Edward Hirsch

I came across this post on The Elegant Variation awhile back when I was working on my blog project for my MFA. I made a note of it in my little red moleskine that I carry around with me and forgot about it. Well today, in true procrastinator style, I flipped through my little red book and was reminded of why I loved the following from Ed Hirsch:

Four Subjects for Poetry
(this is a list from William Matthews that appeared in a 2006 NPR interview with Hirsch)

“1. I went out into the woods today, and it made me feel, you know, sort of religious.
2. We’re not getting any younger.
3. It sure is cold and lonely (a) without you, honey, or (b) with you, honey.
4. Sadness seems but the other side of the coin of happiness, and vice versa, and in any case the coin is too soon spent, and on what we know not what.”

In the same set of notes, I wrote “More than Halfway…lovely!”

More Than Halfway

I’ve turned on lights all over the house,
but nothing can save me from this darkness.

I’ve stepped onto the front porch to see
the stars perforating the milky black clouds

and the moon staring coldly through the trees,
but this negative I’m carrying inside me.

Where is the boy who memorized constellations?
Where is the textbook that so consoled him?

I’m now more than halfway to the grave,
but I’m not half the man I meant to become.

To what fractured deity can I pray?
I’m willing to pay the night with interest,

though the night wants nothing but itself.
What did I mean to say to darkness?

Death is a zero hollowed out of my chest.
God is an absence whispering in the leaves.

Friday (Nutcracker) Musings

My thesis went out this morning. Phew

In honor of the Christmas season (which I’m now giving my full attention) we’re off to see The Nutcracker this evening at Butler University. I have fond memories of this show. When I was younger, my parents took me to a show at the Bushnell Theater in Hartford. There was this snowflake backdrop that hung in front of the stage and it was enormous. It was also beautiful. It was set against a cobalt blue background. You could stare at that backdrop for hours.

I also associate The Nutcracker with Disney’s Fantasia. The dancing mushrooms are my favorite:

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I’ve really enjoyed the Paris Review giveaway on the Elegant Variation this week. Although, the blogs author is probably correct when he says that we should all just go and buy the set anyway. I’ve read a few interviews from the Paris Review online, but I had forgotten how good they were. At any rate, I probably will end up purchasing them. I mean really, buying books? Who am I kidding?
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OK, so the Proposition 8 Musical has been out in the universe for awhile now, but I was in thesis land, so now that I’m back among the living, satiric, and ironic masses…love it!
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Thursday (Ready to Mail!) Musings

I am finished editing my thesis. It will be printed this evening and mailed out tomorrow morning.

Exhaling slowly.
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A pop quiz found on OnTheCusp:

1. When was the last time you wrote a poem?About a month ago.

2. What was its title? Flannel

3. What was one image from the poem (if applicable)? Being wrapped in flannel is like sleeping in dirt.

4. Do you currently have a poem percolating in your brain? Yes. I have no clue what it’s about.

5. If you answered “yes” to number four, what is one image from that poem? Obituaries.
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This isn’t particularly encouraging. Damn economy.

I’ve been trying very hard to win the Paris Review Contest on Mark Sarvas’s blog, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. Here’s is a link to today’s clue.

For now, it’s a good reminder that we really ought to try and write better than a computer, while we still can.

Wednesday (Final Edits!) Musings

Before I begin working on my final edits for my thesis (yay!) I’m going to fill out this survey found on one of the blogs I read regularly. I have not filled one of these out since my days as an undergrad, but I like this one, so here goes:

