Poetry Homework

A few things I'm doing this weekend in hopes that my thesis will rock:

• Reading Ordering the Storm from Cleveland University Press, edited by Susan Grimm, who happens to be in my workshop this summer. A couple quotes I love: 1.) What kind of response do I want the reader to have when they've finished my book, given all possible demographics? Ideally, I hope my reader will be revitalized by the end of the process, gratified, or profoundly moved. I want my reader to perhaps feel the need to linger and savor, or to simply sit with me for a thoughtful length of silence. I want to have touched them, across space and time. I want them to taste my youth and enjoy my sassiness. I want them to be excited by my concerns and ideas. I want them to bemoan my losses and my trials. I want them to sample all life as it has defined me. I want them to have moved through my flesh. Wanda Coleman 2.) [a book] printed while the composition is still warm, reflects one blossoming consciousness, wayward and purposeful, playful, but fully intended[...]you rearrange, fiddle; spread them out on the kitchen floor[...]If this is your first 'kitchen cabinet' your job's even harder, since the poems buttering the tile are the ones that taught you how to write. Philip Brady
• Trying to take what I've read, and every other bit of advice I've heard about ordering a manuscript, and trying to apply it to my own ms. It seems a bit too early for me, but CP insists he cannot read my thesis unless it is in order. When I printed it out back in May, I put the poems in semi-chronological order, but after sitting with that for a while, I realized it was a terrible idea. Now I'm at square one and having lots of trouble.
• Reading bits of The Catechism of the Catholic Church and seriously considering the possibility of going to mass tomorrow. Other than weddings and funerals, I haven't been to mass in about 4 years. I won't get into my weird theological hang-ups, but I will say that I looove mass even if I'm not sure I believe what the church teaches. But this list is supposed to be about poetry homework, right? Well, it is. Because I've been thinking a lot about ceremony and poetry, and what is more ceremonial than mass?
• Reading Charles Simic's Selected Poems 1963-1983 with an eye towards evocation. Do I know what that means? Not exactly. But again, CP said to.
• Studying the list (I forget where it came from) of words all high school grads should know, b/c apparently I am behind. A few words I still don't know: abjure, fiduciary, gamete, gerrymander, obsequious, tautology
• Revising the poems I've turned in so far this summer
• Writing (hopefully) 3 new drafts so I don't have to worry about it while I'm getting ready for Bisbee
• Rereading Leilani Hall's Swimming the Witch and trying to figure out why it isn't jarring to hop from family poem to 17th century witch trial poem to 1970's volcano eruption poem back to family poem...because I feel like when I switch between time periods or subject matter, it is.

Well, I think that's about enough to do, don't you? Meanwhile, I'm making dinner for my sister and brother-in-law tomorrow because they have been making Sunday dinner for years and I want to return the favor. Plus, it's supposed to be +90 tomorrow and they don't have A/C.

Who has time for a social life? People pick on me because I don't go out very often, but seriously, this list sounds way more gratifying than, say, drinking 8 beers and throwing up in the woods like I did last weekend.