in the interest of balance...

a happy post:

today, my poetry class was excellent.

but then there's this:

I open up a poem draft and find a stanza I forgot writing.

I have to believe someday teaching poetry will be like writing poetry: I won't even know I got it right until later.

those who can't do...teach?

I might have mentioned it once or twice before, but damn! teaching is hard.

Deciding what to teach is hard. Deciding how to teach it: even harder. Prepping class notes: tough. Standing in front of a classroom and putting your brain/soul on display: nearly impossible. Grading/annotating with the right amount of encouragement and criticism: exhausting.

Maybe some of you are naturals, but not me. This is the hardest job in the world.

And I want so badly to be good at it, to be inspiring, to share this thing that I love with people who might fall in love with it, too. I want to be Mr. Keating, except without the depressing turn of events at the end. I want to make people stand up on their desks and see the world in a way they didn't before. Why isn't it as easy as it looks in the movies? And why aren't I as funny as Robin Williams?

Oh lordy - part 2, or Wait, you guys aren't freshmen

Did I tell you about the freaky teaching dream I had last week? The one where I totally lost control of the classroom and everyone walked out except for two people who stayed just to tell me I sucked? I thought I was about to have deja vu today.

Okay, it wasn't that bad. But my intro to poetry students are 1) not very enthusiastic and 2) sharp. I'm bummed about #1 and hoping I can turn it around and psyched about #2 but also intimidated. I was nervous and they looked bored. Not a good combination.

And since they're smart, they've probably found this blog and I probably shouldn't be writing about them. But what would I write about if not my fears of being an inadequate teacher?

Friday will be better. Cross my heart and hope to die.

*

I'm not the new kid on campus anymore. I can't go anywhere without running in to someone from the English dept or a student. Sometimes I just want to be anonymous.

*

Italian 101 update: the letter combination "ci" is pronounced with a ch sound. the letters "chi" are pronounced with a k sound. Are they just trying to confuse me? Our first listening exercise is due tomorrow and I'm guessing I failed miserably.

They say that introverts acquire language first through reading and writing, while extroverts acquire language through speaking and listening. If y'all hadn't noticed, I'm an introvert. It is driving me batshit crazy in class when the instructor doesn't give me 1/2 a second to think about what he's just said or written on the board. He says we learn from repetition, but I'm not really interested in parroting what he says when I have no idea what it means or how the grammar works. Apparently I'm going to have to teach myself Italian, just like I taught myself Math for Liberal Arts (yep, it's a real class) in college--which is to say I'll learn more from the text book than from the teacher.

Disclaimer: I'm not saying my Italian instructor is bad at his job. I think he's great, and I wouldn't be able to do what he does. But I don't learn the way he teaches. Most people do...so I just have to learn to compensate. Means I'll be spending a lot more time on my homework than I imagined.

I did learn something in class, though. If you ask me how my day was, I can say "un disastro." Yes, it's a cognate.

*

This may somehow turn into the semester of Dante's Inferno. We'll be reading Pinksy's translation of it in workshop and I'm thinking about writing a paper about it for my lit class. This is a very unformed plan right now, but it could happen. Yes, I admit, I'm thinking ahead to exam lists.

*

I haven't written a poem since I returned from Ohio. Good thing I have to turn in two next week.

*

Is it really only Wednesday? I'm so ready for the weekend. Going to bed really early is not nearly as satisfying as sleeping in really late. The alarm is set for 5:30am. Ick.

*

How'd I do on the spewing, R?

Oh lordy

Seriously? It's Tuesday. It's the second day of the first week of the semester and already I am overwhelmed, exhausted, and running behind.

*

Italian 101: It's really weird taking a class that I could be teaching--you know, if it was in a different language. What I mean is this: the folks who are usually my students are now my classmates/groupmates/study partners. Weird.

Also weird: taking Italian when I have very rusty Spanish in my head. For example, how am I supposed to keep this straight? (The phrases below both mean "how do you say..."):

Spanish: como se dice (there should be accent marks in there somewhere)
Italian: come si dice

Pronunciation is the really hard part..."dice" in Spanish is dee-say (okay, my linguistics professors would be cringing at my phonetic spelling, but whatever) but in Italian, "dice" is pronounced dee-chay. How am I going to remember this? I'm so confused and it's only the first day!

*

The first day of intro to poetry was uneventful. Tomorrow the students are bringing in their favorite poems. I'm very curious.

*

What am I doing here? I have to do my Italian homework and answera million emails before the stolen wireless gods steal my connection.

Thief

This internet connection does not belong to me. Who knows how long I'll get to keep it.

Life is getting very busy these days. And, surprisingly, I'm enjoying myself--even when I'm thinking about/working on UIC stuff. Perhaps I'm making progress. Fingers crossed.

