finished it, so my thoughts aren't very fully formed, but the poems are quietly powerful. They look you straight in the eye while they take your head off with their power. Much is at stake here, and the poems are private and harsh, full of problematic desire.

Okay. I will quote one poem, actually, because it just knocks my socks off.

Snowshoe to Otter Creek

love lasts by not lasting
—Jack Gilbert

I'm mapping this new year's vanishings:
lover, yellow house, the knowledge of surfaces.
This is not a story of return.
There are times I wish I could erase
the mind's lucidity, the difficulty of Sundays,
my fervor to be touched
by a woman two Februarys gone. What brings the body
back, grieved and cloven, tromping these woods
with nothing to confide in? New snow reassumes
the circleting trees, the bridge above the creek
where I stand like a stranger to my life.
There is no single moment of loss, there is
an amassing. The disbeliever sleeps at an angle
in the bed. The orchard is a graveyard.
Is this the real end? Someone shoveling her way out
with cold intention? Someone naming her missing?

—Stacie Cassarino

If you haven't read this book, go out and get it now.

Summer Special

2010-07-04T14:28:00.000-06:00

If you haven't yet gotten around to buying my chapbook, Grey Book Press is running a sale right now that's a great opportunity. Or if you want to stock up on extra copies.

Three chapbooks for $10! That is a steal. May I especially recommend my humble book Scent of Shatter and Used White Wife by my friend Sandra Simonds. (I reviewed that here.)

Go to it!

So begins a new season

2010-07-04T14:24:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I finished my second chapbook manuscript. It contains a few older poems, but also a few poems culled from my Poem a Day venture. I am hoping this manuscript will grow into my dissertation. I am very pleased with the chapbook-length piece, but much still needs to happen for it to exist as a full-length beast. There are many other poems that belong with it, still in need of shaping, revision, rewriting. It is so much more difficult than my first book/MFA thesis where the project was so clear from the beginning.

Last year I was submitting my first chapbook manuscript (which was originally a section of my first full-length manuscript that I ultimately cut, but for quality, but for continuity) and my full-length collection. The chapbook, obviously, got published, and I got a few semi-finalist nods for the collection, and some "try us again next year"s scribbled on the rejection letter. I know this takes time. But this is the part of being a poet that I hate. (Does anyone like this part?) I still believe in my little book, and I will keep sending it out. I just sent it to the first two places of my second year of submitting. So begins a new season.

I never knew how expensive being a poet would become. But what always bolsters me up is reading poetry. So that's how I'm spending my Independence Day.

Highway

2010-06-29T01:18:00.000-06:00

Some medical problems and a trip back East to officiate a college friend's wedding have kept me busy doing things other than poetry the last month, but hey, it is summer, after all. I still intend to attempt my reading list!

Soon I will leave to spend some time Up North at my family's cabin. This is just part of the route.

I am so excited.

Help me Get to Gay Writers' Camp!

2010-06-12T23:41:00.001-06:00

Many months ago, I applied to the Lambda Literary Foundation's Emerging LGBT Writers' Retreat. It takes place in LA every summer, and I've wanted to go every year they've held it, but it never was a good time for me. This year I decided to apply anyway, and figure out logistics if I got in. I never expected to be accepted, because I know the competition is fierce, but this evening, I received my acceptance and the generous offer of scholarship.

I still need to raise around $1000, though, for the remaining cost of the Retreat and for transportation to LA. There are two wonderful ways you can support me.

To help me pay the remaining tuition balance and have your donation 100% tax-deductible,

Go to the Lambda Literary Foundation's donation website . In the field marked “One Time Gift,” you can select the “Tribute” option, choose “In Honor of” from the drop-down menu, then write my first and last name (Valerie Wetlaufer) in the blank fields.

To help me pay for air fare (a couple hundred bucks from SLC to LAX), you can donate funds directly to me, via the Paypal button below, which even allows you to pay with a credit card. I can't offer you a deduction, but I will write you a generous thank you note and send you a signed copy of my chapbook. (A $5 value! And seriously, if you even just want to give $5 for the cost of the chap, it will help a bunch.)

Thanks for any help you can offer!

Review: Lark Apprentice

2010-05-18T23:45:00.000-06:00

Okay, this isn't really a review, per se. Not like the reviews I write for Poets' Quarterly. But I've vowed to write about every book I read this summer, so here goes.

I just finished the book Lark Apprentice by Louise Mathias. I actually didn't order this book. It was in my box by mistake; Amazon mistaking one New Issues title for another. But I believe, if not in fate, in some sort of wantonness of the universe from which we can learn. I think this was the perfect book to begin the summer with, because it is wee; the poems are short, often less than ten lines, much like my own poem-a-day poems, but there is so much going on inside them.

These poems experiement with language, its slippage and flux:

"When I said 'damaged' I meant 'damned."

And it does feel like the speaker(s) of these poems are damned, in some way, or doomed. Pensive, unhappy, regretful and fierce. These lyric poems are so aware of futility it's almost painful to read the raw lines, but we can't help but follow along. Sensuous, dark poems, these, and unashamed of their frequent employment of birds at a time when people complain of avian frequency in poetry. The Lark has earned its place, however.

It is nearly midnight and my brain is waning, but suffice it to say I enjoyed my first read of the summer!

Summer Reading List

2010-05-18T14:23:00.002-06:00

Thanks to many suggestions from friends and my own long-awaited, long-growing list, I have a lengthy summer reading list. I might be crazy (I surely am) for trying to attempt this, but this is what I'm hoping to read this summer.

Hurry Home Honey: Love Poems 1994-2004
by Sawako Nakayasu

All-American Poem
by Matthew Dickman

Tsim Tsum
by Sabrina Orah Mark

Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965-2003
by Jean Valentine

The Diminishing House
by Nicky Beer

Standing In Line for the Beast
by Jason Bredle

American Girl
by Cynie Cory

Radi Os
by Ronald Johnson

Zero at the Bone
by Stacie Cassarino

Beauty Breaks In
by Mary Ann Samyn

Orange Crush: Poems
by Simone Muench

Lampblack & Ash: Poems
by Simone Muench

Writing the Silences
by Richard O. Moore

Revolver
by Robyn Schiff

Musca Domestica
by Christine Hume

The Difficult Farm
by Heather Christie

The Kingfisher
by Amy Clampitt

Self-Portrait with Crayon
by Allison Benis White

Blood Almanac
by Sandy Longhorn

Cradle Song
by Stacey Lynn Brown

The Fever Almanac
by Kristy Bowen

Body Clock
by Eleni Sikelianos

Nox
by Anne Carson

Embryos & Idiots
by Larissa Szporluk

A Monster's Notes
by Laurie Sheck

Fort Red Border: Poems
by Kiki Petrosino

Museum of Accidents
by Rachel Zucker

Lark Apprentice
by Louise Mathias

So, yes, I am probably crazy, but you never have a hope of achieving big dreams unless you shoot for the moon. Off to read...

Summer

2010-05-16T16:17:00.000-06:00

Classes have ended. The last final paper was handed in. I disappeared for a week to Logan for the DONA International birth doula training, where it snowed and looked like January. When I returned, Salt Lake had succumbed to spring. Catie and Esther and I went to Mystic Hot Springs for Catie's birthday, and it was very difficult to leave. I am on call for my first doula client, so I'm trying to relax and get plenty of rest, so I will be ready for that phone call that can come at any hour.

There is so much I want to accomplish this summer, but I know that, like most summers, less will get done than I plan. So many books to read, poems to revise, births to attend, floors to sweep, trips to take. I'm trying to live in the moment and just be okay with what is. This semester was a difficult one, with death and rejection abounding. Thankfully, I have poetry to keep me company, as well as this new adventure being a doula, something I am very grateful for and proud of myself for taking the leap.

Now for a lovely Audre Lorde poem that inspired the name of my doula business, Blooming Within.

Now That I Am Forever with Child

How the days went
While you were blooming within me
I remember each upon each —
The swelling changed planes of my body —
And how you first fluttered, then jumped
And I thought it was my heart.
How the days wound down
And the turning of winter
I recall, with you growing heavy
Against the wind. I thought
Now her hands
Are formed, and her hair
Has started to curl
Now her teeth are done
Now she sneezes.
Then the seed opened.
I bore you one morning just before spring —
My head rang like a fiery piston
My legs were towers between which
A new world was passing.
From then
I can only distinguish
One thread within running hours
You. . . flowing through selves
Toward you.

The Letter V

2010-05-09T14:50:00.001-06:00

Stealing it Back

2010-04-30T18:07:00.001-06:00

Brian Turner posted the following on the Harriet blog today, and I have to say I love it :

I think poets should feel free to steal back from fiction that which was previously within the domain of poetry.

Larger structures. Character development. Subplots and dialogue. Since the days when people gathered around the camp fires of old and recited poems, these elements have been a part of poetry. I’m not advocating incorporating these elements/possibilities simply because they were used in the old days. (I don’t want my doctor, for example, blood-letting the bad humors out of my body simply because that’s how they did it way back when…) But if a poem arrives with dialogue and subplots and book-lengthed structure—then that’s how it arrives.

My first book, an as-yet-unpublished manuscript called Call Me by My Other Name is a sort of novel-in-verse. Through a series of lyric narratives, it tells a story. The story revolves around two women in the late-nineteenth century Midwest. So often readers (whether they are friends, fellow writers or professors) tell me that I ought to ask a fiction writer about "this stuff" that I'm writing, because poetry doesn't usually deal with "such things." Well, I think poetry can do whatever it damn well pleases, and I'm glad to see someone else championing the use of these techniques. (Also, Turner is talking about all this in the context of Stacey Lynn Brown's first book Cradle Song, one that I haven't yet read, but just added to my Amazon shopping cart.)

Buy it: Cradle Song, a poem

Body Politic

2010-04-25T02:27:00.000-06:00

I've always been a bit timid writing about the body. I have written about bodies inadvertantly, but writing about them directly does make me a bit nervous. We still seem to be afraid of women's bodies, particularly the bodies of women who don't fit the dominant paradigm of what is beautiful. But since I started training to become a doula, I feel reinvested in the body, especially the female body. The power of it, the magic.