My uncle once: fell off a roof when he was drunk.
Never in my life: will I wear a fur coat.
When I was five: cut my face open with a Bic razor trying to shave like my dad.
High school was: annoying and enjoyable at the same time.
I will never forget: the time my current boyfriend drove down to Texas to break up with me, got his car towed, had to walk to a bar (in the rain) and get a ride from a bouncer to get his car out of impound. He gave me the receipt from the towing company when we got back together.
Once I met: Tom Ridge.
Once at a bar:copied graffiti from a bathroom stall for a poem.
By noon I’m usually: eating lunch or grading or writing poems.
Last night: I made baked talapia and spinach salad and watched Mystery Diagnosis.
If I only had: lots of free time..
What worries me most: is that all I do is in vain.
If I were a character in Shakespeare: I’d be dead or insane because I also identify with the tragedies.
I have a hard time understanding: cruelty of any kind.
You know I like you if: I talk to you about my poetry.
Take my advice, never: go looking for an apple orchard without directions.
My ideal breakfast is: breakfast casserole my mom makes at Christmas time and a mimosa.
If you visit my hometown, I suggest you: bring walking shoes and a taste for cheap alcohol.
Why won’t people: read more?
The world could do without:hate .
I’d rather lick the belly of a cockroach than: hurt an animal (any animal).
My favorite blonds are: my dad.
If I do anything well, it’s: be an emotional roller coaster.
And, by the way: I’m mailing my thesis out on Friday!

Added Note: The word on the street is that I’m getting a new camera for Christmas. Although the giver of said camera refuses to admit that’s my gift, so he keeps referring it to as a “bike.” Anyway. I’m really excited about my new “bike” and come the first of the year I’m going to post a new photo every week. Because I don’t have any just yet, I’m using this lovely picture of a hydrangea for a place holder.

Tuesday (Tired of my Preface) Musings

I’m tired of my preface. Actually, I’m tired of my thesis. I got to this point with my MA too, but I’m really tired of dealing with this document. I plan to send it out Friday and then at least it is out of my hands. I defend January 2, so I’m looking forward to that and being done. I love school but I’ve been going straight for eight years. Time for a break.

In other news, one of my students was moved to tears by The Things They Carried. I didn’t really expect them to love the story. It’s difficult and a lot of them simply don’t take the time to really delve into the text, so I was pleasantly surprised to get such a genuine reaction out of someone.

The Elegant Variation is hosting a lovely give away.

Monday (Last Day of Class Before TG) Musings

Here is your poem of the day:

Sleeping in the Forest

I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

Mary Oliver
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When I Was the Muse

When the painter said, OK, you guys,
take off your clothes! I startled at the plural,
assuming I’d been engaged to model by myself.
But then the dark-skinned god I knew as Aaron
from my Econ class unzipped his jeans,
and dropped them, grinning, on the floor.
So I did, too, and clambered up beside him
on the plywood box that elevated us above
the clutch of paint-stained easels. Thoughtfully,
the students posed our naked bodies. Someone fluffed
the crispy hair between my legs into a dark brown
bristling fan. And someone pinched the sides
of Aaron’s face to pinken up his cheeks.
Privately, I installed myself inside that mental space
where I had hidden as a child when the world
could be aborted no other way …
It was part of my plan to walk unclothed
among the portraits my unclad body
had provoked. So when we broke
for lunch, the students lunging in a herd
out back to smoke, I did. If you had asked me
then why I modeled, I’d have said,
to overcome my bourgeois insecurities,
to combat my fear of what might happen
if I showed myself completely naked
to someone else. But if you asked me now?
I’d describe the privilege of walking among
A museum of strangers’ images devoted to oneself,
and tell you what a privilege it was to see myself
the varied ways that others did.
Some silly fellow had painted nipples on me the size
and shape of frying eggs. Another jokester
had shrunk them down as small as M&Ms.
But someone serious and sad had shared a vision
of my head as a clotted orb of hair and mouth,
and brushed in underneath, a body headless
as the horseman in the myth. Then I seemed
to walk into the darkroom of my mind’s own eye
and saw the self I’d always felt inside but never known:
a complicated, unsmiling creature with a fear-tinged face.
Around her the aura of something golden was fighting
with whip-like straps of something black. She was staring
straight into the future, trying to get out, trying
to conceal her fear, completely unaware
of how it glistened and glowed, and of how
irresistible it was for the artist to spread it
across the canvas so that everyone could see.
Kate Daniels
I can’t remember if I heard Kate Daniels read this poem at MSU or if I read it in one of her books.
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I’ve spent the last two hours working on revisions to my preface. I’m going to take a “break” now and grade the rest of my first round of argument papers. I still have two classes to do, but I figure I can work on those tomorrow. We’re not leaving till around 4. Busy busy busy…