Can't believe it's the last weekend of summer...

beware, grumpy post below

--poof--

Dear Universe,

I'm sorry. I'll try to stop spewing my venom in public.

Sara

A little more navel gazing...

Life has been full and oddly overwhelming lately. I'm not busy in the normal sense of the word, but I'm keeping myself busy and keeping my mind full (ha! mindful. I'm such a dork) with teaching ideas, poetry ideas, who-the-hell-am-I-and-what-the-hell-am-I-doing ideas. I don't have internet or cable at home, so I've been reading fiction in the quite hours when I'd normally zone out in front of a flickering screen. I read A Million Little Pieces* in one day. Then The House of Sand and Fog, and now I'm half-way through Pigs in Heaven. This is easily the most non-critical prose I've read since I took a class on creative non-fiction during my MFA.

(*Regardless of the Oprah debacle, it's questionable how much of Frey's "memoir" is memoir, especially in light of the tidbit I heard somewhere that Frey pitched it as a novel, but memoir was so hip at the time that his publisher convinced him otherwise... anyway, this is unsubstantiated rumor, but I'm still thinking the book is a novel.)

I'm excited and terrified to teach Intro to Poetry Writing this semester, and have been spending a tremendous amount of time compiling the course packet which essentially is a mini-anthology of the poems that helped me figure out how to be a poet. Of course, I'm still figuring that out, so the thing never feels done and I'm convinced that once I drop it off for copies, I'm going to realize that I left out the most important poems. I guess that's why there are xerox machines, right? I couldn't bring myself to use a textbook or stock anthology because this is the first time I get to teach what I love, and I wanted as much control over it as possible. Now I'm thinking: what the heck do I know about poetry? and just hoping that my excitement for it will cover up the gaps in what I don't know. I'm hoping to post a more substantial something on transitioning from comp instructor to teacher-of-what-I-love sometime soon, but not today.

As for my solipsism: I'm busy putting Humpty-Dumpty back together again after what I can only describe as the most difficult year of my life. Who would have thought that moving to a new city could completely decimate a person's self-ness? Okay, maybe decimate is the wrong word. Maybe scramble. Maybe perforate. Maybe shred.

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the day I got in the car filled with all my stuff and drove six hours to this big, crowded, scary place and started trying to make it fit. Today, I can say it sort-of, almost does. But the me who sorta-kinda fits here today isn't the me who showed up 364 days ago and that's what I'm trying to understand. I did some massively stupid, self-destructive things while ostensibly trying to survive, and I'd like to be able to explain, someday, to myself and the people those actions affected, why I acted the way I did. Right now, I can't even come close, except to say I was sad and lonely. But that doesn't feel like an answer.

More importantly--or at least of more immediate importance--are the questions I have about my work and my place at UIC. I'm still having trouble finding a poetic community here, probably because there are not a lot of poets in the program to begin with, and the ones I know are primarily working on dissertations and not taking workshops with me. I'm also struggling to see my exam committee, and the dissertation committee that follows it, coming together. I'm not sure what my lists are going to be and I'm not sure who I'd like to work with. Unfortunately, I do know who I don't want to work with and I don't like that feeling. I'm hoping that I can slap a quick coat of paint over the mistakes I made last year academically and be more productive and positive this year.

Aaaah....I could go on and on about this, but I have many more things to take care of in my tiny little window of internet time today.

Sorry, world...

too much going on these days--and too little internet time--to worry about blogging much.

I'm totally unpacked and settled into the new place (only a month after I move in) and getting a lot done in terms of poetry and class prep. The best part? Reading two blogger-buddies' kick-ass manuscripts.

Thinking about my family, especially my mom, tonight, and wishing I was still with them.

Going to go home now, pour a glass of wine, and stare out the window. It's that kind of night.

blurry

I never got around to posting pictures of the horses because they all came out terrible, and after the first couple days, the novelty of running around with my camera pretending to be a photographer ran out. But here are a couple of blurry ones from dinnertime one night. The white guy is my pal, Banjo, and the black one is Stevie (named for Stevie Nicks, btw). There are three others who, unfortunately, won't be represented here.


And one last pic of Taylor and Turbo, my constant companions while I was on the farm. They are the cutest, sweetest things I've ever seen. I really wanted to take them home with me.


So, now comes the fun part--packing the suitcase and getting ready for the overnight bus ride. I'm ready to be home, although that feels a little suspect since I only lived in my apartment a week before I came here. I'm no where near unpacked, so it's going to be a little stressful when I get back. And before I know it, school again. Hoping I can pack a little more summer into these last two weeks.

Anyway, good-bye Ohio, I'll miss you dearly. But not as badly as last August.