I feel more of a pull to write about what the body does, though I'm not yet sure what form that will take, but the last few drafts I've started contain issues of the body, and I look forward to seeing where it takes me.

I am also interested in negotiation the balance between poet and doula, and I keep thinking of Rachel Zucker, the only other poet who is also a doula that I know of. In an interview on the Bomb blog, she answers a question about this balance:

SD: You’ve taught writing and been a labor doula. Which profession do you think supports your creativity better?
RZ: I think working as little as possible (and having time to be alone and think and read and walk outside and exercise and cook and go to museums and movies) supports creativity. But work (like exercise) can also make a person healthy and engaged and that’s good for productivity. Teaching writing necessitates the reading of new books and poems and brings a lot of language into my life and that’s useful. Being a doula is physically, emotionally and spiritually challenging. It’s work I feel passionate about, work that feels necessary and vital and sacred. Feeling passionate about something nonliterary is more important, I think, than simply being part of a university but feeling beaten down by the job (which often happens in academia).

I don’t need a job to get me up and dressed every day—having three kids forces me to do that! But, working outside the home forces me to interact with adults and constantly engage in the continuation of my own professional development. I suppose these things are important to my creativity in the sense that if I never did them I would waste a lot of valuable time worrying about not having a career. The downside is that it’s very easy to put writing at the end of the very long list of things I do.

My choice to become a doula is a long time coming, but I don't see it interfering with my writing time. I do not have children to tend to, of course, which allows me much greater flexibility. I am still finishing my doula training, so I have yet to discover how it will effect my schedule, but the information I'm absorbing as rapidly as I can (much of it a review, because of my longstanding fascination with pregnancy and birth) is already seeping into my writing, dancing lovely new ideas through my head about bodies and their possibilities and the ways they affect and interrupt our lifes.

Basically, I think that anything you study that is outside of poetry also helps your poetry. Obviously you should read as much poetry as you can, but to really inject something fresh into your work, it's necessary to look elsewhere.

5 Questions

2010-04-24T15:34:00.095-06:00

Over at the Harriet blog, Camille Dungy talks about the five questions she's most often asked after she gives a reading. I was surprised because they are questions people ask me in workshops, after readings or that my students as me when they're trying to figure out how to write. I thought I would answer them myself.

1. When did you start writing poetry?

Aside from the typical angry teen angst with line breaks, I never wrote poetry before my senior year. I always thought of myself as a writer, and I always wrote something, but it wasn't poetry, until I took my first workshop. It came easier to me than fiction did. And I don't mean to say that it is or has ever been easy, but there was a naturalness to it, similar to when I realized I was a lesbian. I know that genre isn't at all the same as sexuality, and I don't mean to imply that it is, but the process of realizing how right one thing feels over another was similar for me. Once I started writing poetry, it was like a lightbulb went on--Oh, so THAT'S what I'm supposed to be writing. I worked hard in a very short amount of time to catch up to my poetry peers, reading everything I could get my hands on and writing constantly. Within two years of writing my first poem, I was in an MFA program.

2. Your poems often seem to tell stories. Why don’t you write fiction?

I don't actually write too many narrative poems that are straight-forward, unambiguous narratives, but I am always interested in telling a story. I am fascinated with the idea of a story that isn't meant to be told, or can only be told in bits an pieces, as in my first book, Call Me by My Other Name, which attempts to record a history that has been erased. I like stories that aren't entirely clear at first, that make the readers work to form their own understanding of the text. Mystery is important to me, so I like to approach storytelling through a lyric narrative.

3. Who’s your favorite author?

This is such a difficult question, because I often feel, when I'm reading a good book, that it is my favorite, but a few writers do stand out. I didn't choose to list my favorite poets from long ago, because of course I love Dickinson and Whitman and Wordsworth and Clare and a host of others. Everyone knows and loves the old great ones, but I wanted to get more specific to the 20th and 21st centuries.

Lucie Brock-Broido is just incredible. I could re-read A Hunger every day. It does what I strive to do so well, which is to tell a story through poetry, but tell it slant, as Dickinson would say.

Thomas James is another favorite, and it's no coincidence that it was Brock-Broido who helped get his book Letters to a Stranger back in print. I read that book first through a photocopy of a photocopy a professor loaned me and I love it.

Sylvia Plath's Ariel is one of my favorite books. Each time I read it, I learn something new. She is so much better than her reputation.

Mark Wunderlich writes consistently good poems. Both his books, but especially Voluntary Servitude have really shaped me as a poet and they continue to influence how I think about poetry. [full disclosure: Mark was my professor at one point.]

My favorite writer of all time is Carole Maso, who I was blessed to hear read on Thursday, as part of the University of Utah's Visiting Writers series. In a way, I suppose I ought to credit her with helping me become a poet, because once I read her, when I was 13, I started writing differently. My prose looked unlike most prose, and that helped me make an easier transition when I finally found poetry. I think it is so important to search out other genres and other media. Maybe a film inspires you, a painting, a song. I am often most inspired to write poetry by reading the fiction of my friends.

4. Do you ever experience writer’s block?

Sometimes I do struggle with what to write, and I go through long periods of time without writing anything, and then I will spend two days doing nothing but writing. Part of the reason I am doing my poem a day project is to force myself to write on demand, to make myself better at starting poems, better at finding something to write. I never thought I could be one of those people who consistently writes daily, but I have learned so much by just forcing myself to sit down every day and write at least 10 lines. The only cure for not writing is to write, just like sex therapists will tell you that if your problem is that you're not having enough sex, then you should have sex. Oftentimes, studies show, women aren't in the mood when they start having sex, but the process of foreplay and sex gets them in the mood, so they find that, when they agree to sleep with their partner even if they're not necessarily feeling the urge, they are glad they did once it starts, because they get into it. Writing is exactly like this, but without a partner to help you get started. Unless you count gin. (joking!)

5. Do you have a particular routine when you write, or do you just wait for inspiration to strike?

I don't have a routine. I am on my computer most of the day doing homework and I work intermittantly on a variety of things. I do always write on the computer because I can type so much faster than I can write by hand, which helps when I'm trying to capture an idea. Lines come to me in my head and I have to write them down. My iPhone has been great for this, to keep me from losing ideas, because I'll be in my car driving to campus, and I'll often thing of a line, but can't stop to write it down, so I use the voice memo. Usually, though, I sit at my computer and I wait. I look around me, out the window, at things I can see in the room. I think a lot about how Gertrude Stein would write about even the cover of her notebook when she was writing A Novel of Thank You. Such coded expressions you'd never know just reading the book, but I look at pictures on my wall, a sweater over the back of the chair, and it inspires me. I cultivate inspiration all the time, keep several notebooks and a tumblr for inspiration as well as a hard copy writer's journal. I think that when you cultivate inspiration, it is there for you when you need it. Maybe not a booklength project (what I am struggling to find now), but an individual poem will be there.

Poems That Changed Me

2010-04-23T13:25:00.000-06:00

I'm continually impressed and inspired by my friend Stephen's poems, but also his blog, which, today, gave me the idea for this post. Stephen writes about five poems he's written that changed him as a poet. It was such an interesting idea I decided to copy him and write about the same thing.

The first poem that comes to mind is my poem "Helpmate," which I wrote in 2005, when my professor was trying to help me out of a writer's block and push me to write a longer poem, at least two pages. He loaned me a copy of Wisconsin Death Trip and told me to write something inspired by the photographs. I didn't end up writing about the photographs, but I was struck by a short newspaper excerpt about two women who had lived for fifteen years as "man and wife" as the article said. The way they were found out was that the masculine partner was caught stealing. At the jailhouse, it was discovered that "Frank" was really "Anna." The idea was so fascinating to me, that someone would have to live in disguise in order to love who they loved. This is the poem I've revised the most, and it became the basis for my manuscript Call Me by My Other Name (which was originally titled Helpmate). I was so fascinated with these characters that I just kept writing about them until I realized I was writing a book. You can read this poem at Ink Node, where it was the featured poem shortly after being published.

"I Have Reached the Hills; the Mountains Lie Beyond" is probably the second poem that changed me. I wrote this in Fall 2006, in my first graduate workshop, near the end of the semester, and it was torn apart. There were so many arguments over what a poem can or should be, whether the poem was too mysterious, what was going on in the poem, what is a poem, what should a poem be--everyone seemed to have a very strong opinion about it, which I thought was a good sign. My professor really liked the poem and said it was the best thing of mine she'd read. This was the second poem I wrote about the same characters from "Helpmate," and it is what convinced me to make it a book-length project.

"The Mind's Boil" originally started out as part of my manuscript, but when I was revising the book last year, after my thesis defense, I decided this section had to be cut. The book initially had three sections, one from the POV of each of the women in the aforementioned couple, and one for Mary Sweeney, a "window smasher" also discovered through Wisconsin Death Trip, though I was actually able to do more research about her. She was a woman institutionalized numerous times throughout the Midwest, from Michigan to Nebraska, who escaped many times and would smash windows. There was a suggestion that she was addicted to cocaine, a common treatment for lunatics in asylums at the time. I did a lot of research on her, on 19th-century asylums, cocaine and many other aspects of her story. Her section of my book became my chapbook Scent of Shatter, recently released from Grey Book Press. This poem was the first poem I wrote about Mary Sweeney and it marks a new method in my work. I was writing pretty standard first person poems in couplets until I tried to write a poem from the point of view of Mary. Her poems couldn't look or sound the same as anything I'd done before, and so it really pushed me to play with fragmentation, assemblage, tone and diction. This poem pushed me out of my rut and started a new chapter in my work. I think I wrote it in Spring 2007.

