*
Kristy Bowen did such a great job with the cover and she's such a pleasure to work with. I couldn't be happier with my new chapbook. The reading last night was delightful, and for the first time since I finished my MFA, I feel like a Poet, a Real Poet. I think I'll be smiling for days.
Okay, so, I'm a little overly excited. It's just a chapbook. ;-) (Just in case anyone missed the subtle cues, it's defininitely not "just" anything. I'm really proud.)
Check it out: dancing girl press 2009 chapbook line-up. Keep scrolling. I'm in September.
Woohoo!
I'm also going to have work (multiple poems!) in the winter issue of FRiGG. That makes my acceptance to rejection ratio since returning from Arizona 1:1. That, my friends, is my best ratio yet.
Even more exciting is that they're taking one of my favorite poems, one that has been read by no less than 17 different editors with at least 2 of them writing "almost" notes. Needless to say, I'm feeling pretty darn good right now. If there was any wine in this apartment, I'd be opening a bottle to celebrate. Unfortunately all that's here is bud light and that doesn't feel like much of a celebration to me.
I spent aaaalllll day today working on my AZ homework assignment - 10 new pages. I finished the requirement and realized I didn't even scratch the surface of all the notes and journal entries I made while traveling. I would love to continue dumping the contents of my brain on to paper, unfortunately, a girl has to sleep every now and then. Also, I have poems for both classes to revise this week because both portfolios are due within the next seven days. That leaves 3 weeks of summer to write more new stuff.
I'm dreading/anxiously anticipating the revision process because I don't normally produce drafts quite this quickly, which means the drafts are probably less polished than I'm used to. It will be interesting to see how it goes.
Okay, kids. I think it's time for me to wrap things up.
I haven't unpacked anything yet. Nor have I done any laundry. I may be going to class tomorrow in an entirley inappropriate outfit. (Nothing like dress pants and a graphic tee, right? Or a wool skirt and tank top?)
Yesterday's symposium went quite well (why do I hear myself saying this in a British accent?). Lots of good papers on poetry and lit, but of course the high light was the creative section at the end. My friend Jay rolled out the persona he's been working on for the last year or so, and this was the first time anyone got to hear a chunk of it all at once. Man, when he finds an editor who gets it, he is going to sell a lot of books. the stuff is freaking amazing.
Also amazing was, well, me. Yes, my ego is a little overly inflated right now, but seriously, it felt really good, re-e-e-a-lllll-y good, to read those poems. They have been revised, and revised, and revised. I've tweaked line breaks, I've cut stuff out and put it back in, and as I read them out loud all together, I realized there wasn't a thing I wanted to change about them. They are done. (Except one that I think is going to be my first prose poem, but I'm not even sure about that.) And holy crap, what a rush it is to have a room full of people paying attention to me for fifteen minutes! I'm a little shy sometimes, but put a podium in front of me and I want to be a rock star. (Not sure why that isn't the case with my teaching though)
Oh, Rick and Lea were wonderful too, but their writing fills up all the space between margins, which just doesn't get me as excited. Sorry.
