Wednesday (Poe and Prozac) Musings

We took Nimbus to the vet last week and we just got the results of his blood work, and he’s healthy. I had no doubt that he was, but he’s an older cat so I was a little worried (on top of the fact that he hasn’t been to the vet in awhile). Anyway. While I was on the phone with the vet, I asked her about anti-anxiety meds for Kweli. I was informed that we could try the herbal remedy or Prozac. Yes, I said Prozac. I’ll just leave you with that thought…
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Today is our third blank page meeting. I’m hoping more people show up this time. I really want to get this National Novel Writing Month project off the ground. I’m also bringing them a copy of “The Raven” by Poe in honor of Halloween.
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Tuesday (Grumpy) Musings

Here is the fall poem of the week. This will be the last one, and then I’m going to start moving into winter…

Thanksgiving

In every room. encircled by a name-
less Southern boy from Yale,
There was my younger sister singing a Fellini theme
And making phone calls
While the rest of us kept moving her discarded boots
Or sat and drank. Outside, in twenty-
nine degrees, a stray cat
Grazed our driveway,
Seeking waste. It scratched the pail.
There were no other sounds.
Yet on and on the preparation of that vast consoling meal
Edged toward the stove. My mother
Had the skewers in her hands.
I watched her tucking skin
As though she missed her young, while bits of onion
Misted snow over the pronged death.

Louise Glück
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Today has been a killer day. I stayed up too late last night watching some low budget horror movie on AMC. I think it was called Return to the House on Haunted Hill or something equally terrible. As a result of staying up too late, I went to bed late and woke up too early, and that has resulted in me being cranky throughout most of the morning. I started to recover during my creative writing class, which I love. Today we talked about Carolyn Forché and Maxine Kumin. I have them reading The Things They Carried for next week and then we’re moving into poetry.

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Friday (Are we done yet?) Musings

I’m here at school at 8:47 on a Friday morning. Again. I’m gearing up for new faculty orientation. Again. I feel like I’ve been oriented almost to the point of exhaustion. It isn’t that these sessions aren’t helpful. It’s just that I’ve been here long enough where the information is starting to repeat.
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It is a rainy fall day. There is a mild chance of flurries next week and the temperature is supposed to slip down to 20. Welcome winter…believe it or not, I’ve missed you.
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I’m playing with an idea for a poem, which has begun in the form of a free write about flannel sheets. This is what I have so far:

I was lying in bed the other night and it was the first night this month, October, where it felt like fall. The temperature was about 40 degrees. I’ve had flannel sheets on my bed since September, as if I am trying to will the cooler air through the windows. Finally, my cool air came and I twisted myself up as tight as I could in those sheets.

What is it about flannel?

For a time, my flannel sheets smelled like cedar because we used to keep them in a cedar chest that my grandfather built. There was something primitive about the feel of flannel, grainy but soft and the smell of cedar that made me feel like I was sleeping in dirt.

Flannel means comfort and nurturing and a sense of home. I associate flannel sheets with Christmas and holidays.

It is difficult to climb out of a bed made with flannel sheets.

Flannel means bargain. The last two sets of sheets I bought were one sale. High quality. Laura Ashley.

Flannel means sleep, hibernate, tunnel down and don’t come out.

Flannel smells like a wet dog when it is being washed.
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National Novel Writing Month is upon us once again. Despite the fact that I have no spare time and currently no computer at home, I’m going to give it a go.

Wednesday (neglected blog) Musings

Yes, I have been neglecting my blog. Yes, I am insanely busy. Yes, I have been at school until 5 almost every day this week. No, that may not seem like a long time except I usually get there between 6:30-7 in the morning.

Bah.
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Your weekly fall poem that is woefully late. All apologies…

Autumn Birds

The wild duck startles like a sudden thought,
And heron slow as if it might be caught.
The flopping crows on weary wings go by
And grey beard jackdaws noising as they fly.
The crowds of starnels whizz and hurry by,
And darken like a clod the evening sky.
The larks like thunder rise and suthy round,
Then drop and nestle in the stubble ground.
The wild swan hurries hight and noises loud
With white neck peering to the evening clowd.
The weary rooks to distant woods are gone.
With lengths of tail the magpie winnows on
To neighbouring tree, and leaves the distant crow
While small birds nestle in the edge below.

John Clare

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I’ve introduced my creative writers to flash fiction and they’re taking to it like ducks water. I think they’re intrigued by the compression of language and ideas required in flash fiction. Also, let’s face it, flash fiction is cool. In order to give them a wide variety of examples, I bought Flash Fiction edited by James Thomas, Denise Thomas & Tom Hazuka. They compiled flash fiction from the likes of Raymond Carver, Julia Alvarex, Joyce Carol Oates, David Foster Wallace, and John Updike just to name a few. I’ve been reading all night an pulling examples I think my class will like. I’m looking forward to class tomorrow.