Friday (Productive) Musings

I came to school today for my last new faculty orientation meeting. It was scheduled for 9:00. At about 9:45 we all became suspicious of the fact that someone had forgotten about us. We were right. While I’m pretty good natured about these kinds of things, mostly because I planned to here anyway this afternoon, I can’t help but agree with one of my colleagues when he made the comment “this underlines the dysfunction that is______(fill in school)” The institution as a whole is experiencing growing pains, but hopefully those will smooth themselves out in the upcoming year.
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Yesterday, cut up the preface to my thesis. Literally, I took a pair of scissors, and I cut it into twenty six separate paragraphs. This is mostly due to the fact that I want to reorganize it, and it is two difficult to try and do it on the computer without having a visual map first. After I finish typing this blog entry, I plan to continue reordering it and then I have to come up with names for the sections. I always struggles with prefaces or introductions. I did with my Comp and my Master’s thesis and now with my MFA thesis. I’ll be glad when I can send it out and not worry about it anymore.
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I’ve had cause over the last few days to ponder the issue of aging. I’m still thinking it over…
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We’re going to see Evil Dead the Musical at Theater on the Square Saturday night. I’m looking forward to it. It’s the first show I’ve gone to see in awhile.

The following blurb is from Theater on the Square’s website:

Based on Sam Raimi’s 80s cult classic films, EVIL DEAD tells the tale of 5 college kids who travel to a cabin in the woods and accidentally unleash an evil force. And although it may sound like a horror, its not! The songs are hilariously campy and the show is bursting with more farce than a Monty Python skit. EVIL DEAD: THE MUSICAL unearths the old familiar story: boy and friends take a weekend getaway at abandoned cabin, boy expects to get lucky, boy unleashes ancient evil spirit, friends turn into Candarian Demons, boy fights until dawn to survive. As musical mayhem descends upon this sleepover in the woods, “camp” takes on a whole new meaning with uproarious numbers like “All the Men in my Life Keep Getting Killed by Candarian Demons,” “Look Who’s Evil Now” and “Do the Necronomicon.” Outer Critics Circle nomination for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Musical.

Tuesday (Ouch!) Musings

I had my flu shot a few minutes ago, so my arm is sore. I’ve always been a little sensitive to shots but I figure it is worth it to avoid getting sick this spring or over the holidays. Last year I had this horrible combination of strep throat and bronchitis. It was terrible. I suspect that I contracted it from one of my students who was hacking awhile for two weeks while handing in his papers. It’s hard to avoid germs entirely but at least I can prepare for them.

In other news, the crunch is on for my manuscript. I’m working away on my preface and need to get another draft to Brian before Thanksgiving. Also, I’m still fiddling with the order for the actual book, so that’s always fun. The ideal date for my committee to have the thesis is Dec. 5, so the end is in sight. As is the case with most major projects, I don’t start to feel the pressure until the end. Yesterday, while I was working on my preface I had the impulse to throw it out and start again. Fortunately, I resisted that impulse.
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This is from an article that appeared WJHG the local news station that targets Okaloos, FL where parents are trying to ban the book Kite Runner:
Parents also have the right to request a substitute book for their child.
That’s why Principal Charlene Couvillon feels one complaint shouldn’t dictate a district-wide ban.
“I think as a parent I have the right to say I don’t want my child to read that book but I don’t have the right to say that for your child.”While the content in The Kite Runner is disturbing, I think it is ridiculous to say it isn’t appropriate for high school students. To assume that these students do not have the intellectual capacity to deal with rape, which seems to be what the parents are saying, is strange considering they see depictions of it everyday on tv, in movies, and in music. More to the point, you cannot sheild your childrent from ugliness forever. They need to confront it, learn from it, and move beyond it.