"The One with Violets in Her Lap" actually should've been the first on this list, I suppose. I wrote this poem in the Spring of 2005. I was still very new to poetry, and I was very naive. I didn't yet revise much, but the idea for this poem came from a line by Sappho, translated by Anne Carson. I spent a long time writing and revising this poem, and it was the first poem I did some research for (though that research was very minimal). It was also the first poemt hat I showed to my first poetry professor for which he didn't have any revisions to suggest. It was one of the first poems I submitted to a journal, right after I graduated from college, and it was the first poem accepted, by Bloom. It is in their current issue that debuted at AWP. Bloom is a fantastic magazine devoted to queer artists. I read it devotedly in college, and being accepted to the journal made me feel like I was welcomed into the great pantheon of queer poets, like the universe was saying, Yes, you are supposed to be here. I had just graduated from college, and I'd chosen not to pursue an MFA, but would instead get my MA in Teaching, as planned for the last four years. I was going to be teaching high school for a year and I was living alone in my college town working a 9-5 job and really questioning what I was meant to do. I'm happy to finally see this poem in print!

The final poem on this list is my poem "Bad Wife Spankings" recently published in PANK. This was the first poem I wrote after finishing my book manuscript in Spring 2009. For five years, I'd basically devoted my poems to the manuscript, and I worried I'd never be able to move out of that historical mode, as much as I loved it. I wrote this poem the morning of my breakup with my wife. It was a strange day, because I knew the relationship was over and neither of us was saying so yet, but I knew that two things had to happen before I could face the idea of confronting her: I had to be sure I could write about it, and I had to be accepted to a PhD program. I wrote this poem pretty much just like it is now in the early morning in my office on campus before teaching two classes. When I got home and checked the mail, there was my first letter of acceptance to a PhD program in English and Creative Writing. When I got to the apartment, I initiated the conversation that ended our relationship. So this poem really makes a transition in my life in a lot of ways, from my MFA to my PhD, since I wrote it after finishing my MFA thesis/book manuscript, at the end of a big relationahip and independent of the project I'd devoted the last five years of my life to.

The most recent poem that changed me is a poem I wrote recently for my documentary poetics class. The poem is called "Bloom & Scruple," and it tells the story of child sexual abuse using mostly appropriated text. I wanted to explore how to tell a story that is untellable, what words you used, and also to interact with texts I've been reading for a literature course I'm taking right now with Kathryn Stockon. We have just read "The Pupil" by Henry James, several studies about CSA and teacher/student relationships, as well as reading Lolita by Nabakov and watching both film versions alongside the movie "L.I.E." and Kathryn's own amazing book The Queer Child. Using these texts and our class dicussions, I wove my ideas together in a multi-voiced 13-page poem that may or may not be successful in its current incarnation, but it taught me a lot about what I am capable of as a poet, and gave me license to try new tactics in my poems.

I suppose the next thing that is changing my poetry and myself is my Poem a Day project. So far I have written 113 poems this year. They are short, more like pieces of poems, but this summer, once the semester ends at the end of next week (!), I plan to go back to the beginning and start working on revisions.

I'm very thankful that poetry is part of my everyday life. I'm lucky that my poetry continues to change, just as it changes me.

Documentary Poetics

2010-04-20T12:54:00.000-06:00

This semester I've been taking a class on Documentary Poetics. In a way, it's something I've been doing for a long time, since my first book manuscript, Call Me By My Other Name is all about documenting lives that weren't considered worthy of documentation, trying to recover what the past has erased. But in a lot of other ways, the idea is completely new to me. For one thing, the course was also focused on the long poem, which is not something I had ever ventured into before. Frankly, the idea terrified me, but I was so excited to work with Paisley Rekdal and so intrigued by the idea of trying something new after just finishing my first book manuscript that I lived and breathed for five years; it was worth the fear.

The course has one more meeting next week, but it really culminated last Friday with a Documentary Poetics mini-conference. We read exercpts from our poems and then our visitors, Mark Nowak and Juliana Spahr, read and answered questions. (Mark blogged about it on the Harriet blog). We had just finished reading Nowak's Shut Up Shut Down and Spahr's This Connection of Everything with Lungs, two books I've had on my shelf for a while but never got around to reading until this class, so it was really a treat to hear them read and talk with them about what a documentary poem is, what should a doumentary poem do (what can it do), and how to sustain a long poem.

I have been both pleased and befuddled in my own attempts to write a documntary poem. The first endeavor was an attempt to capture the strange way rhetoric on both sides of the gay marriage debate mirrors its opposite, how, unless you know the source of the speech, you might not guess which side the speaker is on, as well as using geological and geographical terms as metaphors for the search to find a home for your family when it is not legally recognized nor protected. This piece still needs a lot of work, but I am hoping it will turn into a chapbook over the summer.

My second attempt was just workshopped last night, and dealt with adult/child sex (abuse) using almost all appropriated texts. This one seemed much less successful if I am to believe the workshop comments, but the idea of appropriation and found texts and the way we cobble together the stories of our lives through a collage of lived experience and encountered matter fascinates me, so I suspect this will also be a summer project.

What I found most interesting at the symposium was Nowak's commens that follow:

During my reading at yesterday’s symposium, I began by talking about documentary poetics as not so much a movement as a modality within poetry whose range I see along a continuum from the first person auto-ethnographic mode of inscription to a more objective third person documentarian tendency (with practitioners located at points all across that continuum).

I guess I like the expansiveness of his definition of doc-po. We queers do love a continuum. :) Anyway, I am so happy to have had this class in my life, and to have added a whole new realm to my repertoire. I am quite sad for this class to end, because I find that I still have so many questions, so many things I want to explore. I've also enjoyed so much the various ways my classmates have approached the documentary long poem. I have learned so much from them. So many questions going forth, so many notes to go over, so many new things to try. I think this is the best way to end any semester.

100 Days

2010-04-10T18:01:00.000-06:00

Well, even though I haven't always gotten my poems posted the day they were written, I have written 100 poems so far this year! It's pretty incredible to think about.

My goal with this project has always been to get myself to spend time with poetry at least for a short time each day. So far I have done that all year, and, though I thought it would eventually get easier, it hasn't. I still struggle to come up with something every day, but I think I've...not lowered my standards, but grown more expansive in my tastes. So some days I wrote a parody of a Lady Gaga song, and other days I used found text from the news. The point isn't to write a specific type of poem about one subject (though my father did request I stop writing so much about sex...sorry Dad...), but to just write something...anything.

It does help to do this, if only to stave off guilt that usually comes with not-writing. My poetry is changing. Or I'm exposing my own obsessions to myself. I like to write about clothing and birds and sleeping (maybe because I write the poems first thing in the morning, usually?) and weather. I think I can honestly say that one can write a poem about anything now. Whether that is a good or bad thing, I have yet to decide. I'm glad I decided to post these poems, though, even if I am sometimes embarrassed by the low quality of that day's poem. The accountability helps a lot, even if no one but my Dad (hi Dad!) is reading them every day, it is a good kick in the pants to keep typing away. And to stop writing about cats so much!

Review of my Chap!

2010-04-08T18:12:00.000-06:00

My friend and former FSU classmate, Stephen Mills, was kind enough to review my chapbook Scent of Shatter on his blog today. Stephen is a fantastic poet, so his praise really means a lot to me.

Don't forget you can pick up your own copy of the chap for a mere $5 at Grey Book Press.

And just to prove that I know how to give as well as receive, check out my recent review of Karyna McGlynn's fantastic book I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl at Poets' Quarterly. McGlynn has come up with the best damn title around and it's a book you simply must own.

My Chapbook Has Arrived!

2010-03-17T14:26:00.000-06:00

cover design by Anna Barss-Bailey

I am very excited to announce that my chapbook, Scent of Shatter, is now available for purchase from Grey Book Press. I am eagerly awaiting my own copies in the mail, but you can order your copy today!

"The aspens finished their flickering, the snow fell lightly..."

2010-03-09T17:44:00.000-07:00

The new issue of Western Humanities Review is out, and it is gorgeous. You can get your copy now at the website for a crisp $10 (or, for $8 more, get a subscription!). I am so honored to be in this issue, alongside Lydia Davis, Michael Martone, Stephen Sandy, Joe Wenderoth and many others, including my colleagues Tim O'Keefe, Natanya Ann Pulley, Esther Lee and Brenda Sieczkowski.

Four of my favorite poems of mine are here and I'm glad this is where they found homes. Beautiful artwork, beautiful prose and poetry. Get yours today!

Gah!

2010-03-02T09:44:00.002-07:00

I woke to an email from Tupelo Press in my inbox announcing this Poetry Project contest they're running about writing a poem using a line from Sappho. At first I was excited and then I was frustrated.

Five years ago, I wrote a poem called "The One with Violets in Her Lap," which is forthcoming this spring in Bloom magazine.

The title of the poem is a line from Sappho, in fact the first line they choose to suggest for their contest participants to use:

Each submitted poem must take as its title or first line one of the following fragments from Sappho (drawn from the book If Not, Winter, Fragments of Sappho, trans. Anne Carson, Knopf, 2002.)

the one with violets in her lap (fragment 21)
if not, winter (fragment 22)
no more than the bird with piercing voice (fragment 30)
but all is to be dared, because even a person of poverty (fragment 31)
you burn me (fragment 38)
but I to you of a white goat (fragment 40)
the doorkeeper's feet are seven armlengths long (fragment 110)
just now goldsandaled Dawn (fragment 123)
sweetbitter unmanageable creature who steals in (fragment 130)
gold anklebone cups (fragment 192)

What a cool contest. But I kind of hate that there are going to be other poems running around with the same title of this poem of mine. That poem was special to me, and it's one of the first poems in my book. I wrote the poem in 2005 and it was the first poem accepted for publication.

I guess it makes me wonder--how original are we ever? If I wrote this poem independent of contest dictates, does that matter anymore? Sometimes I wonder how much the contest machine of poetry gets in the way.

I guess it doesn't matter that I wrote this poem long before this contest, but....for the record....I did.

In like a lamb

2010-03-01T12:29:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite memories took place about six years ago. I was living in Paris, studying abroad, and visited my friend Nicole in Amsterdam. Her host family was an awesome gay couple with an adorable apartment. We woke up to sun pouring in. We ate breakfast and the Postal Service was on in the background. It was the first time I'd heard their album.

