October, Already?

Oh, how time flies when you only have one semester left of your MFA. It's hard to believe that in just five weeks, I'll be defending my thesis. I think there are still some holes I need to plug, which has gotten me thinking about order. I have been avoiding chronology...although I'm really not sure why...but today I plan to put my poems into a timeline to see what's missing. Maybe they'll stay in that order, maybe not. But I think it's an exercise I can't finish my thesis without.

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Yesterday, I got really, really mad at my students. But for some reason, I always feel silly and a little embarrassed when I get angry. Maybe it's because I'm conflict averse. At any rate, they asked for more time on their rough drafts last Friday, and I didn't have a problem with that, except that it threw off my plan for the week. So, I told them that if they wanted more time, they needed to bring drafts and questions to class on Monday. But they didn't bring questions, so all I could do was give them quiet writing time. I wanted to slap them on the wrists and send them home, but that would have seemed more like a reward, so I held them hostage.

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I'm hemming and hawing about going to see Michael Dumanis read at John Carroll tonight. I would really really love to hear Michael read, and to show my support because I think he is such a wonderful addition to the MFA faculty, but I just found out about the reading yesterday, and I really have a lot to do today. (Plus Phil Brady is reading in Youngstown tonight and I had kind of planned that if I got caught up, I would go there. But I've heard Phil read before...) I suppose I could try to be super productive for the rest of the morning and afternoon and reevaluate my level of swampedness later. We'll see.

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New American Writing rejected me less than a week after I mailed them my stuff. I'm all for quick response times, but I can't help feeling like the girl who goes to the audition and gets kicked out before she reads her lines.

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You know what's not on my to do list for today? Updating my blog.
Maybe I should go do something that is.

No love from Cincinnati Review.

Back to my papers.

skinny envelopes

I hate skinny envelopes. They never contain good news. For those who've been keeping up, this means I got my rejection from RHINO today. I can't say I'm terribly surprised (just a little) and a little more disappointed, but on the up side, they did write a very nice note on the slip. I guess this is the kick in the pants I've been waiting for to send out my next round of submissions. Hopefully there will be good news in the mail someday soon.

Winter Wheat was good...not as good as last year, but good. My presentation went better than I expected--I had some BGSU MFAers in the session and they were--I hate to admit this--slightly more prepared than I was. They had recently read Olds, Plath, and Lee in one of their classes, so had lots of insightful things to say about the poems I brought in as examples. It was great to talk with a group of people who are excited about the topic though. This is not what I'm used to considering I teach apathetic freshman.

So, to sum things up, I finally have something to put under "Conference Presentations" on my CV, but my "Publications" section is still quite sparse. I think I have a lot of work to do these next two semseters.