Break Time

I have been so busy lately--and not just "wow, there's a lot on my to do list, but I'm watching TV" busy--that I have gotten really bad at answering emails, updating my blog, etc. (So, if I owe you some sort of communication, please forgive me!) But I'm still really good at updating my facebook status. I'm taking a little break right now for dinner, but then it's back to Ashbery. I don't know what I've gotten myself into--I'm supposed to be coming up with a theory as to how his seemingly unrelated phrases and images work together to make meaning. Huh? I'm sooo not the scholar I pretend to be. The worst part is, if I bomb this, me and the prof won't be the only ones who know--I have to present this paper, conference style, to my whole class and whoever else decides to show up next Wednesday. Fun!

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I really wish I was going to Winter Wheat this weekend. Looks like there will be some really great sessions, and of course lots of old NEObuddies. I hope you guys have fun!!

Updates

The Fall issue of Wicked Alice is up! Go check it out. I think I went to high school with this contributor. Weird, huh? I thought I was the only poet from Cloverleaf. And somehow we both end up in the same issue of the same journal.

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My thesis defense went super well, except for the part where I tried to explain my prose poems and started rambling like a moron. Oh well. Other than that, we talked about revision, my advice for other MFA poets (don't wait for your committee to ask to see your ms, don't start your ms in the first semester b/c you'll hate it by the end, and figure out who gives good comments and ignore all the rest), and whether f**k or screw is the right word to use (in a particular poem). Of course, Mom would say screw, but I think I have to go with the other. The worst part? Trying not to look at Mary because every time I did, I wanted to cry. I can't believe I'm leaving the NEOMFA. Why can't I just stay forever?

Oh, and the ms title. It started out as Hammers and Whiskey, changed to In the Weeds, but we've decided neither is right. What am I gonna call this thing?

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Winter Wheat was also awesome, although more for the company than the actual conference, which seems to get smaller every year. I decided not to bring my camera, though, so you'll have to wait for Mary and Adam to post their pictures of the ghost town that BGSU's student union was yesterday.

There was some interesting conversation in our panel on the nature of the workshop...unfortunately, I don't think we solved anything, but definitely got some ideas. One thing that everyone seemed to think was worthwhile: typing one page worth of analysis/suggestions (which should be turned in to the instructor and the writer) instead of just jotting down annotations on the page.

Mary and I didn't get to dance very much last night, partially because we were totally beat, partially because the dj just wasn't playin' the right stuff. If only he'd played this:



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Time to start grading. Now that my thesis defense is over, I have no more excuses for not being on top of things.

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P.S. Thanks everyone for the good luck and congratualtions!

Simplify? Not yet.

This is going to be one heck of a week. First, I'll be driving all around the NEO stalking H.L. Hix. Okay, not really. But he's speaking in Kent today and hanging out in Akron on Thursday, and I'm going to try to make it to as many events as possible. But before that, I need to read some of his poems.

Then...Thesis Defense on Friday! Holy Crap! I know I'm ready. But it's still scary.

After that, it's off to Winter Wheat. Me and some other NEOpoets (Jen, Jay, and Jessica S.) will be talking about workshops, poetry pedagogy (is there such a thing?), and genuine responses on Saturday at 2:30. I'm thinking about doing a little celebrating on Friday night, but since Mary's job market talk is first thing in the morning, maybe I'll save all my energy for Saturday night. I'm looking forward to meeting some people (Gary, Adam, who else?) that I somehow missed at AWP last year.

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Mom and Dad are moving to Florida. Well, nothing is set in stone just yet, but they've been talking to a realtor and their friends in Florida are scoping out houses for them. I guess I'm pretty unusual in that until I went to college, I lived in the same place my whole life. Mom and Dad bought the house I grew up in in 76 or 77 and have lived there ever since. But now they're moving. I would love to be in a position to buy the house from them, but I don't think my tiny little stipend will pay a mortgage. Besides, I'm supposed to be leaving, too.

That's what's really weird. Mom and Dad's house has always been the center of our family, and we (me and my 4 sisters) have tried to stay relatively close (except Carla, who has been bouncing around for the last 10 years with her then-boyfriend/now-husband while he learned how to be a periodontist). Now, the folks are planning to leave, Carla's in VA, and hopefully I'll be somewhere far, far away, too. Maybe I'll end up at Florida State and I'll be able to "go home" on the weekends. Or maybe I'll end up in Nebraska and no one will come visit me because they'd rather take their vacation time to go see Mom and Dad.

Regardless of where I end up, I think my family as I know it will soon fall apart. I don't know that we'll stay as close when we aren't geographically close. (Although Carla and I seem to get along better the further away she gets, so maybe I'm wrong.) Most of us hate talking on the phone. Between jobs, limited incomes, and other obligations, none of us have the luxury of traveling frequently. We do like email though.

I'm afraid we're going to turn into one of those families that gets together on Christmas and can't wait to get back home. I'm afraid that my sisters and I will become distant, unfamiliar. I suppose I have as much control in not letting that happen as anyone, but frankly, I'm bad at keeping in touch between visits at Mom and Dad's house now, so how good am I going to be at it while studying for the comps or writing a dissertation?

My mother's favorite bit of advice is to not worry about something so far off in the future that you can't do anything about it. So I suppose I'm wasting time and energy fretting about this now. What I should be worrying about is those PhD applications, b/c if I don't get those done, none of this really matters, now does it?

Sunday, Bloody Sunday

You know, my blog titles make absolutely no sense sometimes.

