The Baby is Hungry

A couple of nights ago, I had a dream that I had a baby--well, a toddler--and I didn't know how to feed it. When I realized the child was hungry and I couldn't do anything about it, I was so overcome with guilt that it woke me up. So, no, I'm not pregnant...and I think the baby is a stand-in for poetry.

When I signed on for the crazy BBQ job, I imagined myself grabbing every spare minute to read or write, but I found myself doing very little of that. OK, I did read a few books this summer, but for the most part, I spent my down time sleeping, going out to eat with the crew, and on the phone with people at home. Many, many things were working against me: the 14-16 hour workdays, my crazy, spoiled, Russian princess of a roommate, the homesickness. And when I was home, well, it was usually for less than 48 hours and I spent most of it doing laundry and sleeping. The longer breaks didn't come until the end of the summer when it was time to start packing.

Anyhow, you, dear readers, are not my mother (well, one of you is) and are not my priest, so I guess I don't have to explain my guilt away like this. The point is, poetry got bumped this summer, and not because I didn't feel it was important, but because I couldn't find the emotional or physical energy to dedicate to it. And now, it's the day before fall semester begins and I don't feel like a poet at all.

I'm currently inundated with theory: Kant, Hegel, various composition texts, and still trying to adjust to this new city, which is, to say the least, overwhelming. I want to write, but I feel that other things are more pressing. I want to write, but I'm afraid I've forgotten how. I don't know how to feed the baby.

I've been joking to Boyfriend that my second ms is going to be called Lonely Country Girl in Chicago. Not a great title, and I imagine a pretty boring read...but the weird thing is that I can't even seem to eek out one of my old-style, overly sentimental poems. It's pretty bad when writer's block extends to the narcissitic, catharsis-inducing poems I've always reverted to in the past.

So, here's my question, folks: what do you do when the muse has taken a leave of absence? How do you tap into your inner poet when things like practicality and critical texts get in the way of your imagination? And, for those of you who have done or are doing the PhD thing...how do you balance being a scholar and an artist?

Prompt answers are appreciated...I have to have a new poem for workshop on Wednesday. : )

Do I have writer's block...

or just an overactive internal critic? There's two weeks left in my workshop, so I want to turn in two new poems (I'm a week behind) tomorrow. I've been working on rough drafts for a week and can't come up with anything cohesive. I'm afraid of writing something cliched, or prosey (my most frequent workshop comment), and in turn, I'm not writing anything. As a result, my brain is about to explode and I'm smoking like a fiend...neither of which are helping. Maybe I need to get raging drunk and see what my subconscious wants to write about.