Saturday Morning

This was one busy week. And exhausting. Yesterday morning, Brilliant Poet Leslie left after a very successful visit, which consisted of a fabulous poetry reading, a Q&A, dinner with faculty, "sightseeing" in the metropolis of Chestertown, and many Argos kisses. As I wrote to J in yesterday's email, "If you and I are ever killed in a freak tapas accident, we should leave Argos to Leslie." It's true. I've never seen my dog so smitten before.

Now that both of my poets' visit to Chestertown are done and have gone so well, I feel as if I've really begun to contribute to the cultural life of Washington College. Participating in last weekend's first annual Chestertown Book Festival also reminded me that this place is now home. I've been a nomad my whole life, since the day I was born. That's not an exaggeration. And now I'm here on the Eastern Shore, which as Leslie said during her stay, "is basically heaven."

And I can't help but agree, especially when it's sunny and mild, my next neighbor is riding his ubiquitous lawn mower, and the Canada geese are flying overhead in their usual autumn traffic jam of wings. The weekend never lasts long enough but, for the moment, on this Saturday morning, it feels as if it's big as the Chesapeake.

You're the Tops, You're the Louvre Museum

I'm not sure how it happened, but I ended up on this pretty cool list in Washington Life Magazine.

Semester As Leaning Tower of Pisa

At the moment, that precarious tower of responsibilities that we call a semester seems stable, not about tip over. I'm sure that by the end of the week, I'll be losing my mind again, once more buried under the rubble of assignments that need grading, unable to keep up with a landslide of student requests for individual conferences, paper extensions, and other special dispensations. So it goes.

For the past few days, I have been in one those if-you-don't-have-anything-nice-to-say kind of moods, which is why the blog was dark. I put a sign on the door of the blog, GONE FISHING, locked up the place, hid the key under the mat, and left for a small vacation. But, I'm back now. One of my dearest friends is coming to visit me on Thursday, and how can I be a grump when Leslie is in my future?

Plus, J's long underway is nearly done, which means that (for the moment) I can stop contemplating how badly I'll handle his even longer deployment in the spring. The good news is that his deployment will give me plenty to write about for my book essays; I'm planning to keep a "deployment diary" in order to track the ups and downs of the separation. I've been wanting to write the big, opening essay for the book, and this could be the right opportunity.

I wrote a new poem that I'm pleased with...all except for the title, which is good, except not for this poem. The title is "Portrait of My Parents Dressed for a State Dinner." The hold-up is that the poem takes place both before the dinner when they're dressed, and the next morning when all the clothing is all back on its hangers. So, the title is inaccurate, which is driving me crazy. Have you ever had this kind of problem? --a strong title that doesn't really satisfy poem for which it was invented. For the last couple of days, I've been reading the draft and rereading it, turning the poem over again and again, like it's an itch of some kind or a tiny pebble in a shoe. But I still can't seem to figure out the proper title for the damn thing.

Green Around the Gills/Moment of Gratitude

It ached like the flu. It sniffled like the flu. It even up-chucked like the flu. But it turned out be food poisoning. So, last night, after spending nearly two days in bed, groaning, rubbing my pounding head, I dragged myself down to the Book Plate on High Street and introduced (to a packed house) the opening event of the first annual Chestertown Book Festival: my former teacher, Michael Collier.

Although I felt a little sick for the whole evening, it was wonderful to finally have a chance to thank a professor whose words have really had an important impact on my writing. In 2001, when I first studied with Michael, I didn't appreciate his advice, or even understand most it. I think he saw me at my worst, all those years ago, while I was struggling to find a voice and struggling with the fact that I was at the bottom of the MFA hierarchy. Unfunded. Untrained. Inexperienced in the strange, exotic language of the workshop.

I see a similar struggle in many of my own students when they realize that (1) they're less talented than they thought themselves to be, (2) that others are more advanced than they are, (3) that the writer's road is very, very long and consists of a thousand tiny steps, or (4) that the reward for the writer's life has very little to do with money or fame. In the midst of these sharp epiphanies, students often become angry or frustrated with me. It's transferance. I become Mean Mommy, who crushes their dreams under the pointed heel of her shoe. Or I am Worst Teacher Ever, whose suggestions must be wrong, whose ideas about writing must have nothing to do with experience or training.