This is a little late, but here is a review from the San Francisco Chronicle concerning Toni Morrison’s new novel, Mercy.
I recently subscribed to Poetry. I’ve been meaning to do this for about two years, but kept forgetting. This particular issue I’m particularly taken with several poems (the Levine I posted yesterday) so here is another one for your reading pleasure:

Zeus to Juno

He—
You saw the way her body looked at me
all address
calling me down
she was so
well-turned
curve and volume
her body presented itself–
Clay–
I could mold it

She—
You were taboo
not totem–
covered her
though your wing gave no shelter

Your pale plumage
became shadow
Your beak caught
in the net of her hair

He—
When I entered her
her death became my life
in her death swoon
she fell away from me
the more she fell
the deeper I pursued her
the deeper I went
the more lost she became
her body
became a forest of echoes
hills and valleys
echoing each other, a language
I didn’t know–
surrounded alone

She—
The discarded body
lies in long grass
Flies and wasps
fumble there–

on a summer day
the lost girl hums–
Kelly, Sarah, Joanne changed
into parable

Prodigal hair
flung out
body agape
like a question

The scavenger crow knows–
she’s beautiful,
outgrowing her name
in the noon heat
Fiona Sampson

Tuesday Musings

Mark Sarvas is once again off on his book tour, so his guest blogger for this week is Todd Hasak, whose post this morning really resonated with me. Check it out.

I do remember when I just loved reading. I still get that feeling a lot, but I think a “love” of reading is complicated. For instance, I love Woolfe’s To the Lighthouses, but I don’t think I’d necessarily curl up with it on a rainy morning. It is beautiful and complex and even though I’ve read it and studied it, I’m still not convinced I completely understand it. I’m OK with that. I think that’s partly why I like the book so much. On the other hand, I read books like Annie Dillard’s A Pilgrim At Tinker Creek or Joan Didion’s A Year of Magical Thinking or Barbra Kingsolver’s The Posionwood Bible and I can’t put them down. These are books I would curl up with. I like reading books that challenge me and I like reading books just to read them (Harry Potter falls into this category) but it is a complex question to ask, why do I read?

Speaking of reading, I started Harry Revised the other night and am now on page 48. I love books that make me laugh and so far this one is doing a smashing job.
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I like to follow the blog of Sara Tracey, Mindful Ramblings, because I feel a certain kinship with her. Her post this morning takes me back to when I was in grad school at UNT and I was trying to teach three comp classes, work on my thesis, and finish up theory and literature classes. When she says that begin a PhD student isn’t really helping her poetry, I want to chime in with an exuberant “Yes!”

It is difficult being a full time PhD, MA, or MFA student while teaching and working and writing. I always say that after I’m done with my MFA, I will have more time to devote to writing. As it stands I have a few ideas for some new poems, but I have yet to sit down and committ those ideas to paper, because, well, I’m f**king swamped.

Recently I came to the realization that this problem will not get much better once I’m done with my MFA. I’ll still have a full time teaching gig, I still have a dog, and friends and family, and an apartment. In other words, I will still have many demands on my time, and the MFA will soon be replaced by something else. I used to think my graduate professors were trying to screw with me when they would assign a poem, a 300 page reading assignment, and a literary critque on top of the mound of narrative essays I had to grade for my comp classes, but now I understand. They were not screwing with me. They were teaching me how to be a writer, specifically a poet, and survive in the real world.

So cheers to you, Sara. Hang in there and know that I’m out here too trying to figure out just what the hell I’m doing.
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Food For Thought

This excerpt is taken from Collin Kelley’s blog and is a response to a post by Barbra Jane Reeves who is in turn responding to post on Stacy Lynn Brown’s blog regarding her ill treatment after winning a poetry contest sponsored by Cider Press:

Poets need to stop buying into the contest cycle of abuse, let go of the notion that self-publishing makes you less of a poet and that working with a small or micro-press won’t bring you any “prestige.”

I think this is an interesting idea to consider. While I understand the shortcomings of MFA programs in that they sometimes breed this type of behavior, I would like to say that this past July at my low residency program I was encouraged to seek out small presses for my first manuscript. Not only were students encouraged, but the program directors brought in a small publisher and two other creators of online journals to sit on a panel and talk to students about alternate publishing methods. It is important for poets to expand and evolve with the changing market and I hope that MFA programs, agents, and publishers will do the same.