That Was The Week That Was: Week Seventeen (AND BEYOND)

Posted by emmabolden in appearances, disappearances, summations, free stuff, teaching, awesome kids we should all keep an eye out for, cool/not cool, bad behavior in public places, Squee!, A festival of photos, disagreeable/agreeable, Home, Academic inquiries, A teacher's education, accidental confessions, NOT COOL., Jellyfish, Emma is very lucky, Emma miraculously survives another holiday, Amazing discoveries and wondrous visions, 365, Photo for the day, Academia, learning, teaching writing, toys, flickr, Georgia, family, What Emma is up to, Photography, Retrospective, Retrospectitating, instagram, Glitter (Mariah Carey version), It's the end of the world as we know it, 2012, It is ON 2012, That Was The Week That Was, Happy accidents, creepers, awesome

Dear denizens of the Interwebs, it has been quite a week and beyond.  There was the end of the semester.  There was averaging, which required mathematics, which was, needless to say, complicated.  There was packing.  There were airports and airplanes and there were frozen yogurt stands placed perilously close to my gate.  There was a trip to Alabama to celebrate Mother’s Day.  There was a birthday, and it was mine.  There was an anniversary, and it was my parents’.  There were more airports and more airplanes and there were frozen yogurt stands placed even more perilously close to my gate.  There were cats and those cats had a lot to say about being left behind in Georgia.  Here are the photos to prove it.

Day 130: There will come a day when I shall enter a drug store without purchasing nail polish. Thankfully, I do not think that day shall come soon.

Day 131: One of my favorite things about birthdays? Birthday coupons. I mean, let’s face it: getting older sucks. After 21, there really isn’t a fun birthday, unless you have waited all of your life to be able to rent a car at 25. Birthday coupons take the sting away from un-fun birthdays. I’m a particular fan of Sephora’s birthday coupons, as they come with another one of my favorite things: free samples. Here, you see the glorious free perfume samples I got. I might have put them on all at once and then had to take a shower and change clothes immediately.

Day 132: There really isn’t a better sight on the day after you turn in all of your grades than this: Mariah Carey’s Glitter on the Style Network. This is the best terrible movie in existence, as it raises so many questions. Have the authors of this film ever communicated with another human being? Is this what the 80′s were really like? Why do so many characters dress like extras from Beetlejuice? It’s practically a Pandora’s box of important philosophical queries.

Day 133: First, let me make a confession: I was, at the time this photograph was taken, 31 years old. I am now 32 years old. Nevertheless, I still think the best cure for a bad day is a Happy Meal. This Happy Meal came with this weird singing star-shaped necklace thing, and with this piece of paper listing the “lyrics.” This raises the following points: 1., Nickelodeon, what have you become? 2., This is not a song. 3., If this is a song, it isn’t appropriate for children. 4., Whatever happened to Pinwheel and could you please put it back on the air or at least release it on DVD? I need to catch up with Herbert and LuLu.

 

Day 134: I found this robin’s egg in my parents’ backyard and it was too beautiful and perfect not to become my photo of the day.

Day 135: I can’t even talk about the cuteness here. This is my cousin’s little boy, and he and my god-daughter are my two favorite kids in the world. I asked him if I could take a picture of his shoes, and he posed like this and said, “They’re Chucks.” This proves there is hope in the world.

Day 136: Back to the birthday coupons! I went to Anthropologie to use my 15% off coupon, and nearly had a heart attack when I saw that their window display was full of JELLYFISH. There was even a JELLYFISH POEM involved. I might have swooned a little bit.

Day 137: Here’s the lovely group of women who sat by me in the Birmingham airport. They spent a lot of time talking with great excitement about their trip to Italy. And then they started talking with great excitement about … Fifty Shades of Grey. Which, apparently, they have all read. At LEAST six times. One of the teenagers in the group, at that point, asked, “What’s it about?” I quietly stood up and moved before I had to hear any more.

Day 138: Here’s why I love Georgia. I mean, of course I want boiled peanuts with my morning coffee! What else would I do?

That Was The Week That Was: Week Sixteen

Posted by emmabolden in 2012, 365, A festival of photos, A teacher's education, Academia, Academic inquiries, accidental confessions, Alice B. Toklas (feline version), bad behavior in public places, book reviews, books, COLLECT!, disappearances, education, edumacation, Emma hits a wall, Emma's dsyfunctional relationship with Diet Coke, Fear and how to face it, flickr, Georgia, instagram, It is ON 2012, kitteh, learning, learning patience slowly, Mustachio'd Kitties, My meowing roommates, NaPoWriMo, Perspiration? Inspiration?, Photo for the day, Photography, reading, readings, Retrospectitating, Retrospective, shameless cat photos, Shifting metaphors, Squee!, summations, teaching, teaching writing, The evolution of Emma, The grind, The Year of Projects, velociraptors, What Emma is up to, writing and not writing, writing community, writing life, writing teachers

Okay, party people.  I know, I know.  This entry is late.  Again.  But look: if there’s one thing that’s important to Emma Bolden, it’s narrative consistency.  The narrative of this blog just wouldn’t hang together if I actually did things on time and according to schedule.  I mean, it’d basically be like reading a book and thinking the protagonist was a successful businesswoman and then finding out on page 254 that she’s actually a he, and that he isn’t actually a businesswoman or a businessman, but a Velociraptor.

Okay, ignore that simile, because that sounds kind of awesome.  Instead, please allow me to distract you from the tardiness of this entry with a photograph of a kitten:

I mean really, how is anything this cute? GET IN MAH HOUSE, KITTEH!

