happy

My sister is here, last night I did my second reading since Flood Year came out and then went to Little Joe's to belatedly celebrate my birthday, today we're going to wander around the city like tourists and the weather is perfect.

Compliments from lots of folks, including the department chair and AW, after the reading. Sold a couple of copies. Felt like a rock star.

Karen wrote a little review of Flood Year that's just amazing...I kind of can't believe she's talking about my poems. Thanks so much, Karen!

For the record

I'm proud to be a wicked alice contributor and a future dancing girl press author.

Manuscript Madness

Yesterday, I sat down with my manuscript plus the 40 poems that aren't currently in it (mostly new, but some are from my MFA workshops that didn't make the cut for my thesis), and started to do some shuffling. And then I just got frustrated.

When I was ordering my thesis, I had three sub-projects that I was trying to weave together: childhood/family poems, Donny & Stella, and waitressing/working class poems. It all worked well because Stella was "my" cousin and she was a waitress, and I wrote some Donny childhood poems and he was a working class guy...at the time, it all made perfect sense.

But when I look at the manuscript now, there are about 5-10 childhood/family poems that don't fit and I'm anxious about the Stella stuff because of the chapbook--literally half of the full-length manuscript is in Flood Year. I feel like I need to do more with Stella so that folks who read the chapbook have something new to learn about her if/when In the Weeds goes out into the world. But that's a minor concern. I know that lots of poets' first chapbooks land directly in their first books. It's the poems I want to take out--they're going to need to be replaced or the ms is too short (and way too Stella-centric at that point). So, then there's those 40 unaccounted-for poems. Do they (some of them) end up in ITW? Or are they for a new manuscript(s)?

What I ended up with yesterday were three piles--which could turn out to be 3 manuscripts. And it would feel really, really nice to have a sense of the trajectory of my first three books. But I wonder if I'm drawing these lines in the sand that don't need to be drawn. Some of the poems in pile three could easily be integrated into ITW. I could even slap Donny's or Stella's names on some of them and add a few identifying details and *poof*--they're persona poems.

Right now, I wish that I wrote with more purpose. For the last year or so, I've been writing always with my thesis in the back of my mind--I knew when I turned it in that it didn't feel done to me, but everyone who read it at the time told me it was ready--so half of me thought the poems I wrote were for my second project, and half of me thought they were for ITW. I wish I'd been more deciscive, because now I'm just confused.

I've pushed back my personal deadline/goal for getting this manuscript in the mail 100 times (okay, maybe more like 10 times) and I don't know if it is truly for artistic reasons or just because I'm chicken shit. Then again, I knew my chapbook was ready and only had to send it out twice. If I know this manuscript is ready, will I have the same good luck? If I send it out when I'm still unsure, will I be wasting my postage and my reading fees?

And then there's the problem of revision--previously my favorite part of the writing process. But lately, I haven't been able to see beyond the first draft of a poem. What's missing, where is it going, how can I blow out the walls? These questions used to inspire a writing frenzy, now they just cause me to stare out the window listlessly. Eh, I think, this poem's pretty okay as is. I don't really know what else to do with it, so I guess it's done. That's not who I am as a writer! At least, it's not who I want to be. But I've lost my knack for re-visioning. How do I get it back?

The biggest news in my poetry career so far...

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!

Chapbook News

Many congrats to Greg Wrenn, winner of The Laurel Review / GreenTower Press Midwest Chapbook Series Award!

More importantly, I was a finalist! Sorry, I know that's not very diplomatic of me, but I've never been a finalist before. Woohoo!

Late Night

I haven't posted past midnight in a while...it's that early teaching schedule. But I'm on spring break, so schedules be damned.

I have a huge mental block on finishing and submitting my manuscript, but I just finished whittling it down to a neat 26 page chapbook. I'll be sending it out next week. I'm not asking anyone to read it and I'm not telling anyone what the title is until it's printed and mailed. I have a serious issue with indecisiveness, so I'm trusting my gut on this one.