I met with the blank page again today, but our group was a bit small. We’re received the go ahead from the library for our National Novel Writing Month project, but I might have to tweak it a bit in order to get in done in a time frame that is realistic for our members.

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My department chair gave me this Salvador Dali print to help me battle aganist my depressing white walls. Gotta love Dali…

Monday (Love your Body!) Musings

Today is officially “Love Your Body Day.” I like this idea. I fall into the same trap as many women who get down on themselves because of the way they look. I’ve recently (and by recently I mean like a week ago) decided that I need to get over it. I go to the gym and I eat pretty healthy but I need to stop freaking out when I have a piece of chocolate or eat some french fries. The reality of the matter is we live in an imperfect world, so to try to be perfect is ridiculous. I’m over it. Health is what is important. Thanks to SB for bringing this to my attention.

Here is a link to the site and lots of neat information.

I’m ordering these for my office:

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Here is your autumn poem for the week. I’ve decided that at the end of October I’m going to move onto another “theme.”

Hornworm: Autumn Lamentation

Since that first morning when I crawled
into the world, a naked grubby thing,
and found the world unkind,
my dearest faith has been that this
is but a trial: I shall be changed.
In my imaginings I have already spent
my brooding winter underground,
unfolded silky powdered wings, and climbed
into the air, free as a puff of cloud
to sail over the steaming fields,
alighting anywhere I pleased,
thrusting into deep tubular flowers.

It is not so: there may be nectar
in those cups, but not for me.
All day, all night, I carry on my back
embedded in my flesh, two rows
of little white cocoons,
so neatly stacked
they look like eggs in a crate.
And I am eaten half away.

If I can gather strength enough
I’ll try to burrow under a stone
and spin myself a purse
in which to sleep away the cold;
though when the sun kisses the earth
again, I know I won’t be there.
Instead, out of my chrysalis
will break, like robbers from a tomb,
a swarm of parasitic flies,
leaving my wasted husk behind.

Sir, you with the red snippers
in your hand, hovering over me,
casting your shadow, I greet you,
whether you come as an angel of death
or of mercy. But tell me,
before you choose to slice me in two:
Who can understand the ways
of the Great Worm in the Sky?

Stanley Kunitz

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Some of the “Best of…” from Poetry Out Loud.

Toni Morrison’s new novel to coming soon…

Wednesday (Rainy) Musings

The computer lab where I teach my M/W classes is insanely cold. My hands were turning blue while I was teaching this morning. Not cool (pun intended).

I’m beginning to acquire a nice little collection of flash drives that were left behind in the lab. I’ve emailed all the students, but have heard back from none. Strange.
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Here is another take from the NY Times on why A mericans just don’t get it (the Nobel Prize):

On Tuesday, Horace Engdahl, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, the organization that awards the Nobel Prize in Literature, gave an interview to The Associated Press and, while not dropping hints about this year’s winner, seemed to rule out, pretty much, the chances of any American writer. “Europe is still the center of the literary world,” he said, not the United States, and he suggested that American writers were “too sensitive to trends in their own mass culture.” He added: “The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature. That ignorance is restraining.”

And then he backtracks:

He insisted that the academy strictly followed Alfred Nobel’s rule that in awarding the prize no consideration should be given to an author’s nationality, and added: “It is of no importance, when we judge American candidates, how any of us views American literature as a whole in comparison with other literatures.”
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When Doctors, and Even Santa, Endorsed Tobacco

*courtesy of the NY Times
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I completely rewrote a poem yesterday. I don’t know if the rewrite works…

Tuesday (yawn) Musings

I’m tired. It’s Tuesday afternoon. This is not a good sign. I need to stop scheduling my weekends so tightly because I’m not getting a chance to recharge which will only lead to bad things.

Today feels especially fall like. Although, I have not seen a window since my 11:00 class, so it could be balmy and sunny by now.

Coughing and sniffling has started. Bah.
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This is kind of unfortunate. You know things are backwards when a dance studio is being put out by a Banana Republic.

This is really unfortunate.

Monday Musings

This weekend my mom and sister drove in from Erie and we went to the Vera Bradley trunk show. It was awesome. I bought $250 worth of stuff for $98. My mom got a bunch of presents for her friends and we’re already making plans to go to the one in May. We also spent some time at Trader Joes and the T.J. Max Home store. Erie isn’t exactly the shopping mecca of the world, so we like to get our shop on when they come.

Kwe finished his first week at doggie school. He received good marks on his “report card” and I’m going to work with him on the skills that they introduced him to. I might take him back in about a month, but we’ll see. I am intrigued by this medication proposition, so I’m going to call the vet this week and get some more information.
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Here is your weekly fall poem:

Frog Autumn

Summer grows old, cold-blooded mother.
The insects are scant, skinny.
In these palustral homes we only
Croak and wither.

Mornings dissipate in somnolence.
The sun brightens tardily
Among the pithless reeds. Flies fail us.
he fen sickens.