Well, they just popped up on my Pandora "Mushaboom" radio station and the sharp clear light of March is pouring into my rooms as I enjoy my coffee and Icelandic skyr (my favorite new indulgence).

Last night I finished writing my first paper of the semester and any of you who have been in school know that lovely feeling of freedom.

My dad, who is pretty much the most awesome dad there is, sent me this quote in an email this morning:

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.

Charles Dickens

It feels exactly like that today. I will spend the day reading poetry and saying thank you for how lucky I am to have a job that lets me do that, to live in a state that is so lovely and to have time to sleep in on mornings like this. Last night I slept bathed in the moonbeams from the full moon.

Clouds

2010-02-26T01:44:00.000-07:00

Wow.

Inspired by C. Dale Young and his word cloud for his current manuscript, I decided to create one of my own. Aside from the names of the two protagonists (it is kind of a novel-in-verse), it is interesting to see what came up:

And here is one for my chapbook:

Yikes. I need to stop using the word like forever. No surprise that hair, child, window, night are represented, though.

The chapbook is coming out so very soon. I'm so excited to share it with you. I got final proofs today.

I have been sick for two days and now I will spend the weekend writing a paper on Jane Austen and the Superbowl.

Tideland

2010-02-24T15:37:00.000-07:00

I've been emailing lately with a couple people considering various schools I've attended. Some are high school seniors considering my alma mater, who are related to friends of friends of friends. Some are considering the school through which I studied abroad, and some are thinking of my graduate schools. I like talking to people considering their future. I worked in the Admissions Office (and, in fact, had a dream about that job last night) at my alma mater, and I taught high school and counseled students on applications. It feels like every few years I apply for something and I know that acute feeling of anxious hope that seems to attend this season.

Talking about schools is nice for selfish reasons too, because it reminds me why I made the choices I did. It's affirming.

Yesterday I was sick. I had to go to the store to buy medicine and soda crackers and gatorade and so I bought myself a purple hyacinth as well. A little bit of spring inside amidst this dreary weather. Everyone is longing for spring, but I crave the cold. It hsn't snowed much in the valley, though the mountains have reportedly received nearly 300 inches (can that possibly be right?). I wish I participated in some sort of outdoor winter activity other than ogling the snow queen domain.

I dream arctic. I dream polar. I am writing a book-length poem about geography, landscape and gay civil rights. It started as something for my documentary poetry class, but I think it's growing beyond that. I am trying to understand how our liminal, fragile bodies relate to ancient landscapes, how geology reflects and refracts human conflicts, how friction between factions mirrors topographical distress.

Outside the snow has turned to rain. It is cold, but not cold enough for what I crave. I long to watch water barely hovering above freezing. I want penguins and seals and polar bears. I want glaciers.

Five-Oh

2010-02-19T16:33:00.000-07:00

I have written 50 poems this year.

That is more than I've written any other single year except maybe 2007.

Not saying they are all brilliant or even all finished. But. So far for the last fifty days, one poem a day.

I am being rewarded with a horrible migraine today, so I console myself with a brownie and lots of work on my long documentary poem for my documentary poetry class. I love it (the poem; and the class) and am terrified by it (the poem).

RIP Lucille Clifton

2010-02-15T18:29:00.000-07:00

I am accused of tending to the past

as if i made it,
as if i sculpted it
with my own hands. i did not.
this past was waiting for me
when i came,
a monstrous unnamed baby,
and i with my mother’s itch
took it to breast
and named it
History.
she is more human now,
learning languages everyday,
remembering faces, names and dates.
when she is strong enough to travel
on her own, beware, she will.

Clifton was one of the first contemporary poets I read. My teacher assigned me one of her books (I no longer remember which) for a report. So sad to hear of her recent passing.

Making Art

2010-02-12T02:15:00.002-07:00

Okay, I kept going back and editing the last post until I finally decided that I just had to write a new post.

I don't do anything.

I mean, of course I do. But I don't have a job. I am a PhD student who is paid to be a PhD student and write poems. In a few years I'll go back to teaching (which I LOVE and miss), but my job is basically to read and write.

I go back and forth between thinking that I do something important and thinking that believing I do something important is really fucking arrogant. I am so lucky to be in a position where I have the luxury of my existential dilemma being about art.

Of course I think art is important. And I do and don't believe in fate. In that I believe we each have something we're supposed to do and we get to choose this thing, but we've got to be authentic about it.

Martha Graham, the dancer, wrote (or said? I dont' know where this quote comes from):

"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. ... No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others"

I love this quote, and I have it posted above my desk and have had since I started college. I don't know if I am more alive than other people. Considering the amount of time lately I've spent in bed watching Frasier, I doubt it. But I do think that there is originality because there is only one you. Sure, there is a zeitgeist and people write in the same way about the same things, but same but different. Even when we end up using the exact same words (because, after all, there are only so many ways of saying things, and there's bound to be some confluence, even unintentional).

What am I trying to say?

I always console/torture myself by reminding myself that what I do—writing poetry—isn't going to change anyone's life.

Except—

Poetry has changed my life. I can name several poems by contemporary poets that have changed my life in big and small ways. And even more poets, though more by virtue of them being my friends than being poets.

The big ways are things like thinking maybe I shouldn't kill myself or I want to write poetry too or holy shit, I'm not the only lesbian in the world.

But the small things are big too. They make me feel more human. More connected to people, less alone.

This is something I envy about musicians. Not the numbers of people they connect with, but how it is so much easier to make music a huge part of your life. I am always listening to music. I grew up around music. My mother has a lovely soprano voice. My dad plays wicked guitar. My brother the cello. We both took piano lessons. I used to play the most lesbian instrument ever, the French Horn (think about it). I used to sing, but not very well. I am listening to music (Amanda Palmer, bien sur) right now. I can't write a blog post and read a poem. Though I could write this and listen to a poem, I couldn't concentrate. And musicians have concerts, which, let's face it, are cooler than poetry readings.

But we have poetry readings! For some reason I get super nervous doing readings, even though I never got nervous acting in high school, which I devoted all my time to.

What I'm realizing is that I have always been an artist, surrounding myself with art of some sort. I used to think it was really pretentions to call yourself an artist. I don't feel that way anymore. (Though it can certainly be obnoxious in certain instances.)

Anyway, I love reading my work. I love connecting with an audience, once my breathing calms down and I accept that I will just always blush talking in front of people (unless I'm teaching, when this reaction is, for some reason, not triggered). I have been to a lot of poetry readings, and it is very different from a concert. Yes, every performance of a song is different, kind of, but at a poetry reading, well, it's unlikely you've heard the poet read their work before unless you've been to a reading. My point is, you sit at home alone with a book. And it's just you and the book. And then you go to a reading, and instead of looking down at the book, you're looking out at this person who made this book, and you're sitting beside other people experiencing this, and experiencing art like this always galvanizes me to make more art. It's one of my favorite parts of this job (and I do think of it as a job, in a non-creepy careerist way, I hope), as shy as I am.

Poems take themselves really seriously a lot of the time, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I don't even think there's anything wrong with taking yourself seriously as a writer. I think that's important. I think if you don't believe in what you do, then why the fuck are you doing it? This is not a manifesto, and I am certainly no expert on anyone's doings but my own (and even then—).

Go read Chad Reynolds poem(s) "Auto-Collaborations with Myself" over at SIR!. They're great. I think there is something connected to at least my thoughts on these manners there.

I should do more with this space. I love blogging, but when my official real name is attached, I feel shy. Someone told me once that you can never get a Real Job (i.e. tenure-track university position) if you have a blog. I'll be sad if that's true. I don't think I say anything here that would be contrary to teaching at a school of any kind. I love to teach. I am good at it. I have a degree in it. And experience! And good evaluations!

Anyway, I won't make promises for future blog plans, because it seems that is the surest way to leave them unfulfilled. I should get some sleep and practice the piano and write some poems. In that order. Well, at least with the sleep coming first.

Good night.

Mid-winter Days

2010-02-11T22:47:00.002-07:00

February is my least favorite month. In first grade, we learned a song to remember how to spell February.

F-E-B-R-U-A-R-Y

Okay, that doesn't capture it at all, but if you meet me, I will sing it for you sometime. It is in my head whenever I see the name of the month I most dread. When I was a child I was always coming down with strep throat for, it seemed, two weeks at a time. I missed a lot of Valentine's Days at school, and often cried when I couldn't hand out my personalized cards.

Alexander McQueen's suicide brings up all the suicides I've known. It is too many. I understand that sorrow so well, and yet I could never cross over that line, now that I know what it is to watch someone go over it. So sad.

I stayed up until four in the morning yesterday, because I am determined to get all my homwork done for every class and never miss (except once for AWP).

Technology is so frequently criticized for dehumanizing us, causing disconnection. And sure, it does allow some people to avoid society all together, but for me it has forged connections! I get to "meet" poets whose work I admire. Old friends reconnect, I am constantly discovering great new work and following a google breadcrumb trail to the poet him/herself, finding work they reccommend. It is a vast community and yet a small one. We are all connected in some way. My life is made of words. We should be kind. Simple things are the most important things.

I am reading Charlotte Bronte's Villette. I am writing about Jane Austen and the Superbowl (for real!), rediscovering Barbara Guest, Lorine Niedecker, phenomenology. It is so cold in my rooms these days. Sometimes (though far too infrequently for my taste), there is snow on the ground. I can't get enough water or sleep.

I do yoga in the mornings, following along with a DVD. Morning sunlight, cats showing off their greater flexibility and a pot of tea accompany me. Books, ink on paper. Life is good.

EDIT:

I was reading Amanda Palmer's blog, and found a quote that really describes how I feel about technology. Now I am a mere poet. And I don't have a book (yet?) and who am I, I don't have fans, but I want to connect with other artists, other people who like art and this is why:

the whole point is: if you’re an artist, you either like connecting or you don’t. if you like it, you’ll find every possible creative way (online: blogging, twittering. live: meeting, signing, hugging etc.) to do it.
if you’re a misanthrope, you’re simply fucked. it’s 2010. the currency is connection. the internet is the tool.