I just submitted my pedagogy paper. I would usually ask someone to read something like this before I submit it, but I decided to trust myself this time. We'll see how that works out. I'm already getting excited/nervous about my first trip to NYC. I'm such a country bumpkin, I don't know what I'm going to do with myself in a city that big. Chicago made me want to pee my pants the first time I was there...I'm sure NYC will be somewhat the same.

Next up, working on my Winter Wheat presentation.

I got a lot of little things done yesterday, but not near as much as I was hoping. And I still need to write those damn poems floating around in my head. There's never enough time! Gotta leave for dinner at my sister's soon, and I'm usually there way longer than I plan to be, so once again, my weekend to do list is going to roll over into my Monday to do list. Hrumph. At least there's Tuesday...a very un-busy day to catch up.

Do you ever wonder how much of what you write isn't really yours? I was reading Drift of the Hunt the other day, which I haven't looked at for about a year, and I realized that one of Craig's lines ended up in one of my poems. I didn't do it on purpose. Luckily, Craig believes in poetic cannibalism, so I know he won't be upset. Besides, he's read the poem and he didn't notice either. (At least not that he told me.)

Enough of this mindless rambling. Back to work.

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.

It's early

Last night, an Indian woman who I take classes with told me she wanted to dress me up in a sari and make me an Indian bride. I wonder, does she want to arrange a husband for me, too? Hopefully not her skinny 17-year-0ld son.

It's almost 9 a.m., and it feels very early, although I know that I have only six hours left to clean, do laundry, and finish preparing my presentation for Winter Wheat tomorrow. Oh, and pack. It should be more than enough time, but I'm tired and not a morning person. I'm afraid I'm probably going to be sitting at the computer pretending to be productive for another hour or so. Then I will have to rush for the rest of the day.

Tomorrow, those who are lucky enough to attend my session will get to read "Aspic & Buttermilk" by Sharon Olds, "The Gift" by Li-Young Lee, and "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath. (I figured you can't talk about family poems without Sylvia, can you?) I haven't decided if I'm going to share any of my own poems yet. It feels sorta cocky to say "If you want to write a poem about your family, do it like I do" when I haven't gotten anything published yet. On the other hand, I'm afraid it will be suspicious if I don't share my own work.

I am very, very nervous. I shouldn't be. I know WW is a friendly place, and no one is going to boo me, but I am still terrified about this presentation. Hopefully I can shake that feeling with a little more preparation.

Getting There

In my attempts to become a visible part of the literary/poetry community, I sent out a seminar proposal to the BGSU Winter Wheat Literary Festival. I've been anxiously awaiting the day when people can sign up for my session, and that day is finally here! Check out the Winter Wheat seminars and workshops schedule to see my session (I'm in the 1:00 section).

Now, if I could just start getting good news in those SASEs...

And now, my first official mindful rambling:

I've been thinking a lot today about academia and my place within it. When I first started my MFA, I thought that I would want to go on for a PhD, then, for a while, I convinced myself I didn't. Over the weekend, I started thinking about it again, and now I'm not so sure what I will do come December '07, when I have a completed thesis and a diploma in my hand.

Before I started the NEOMFA, I did a year in the U of Akron's comp MA program. I had just lost my first "grown up" job at an insurance company and decided instead of looking for another job, I would apply to grad school. Unfortuantely, this happened in May, and I had missed most of the deadlines already, except for Akron's, which is where I got my BA. I knew I didn't want to study lit for two more years, especially with the same professors that I had studied under before (not that they weren't wonderful, but I thought I might end up studying the same stuff over again), so I signed up for the comp track, not exactly knowing what I was getting into.

For the next nine months, my brain was overloaded with Berlin, Foucault, Shaughnessy, and the like. I had a lot of trouble doing well in my comp classes and was even brought to tears one night while trying to prepare a presentation on "Power/Knowledge". You can imagine my relief and excitement when I found out that Akron was about to become part of the NEOMFA. I immediately applied, waited for my acceptace letter, and signed up for two workshops and a lit course for my first semester in the program.

Since then, I've had some minor encounters with deconstruction, new criticism, etc., and have found myself twitching all over again. I write pretty straight-forward, narrative poetry and sometimes struggle with finding the relevance of this heavy, intellectual stuff in my own writing. Which is why I decided a PhD wasn't in my future.

Nevertheless, the possibility has returned to my thoughts and won't let go. I once had a professor tell me I was intellectually lazy, and I think he may have been right. I have friends working on PhD's and I've heard the horror stories: massive amounts of reading, seemingly impossible amounts of writing, zero social life or down time. Do I want to make that kind of commitment? Will my creative writing have to take a back-burner to my academic writing? Can I handle the pressure?

On the other hand, I'm envious of people who can carry on a thoughtful conversation about lit crit or rhetoric as easily as they can talk about the weather. I would love to be one of those people. I want to spend more time immersing myself in the books I haven't read yet, I want to understand why people are obsessed with Nietzsche and Derrida, I want to be able to deconstruct a text and not make a mess out of it. Hopefully, these would all be aspects of my life as a PhD candidate. And I won't deny that the prestige and respect of being Dr. Tracey would be pretty darn nice.

It all boils down to this: will I be ready in 14 months to take on the job market? I have found over the last two months that I love teaching and hopefully will continue to love teaching. I'm aware that the market is not good for PhD's or MFA's, so wouldn't it be better if I spent more time reading, writing, and learning before I put myself out there? Or will I be setting myself up for failure (or, possibly, some success at the cost of my sanity)?

I'm curious how folks out there with MFA's and PhD's made the decision to do both. Any thoughts?