And now for the photos for this week, which was both the last week of the semester and the beginning of exam week.  In other words, A LOT.

Day 120: I may or may not have completely destroyed the remaining functions of my kidneys with the amount of Diet Coke I may or may not have had this week.

Day 121: The last day of NaPoWriMo — and of writing a poem-or-something-a-day for four months. Or so I thought — I’ve totally been writing since then, though a lot of it looks like indecipherable scribbles and drawings of Koopa Troopers.

Day 122: This was a Dreamsicle Icee, which is what God intended all beverages to be.

Day 123: I don’t really know what was happening on the side of this Happy Meal, but I’m glad it did.

Day 124: Apparently, during the last week of the semester, my eating habits are akin to the eating habits a typical four year old hopes and dreams of, only I have no parental figure to stop me. Plus, these cupcakes were just sitting there in the mail room, so sad and lonely. Who was I to deny them?

Day 125: Clearly, after my end-of-semester eating habits, it was time to start a work-out routine. What better inspiration than the Hot Sundaes?

Day 126: I think this is the first photo this year that I’ve taken around midnight. I ended one day and began another by reading this gorgeous book by Hannah Dela Cruz Abrams. It’s so beautiful that after I finished it, I turned back to the first page and read it all over again, and I’m already planning to read it a third time.

Day 127: My orchid lost its last bloom last week, and I was beginning to despair of its condition. Then I looked a little bit closer and saw this — new growth!
There is probably a metaphor here, but I’m working hard to resist it.

Day 128: It’s late spring/early summer, which means it’s thunderstorm season here in south Georgia. Alice responds to thunderstorms by hiding — in this case, by hiding her face under a blanket. Apparently, she has not yet developed object permanence.

Day 129: Jasmine tea and Tea-Rex — no better way to face averaging!

 

 

The Four-Month Grind: Stats and Averages

Posted by emmabolden in Uncategorized, Other Poets, Those Who Walk The Same Line, disappearances, hopes and dreams, summations, mullings and ramblings, poem challenge, the poem factory, writing life, thought for the day, wonders and apparitions, chapbooks, revision, training, the genre line (and stepping over it), cool/not cool, mariners and the seas etc., bad behavior in public places, ranting and raving, Gertrude Stein (feline version), Gertrude Stein (human version), This entry brought to you by Tender Buttons, perfection is boring. period., inspiration, this is the end beautiful friend, NaPoWriMo, [expletive deleted], Perspiration? Inspiration?, Squee!, shameless cat photos, Chchchchanges, Movin' on, COLLECT!, The siege in the room, Notebooks, where are you going where have you been, creative nonfiction, the lyric essay, disagreeable/agreeable, living without linebreaks, My nerves are bad tonight. Yes bad., odd comparisons and awkward metaphors, My addiction to terrible television, Cue the Golden Girls theme song, Losing courage and other freakouts, Bizarre associations and other odd tendencies, Probably quite a bit TMI, learning patience slowly, Simon and Garfunkel, accidental confessions, You gotta have friends, Jellyfish, Mustachio'd Kitties, NaPoMo, Emma is very lucky, Bad girls and good girls gone bad, Emma's dsyfunctional relationship with Diet Coke, Amazing discoveries and wondrous visions, Poetry Exercises, EPIC WIN, A manifesto of sorts, Art and life and love and The Big Stuff, Poetry as therapy, Alice B. Toklas (feline version), gratuitous photos of whatnot, On the book and putting it together, Future husbands, Going to eleven, My Future Husband Josh Groban, Shifting metaphors, writing and not writing, My meowing roommates, All-around amazing people, Photo for the day, learning, writing teachers, writing community, Fear and how to face it, it is ON., flickr, The evolution of Emma, Department of Writing and Linguistics, Georgia, family, beer goggles, music, internet fads, poetry, nonfiction, What Emma is up to, multi-tasking, Photography, Georgia Southern, Retrospective, Retrospectitating, instagram, drafts, writing room, writing space, Thanks and thanks again, The Year of Projects, Who The Eff Cares?, It's the end of the world as we know it, 2012, Resolutions, Free to Be You and Me, It is ON 2012, Lana Del Ray, Happy accidents, poems, awesome, my students, The only living boy in New York, gardening, The Hunger Games

The end of an era … kinda.

This year has been, without a doubt, one of my most productive years in all of the many, many years I have lived (as my birthday nears and I come closer to adding another number to said years, I felt the need to add another “many” here).  I’ve just finished four solid months of writing a poem or a something a day, and I’m kind of shocked to be able to say that I actually, really, truly and honestly never skipped a day.  I’m even more shocked to be able to say that I actually, really, truly and honestly sometimes wrote more than one poem a day — sometimes up to four?!  It’s as if some kind of super-productive zombie interested in eating ink and paper instead of brains took possession of my body for four months.*  A lot of it also had to do with the support of my colleagues and friends and fellow writers, both my fellow Grind members and the Georgia Southern folks, especially those who wrote along with me through NaPoWriMo, and I can’t even express how grateful I am to all of them.

I guess, in a lot of ways, it feels like it’s not entirely my accomplishment: it just happened, and kept happening because the people around me are amazing and, well, I’m really stubborn.  However, even if it doesn’t feel like my accomplishment, it’s still my writing — and I’m the one who has to take the next step (or, rather, the next series of steps, which will probably lead me to more steps).