I've been thinking a lot about Amanda Palmer lately. I was really into the Dresden Dolls in college, and they played at Bennington once, which was incredibly awesome, and I hate that I was too shy to even say hi or "you're awesome" or whatever. Anyway, life went on and I lost focus on them and so I just recently bought Palmer's solo album, and now I can't stop listening to it and it makes me want to play the piano again (I took lessons for about ten years) and reading interviews with her and her blog and all of this. And the reason I think I have become so interested in her (aside from the fact that she's brilliant) is that I really admire how she's conducted her career. Like the above quote, she seems to really try for being genuine and connecting with people. Poets are never going to be rock stars, and I think most people who get into this job realize that. We have to be humble and honest about our own expectations. Yes, I want a book. And I want people to buy it, read it, like it. How many? Well, enough that someone wants to keep publishing me. It feels so premature to think about these things now, and it seems like we're all supposed to pretend that we don't want these things, that we don't care about winning prizes and getting published, as if we're too cool for school. It can be frustrating, because it doesn't feel like many people are having those genunine conversations and actually trying to connect as much as one would hope. BUT I think this is changing, thanks to the internet. People are being more direct and connecting, and it is lovely. That is, in the end, all I want. To collaborate and connect. To put a few words on paper. So, yeah. I love the internet. I just think that the world is actually really fucking small, in a really beautiful way. In the last week, I've made all kinds of weird/random/cool connections of how I know the friend-of-a-friend of someone or whatever. I am painfully shy, so the internet makes things easier and encourages me to get out of my shell and actually makes it easier for me to put myself out in the world. Okay. It is late and I am tired and dehydrated. I am pro-connection, pro-internet, pro-Amanda Palmer.

Home in Cyberspace

2010-02-07T13:26:00.001-07:00

I remember the first website I had. I was in junior high, and I used one of those easy-pubish sites that was marketed to girls. The background was garish purple with sparkling .gifs. I talked about music and The X-Files a lot. and kept a blog called "Dear World."

Well, I think I'm come a long way from there. Today I built and published my first professional website, of which this blog is a subsidiary. It is still rough, but what do you think? My own domain and everything.

I am swamped with work, so of course a little website procrastination was in order. I am spending my weekend finishing Sense & Sensibility, beginning Villette, perusing Some Values of Landscape and Weather by Peter Gizzi and Fire Pond by Jessica Garratt, the two visiting writers this week. Last night there was knitting and music and vegetable pies. It's a good life.

Music to Type To

2010-02-05T23:04:00.019-07:00

My friend wrote recently of the music she listens to while she writes. This is something I've always wanted, but never took the time to do, so yesterday I took a few hours to sort through music I'd forgotten I even had, buy some new music (like the Zoe Keating my friend mentioned) and today I tried it out. I found that sometimes it helps most to have lyrics, while other times I require only instrumentation, so my list is long and large, to offer options.

Here are some selections from my list:

Sigur Rós ( ) is my favorite & I have my dad to thank for this recommendation; he is my music guru
certain Regina Spektor songs ("Summer in the City," "Après Moi," "Samson"
Who Killed Amanda Palmer?
the soundtrack to Where the Wild Things Are
The Blue Notebooks Max Richter
the soundtrack to Shortbus (my computer tells me I've listened to "Boys of Melody" 278 times!)
various selections by Philip Glass
Zoe Keating (she is truly fantastic)
Carla Bruni (oui, la femme du President de la France!)
The Books
Cat Power
Feist
Guitarra Espagnole
Vitamin String Quartet (I particularly like their renditions of Radiohead & Madonna; true story: my ex was seriously considering walking down the aisle to their version of "Like a Prayer" at our Canadian wedding)
Mark Mothersbaugh compositions from various films, mostly Wes Anderson's

It's been a short time I've had this list, but so far I have opened up OmmWriter, shut off its sounds and turned on my playlist and it really does help me focus. In college and other times I've cohabited, I always listened to music through headphones to give myself some aural privacy and shut out the sounds of the roommate or partner. It was so refreshing, once I got my own place, to have no need of them, that I forgot how isolating (in a good way) headphones can be. I'd forgotten that sweet spot you reach when the music is at the right volume and it's like you've reached the point where you can hear yourself thinking. I used to have this little red discman I won somewhere and I carried it everywhere. It had this anti-skip protection so it was great on long bumpy bus trips around Europe. How far we've come with our little iPods....and I have an old-school tiny-screened iPod!

I've always felt that technology only helps my writing. I have a dictionary right on my desktop, so I don't have to disrupt the flow of a thought to doublecheck a word, I can italicize &c right in the word processor and thanks to Mavis Beacon typing lessons as a child, I type quite fast, much quicker than I can write, making it less likely that my thoughts get away from me. I would bring my laptop to take notes in class, but my years of pedagogy training taught me the importance of students (including myself) actually writing things down. There is a direct connection between memory and writing things down. In France, they even color-code. I used to. Anyway, I am a firm believer in handwriting notes, even if it is hard to catch my breath.

Lately the theme for my life seems to be my need to slow down. I can't sleep, can't focus, seem to be either ahead or behind, never right on the mark. How much music helps! I used to listen to music all the time, but I don't know when I stopped. I have lived with several people with whom I strongly disagreed about music, which makes things difficult. It's amazing how emotionally attached we get to music we love. So I got out of the habit of it. When I'm on long trips, the iPod is locked and loaded, but since getting satellite radio in my car, there's always something good playing, so remembering to bring my mp3 player everywhere lessened in importance. Rediscovering it has been nice.

Imagination

2010-02-03T12:21:00.000-07:00

I've written before about this issue of fact and fiction in poetry, and the need some people have to know the story behind the poem. Just the other day I workshopped a poem that included a rape and not only did someone question whether or not it was a rape, but they asked me if it really happened. Aside from that being an insensitive question, it's beside the point. Even in a nonfiction context, the idea that "It didn't really happen that way" or fear that people will think what is true isn't and vice versa only gets in the way of the poem. While I'm sure my family would prefer I only write "happy poems" and not anything that might lead to questioning of their parenting skills (they were the best parents I could ask for, despite what you think a speaker is saying in my poems!), I always aim for what's best in the poem and ignore the biography, even—maybe especially—when I am trying to write a poem about a specific event in my life.

My former MFA advisor, Erin Belieu tackles this topic at How a Poem Happens, and, not surprisingly, I agree with her completely:

Even if themes or images originally spring in some way from the biographical, any poem worth reading moves beyond that quickly. I mean, I know that Hardy had a miserable relationship with his first wife, but I didn’t know that when I first fell in love with his poems and knowing this doesn’t add anything to them. “The Voice” is an incredibly powerful portrait of grief without this “fact.” My persistent fear is that reality television and celebrity blogs and all that delicious but nutritionally void garbage are completely devaluing acts of imagination in every form. I hate those “based on a true story” stickers they put on books now. I think we all need to take the pledge to stop caring about what the facts are and just be hopeful for something imagined that truly moves us. On my next book I’m putting stickers on them that say, “based on an imagined story.”

My ex was very uncomfortable with me being a writer. She was obsessed with people thinking poorly of her because of the actions or description of some anonymous female in a poem. We were constantly fighting about what I was and was not "allowed" to write. The best part about breaking up was that I no longer had to worry about that voice over my shoulder telling me to be nice. If anything, it encourages me to go for the jugular and write whatever I want and not worry about what other people think I may or may not be talking about. (Or about whom I'm talking!) That George Herbert quote "Living well is the best revenge" can so easily be translated into "Writing well is the best revenge."

Withdrawal

2010-02-03T00:31:00.000-07:00

The difficult thing about school is that we all say we go in order to have time to write. This is a lie. Sometimes I think I got more writing done when I taught high school. (Hello free period!) I am extremely luck to be on a fellowship that doesn't require me to teach while I am taking classes, but I am also quite fussy, which means I do read everything assigned and I take my schoolwork seriously. I actually miss teaching, but I don't know how I would possibly squeeze everything into my life with the rigorous courses I am taking this term. Thing is I love them. I think this is the best semester I've yet had, because I love the work I have to do.

But since last week, I have been really wanting to write—to really sit down and just write all day—but I can't. Too many books to read and theories to theorize over. I am itchy for my fingers on the keys. I actually feel like I am going through withdrawal. There are many contributory factors to this feeling only slightly related to the glass of wine I've had the last few nights.

For the past five years, I've been writing this book. Steadily working on a project that is now looking for a home. It is done, for now. It is as complete as it can be for where I am now, and I am very happy with it. It was such a specific project and I am in love with it. But I am now a little lost. What am I writing now? Besides a poem a day, nothing. Sure, I write poems for class, but I don't yet have a larger project developing. But this weekend I've felt that itch, the burning sensation that can either mean infection or inspiration. (Ew.) But I haven't had time to spend one of those langorous days pacing back and forth in my den, drinking a bottle of wine and pulling books off my shelf and blasting music and swearing and dancing and typing and writing. I'm spoiled, of course. I spent all of last year ~~planning my wedding~~ polishing my thesis, writing, revising and doing little else all day.

I need to start implementating a day like this at least once a month. January's poems-of-the-day were mostly dashed off hastily, but I've begun spending more time on them. Certain things are emerging in my mind of what I want to write. Titles, phrases, images, songs come to me so clearly, and I'm trying to create some consolidated idea of how that translates into language.