I think this is the right step--the hesitation for my thesis-turned-ms is partially fear, but also partially an awareness that, although I'm very happy with it, it isn't finished. There are still poems I want to write, poems I want to revise, and it just isn't time yet. Summer or fall, maybe, but I'm not going to push it. I want to be totally in love with my first book when it comes out. And I'm totally in love with my chapbook. Then again, this was just the first date, and I have a tendency to get attatched too soon. Ask me how I feel about it in the morning. But not before 10, since it's almost 2 now.

*

I still haven't heard anything from the last school...but I got another annoying graduate newsletter email from them today. I get excited every time I see the name in my inbox, but then I read the email and at the bottom, it says "Contact your department for the status of your application" and I realize that they're just teasing me. If I don't hear anything tomorrow I'm calling Monday. Wait, make that Tuesday. Monday is St. Patrick's day, and even though I'm not Irish, my friends are.

14 out of 23

Well, I just got back from teaching my last class for this semester. Only 14 of my 23 students turned in portfolios on time. I'm not sure what my policy is for late ones. Still, even with this tiny half a class, they managed to eat all 4 large pizzas I ordered.

I'm overwhelmed with relief that this semester is over (almost). It's been a stressful one, for whatever reason I'm not sure. My MFA courses weren't too tough or demanding, and although my students gave me some trouble, over all it wasn't too bad. So why do I feel like I can breath again for the first time in 15 weeks? Strange.

So, it's time to grade portfolios, finish up one last assignment, and get on with my life. As I mentioned yesterday, that means moving and trying to find a summer job, but it also means compiling my thesis manuscript so that I can start ordering it and looking for poems that haven't been written yet. Previously, I've been toting around a folder with a bunch of rough drafts at various stages of revision and calling that my thesis, but I went through that folder the other night and realized about half of those drafts won't make it into the manuscript, so it's time to clean up and look at it realistically. Also, I need to put together a chapbook manuscript so I can enter some contests in the fall.

It's strange to start thinking about chapbooks seriously. Back when I first did it, I just thought: hey, I have 20 pages of good poems. That's a chapbook. Now I realize how much more complicated it is, and I think I have 3, maybe 4 beginnings of chapbooks: there's the one where I deal with my felon grandfather (only 3-4 poems right now, so who knows when it will be long enough), the one about my childhood (probably almost ready to go), the Bird-Witching Carla poems (which mostly overlap the childhood poems, so then what?), and the newer stuff I've been writing about working class relationships. I need to decide which one to focus on first. But that feels like deciding which one of your kids you'll feed because you don't have enough food for all of them. Or something? It doesn't feel right to neglect one in favor of the other is what I'm trying to say. So...hopefully I will hurry up and make a decision.

Back to work.

finish chapbook...check

Well, I've done it. I picked some poems, put them in order, and decided to call it The Secret Prophecy of Thumbs. Tomorrow morning, it goes in the mail for my very first chapbook contest.

I have this weird feeling--like a sense of accomplishment mixed with fear of forgetting something. Like accidentally turning in the rough draft of a term paper instead of the revision. I can't explain it. I guess it comes from knowing that I've come a long way since I've been working on my MFA, but not quite sure if I'm ready to be calling a group of my poems a chapbook. There are some poems that clearly go together, and some themes threaded through all (or most) of the poems, but I'm not sure they work in a cohesive group just yet. And there are two or three poems that I wanted to include, but they just aren't ready, and won't be before the deadline for this competition.

The good thing is that I can now cross this off my to-do list and focus on other things. I need to write my class plan for next week and start really focusing on my Winter Wheat presentation. I've been thinking about it and planning it in my head, but I have yet to put anything on paper. I can't believe it's just two weeks away! When that's over, it's term paper time, then my first time grading freshmen portfolios, then Christmas break. After that...thesis. Holy cow. There's just not enough time!