The question I’m facing now is this: what happens now?  It seems like a simple question but it’s really one of the most difficult ones with which I’ve ever been faced: what does happen now that the zombie is gone and I’m just plain old Emma, sitting here and staring at pages and typescript that’s starting to not even look like words?  Now that the manic pace of production has slowed, what’s next in the process?

Really and truly and actually and honestly, though, I think perhaps the answer might be simpler than I thought.  I think perhaps the answer is just this: the process.  What’s left is what’s left.  What’s next is what I do with it.

First, of course, comes the processing part of the process: putting together the puzzle of what I’ve produced and what needs to be further processed.  I thought I’d share my results on the blog through a series of stats and averages, so here goes it:

Even cats with literary namesakes are apparently not fans of literature, when it really comes down to it, and when they really want their owners to stop reading and/or writing to fetch them some treats.

The Grind Daily Writing Series Stats and Facts

Player: Emma Bolden

Poems Drafted: 128

Essays Drafted: 3

Various and Sundry Bits and Bobs and Pieces of Prose (Typed): 9

Ill-Advised Trips to the Gas Station to Purchase Chocolate, Which Was Nearly Always Kind of Old and Nasty: 9

Preferred Beverage: Diet Coke

Average Hours It Took Me To Get To Sleep Because I Drank Too Much of My Preferred Beverage and/or Was Thinking About Poems and Bits and Bobs and Pieces of Prose: 2

Average Number of Nightly Feline Arias Performed by Gertrude Stein in Protest Over the Fact that I Either Was Not Asleep or Had Just Moments Before Fallen Asleep: 3

Average Cups of Coffee Consumed Every Morning: 3.75

Poetry Manuscripts Drafted: 2

Essay Collection Drafts Completed: 1

CILANTRO! Every year, you ruin me with your will to DIE.

Average Hours a Day Spent Shopping for Shoes on the Interwebs Rather Than Writing Poems: 0.75

Cartons of Ben and Jerry’s Consumed: 2 (Red Velvet Cake and New York Super Fudge Chunk)

Memoirs Outlined and Begun: 1

Number of Abandoned Projects Returned To: 2

Average Number of Times I Said “Why in the Name of Everything Holy or Unholy Ever Am I Writing About Jellyfish All the Time I Mean Really?” Out Loud and Confused My Cats: 3.8 a day

Number of Times Alice B. Toklas Accidentally Trapped Herself in the Closet, Bathroom, and/or Screened-In Porch: 12

Number of Times I Decided to Write Found Poems to Justify My Watching Reality Television Programs: 4 a week

Print-outs of the work I’ve typed, shoe-shopping, Del-Rey-listening.

Chapbooks Drafted: 1

Container Garden Plants Planted: 16

Container Garden Plants Surviving Even After I Forgot to Water Them: 15

Preferred Beers: Innis and Gunn (Original) or Shock Top (Raspberry Wheat)

Preferred Wine: Pink Moscato from the Rite-Aide**

Preferred Albums to Play Over and Over Until I Think My Neighbors Were About to Call the Police and Report Me for Being Kind of Creepy: Born to Die, Lana Del Rey; The Hunger Games: Songs from District 12 and Beyond; The Execution of All Things, Rilo Kiley; Blackout, Britney Spears***; Birdy, Birdy; Elton John, Elton John; Les Miserables: Complete Symphonic Recording; Collected Works, Simon and Garfunkel; Chess in Concert starring my future husband Josh Groban.

Average Number of Times A Week I Took the Nonsensically Long Way Home in Order to Sing Along to One or More of the Aforementioned Albums as Loudly as I Could So My Neighbors Wouldn’t Make the Decision to Finally Call the Cops on Me: 1.74

Bizarre Drawings Made to Serve as Notes for Poems: 36

Volcano notes. Crazy, crazy volcano notes.

Number of Days Since the Grind/NaPoWriMo I’ve Worked on My Writing and/or Wrote Something New Despite the Fact I No

Longer Have To: 5. In other words, every single one.

Surety that I Need a Daily Writing Routine After All So Um Oops: Infinity.  Plus one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*For a far better and far, far more lucid description of what The Grind is like, please do travel to my good man Ross White’s blog for his entries about how it started and why in the name of God we do this to ourselves.
** People, this is a NO JUDGEMENT ZONE, okay?
*** Seriously.  NO JUDGEMENT ZONE.

That Was The Week That Was: Week Fifteen

Posted by emmabolden in 2012, 365, A festival of photos, A teacher's education, Academia, Academic inquiries, accidental confessions, aesthetic theory, Alice B. Toklas (feline version), All-around amazing people, Art and life and love and The Big Stuff, awesome, bad behavior in public places, books, classroom, contemporary poetry, cool/not cool, creative writing pedagogy, Department of Writing and Linguistics, education, edumacation, Emma is very lucky, flickr, Georgia, Georgia Southern, Gertrude Stein (feline version), graduate school, gratuitous photos of whatnot, Home, hopes and dreams, inspiration, instagram, IRL Drama Llama, It is ON 2012, Lana Del Ray, learning, learning patience slowly, MFA, multi-tasking, music, My meowing roommates, my students, NaPoWriMo, pedagogy, perfection is boring. period., Photo for the day, Photography, poems, poetry, poets, reading, readings, research, Retrospectitating, Retrospective, shameless cat photos, Some Groups Who Do Good Work, Squee!, teaching, teaching writing, Thanks and thanks again, That Was The Week That Was, The grind, the poem factory, training, wonders and apparitions, writing community, writing life, writing teachers, You gotta have friends

People of the Interwebs, I give you no great introduction for this week’s week in photos post. For lo, the end of the semester cometh, and it and its great stacks of grading weighest heavily upon my heart, laden as it already is with the great weight of NaPoWriMo and the conclusion of four months of poems which scrawleth their illegible away across the pages of mine Moleskine.

