spreadsheets, snowboots, & goodreads

I've been building a ginormous spreadsheet of all the lucky journals who are going to have the chance to consider my poems in the next month or so and when I need a break from the geeky Excel stuff, I work on poems. The poems are in worse shape than the spreadsheet. I have a lot of rough drafts, a lot of half-formed ideas. I haven't sat down to make the poems do what poems do in a long time. I'm going to have to before the big winter submission. The HUGE winter submission.

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My Barberton day went swimmingly. The students were sweet and sharp and asked great questions and it was toughtoughtough. I don't know how you high school teachers do it, 5, 6 classes a day, 5 days a week. I admire and am awed by you.

I don't think I'll be banned from Barberton after all.

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I bought a pair of snow boots today. I'm going to hate myself for saying this later, but right now, I can't wait for it to snow so I can wear them. They're cute and furry, but in a subtle way. You know, they're not giant fur leg-warmers like Chippendale dancer boots.

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Flood Year is on Goodreads. I hadn't logged into Goodreads for at least six months, so I didn't know until today. I have one review (from Karen) one person currently reading (Brandi) and I'm on one person's to read list (Susan Slaviero). It's a darn good beginning, I'd say.

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Did you know Costco sells diamonds?

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!

Rigoberto González had nice things to say about Flood Year and dgp over at Critical Mass. Awesome!

Publicity

My chapbook is getting some publicity at the Chicago Poetry Calendar today. Sweet!

And back home, my MFA pal Jason Venner is getting some press, too.

Good things, good things.

Now Available!!

Yep, that's right. You can buy your very own copy of my chapbook now. Just click here: Flood Year

But...there are several folks who will be getting little presents in their mailboxes as soon as I get my next batch of copies. I thought I'd go to UA when I was in Ohio to hand-deliver some copies to friends and mentors, but my family snatched up all my author copies. I also owe some folks a trade, so you all will be getting those too.

Otherwise, I hope you'll think about buying a copy and supporting dancing girl press, which does such great work.

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I translated a poem about sailors and prostitutes tonight. From Italian. It was fun. The poem is "Citta` vecchia" (Old City) by Umberto Saba. Next up: a poem in sapphics. I guess that means three lines of 11 syllables each plus one line of five syllables, repeat as desired. I'm terrified because it isn't just about counting syllables, but also about counting stresses, and I have a tin ear. You'll never catch this girl writing sonnets or blank verse. Well, never say never.

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What a strange, strange world this is. I still can't believe I live in Chicago. I still can't believe it's almost winter.

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My sister Carla is coming to visit in a few weeks. I can't wait to do touristy things with her and introduce her to my friends.

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Workshop started in my intro to poetry class. It's going so, so much better than the first half of the semester did. Some of my students are really talented and they are all working really hard. I'm proud of them and (finally) excited to walk into the classroom every day. I feel like a big nerd, but I love it. Oh, and the number of students who have come to see me during office hours has quadrupled in the last week. That's always fun.

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I'm happy in a sad way right now. Does that make any sense to anyone?

I'm the happiest girl in the world

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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.

a little of this, a little of that

I made a pot roast today, and even though I got advice from almost everyone in my immediate family on how to do it properly, I was still disappointed. And then I remembered: I don't even like pot roast. But I love the potatoes that go with it. So for the potatoes, it was worth it. And the meat was on sale for super cheap so meh, no big deal.

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When I called my sister Beth to ask about the pot roast, she said she misses me more when I don't blog. So, I guess I'm going to try to blog more.

Speaking of missing people, I'm heading to Ohio in two weeks. This is the longest I've gone (10 weeks) without a trip to Ohio since I moved here. It gets easier but it's still so freaking hard. I wouldn't have to make pot roast for one if I lived closer to my family...

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My poem-a-day experiment is failing. As usual, the first two weeks were strong, the last two weeks not so much. But still, I'll have 10+ drafts to revise (and another 10 or so to throw away).

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I proofed the galleys for Flood Year this morning. It really is happening! (ps - Karen, you'll be getting a copy of my chapbook as soon as I get my author copies. As will the rest of you who I've promised to trade with.)

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I still haven't sent out In the Weeds. I'm thisclose, though, I swear. Just have to fix the page numbers, print it out, and label the envelopes.

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Some days, I still don't know what the heck I'm doing in academia, what the heck I'm doing in front of a classroom, or even how to write a poem...but for the most part, life is making more sense than it has in a long time. Ssshhh, I don't want to jinx it.

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I take back what I said about Italian class. I study about 10 minutes a day and have a 98% so far, so I guess the way my instructor teaches works just fine. On my first oral assignment, I lost two points for my "midwestern accent." Guess I'm gonna have to work on that...

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I think I'm coming down with the swine flu. You see, normally, I would say "I think I'm getting a cold" but since we get URGENT ANNOUNCEMENTS about once a week from the administration about dealing with excessive absences and sneezing into our elbows to contain H1N1, I'm pretty sure this sneezing and coughing I'm doing today is going to lead to my imminent demise.

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My friend Andy invited me out tonight, and I said yes (before I realized I had the swine flu) and he said he'd text me later to let me know where. I just got the text and we're going to the Skylark which makes me unhappy for several reasons, first because it's in Pilsen which is like 800 miles away (okay, so an hour+ on CTA and 30 min/30 bucks in a cab), second because the last time I was there I am pretty sure I left a $60 tip (because I was embarrassed for drinking too much because the bartender was my student [In my defense, we were celebrating the last day of the first year of our PhD program]), and lastly because the beer there is not cheap. On the other hand, I've been a bit more antisocial than usual so far this semester, so I guess I can suck it up for one night.

Here I go...

October 2

I'm sorry I've been away. I've been busy.

What brings me back? Self-promotion. Please come see me read next Friday. Details below.
(PS - Forecast calls for a Flood Year. I know, I'm cheesy.)

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First Friday Series

7:30-9:30 PM

St Paul’s Cultural Center
2215 W North Avenue
October 2nd

1st Friday Series presents dancing girl press poets:

Sara Tracey
Rachel Jamison Webster
Sarah Gardner
Jen Blair

Now Hosted by the Waiting 4 the Bus Collective!

2+ blocks west of the Damon Blue Line stop
Street parking available

Beer, wine, soft drinks available @ cool-low prices
Free Admission
Donation Requested

The First Friday Poetry Series is a Poetry Green Zone

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?