Certain things that speak to me:
this photograph in my head I don't know how to describe
Amanda Fucking Palmer
fabric, especially those associated with women (lace, velvet, silk)
certain friends who seem to embody this slippery quality I'm after in my poems
perfume
wine how one beverage can have such variety of tastes
revenge fantasies specific and general
laundry
Victoriana
tea
snow
mountains
avalanches physical and metaphorical
ice
broken dishes
dried flowers
post cards
London

I downloaded a writing program called OmmWriter. It is incredible. There are plenty of problems with it (no bold, italics, &c????), but it provides you with a full-screen background and just this floating textbox and ambient sounds and even customized keyboard clicking. Plug in your headphones and you can finally write at the coffeeshop! I intend to try that out at my new favorite tearoom this weekend (anyone want to join me?) I've started writing my daily poems in Omm and it does help me shut out the rest of the world for a bit. I like, especially with a poem, to see the text all by itself like that. I don't focus so much on the format as on the words, which is most important for me. More and more form is starting to arrive at the same time as content in my mind, but the majority of the time it's the words I need to get down and then I format them. It's one of the reasons I like writing on a computer so much—I can do both simultaneously, without overthinking it. (The overthinking comes later, during revision.)

Something about this semester makes me want to write a novel. Maybe it's that the novel workshop is reading Carole Maso, my favorite author, and I'm reminded of how much I love that. Maybe it's that I wrote a novel in verse for my first book, so I'm still in that mindset. My new goal: to write a book-length poem. We'll see how that goes. It's not even started yet. But I can't think about it without tasting earl grey lavender tea, which is a good sign. Tangibility is important, even in poetry.

31 Days

2010-01-31T15:26:00.000-07:00

For the past 31 days, I've written a poem every day. I interpret "day" literally--within the 24 hour block of time that is that day, I must write a poem. Sometimes that means if I'm awake after midnight (which is most days), I'll write that day's poem. Sometimes it means that I write that day's poem right before midnight. It has been a good exercise for me. I almost take it for granted now--oh, I have to write my poem before I forget! Usually I try to do it in the morning. I think dashing the poems off quickly have helped me push myself outside my comfort zone. I am more direct and maybe weirder than I usually would me. I don't think I've written any poems that are fantastic, but I do think I have a few good lines, a couple images I'll try to salvage. I make myself write at least 10-14 lines, since I think I don't want to go shorter than sonnet length. Plenty of good poems have been written shorter than that, but for my purposes, it would just be too easy to write three lines and leave it at that. When I'm teaching poetry, I make ten lines the minumum for my students. I think initially because my first poetry professor set that limit, but also because I think it's very difficult for beginning poets to say anything worth reading in less time than that, unless they're working with a fixed form like a haiku. So often the first half of the poem is an onramp that will be cut in workshop; it's important to at least get a toe beyond that, so you're left with material to work with.

One thing about writing a daily poem is that I become aware just how much my surroundings (literal and emotional, psychological) affect my poems. Sometimes I can look back at revised poems and recall what I was doing when I conceived the poem, but usually it recedes with time and revision. But now I can very clearly see: Oh, I was listening to Amanda Palmer or I just got my BPAL perfume order that day or I spent the day obsessively following the Prop 8 hearings or That was the day of the big snowstorm! It's like a poetry diary, though I try not to be too literal.

It's been difficult. There have been a lot of days when I've been so busy, so blocked, so tired that I did not want to write that day's poem, but the idea of having 365 poems at the end of this really thrills me. Though the idea is to be with poetry daily, I have written a week's worth of extra poems already for days when I know I'll be too sick or busy to take the time. I had to skip one day this past week when I was flat on my back with the worst migraine I've ever had. I relied on an extra poem. Then the next day I wrote two poems. That's where the extra poems accumulate, my making up for what I didn't do. I don't want to be too strict with myself; that's when plans like this fall apart, when I hold myself to a standard I know I can't achieve.

I think it will get a little difficult when I'm traveling--particularly at AWP and when I officiate my friend's wedding this summer--but I hope that by that time I'll be so used to it, I'll be typing on my iPhone or something.

Time is passing so swiftly. Soon it will be summer and I'll be in my second year of the PhD. I want to slow everything down. There is so much I still need to learn, so much I want to read and do before I'm released into the real world. Funny thing about grad school—you have this extended adolesence of schooling and by the time you're finally finished, you're middle-aged. Depressing.

January in photos

2010-01-31T12:53:00.002-07:00

It has been a spare, cold month. I've only gone out with others three times this month. I've always been studious, but not quite this much. The exigences of my current course load are great. So I offer you the month in photos:

I went to the Grand Canyon in between my grandma's house and home.

When the inversion is not in effect, it's actually quite pretty in Salt Lake:

Theory, O no, Mr. Bill!

There was a wild night playing Taboo at dawn's house. But it was requested I not post photos of faces.

Cate brought me flowers:

I put postcards on my bedroom wall.

A spoon with a history:

But most of all, I drank coffee and studied.

Cover Art

2010-01-29T20:09:00.001-07:00

I am very excited to unveil the fabulous cover art my friend and former roommate Anna Barss-Bailey designed for my chapbook Scent of Shatter (Grey Book Press, 2010). Anna is one of my favorite artists--long has a piece of hers adorned my mantel--and so I was thrilled when she agreed to design the cover for my first published group of poems.

Blogger is not letting me upload a high-quality image, but this will at least give you an idea. Not being a visual artist and knowing many writers have no say in the cover of their books, I try not to think too much about what might adorn my work, but this is just more than I could ever have expected. I love it so much. Seeing the cover art makes it feel very real that soon I'll be holding the chapbook in my hands. Around the end of February, in fact! It's quite exciting. As I may have mentioned before, this short collection is a section that was originally in my long manuscript. Indeed, it was part of my thesis, but I opted to remove it. I think it works better on its own, actually, and freeing it from the larger context allowed me to do so much more with it.

For a preview of one of the poems, grab a copy of the latest issue of Western Humanities Review, which just went to press this evening. As part of the perks of being a runner-up in the Utah Writers' Contest, I have four poems appearing in the journal. If you do order a copy, it is likely that I helped stuff the envelopes, since I also work as an editorial assistant (which has nothing to do, I can assure you, with getting poems in, since it was anonymous and a judge unaffiliated with the review).

I've been plagued by migraines all week, but finally knowing what my cover will look like, and knowing the proofs of the chap are in the mail makes for a very cheery (if chilly) Friday night in Utah.

Favorites

2010-01-27T01:45:00.000-07:00

Tonight two friends came over to watch some movies for a class we're in together, and I was able to gush about my love for Carole Maso, because one of the friends is reading The Art Lover. I first read the book the summer before ninth grade. I plucked it off the shelf of a great little bookstore, Sister Wolf Books, in Dorset, Minnesota. I thought, pretty mundanely, I like art, I'm an art lover, I should read this. The book changed my life, and I remembered how Maso is really to credit for so many of the writers I love today. I'd actually forgotten this, but I used to write down all the names of authors, the titles of films and pieces of music and paintings and anything else Maso mentions in her work I didn't recognize (which was most of the references), search for them on Amazon and discover opera, French nouvelle vague cinema, Gertrude Stein and dozens and dozens of other works of art. Seeing the vast possibilities available in contemporary literature through Maso's oeuvre allowed me to start with possibilities, to dwell in them, as Dickinson would say. I never felt restricted in my writing, never felt I had to follow any rules. For me, this was wonderful. When I started writing poetry, I enjoyed prosody because it didn't feel constraining but a new approach. I was able to appreciate rules because I didn't suffer through them in my earlier writing career.

When I look back at writing I did in the first few years of high school, the content isn't anything special, but formally, it is, in a way, much closer to the work I'm doing now. Maybe it's time to re-read Maso and remind myself of possibilities...

Writing a poem every day can be exhausting. I struggle with it so much. Even though I'm constantly thinking about what to write--and this is good, a way of being with the project every day--it's difficult to actually come up with anything.

I spent five years working on my manuscript, and it was such a specific project with a narrative (though it's told through lyric poems). I have yet to discover my next step. I am without a project. So I am focusing on small things. What do I enjoy? What do I like?

Shakespeare's sonnets
dried flowers (but not roses, they smell)
light on a white wall
the shadows made by said light
things barely seen or almost-seen; through mirrors, reflections, peripheral vision
paper flowers
glasses
sandwiches
mermaids
sisters (never having had a sister, the relationship fascinates me, as do...)
twins and images of twinning
sailors
the sea
the desert
mountains
velvet
women wearing hats
pictures of the Sacred Heart
repetitious prayers, see also, mantras
monuments
thin curtains covering windows
all bodies of water
snow
rain
peppermint, lavender, geranium, pansy
brushstrokes
braids
clotheslines
the scent of fresh laundry
the clip-clop of ladies' shoes
houses, spaces (think Bachelard, Forster, Austen)
Polaroids
balloons
sapphires
mistaken identity
the sound of an old-style bell phone ringing in an empty room

Queer History

2010-01-21T11:41:00.001-07:00

When I was 21, I moved to Paris. I made my first lesbian friend and she made me lists and lists of required reading/viewing/listening. Everything was included from pulp to pomo in music, literature, movies, theory, experiences. I read queer theory texts to find out how to think about myself, to find words to describe my identity. I read Gender Trouble for fun (how, I don't know, because when I read it now I am mired in the difficulty...) but somehow my youthful hubris and fascination for words on the page that spoke of that which I'd never named emboldened me.

So I fell in love with Franco-Algerian author Nina Bouraoui and translated her novel Tomboy for my thesis, which had me reading Halberstam and Sartre and Butler. No one taught me these things, no teacher handed me these books, it was my friends, my community. Thus queer theory has always felt so personal to me.

Grad school quickly taught me that being a lesbian doesn't mean I have a leg up on studying this stuff. My first theory class kicked my ass. It destroyed any confidence I had in my own abilities to discern knowledge from texts that, I felt, were about me and my life and my friends. I turned to contemporary queer poetry for that instead. In fact, one of the reasons I devoured poetry so rapidly was because it was where I found the best mirror, not in theory where I originally sought it.

This semester, I am in what could be called a queer theory class. Until my PhD, until this semester, I am entirely self-taught. My professors have indulged me frequently letting me employ this optic when approaching my seminar papers, but it really feels official now, and I am blissfully getting the wind knocked out of me. Entering a PhD program has had a dramatic effect on my motivation. Oh, I've always been an overachiever, but in my two Masters programs, there always seemed to be a cushion of safety. If I didn't learn it now, there was more time left. There's no more time left. I want to learn yesterday what I am studying today. I want to be able to adequately teach what I am grappling to understand.