Therefore, here is my introduction for the week:

Hey.  Here are some pictures, okay?

Day 113: After the storm (pictured last week in the figure of Alice B. Toklas' great panic), these were EVERYWHERE, which meant they were releasing their pollen EVERYWHERE, which mean I was sneezing. EVERYWHERE.

Day 114: My day in songs. I think the moodiness is self-evident. I also think I should probably only listen to "Shiny Happy People" and "Cold Hearted (Snake)" from now until the end of the semester, and perhaps until the end of time.

Day 115: A view of the Boro from my ride home from dinner. The sky was absolutely gorgeous.

Day 116: I taught the elegy on Wednesday, which required me to unearth my notes from graduate school, when I attended what might have been the very best craft seminar or lecture or talk or situation in which words were involved, period: Mark Doty's seminar on the elegy. Apparently, in graduate school, I assumed that this was the ideal vessel for writing down undeniably brilliant observations on, oh, writing and language and life and death and the universe and everything. My sincere apologies to Mr. Doty and his brilliance.

Day 117: I really didn't think there was anything, anything at all, that could make me love Altoids any more. Then they started printing stuff like this on the paper inside. I think I actually swooned.

Day 118: Yesterday afternoon, I came into my bedroom to find that I couldn't find Gertrude Stein. Then I realized that was because she was hiding under my comforter with only her face exposed. I think this was a brilliant move and that we should all aspire to such leaps of genius as her furry feline mind can make. In fact, if you need me, I'll be hidden beneath my comforter for the rest of the day.

That Was The Week That Was: Week Fourteen

Posted by emmabolden in 2012, 365, Alice B. Toklas (feline version), Amazing discoveries and wondrous visions, awesome, creepers, Emma hits a wall, Emma's attempts at normal life, Emma's attempts at real life (failed or otherwise), Epic Cat Battles, eyebrows, Fan Girl, flickr, Free to Be You and Me, Georgia, Gertrude Stein (feline version), gratuitous photos of whatnot, Happy accidents, hopes and dreams, instagram, IRL Drama Llama, It is ON 2012, learning, learning patience slowly, Losing courage and other freakouts, Mustachio'd Kitties, My meowing roommates, NaPoWriMo, nonfiction, Perspiration? Inspiration?, Photo for the day, Photography, poem for the day, Poem of the Day!, poems, poetry, random musings, reading, readings, Retrospectitating, Retrospective, shameless cat photos, Squee!, stalled, summations, That Was The Week That Was, The grind, The Hunger Games, the poem factory, The Year of Projects, Thoughts of a Nonfiction Fan Girl, What Emma is up to, writing and not writing, writing life

People of the Interwebs!  Once again, my weekly update is late.  Forgive me, for lo, I am a mere eight days away from completing the great and terrible task of writing at least one poem a day for four months straight, and I’m starting to think that my brain has become Jell-O.  And not solid Jell-O, either, like a Jell-O Jiggler, but some kind of odd flavor of Jell-O that nobody really likes, like Melon Fusion, that’s been sitting on the shelf at Food World way too long and therefore doesn’t set correctly.

Now I want Jell-O.

Here are the photos for this week; sadly, none contain Jell-O.

Day 106: This is a photograph of what might well be my proudest achievement to date. I've had this Moleskine for about a month and I've already filled this many pages. Considering that said many pages contain poems written in my terribly small, nearly illegibly cramped handwriting, well -- I'm really proud of myself.

Day 107: This is the day I hit the wall when it comes to writing a poem a day. I wanted very much, in fact, to refuse writing a poem for that day. The times, as they say, were desperate, and desperate measures therefore needed to be taken. In my case, such desperation took the form of an evening trip out into the world for some Ben & Jerry's. I was at first furious to find that, due to re-stocking, my standby Emergency Ben & Jerry's Flavor (Phish Food) was missing. Then I found Red Velvet Cake, which was exactly like finding my soul mate.

Day 108: Every week, The Penny Saver appears in my mailbox. Every week, I ignore it -- until this week. I finished Miranda July's It Chooses You on Sunday night. I expected the book to be quirky and ironic in an Urban Outfitters catalog way, like a photograph of some hipster girls wearing platform shoes and giant sunglasses while riding Segways across the street. The last thing I expected was to find myself staying up way past my bedtime to finish the book and then having the longest, most wonderfully cathartic cry I've had in a very long time. I'll never look at The Penny Saver the same way again -- mostly because I'll actually look at The Penny Saver now.

Day 109: Sometimes it occurs to me that perhaps Gertrude Stein spends so much time wandering around the house and meowing loudly and pitifully because she feels misunderstood and undervalued as an artist. This rare photograph of the artist and her work shows why. Gertrude spent much of the night working on this installation piece, the working title of which was "Busy Bee Drowning In His/Her Very Own Sorrows (with Hair Tie)." Unfortunately, Busy Bee soon met his/her end in the trash can, due to being soaked through so very many times, and Gertrude Stein began work on a new piece, the working title of which is "If You Take My Busy Bee From Me I Will Take Your Sleep From You (with Overturned Food Bowl)." I hear the MOMA is soon to contact her for a retrospective.

