verve

I have been sitting here all night, fighting with the internet, chatting with a poet friend/classmate on facebook, watching Grey's episodes online (when the internet is working)and now it is 11:56, past my bedtime, and I'm not sleepy, but I am tired, and I do have to get up in 5 or 6 hours depending on whether or not I want my hair to look decent tomorrow, but I haven't done any of my homework/grading, and I've figured it's safe to put some of it off until tomorrow night or the next night, but a lot of it (writing a sonnet, revising a poem, reading some Dante) needs to be done by 3pm tomorrow, and minus the time I'll probably spend sleeping, I only have 3 free hours between now and then and usually trying to write in fixed form takes me a really, really long time, and I keep thinking that Anne said I don't have to write the sonnet because I did okay on the sapphics, but it would be good for me anyway, and I'm wondering what's up with this never-ending run-on sentence?

I took my birthday weekend off, officially, but the truth is I've been phoning it in for a couple of weeks. Why? Who knows. Winter doldrums kicking in early? Mid-semester burnout? General laziness? Can't quite put my finger on it. Just know I haven't had much verve lately.

Speaking of verve, Anne also told me my poems have no intensity/focus/urgency. I'm supposed to be revising to find the moment of urgency/intensity/focus that is at the root of each draft. When she said this to me last week, it sounded profound and right and productive and now it just feels heavy and sad and impossible. Oh, she also said I have a small vocabulary. boo.

and now I'm good and depressed and ready for bed. I'll do what I can tomorrow and what doesn't get done will go on the permanent record of things-Sara-didn't-do-well-enough-according-to-her-own-stupid-standards which I think all perfectionists have except I'm a lazy perfectionist and even though I want everything to be perfect I usually don't get there.

self-pity, it's good for my art.