Where does love of subject intersect with knowledge of subject? Does it matter if we're devoted to a topic if we can't grasp it? Why does my work in queer theory feel so personal, and is this detrimental? Can you care too much in academia? Danger seems to surround personal involvement when we are told to be detached and objective, but literature, beauty--these are subjective things. Who do I want to be is a question that seems so intertwined with what do I want to study?

Ah, school.

Congrats to Esther Lee!

2010-01-13T11:57:00.002-07:00

I am thrilled that my friend Esther Lee's poetry manuscript, Spit, has been accepted by Elixir Press. Esther is a fantastic poet and a fierce friend, and I feel so lucky to know her and so glad good work is getting noticed!

Congrats, Esther!

Resurrection

2010-01-13T11:30:00.000-07:00

I am delighted to report the following news: the fabulous queer journal of the arts, BLOOM, is back! It is being resurrected this year, and I'm to appear!

When I first started writing poetry, my professor told me about the journal and I subscribed online. It was beautiful and chock full of the highest-quality writing by queer writers. I loved everything about it, and when I graduated in 2005, I submitted a handful of poems. I'd never submitted work anywhere before, so I was stunned when, eight months later, I got an email from then-poetry editor Joan Larkin saying they'd like to continue considering my poem "The One with Violets in Her Lap," and was it still available? I was teaching high school at the time, and waiting to hear back from MFA programs, and I felt this note was a lifeline, a sign that I was, after all, meant to do this poetry thing.

A few months later, I was sitting in a restaurant with my mom in Tallahassee, where she'd just helped me move to start my MFA at FSU. We had literally just driven into town and it was my first chance to check my email thanks to wi-fi at the cafe. The first email I read was from Bloom, officially accepting my poem. That was in June 2006. It seemed so auspicious to have the first poem I submitted anywhere be accepted the day I moved to town to really give the poet thing a shot.

I got to meet the editor, Charles Flowers, at AWP in Atlanta that year, read the latest issue, and hear that my poem would appear in the next one.

Well, Bloom ran into some problems, and didn't appear for awhile. It sounds crazy that a poem I submitted in 2005 is finally being published in 2010, but since I didn't have editors banging down the door to publish my work, and since I loved the magazine so much and had such sentimental connections to it, it being the first journal I started reading regularly, I held fast. I had plenty of other poems to submit and have published 17 other poems and have several more forthcoming in the interim, but I still wanted to see my work in Bloom. The poem is one of the first ones in my manuscript, and one of the few poems I wrote in undergrad that I can still stand to read. I worked on it longer than I'd worked on any poem at that time and it was one of those prophetic moments when you're able to produce something better than anything else you've ever written and it's difficult to duplicate, but you hang on to that one poem. It remains a favorite of folks who've read my work, which is another reason why I kept patient and waited for Bloom's return.

When I submitted to Bloom initially, I had only just come out of the closet, too, and it took a lot of courage for me to submit to a self-identified queer journal. I knew that being published there (and google-able) would mean being okay with really being out. It was a stand I took. I've written about queer issues in my work since the beginning. My first poetry professor is gay and the first book of contemporary poems I read for my first poetry class was by a gay man, and so I think I've always seen poetry as a genre welcoming the revelation of secrets as well as a genre of liberation. It meant a lot to me, not just as a poet, but as a lesbian to have my poem accepted in Bloom.

I'm so looking forward to finally seeing it! It has been worth the wait.

Check out their new website and, if you're queer, submit work!

Poem Memoir Story

2010-01-12T21:53:00.000-07:00

After a very busy and tiresome day, I decided to give myself a study break and check my mail. What to my wondering eyes did appear but two contributor's copies of PMS poemmemoirstory, which contains my poem "One day I laid down the bruise of you." I'm even mentioned in the editor's note at the beginning. A welcome reminder of why I'm doing this crazy PhD thing in the first place: the poetry.

First Day

2010-01-11T17:57:00.000-07:00

I spent the weekend reorganizing my closet and den, getting things in ship shape, ready for another semester of PhD school. My sister-in-law started a Masters program today, and she's been on my mind all day. It's been a busy one. It started with yoga and breakfast, soft music, then my first class, on the intersection of prose and poetry in the 20th century (& beyond), followed by a frantic race to fill up my gas tank before the car quit on me, an (unsuccessful) trip to a local bookstore, grocery shopping, reading, playing with my new camera and my kitties and getting ready for my evening class on documentary poetics, a subject I devoted the last five years of my life to with my manuscript Call Me By My Other Name, about a lesbian couple in the late-nineteenth-century American Midwest.

Tonight, or maybe this weekend or tomorrow, I'm making a light box out of a cardboard box.

And reading, reading, reading.

I am all ready & waiting--

Week One

2010-01-07T20:02:00.000-07:00

Well, I've made it through seven days of writing a poem every day, and so far I'm really enjoying it. I think I have a few good lines, and I know I feel happier having written even a little bit every day. I'm starting to spend more time on the poems, and often I write more than one a day. I know that it will get a lot harder next week, when classes recommence, but I look forward to the added challenge.

Don't forget to keep checking my Poem a Day tumblr for my daily efforts. Like my photo-a-day project,where all my pictures are SOOC (straight out of the camera, as in not edited, at least not until I figure out how to use Photoshop), my poems kind of are too. They go through minimal revision if any before they are posted, and I'm usually so neurotic about trying to get everything perfect before it sees the light of day that it's kind of refreshing to just post something when it's first written. So far I've been writing first thing in the morning, when my brain is still kind of fuzzy and, I think, my inner censor isn't yet awake. While things will get revised if I decided to do something with the poem of the day, I edit myself so much while I'm writing usually, so to just let my fingers type away and don't get in my own way. I think my poems have been pretty weird lately, but the weirdness is welcome.

I'm looking forward to seeing how this project continues to develop!

I'm also reading A Brief History of Time by Shaindel Beers and I Have to Go Back to 1994 And Kill a Girl by Karyna McGlynn, both of which I am enjoying immensely.

Another semester begins

2010-01-05T13:44:00.000-07:00

Another semester is starting next Monday. In a way, my daily poem writing helps me feel like I'm getting back in the spirit of school after a month of lolling (and LOLing), but I intended to read a few theory books before Monday, and I realize now that's just not going to happen. I started reorganizing my closet and it is a much bigger project than originally anticipated. I've allowed myself to indulge in fashion, reading Academic Chic, Fashionable Academics and The Glamorous Grad Student and making a few purchases in the post-holiday sales, playing around with my new dSLR and watching movies while enjoying tea and toast, honey and kitty snuggles. I love winter, even with its discomfort and inconvenience. Once my new boots arrive, I'll like it even more!

Soon I'll be studying Canonical Perversions, 20th century literature and the Long Poem. But today I obsess over camel-colored hangers.

Happy back to school, all you academics.

Writing Daily

2010-01-03T11:15:00.000-07:00

So far the poem-a-day project is going well, I think. I am writing poems very different from my usual fair and greatly influenced, I think, by my recent browsing around the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab's catalogue. "This poem has hints of bergamot, myrhh, a touch of cedarwood and a breath of lilac."

I made that up.

Anyway, I find that doing the daily photo challenge alongside the daily poem challenge works well together. In an effort to avoid only taking pictures of my cats and cluttered apartment, I leave the house and have more to write about, too. It sounds daunting, but so far, it hasn't been a problem. I'm only on day three, though, so we'll see. I'm sure once school starts up, I'll find it more of a challenge and won't be posting my poem by 10am every morning. Still, I am really enjoying this small feeling of accomplishment, and it will be easy as long as I'm having fun.

Poem #3

2010-01-03T11:06:00.002-07:00

Poem 3 - Inflict upon me: epistemology, runes, crustaceans. A tale wind, sixteenth notes, creased spines &... http://tumblr.com/xzg57ftzw

Poem #2

2010-01-02T11:22:00.000-07:00

The second in my series of daily poems for 2010 is up at my tumblr page. I've also added comments over there so you can leave your thoughts.

Poem-a-day

2010-01-01T20:11:00.008-07:00

Jonathan Mann, a guy I went to college with and whose songs from those college years still stick in my head, embarked on a project in 2009: He wrote, recorded and published on Youtube a song every day. Here is a song about his project:

He also entered lots of contests, and won several, including writing a jingle for Bing, that other search engine. Warning: it is an earworm.

One of his other songs, one of my favorites from his project is this one called "This is How We Do It at Bennington," a reference to our alma mater:

and this one about Bob Dylan as the voice of a GPS system (based on a news report):

Anyway, Jonathan has inspired me to write a poem a day. I definitely abhor the notion of "first thought, best thought," and these poems will be revised significantly before they are published for real, and many might not make it past this initial stage, but I thought committing to writing one a day and posting it here would inspire me to actually go through with it. So here is my poem for today, January 1, 2010:

dearest sapphire,
balloon flaccid, birthday long gone,
cake stale, bridal veil wilting.

dearest spinster,
lace underwear besmirched,
torn at the seam, light chafing.

dearest kit lens,
camera’s choosiest angle, hair’s flirting
toss, cat’s whiskered curl.

dearest vacuum,
crypt for spiders and the dust pollen
brings, webs and snares.

dearest, dearest flaw and dagger, musk oil
and launch pad. Lilly Rose Hip. Dearest fleet.

Flee.

From now on, I will be posting my daily poems at poemdujour.tumblr.com I'll post a link to the latest poem here. Am I making this too complicated? I like the spareness of tumblr...

Janus-faced

2009-12-31T14:21:00.003-07:00

2009 has been both a horrible and a wonderful year. Horrible because I endured a big breakup, but wonderful because I was accepted into a fabulous PhD program where I've met talented, generous and kind colleagues, been challenged in my classes, expanded my poems and had a lot of fun.