Day 110: Listen: if you've visited my blog, you have surely come to the realization that I am, well, a dork and a fan girl. Both qualities combined in the purchase of this wondrous Hunger Games t-shirt. Both qualities, along with a slight OCD nature, also combined in my worries about the possibility that said shirt is inaccurate. To wit: there are only 12 circles surrounding the Capitol seal, and the 12th circle shows nuclear symbols -- but that was District THIRTEEN, which makes me worry that a district is MISSING. And now I realize that I am giving this too much thought and perhaps that's why I'm having trouble coming up with poems at this point ...

Day 111: I happened to catch the clock at its luckiest time this morning. Then, when posting my photos, I realized that not only did I catch the clock at 11:11, but this was also the 111th day of the year. It's almost too much for my superstitious brain to handle, and now I'm back to Jell-O again.

Day 112: Yesterday evening, a storm came through. There was a lot of thunder. There was lightning. There were dime-sized pieces of hail. There was this cat, who had a complete and total nervous breakdown. Alice B. Toklas is the only feline I know who has real, serious, and legitimate panic attacks. I had to sit on the bathroom floor with her for twenty minutes to get her to calm down. Most of those twenty minutes also involved my contemplating this very important question: how on earth did I get a cat who has real, serious, and legitimate panic attacks?!

That Was The Week That Was: Week Thirteen

Posted by emmabolden in 2012, 365, A festival of photos, A teacher's education, Academia, accidental confessions, aesthetic theory, Alice B. Toklas (feline version), All-around amazing people, Amazing discoveries and wondrous visions, awesome, awesome kids we should all keep an eye out for, bad behavior in public places, Bizarre associations and other odd tendencies, classroom, creative nonfiction, creative writing pedagogy, creepers, criticism, Cue the Golden Girls theme song, education, edumacation, Emma is very lucky, EPIC WIN, flickr, Friendship Is Magic, Georgetown College, gratuitous photos of whatnot, Inquiries into academics, inspiration, instagram, It is ON 2012, learning, learning patience slowly, lolcats, Losing courage and other freakouts, META, My meowing roommates, my students, NaPoMo, NaPoWriMo, nonfiction, pedagogy, Photo for the day, Photography, poems, poetry, publishing, publishing (or not publishing, Resolutions, Retrospectitating, Retrospective, shameless cat photos, Squee!, submissions, summations, teaching, teaching writing, Terrible unfunny puns, Thanks and thanks again, That Was The Week That Was, The Drama Llama, The evolution of Emma, The grind, the lyric essay, the poem factory, Thoughts of a Nonfiction Fan Girl, toys, What Emma is up to, writing community, writing life, writing teachers, You gotta have friends

Woah — I just realized that not only is this the thirteenth week, it also contained Friday the thirteenth.  That explains a lot.

This week’s photos are candy- and cute-animal-themed, so I figure I should get to them as quickly as possible …

Day 98: My friend has these chickens, and they are absolutely amazing. I really want chickens now, perhaps even more than a goat.

Day 99: Do I really need to caption this? The Cadbury Cream Egg: nature's perfect food.

 

Day 100: This is a photograph of the sweetest present I've gotten in a long time. Anyone who's taken a class with me knows that I'm completely and totally obsessed with Lia Purpura's essay, "Sugar Eggs." Lauren, one of my students from Georgetown College, sent me this gorgeous sugar egg in the mail, which was the nicest thing ever -- and I definitely looked in it for a long time and thought about Purpura. It was a good night.

Day 101: Anyone who's ever been in one of my classes probably also knows that I have a bizarre sock collection, but is too polite to say anything about it. This pair? One of my favorites. I mean, really: they're SOCK MONKEYS printed on SOCKS. It doesn't get more meta than that.

Day 102: I'm trying to stick to my resolution and send out submissions, like the one pictured. Thank God for the Grind and NaPoWriMo -- now, I actually have some poems to send out. I hope. Even though I'm biting my nails to shreds over them.

Day 103: Eeyore. It's a running joke in my family that, from time to time, I kind of embody the spirit of Eeyore -- so much so that when my father went on a business trip to The Magic Kingdom, he bought me this Eeyore figurine, who currently lives on my desk on campus. I was feeling particularly Eeyore-ish today and decided that this was the perfect photo of the day. Now if only I could find some thistles to eat ... Oh, and my tail ...

Day 104: Usually, I'm home all day on Fridays. This Friday, however, was a major exception: I had a meeting, then I had errands to run, then I actually had a Social Activity With My Friends. When I came home, I found Alice sitting on the table and looking at my manuscript with an expression of great scorn. I can only imagine that she spent the day reading it and finding it lacking in everything except sucking.

Day 105: I think that if we as a society are making cat toys like this, there's still some hope for humanity.