Now that I am a teacher of creative writing, I have real sympathy for the challenges of Michael Collier's job, where the stakes for students feel even higher. Many undergraduates realize that their current passions won't become their life's work. But at the graduate level, most students are convinced that they will be professional writers the minute they defend their master's theses. One of the big secrets of grad school (the secret that everyone learns within the first semester), is that most master theses will amount to nothing. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be done, my thesis advisor Josh Weiner once told me. Right then, I understood how long the writer's road must be; my master's thesis didn't have to be perfect, because it was only the first of many drafts of many long projects and, like most of those drafts, would eventually be tossed into the garbage.

So, it was lovely to see Michael last night and to thank him. Belatedly. The lessons weren't easy. They hurt. But I am grateful that someone was willing to tell me when my poems were bad (really bad) and how they might eventually be good.

Status Report

• current obsession: fruity teas from Teavana.
• current irritation/s: the massive piles of soggy leaves in my front yard; the blister on my hand, which came from raking the aforementioned soggy leaves.
• current good news: a poem accepted by Ploughshares.
• current problem: the dripping furnace (and yes, the guy is here fixing it right now).
• current question about my dog: Can a puppy ever be too fuzzy?
• current food craving: the gazpacho and the patatas bravas from Jaleo.
• current weather in Chestertown: 57 degrees and overcast.
• current books on my bedside table: Taije Silverman's Houses Are Fields, Valzhyna Mort's Factory of Tears.
• current household chores: fold laundry; vacuum; wash sheets; scrub toilets; rake more leaves...glamorous, no?
• current poem-in-progress: a sonnet, in the revision state, "Returning to West Berlin, 1987."
• current fantasy: I win $65 million in the Powerball.
• current room with a view: my living room, the drifts of soggy leaves on my front lawn.
• current wish: that J were already home from being underway. I miss him.
• current existential question: When will I start feeling like a grown-up?
• current age: 33 years and 364 days.

Sunday Evening Blues

Tomorrow is Monday, never a good thing. Why can't everyday be Saturday, Saturday with weather in the high 60s, tasty dinner plans at Brooke Tavern, and a Wheaten Terrier named Argos to walk down High Street? I spent most of the afternoon reading student writing and reading student writing and reading student writing. The problem with assigning homework is that some one has to grade it eventually.

weary of Sunday, weary of Sunday song
weary of Sunday, I'm so weary of Sunday song
oh please let Saturday last the whole week long

At least this week has plenty of diversion to offer me: a poetry reading on Wednesday, a fiction reading on Thursday, my usual mini-workshop with Meredith, several nights of dinner plans, and some catching-up with an old friend.

So...oh, I don't know...too brain dead to type clever stuff. I.O.U. One witty blog post later on, when I've regained my powers of snark.

The Problems with Being Prolific

1. Many of your writer-friends won't like your process, won't trust it, and don't want to hear about it. The more you write, the more some will doubt their own writerly routines. What the hell does she have to say? It can't possibly be anything meaningful.
2. Many people will imagine that you throw nothing out. Myth: The prolific writer is a packrat, a hoarder, a compulsive nut who saves every scrap of poem or essay, mistaking it for treasure. Fact: The prolific writer (if she's any good) keeps a clean house, throws out all texts that look like they might spoil, that have reached their expiration dates. At the first sign of rot, she chucks the poem, the essay, the review. In fact, sometimes she has trouble holding on to bits and pieces long enough to see if they could become something delicious.
3. Many people will believe that prolific = low standards. This point is slightly different from example #2. It suggests that you can only be prolific, sending out lots of work, publishing lots, if you're a poem factory, producing sonnets and rhymed couplets on an assembly line where the workers are underpaid, exploited. The prolific writer must not be an artist but a Thomas Kinkade, a poet-by-numbers, a poet who writes on black velvet canvases.
4. Many people will imagine that the prolific writer has an easier time writing than the few-and-far-between writer. I swear the blank page is as snarky to me as it is to anyone else. What, it snorts derisively, you think there's anything new to say about the pleasures of the body, about November, about dried apricots?
5. Many people will have trouble keeping track. Which book is this? What's this one about? Only your parents and your spouse will remember which project is published, which one is forthcoming, and what you're writing now. Sometimes even they will forget. Sometimes even you will forget.

P.S. Am I complaining? I'm not sure. Am I a grouchy this evening? Absolutely. Do I know why the grouchiness? No, no clue. In fact, there was a lovely pumpkin-colored moon earlier tonight, which is usually beautiful enough to give me a kind of afterglow from its reflected light. Do I like writing and writing and writing? God, yes (even when most of what I produce is total bollocks, as the Brits would say). Moral of the story? Nie ma (as the Poles would say), there isn't one. The End. And they all lived happily ever after. Until the next blog post.