I got 18 poems accepted for publication in The Gay & Lesbian Review, Poemmemoirstory, Melusine, Main Street Rag, Ink Node, Word Riot, PANK Magazine, Drunken Boat and Western Humanities Review. (Most of those poems are forthcoming, but some have already appeared.) This after a gap of two years with no acceptances. Patience pays off.

My chapbook Scent of Shatter is forthcoming in 2010 from Grey Book Press. The chap was originally a section from my book I ultimately decided to remove, but I couldn't abandon it, because the poems mean so much to me. They are just the right length for a chap, I think.

I was a semi-finalist for a book contest and my manuscript is still floating out there, hoping to be taken as I work hard on my second collection of poems.

I gave my first reading in Utah, along with three other very talented writers.

I started writing reviews and published three so far, with one more forthcoming. I really enjoy writing reviews, and I know this is something I will continue doing.

I fell in love with Medieval Literature and wrote a paper I'm quite proud of for the class on that subject. (It had been over a year since I'd written critical prose, so part of me worried I was too out of practice.) I read the Bible for a poetry class (parts of it) and realized how much I actually enjoy parts of it for its poetry (My poem "Insomnia with Solomon" comes out of this experience.)

There were other good and bad things that happened in 2009. In 2010, I am looking forward to continuing to explore where my poetry is taking me, hopefully publishing more, seeing my work in print again, taking three fantastic classes this Spring, getting to officiate a friend's wedding in June and more travel. I also want to write more on this little blog.

Happy New Year!

Four poems in PANK Magazine

2009-12-14T21:50:00.003-07:00

Four of my poems, "Bad Wife Spankings," "July," "Insomnia with Solomon" and "Love Poem in Three Parts" appear in the most recent online issue of PANK Magazine. I'm pretty excited. I think it's a great quality magazine with a good web layout and these are four poems that mean a lot to me.

I also finished my last assignment for the semester and can say I officially completed my first semester in a PhD program. It feels surreal.

This Month in Pictures!

2009-12-09T16:33:00.010-07:00

Bedroom Signs
(taken with my iPhone & the Holga setting in Camerabag)

The birthday ballon my brother and sister-in-law sent is still flying high; time has not diminished its altitude.

This is what my kitty Vita thinks about all the time I've spent reading Chaucer in November.

My living room, decorated for Christmas.

It snowed yesterday.

The birds appreciated the feeder I keep for the cats' entertainment.

This is the view from my bedroom window.

and so is this.

I don't think you can tell in the photos, but now that the leaves are gone from some trees, I can clearly see the Oquirrh mountains from my window. I love them so much, and even though the snow is a pain, its beauty is worth the trouble to me. I feel more at home here, more like I did in Vermont, than I ever felt in Florida. I was not meant to be a Southern girl.

I can't believe the last day of the semester (for me) is tomorrow. I still have that Chaucer paper to write, but I have big plans of camping out in my den all weekend. For now, tonight, I shall drink punch and mingle with my colleagues at the department party.

Endings

2009-12-08T16:45:00.005-07:00

It is the last week of the semester. Today I gave a presentation on a paper I already wrote (at midterm) for my Medieval Lit class called "Your Silence Will Not Protect You: Stone Butch Sexuality in the Roman de Silence." It's about the 13-th century romance by Heldris of Cornwall, in which a female-bodied character lives most of her life as a man. When answering questions, I apparently caused quite a stir (I am too naive to realize what will shock people nowadays, I guess) when I called the character Eufeme a "bossy bottom" and when I said that my ex-wife was stone, so I had first hand knowledge of the topic.

The city is enveloped in a thick layer of snow and it is gorgeous.

I'm wishing I'd photographed my final project for my narrative theory class. I wrote a long episodic lyric poem based on the idea of marginal notes that I printed on vellum and then glued to photocopied pages from books to which the poems were responding, including a section discussing making paper out of my obsolete wedding invitations. I had a lot of fun with the project and wish I'd documented it better.

My friend Shena took this picture at my birthday party. Author photo, I think, yes?

I just got home from a lovely dinner at my workshop professor's house (pasta, frittata, salad, tirimisu), but nearly got my car stuck where I parked it thanks to an overzealous snowplow. Thank goodness for 4-wheel drive. Then my garage door opener wouldn't work and I tried to drive around the block, but accidentally hit the button that shuts my car off (I have one of those new-fangled push-button ignition cars) and freaked out that I couldn't get the car to move; now I know it wasn't on. Duh. Luckily the garage door opened on the second pass and Catie talked me through the fear that I would slip and slide to my death down the San Francisco-like hills of my neighborhood.

Tomorrow is the department holiday party and Thursday my friend Catie (and some other folks I can't remember off the top of my head) give a reading and somewhere in the interim I have to read a lot of Chaucer and write a paper on The Clerk's Tale. It's a little soon to tell, but overall, I feel the first semester of my PhD program has been a remarkable success.

Utah Writers' Contest

2009-12-08T12:34:00.006-07:00

The results for the winners of the 2009 Utah Writers' Contest--one conducted annually through Western Humanities Review--were announced this morning:

In POETRY (chosen by Brenda Shaughnessy)
Winner: Esther Lee
Runners up: Timothy O'Keefe and Valerie Wetlaufer

In FICTION (chosen by Kate Bernheimer)
Winner: Natanya Pulley
Runner Up: Brenda Sieczkowski

Winners receive $500 and will be published in this Winter Issue
of WHR, along with selections from the work of our runners up.

I'm really excited for my good friend Esther getting the recognition she deserves. And I look forward to reading the work of the other talented folks who I know and very much like as people, but with whose work I am unfamiliar. And of course I'm excited to be a runner up, and find a home for some of my poems, especially chosen by Brenda Shaughnessy, on whom I had the biggest poetry crush when I first read her book Interior with Sudden Joy, an absolutely fabulous collection of poetry.

I also heard from two book contests yesterday that I was not chosen, but one editor scrawled on the bottom of the rejection that my "ambitious ms." made it to the semi-finalist stack. That is slightly encouraging. Hopefully the new year will bring more good news.

Done and Done

2009-12-07T20:10:00.003-07:00

It is very cold. It has snowed and the snow, so far, is sticking. I spend most days on the couch in the living room, in front of the fire, gazing lovingly at my fiber optic Christmas tree and reading. There is but one week left in the semester, and one paper to write. Aside from the paper, I'm all done. Classes this week and homework, but relief is near. My first semester as a PhD student has been a success. Now I'm back to reading fluff on my Kindle. I've had a headache all day, slightly alleviated by pasta, water and chocolate cherry pistachio bread. Though it is only eight o'clock in the evening, it is even too cold by the fire. I am taking to bed with my books and the warmth of the electric blanket.

Preoccupation

2009-11-30T16:09:00.002-07:00

I had a lovely Thanksgiving potluck at my friends Esther and Jordon's place, and my corn souffle was a hit. This was followed by a relaxing weekend and a lovely, quiet birthday. Everyone keeps telling me how young twenty-seven is, and I guess they're right, but it's as old as I've ever been!

I have lovely friends who take me out for brunch, throw me dinner parties and buy me plants. I have a loving family who sends me cards and presents and bouquets of flowers. I have a great career where I get to read and write all the time. Life is good.

I did this Twitter Cloud of things I tweet about. It's pretty funny and accurate.

Happy Thanksgiving

2009-11-26T13:15:00.006-07:00

This is my first Thanksgiving sharing dinner with my friends. I've gone home with roommates in college before, but it was still a family-focused event. Tonight I am going to a potluck with my new friends, who are wonderful and gracious. I'm spending the morning cooking my specialties--mashed potatoes and corn souffle. I'm listening to Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant" and looking out on the snow-covered Utah mountains. It's a sunny day and I do feel so much gratitude.

I'm thankful for my renewed health, my wonderful friends, my loving family, the editors of the journals who have accepted my poems for publication this year, the Muse that inspires me to write and whoever is responsible for the fellowship I have that allows me to focus on writing and coursework for two glorious years. I really feel I've made the most of my time this semester, but only because I am not teaching right now. I'm thankful for the beautiful weather we're enjoying and my mother who, twenty-seven years ago was 42 weeks pregnant with me (yes, I was two weeks late!).

Now the pumpkin pie is done, and there is a mini-Christmas tree to be decorated. I have recovered from H1N1 and food never tasted so good!

Melusine

2009-11-22T22:09:00.003-07:00

My poem "Twins" is published the the new Fall issue of Melusine or Woman in the 21st Century.

Melusine is

an online journal of literature and art by women (but not only women) about women (and just about everything else.)

It's a fairly new online publication, with quite a quick response time. I think this is its third issue. The editor, Janelle Elyse Kihlstrom, a fabulous poet in her own right, says she's "all about the online revolution" in literary journals. Me too. And I'm proud to be a part of Melusine, to which I was initially drawn because of its name. Melusine is a mermaid-like woman from an old French legend I was obsessed with in college. Once a month (or week, depending on the legend, Melusine turns into a mermaid. She forbids her husband to spy on her during this time, but of course he can't resist. And something bad happens. It varies by story. She is nonetheless, a powerful female figure. I love the notion of keeping one day private for herself, apart from her husband. Pretty great for the 12th century!

Anyway, the legend of Melusine is what drew me to the jorunal, which is no less fascinating and watery-themed. They are running a poetry contest until February, so if you write poetry, you should check it out! Here are their other guidelines. I like that they're women-themed, but not exclusive.

We're also open, year-round, to submissions of short fiction, visual art, poetry and short creative nonfiction. We publish reviews of chapbooks and full-length works of any genre, so please send a query if you would like your book reviewed or if you have read a recent book that you would like to review for Melusine.

We're looking for carefully crafted, thought-provoking work that explores all angles of the contemporary female experience, especially those sharp, jagged angles. Men are welcome to submit work as well. Our tastes usually veer away from the confessional or overtly political, but quality is our final criteria, so you never know. We're open to all styles of writing, including formal (not greeting-card) verse.

There are a lot of other great works published in this issue. It's well-designed and I also like how they pair art with each piece.