That Was The Week That Was: Week Twelve

Posted by emmabolden in 2012, 365, A teacher's education, Academia, accidental confessions, Amazing discoveries and wondrous visions, bad behavior in public places, classroom, creative writing pedagogy, creepers, Department of Writing and Linguistics, education, edumacation, Emily Dickinson = The Ultimate, Emma is very lucky, Emma's attempts at normal life, EPIC WIN, Film, flickr, Forms of Poetry, Friendship Is Magic, Georgia, Georgia Southern, Going to eleven, Inquiries into academics, inspiration, instagram, internet fads, It is ON 2012, learning, learning patience slowly, my students, NaPoWriMo, pedagogy, perfection is boring. period., Perspiration? Inspiration?, Photo for the day, Photography, poem challenge, poem for the day, Poem of the Day!, poems, poetry, Prosody, Retrospectitating, Retrospective, Squee!, teaching, teaching writing, Thanks and thanks again, That Was The Week That Was, The Hunger Games, writing community, writing teachers, You gotta have friends

The first week of NaPoWriMo is more or less over, and though this is my fourth straight month writing a poem a day, I have to admit that there’s a different energy to NaPoWriMo.  I think it’s largely because this time, I’m not alone — well, not that I was alone the last four times, but I sent my poems to a group of people I’ve never met.  This time, I’m sharing poems with people I see every day, and they’re sharing poems with me, and we’re talking about poems in the mail room and by the Coke machine and it’s just fantastic.  Every day, I wake up and hum “Eye of the Tiger” to myself.  I make a pot of coffee, praying it’s not just mostly grinds, and then pour a cup of coffee, which is inevitably mostly grinds, and I sit on the back porch and write a poem.  Then I turn on my laptop and read the poems waiting in my inbox and on others’ blogs.  Then I move through my day, carrying all of those words with me, and come home and sit down to revise and post the poem, and read what others have revised and posted, and it’s just — well, it’s the best.

Here’s a look at what else I’ve been up to …

Day 91: I had to be at an Open House on campus very, very early, which means I had to get up very, very, very early, which means I might not have necessarily been exactly what one would call "awake" when I got in the car. This meant that I had to Rock Out in order to get closer to "awake," which meant that I listened to "One Night in Bangkok" louder than perhaps anyone has ever listened to "One Night in Bangkok" in the part twenty or so years.

Day 92: Folks, it's time for Emma to get real. I'm really bad at watching movies. Like, the worst. The last movie I went to see in the theater was Mama Mia, and it was such an excruciatingly terrible movie that I'm using that as my excuse for not watching one since. This Sunday, I broke my movie theater fast so that I could see The Hunger Games on the big screen, and IT WAS AMAZING. From what I saw, I mean, since I ugly cried from the first scene with Prim and Katniss until, well, the Arcade Fire song that played over the credits.

Day 93: One of my students brought my Domo a boyfriend and it absolutely made my life. They're a very happy couple and enjoy hanging out next to the Emily Dickinson biographies and standing under the wind-up toys.

Day 94: I found this necklace in the bottom of my jewelry box. It's what I call my Spoils of War necklace -- years ago, someone left it in a classroom, and after it'd been there for months and months and I asked and asked whose it was and still it remained unclaimed, I decided to claim it. I still feel a little guilty about it, but it's such an awesome necklace at the same time ...

Day 95: Today was meter day in my poetry workshop, which meant a special guest appearance from Iamb the Owl, the wind-up toy who walks with unstressed, stressed, and unstressed, stressed footsteps.

Day 96: My mother sent me a care package, and listen, people, this woman's care packages are LEGEND. This one contained a box of Peeps, which really might be nature's perfect food.

Day 97: I saw this when I entered Walgreen's, and I almost turned around and immediately exited Walgreen's. It was a lot to have to handle.

 

Breeding Lilacs Out of the Dead Land

Posted by emmabolden in 2012, A teacher's education, Academia, Amazing discoveries and wondrous visions, announcements, appearances, Art and life and love and The Big Stuff, bad behavior in public places, Chchchchanges, classroom, creative writing pedagogy, disagreeable/agreeable, education, edumacation, Emma is very lucky, EPIC WIN, Failure Schmailure, Fear and how to face it, Georgia, Georgia Southern, Going to eleven, Inquiries into academics, inspiration, internet fads, It is ON 2012, learning, learning patience slowly, Losing courage and other freakouts, NaPoMo, NaPoWriMo, New Fangled Technology and Whatnot, pedagogy, perfection is boring. period., Perspiration? Inspiration?, plans, poem challenge, poem for the day, Poem of the Day!, poems, poetry, Poetry as therapy, poets, re-purposing, revision, sins of commission and omission, Squee!, teaching, teaching writing, Thanks and thanks again, The evolution of Emma, The grind, the poem factory, The Year of Projects, Those Who Walk The Same Line, training, Very Excellent News, What Emma is up to, where are you going where have you been, Where You Can Find Me (Or At Least My Words), wonders and apparitions, writing and not writing, Writing Anew, writing community, writing life, writing teachers, You gotta have friends

Yesterday was March 31rst, 2012, and it marked the end of my third consecutive month as part of The Grind, a project where writers write a poem/piece/significant revision/et cetera a day and e-mail it to each other.

Today is April 1rst, 2012, and it marks the beginning of my fourth consecutive month as part of The Grind.  It also marks the beginning of National Poetry Month, and therefore NaPoWriMo — National Poetry Writing Month — which means I’ll not only be writing a new poem a day for the fourth straight month, it also means that I’ll be posting my drafts, publicly.

No, this isn’t an April Fool’s Day post — this is for real.

A little bit of background: I’ve written in the past about how I’m not a writer with a daily writing routine and I’m happy about that.  The Grind completely changed that for me, and it changed so much more.  I think that most writers are probably hyper-vigilant about their process and production, far more than we’re willing to admit, but The Grind has made me even more so — and it’s

Here's an example of the Magic of Daily Writing: a poem that just appeared when I meant to write a couple of lines.

made me bite my tongue and wish I could take back everything I’ve ever said about how I didn’t need a daily writing routine and was working perfectly well without one.  The truth is, I did, and I wasn’t.  The truth is that I do need the daily practice.  I do need the routine.  And my writing? All the better for it.

