Waiting

Compared to last year, this summer has been un-hectic. No wedding planning this year. No wedding classes to drive 45 minutes to and be lectured at for another two hours. No moving from Kalamazoo to Grand Rapids for ten days before heading 700 miles three days after the wedding. No getting used to a new program, new people, and a new city. I should be grateful that life is less complicated of late, though big change is two or so weeks away. But I feel as prepared as I can be for the little person and, with M. in control of much of the day-to-day preparations, have the luxury of the stability of knowing we have a home together. There will be adjustments, sure, but a swirl of other matters aren't getting in the way of my peace of mind.

But I do wish I didn't have to wait for so much else on the professional end. I hate that feeling where something good is maybe in the works, though I have no control over it or have the slightest idea of when it may arrive in my inbox or mailbox. It's a game I'm tired of playing right now. I want to be proud of some accomplishment that feels like a, you know, real accomplishment. Yes, I've made it through the first year of the Ph.D. Yes, I've written a fair amount this year that I'm proud of. Yes, I have a good idea of what my last year of coursework ever will look like. These are all good things, but considering I'm in a six-month acceptance slump, I'd like some validation. I don't search it out very often, and I hate to be that guy who complains about not receiving any, but some sign I'm on the right track would be helpful and keep me from whining instead of being properly patient with the workings of the literary journal world.

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On a more positive note, I was skimming Poetry Daily tonight and saw that as part of his "American Life in Poetry" series Ted Kooser introduced a poem by Alexandra Teague, who we published at Third Coast when I was poetry editor. After clicking on the link, I was happy to see that Mr. Kooser had actually referred to "Language Lessons," the poem Shannon and I took for the Fall '08 issue. There's something to be said for the pride an editor has in seeing a poem he/she accepted going on to be noticed on an even grander scale. Wherever you are, Alexandra, congrats on having your work put up in such a grand forum. And even more good tidings for getting your manuscript picked up. Great news, indeed.

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A poem excerpt for the day:

Call us childish, call us to our teachers:
a cop with a clipboard calls me over, to ask me what of blood I heard.
He knows in his blood better than to say it that way.
He puts it neutrally, may his heart feel adjudged by restraint,
may the differently abled be restrained for their own good,
and when I say his "heart" may I mean mine and may my mouth feel antique—
what he asks me is if I heard any cries—no, not even that, just... "anything."
Let's get this right.
Does a dying self make up a face as it goes, will any face do?
Right there on the concrete a bloodstain the children will pass, to touch it:
what's to touch once blood stops doing its cartwheels?
Someons has stepped out from under our thumbs and heels?
Can anyone ever make blood do anything? Can clouds be pushed around?
On and on till the questions are all open coffins.

- Bill Olsen, "Blood," from Avenue of Vanishing

More Encouraged Reading

Here's a link to Cimarron Review #167, and because she's much too humble to recommend reading her poem, I'm going to tell you to check out Beth Marzoni's "Blasphemy Song." It even has Kalamazoo in it. What could be better than that?

Wordled

My chapbook manuscript, Lost Film, Wordled:

Encouraged Reading

Buy it here.

I'm a Grown Up

from Frost at Midnight

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the night thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

- Coleridge

Scenes from a Pig Roast

Turning to Fall / "The Whitsun Weddings" - Larkin

In short bursts:

I had expected to be much more frequent and thorough in my posting, but that clearly has not happened. I blame the past two and a half months. Learning a new city, trying to develop friendships, staying on top of all that's demanded of a Ph.D. student, and especially taking care of M. as best I can. I don't think I've been successful at any of these, which sometimes doesn't make sleep come as easily as I'd hope. I want this admission to compel me to do better, to enable me to benefit from what I've learned and move forward, but I'm not necessarily wired that way. I hold on to what needs forgetting.

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I worked on my ms. tonight, which is the first time I've looked at it since I had meetings with Bill, Nancy, and Beth B. last April. This has been long overdue, but at least I've written a poem a week for workshop, which should (maybe) help flesh out what I've spent the last three degrees working toward. I don't know how close it is to being polished, but I'll send it some people whose opinion I trust and get some constructive feedback. I've been keeping up with Keith Montesano's First Book Interviews at http://firstbookinterviews.blogspot.com/ and the perserverance we writers need to have is frightening. I seem to be able to block out the horror stories about how long it takes to get a book published, how much effort is put into shaping a ms. It'd be great if Paul Zimmer, who's visiting next semester, could tap me on the head and magically get me a book, but stranger things have not happened. So it goes.

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Mad Men finished Season Two tonight, and that makes me sad. M. and I disagree about how Matthew Weiner seems to approach his storytelling: I'm fine with threads from early in the season being brought back five or six episodes later, while she needs the writers to keep spinning the plates. (In some ways, she is a protege of some faculty members, whether he's conscious of it or not, which I stress is not a bad thing. Really. I got a lot from my two semesters taking nf workshops.) I'm never insulted watching MM, which I can't say about most television. I don't need everything recapped for me, nor do I want to have all the answers for who did what why neatly laid out for me. More often than not, I'd rather work for my entertainment, though I concede there's time and place for the mindless. Sometimes, I'd rather not be inside my head.

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Two Browns wins the past three weeks. My self-worth shouldn't change so much after a win, but it does. I didn't want to go to school the day after The Fumble. I had a hard time walking campus when the Steelers beat the Browns, though I didn't really know anyone enough to give me a hard time about being in Meadville following a team that's been owned by their biggest rival of late. I am a Clevelander, and that'll always define me. Expecting failure is in my blood, and I'm not sure how that plays into what I wrote two paragraphs up. It could be good or bad. I just don't know.

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I think a lot about Larkin's "The Whitsun Weddings." I had read it a number of times, but it wasn't until I went to a lecture by Rachel Hadas that I needed to memorize the conclusion. Taking a cue from a friend (http://againstoblivion.blogspot.com/) I'd like to include a poem somewhere in all of my future posts. I thought it'd be good to start with the last stanza I committed to myself years ago. Here it is:

from The Whitsun Weddings


There we were aimed. And as we raced across
Bright knots of rail
Past standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss
Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail
Traveling coincidence; and what it held
Stood ready to be loosed with all the power
That being changed can give. We slowed again,
And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled
A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower
Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.


Be well.