Frost drops even the spider. Clearly
The genius of plenitude
Houses himself elsewhwere. Our folk thin
Lamentably.

Sylvia Plath
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Madonna never stops.

When I heard about the message that Alec Baldwin left his daughter, I thought he was an idiot. However, this article brings up an interesting point that I had never considered:

In short, it’s the womenfolk who make the kids hate Dad. Dad then spirals out of control and leaves an obscene, emotionally violent message for his prepubescent daughter on her cellphone (as Baldwin notoriously did in 2007, calling her, among other things, a “rude, thoughtless little pig”). The message is leaked to the press, which really makes you wonder which parent should be tied to the back of a pickup truck and dragged down a gravel road at night, but nevertheless the father is left with egg on his face, and his daughter with one person fewer on her speed dial.

Check out the rest of the article from the NY Times.

Thursday Musings

I read about this on EV this morning. He makes some decent points, but I’m not sure if his criticism is so much about American literature or just Americans in general:

“The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature,” Engdahl said. “That ignorance is restraining.”

We are isolated and we don’t translate enough. However, it seems like this comment falls under the same stereotypes I was warned about when I prepared to spend six months abroad my junior year in college. Americans are stuck up, we only worry about ourselves, we have no clue what is going on in the rest of the world, etc. While I think that these stereotypes have some kernel of truth, I also think that that insularity may have something to do with why American literature works. I keep think of Whitman, and how many scholars consider him cocky and far too celebratory of his own genius, but isn’t that part of what made and makes Whitman remarkable? Are we full of it? Probably. I think the real question is have we earned the right to be, and in some instances I would say yes.
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John Ashbery has a poem in this weeks issue of The New Yorker:

The Virgin King

They know so much more, and so much less,
“innocent details” and other. It was time to
put up or shut up. Claymation is so over,
the king thought. The watercolor virus
sidetracked tens.

Something tells me you’ll be reading this on a train
stumbling through rural Georgia, wiping sleep
from your eyes as the conductor passes through
carrying a bun. We’re moving today,
today on the couch.

I have a hard time with Ashbery. In grad school I really struggled but I was intrigued. Lately, spurred on by his collages and new poem, I’ve considered giving him another look. I know it was my failing that caused me to back away from him. That being said, I can’t honestly say I know what the hell this poem is about, but I like it and that’s a good place to start.
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I mentioned EV above and on a similar note, I finished reading Harry Revised the other night. I loved it. I loved everything about it. I started to notice that the last third of the book (when everything begins to unravel for Harry) that the humor became scarce, but I wasn’t bothered by it. It seemed just a natural progression through the lives of these characters and at the end of the book I was profoundly sad but hopeful for Harry. Hopeful that in forgiving his wife, he could begin to forgive himself.
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Wednesday Musings

Yesterday when I went to pick Kweli up from doggie school, they asked me if I had ever considered “putting him medication.” Apparently his anxiety is inhibiting his ability to learn, and they think adding medication (for a short period of time) with his training may help him become a more productive canine member of society. I wasn’t offended at the suggestion and I’ve been mulling it over in my mind but (and you knew there was going to be a but) here’s the thing…

He’s an anxious dog. I know this and I know it causes him to loose focus, which makes getting him to do anything difficult. However, because he needs so much structure, it would make sense that these daily trips to doggie school are stressing him out. It isn’t that I’m not open to medicating him, but I guess I have a similiar reaction to most parents when the school nurse calls saying your child may have ADHD and we want to put them on ritalin. Let’s give it just a little more time…

So low in behold when I arrive today to pick him up, Megan, his trainer, informs me that he was much calmer and overall less stressed. In her words “he was like a whole other dog.” So I’m confident that he may not have to go on doggie prozac just yet.
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Henri Cole Receives the Lenore Marshall Prize$25,000 for the year’s most outstanding book of poetry
New York, October 1—The Academy of American Poets announced today that Henri Cole’s Blackbird and Wolf (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) was chosen by poets Lucie Brock-Broido, B. H. Fairchild, and John Koethe to receive the 2008 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, which awards $25,000 to the most outstanding book of poetry published the previous year.

About Cole’s winning book, judge John Koethe remarked:
Henri Cole has become one of his generation’s most assured and accomplished poets, and Blackbird and Wolf is a powerful and masterful book: powerful in the psychological directness of its self-scrutiny, and masterful in its achievement of a poetry so artful it almost seems artless.
Henri Cole was born in Fukuoka, Japan, in 1956 and raised in Virginia. His volumes of poetry include: Blackbird and Wolf (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007); Middle Earth, which received the 2004 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; The Visible Man; The Look of Things; The Zoo Wheel of Knowledge; and The Marble Queen. He has held many teaching positions and been the artist-in-residence at various institutions, including Smith College, Reed College, Brandeis, Columbia, Harvard, and Yale Universities. He currently teaches at Ohio State University.
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Great E-panel on Upstart Publishers on Emerging Writers…