I’m not going to pretend that some days aren’t rough.  I’m not going to pretend that writing every day is easy.  I can, however, say that somewhere in my second month of The Grind, something amazing started happening.  I sat down every morning with a bowl of Lucky Charms and a cup of coffee, and instead of vegging out in front of the television, I wrote.  I walked around all day with poems making themselves in my mind.  I spent the time in bed before I got to sleep working through lines and line breaks.  I’d sit down again the next morning, Lucky Charms and coffee and Moleskine in front of me.  Most of the time, I’d plan to write a few lines I’d been thinking about.  Then it’d happen, like magic: a poem.  A whole poem, just there, each one a surprise and a gift.

I’m still not sure where the poems came from, except from daily practice.  I think that’s what I’ve learned more than anything, and what’s most important: daily practice means living your writing, and your writing begins to live with you.

I knew that I wanted to stick with the poem-a-day grind through NaPoWriMo, but when I started thinking about how much my writing has benefited from The Grind, I started thinking about how great it would be to set up a community for NaPoWriMo, a group of writers who could post together and support each other, both in real life and online.  I started thinking, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if I could get a group of people here at Georgia Southern to write a poem a day?”  And thus, the Georgia Southern NaPoWriMo project was born.

Listen: there are moments in your life when you realize how lucky you are, how you’ve managed to land in exactly the right place.  Organizing the NaPoWriMo project here has been a series of those moments.  I am grateful that people decided to write along with me and with each other, and excited to see so many people so excited about poetry.  For the next month, twenty four writers will join me in writing and posting a poem a day, and I cannot wait.

This doesn’t mean I’m not nervous, because I am.  Actually, wait.  I’m not nervous.  I’m utterly terrified.  I mean, this certainly isn’t my first time at the NaPoWriMo rodeo, but it IS the first time I’ve battled the beast with my real name.  I’ll be posting poems on our group blog in solidarity with the other writers (and so as to not fill your Facebooks and Twitters machines and in-boxes with “hey, Emma wrote some stuff” messages).  Each draft will be up for less than 24 hours, and each draft will certainly be, well, a draft.  They’ll be far from perfect, but perfect isn’t the point.  Writing poetry is.

Let’s do this, April.  And please don’t be cruel.

That Was The Week That Was: Week Eleven

Posted by emmabolden in 2012, 365, A teacher's education, Amazing discoveries and wondrous visions, awesome, bad behavior in public places, books, classroom, Comp prompts, Composition, cool/not cool, Department of Writing and Linguistics, education, edumacation, Emma's Awkward Adolescence, filet o'fish, flickr, Forms of Poetry, Found art, Georgia, Georgia Southern, Happy accidents, How the iPhone changed my life, I really did go to a school called Our Lady of Sorrows, Inquiries into academics, inspiration, instagram, internet fads, It is ON 2012, learning, My meowing roommates, pedagogy, Photo for the day, Photography, reading, readings, research, Resolutions, Retrospectitating, Retrospective, revision, rock tumbling, sacrilicious, Scenes from my childhood, sins of commission and omission, Squee!, Stick Figure Pedagogy, Stick figures ARE art, Tangents that should be entires on their own, teaching, teaching writing, That Was The Week That Was, The evolution of Emma, The grind, the poem factory, The Year of Projects, What Emma is up to, writing and not writing, writing life, writing teachers

I’ve decided that I am never, ever, never going to start my weekly wrap-up with a paragraph about how busy the week has been again.  It seems as though every time I do that, the week to come gets all huffy and decides that it will show me what busy looks and feels like, by God.  Therefore, this week, it’s ix-nay on the usy-bay alk-tay.  Instead, I’ll just say, hey, how about all this basketball, huh?

And I’ll also give a teaser: keep an eye out on the Blog for an Announcement of Awesome!

And now for the photos …

Day 84: A few weeks ago, I found myself writing a poem about the one nightmarish experience I had with a hermit crab, when I brought home the one who served as our class pet and who, apparently, spent his nights trying to claw through the wire of his cage. When I went to Petco to pick up some Science Diet Sensitive Stomach for the cats (don't ask, really, you don't want to know), I couldn't help but notice a giant new hermit crab display. Nor could I help but notice that said hermit crabs in said giant new display WERE CLIMBING TREES. There may well be another poem in that.

Day 85: I've been pretty under the weather as of late, and the weather I've been under has been, like, hailstorms and lightning and gale force winds. I decided to take the fact that I've been condemned to bed for a while to finally read The Hunger Games trilogy -- and man oh man oh everything, am I ever glad I did.

Day 86: Every once in a wild while, some wondrous thing comes along and I think to myself, "Not only have I waited for this all my long life, my entire life has led up to the very moment that this came into my life." I felt that way about Starburst jellybeans. I now feel that way about Draw Something. I mean, it's pretty much everything I have ever wanted in anything. Please see above my drawings for Luke, Katniss, and Twilight.

Day 87: When I sat down at my desk in my Poetry classroom, I couldn't help but notice that someone had gone all A Beautiful Mind on the desk. I'm used to seeing strange things drawn on desks, sure, but numbers? In the writing and literature building? Really?

Day 88: I read this essay about how love and monogamy are impossibilities in an old Composition textbook and I found it absolutely abhorrent. I decided to fight back the only way I could: by turning it into a series of found poems about how love creates possibilities. BOOM.

Day 89: Someone put these signs up all around the building that houses the Writing and Linguistics department, and boy did they ever make my day.

Day 90: NOTE: If you raised me or had me as a student when I was between the ages of four to thirteen, you should probably skip what follows. Actually, you know what? If you're reading this and have ever been offended by anything, you might want to just skip what follows. So, when I was in Catholic school, I really liked Lent, and for four reasons. One: Palm Sunday, which was, is, and shall ever remain my favorite day of the liturgical year. Two: I could just listen to Jesus Christ Superstar instead of studying and pass all of my tests with flying colors (seriously, I got a 105 on a religion test the week after I got the soundtrack). Three: cheese pizza on Fridays for lunch. Four: Filet O'Fish on Fridays for dinner. This is a tradition I still maintain (well, as well as listening to Jesus Christ Superstar).

 

That Was The Week That Was: Week Ten

Posted by emmabolden in 2012, 365, A festival of photos, A teacher's education, Academia, accidental confessions, Alabama School of Fine Arts, Alice B. Toklas (feline version), Amazing discoveries and wondrous visions, Artist's Renditions, classroom, disagreeable/agreeable, disappearances, Ear Worms, education, edumacation, Emma's theories on what makes for A Very Good Poetry Submission, Emma's attempts at normal life, Emma's attempts at real life (failed or otherwise), Emma's dsyfunctional relationship with Diet Coke, Epic Cat Battles, flickr, gardening, Gertrude Stein (feline version), hopes and dreams, housekeeping, Inquiries into academics, inspiration, instagram, It is ON 2012, Lana Del Ray, learning, music, Mustachio'd Kitties, My addiction to terrible television, My meowing roommates, my students, Notebooks, odd comparisons and awkward metaphors, Pepsi-Cola, Perspiration? Inspiration?, Photo for the day, poem challenge, poems, poetry, publishing, publishing (or not publishing, Retrospectitating, Retrospective, revision, shameless cat photos, Shifting metaphors, Stick Figure Pedagogy, Stick figures ARE art, submissions, summations, teaching, teaching writing, That Was The Week That Was, the container garden and you, The grind, the poem factory, The siege in the room, What Emma is up to, writing and not writing, writing room, writing space, writing teachers

The week that was this week was an especially hectic one, as the first week back to campus after spring break inevitably is.  Dear fellow denizens of the Blogosphere, I’ll be honest: over a break, a person gets used to having entire mornings, afternoons, evenings, and nights over which to spread writing, reading, re-writing, grading, re-reading, revising, re-revising, and, yes, even sleep and catching up on gloriously terrible television.  With the end of the break comes a mad rush to prep and grade and prep and teach and advise and prep and grade again.  It’s a bit to get used to, both on the side of the professor and the student.  However, spring break also marks a turning point for me as a teacher: it’s the point at which all of my classes are in workshop, which means it’s the point at which I get to read writing from every student I have — which means that things are, in a word, awesome.  Let’s take a look at the photos from this hectic, glorious week.

Day 75: One of my major goals during the break? Get some submissions SENT. OFF. Here, I've set up my craft table for some serious submitting. Somehow, Lana Del Ray's album seemed tailor-made for this. NOT PICTURED: Gertrude Stein, who continuously tried to steal my seat, and Alice B. Toklas, who continuously chewed on various cords, papers, envelopes, stuffed animals, terrarium lids, and pants.

Day 76: This photograph shows the most brilliant plant transportation method I have ever devised. It also shows that I am bound and determined to try to grow orchids again. FLASHBACK: back in the day, when I was living on the dorm floor at the Alabama School of Fine Arts, I somehow magically managed to grow the most beautiful and majestic orchid in history. Over fall break, I took it home and put it out of my cat's reach -- or so I thought. I woke up from a nap one morning to find him standing on top of my chest of drawers, his mouth over one gorgeous and exquisite bloom. He ripped off the flower, turned his head, spat it out, and looked at me. The orchid never bloomed again -- and this time, I'm keeping them under glass.

Day 77: Wouldn't this be an awesome album cover? Apparently, picking out album covers is my new hobby. Now I need a band. Preferably one called Fire Exit.

Day 78: Here, Alice B. Toklas concentrates on Bridezillas. I think hers is the appropriate response.

Day 79: This was my first day back on campus after the break, and it left no doubt that it is, indeed, spring. Let the requests to hold class outside commence!

Day 80: This is my third straight month in The Grind, a poem-a-day project. At this point, my brain is constantly in full poem mode. However, I am sometimes too tired to actually use words, so a lot of my poems are planned in stick-figure drawings scrawled in my bedside notebook when I wake up groggy and half-blind at 2 a.m. Case in point? This drawing.

Day 81: Here's a confession: Real Simple magazine? I love it beyond just about anything. A few years back, I saw an article about storage solutions for the, well, scatter-brained, which is, well, me. I covered a piece of foam board in fabric, framed it, found some straight pins, and voila! Necklace storage and art!

Day 82: I took this photo on Thursday, shortly after I sent my mother a long text about how awesome it was that it was Friday and received a text back that said "For the rest of the world, it's Thursday." I then realized more caffeine was necessary. Diet Coke, once again, you saved me and my paperwork.

Day 83: Look at these. Just look at these. I mean, really. How beautiful are these? I planted them sometime last summer, and -- well, forgot what kind of flowers they were? Somehow, they managed to survive through the winter and through a month without water, and have started to bloom -- beautifully -- again. Maybe it's just the Epsom salt, but I think there's a pretty good metaphor in that. Excuse me while I use stick figures to figure out what it is ...