Category: disagreeable/agreeable

Revisionings
I’m at this weird moment with my writing. I am, on one hand, working on very very very (to borrow Anne Lamott’s absolutely perfect term) sh*tty rough drafts. They’re the kind of drafts that are necessary for the kind of work I’m doing, which is very difficult and very personal and therefore means that I need to write faster than my brain can run, because my brain will just be like, stop stop STOPSTOPSTOP, and nothing will ever get done. On the other hand, I’m working on almost-to-the-very-end-of-revising-and-beginning-of-submitting revisions. In other words:
- I’m cutting large parts of poems out and yelling things like stop trying to make fetch happen at them and then re-writing from the few lines that remain.
- I’m spending most of a day (well, okay, a week) working on a poem, trying to coax it out of the form I at first forced it into (because it
  Here are some of those notes I was talking about in all of their cryptic glory.
  
  seemed like it wanted to be a pantoum, it really did) and into the form in which (hopefully) it’ll do something close to working.
- I’m taking three hours to get two lines right.
- I’m taking out all of the commas and capital letters and then replacing all of the commas and capital letters.
- I’m changing “the Alabama Shakes’ Boys and Girls” to “that Alabama Shakes album” and realizing that that tiny change revealed exactly what the essay meant all along, and what I needed to do to make it mean that.
- I’m trying to translate and expand cryptic notes I leave myself on my phone, on my laptop, on my Kindle, on my Post-Its, on the skin beneath my thumb, on a receipt for a McDonald’s smoothie.
- I’m remembering what I meant by FUNERAL WHAT’S SAID STOPPED WRITING ESP ABOUT BC ALSO THIS ISN’T THE CLIMAX END TO TENSION THAT CHANGES THINGS CATS.
- I’m taking out all of the commas and capital letters and then replacing all of the commas and capital letters — except for two commas and one capital letter, which finally, finally makes the poem work.
It’s an interesting in-between place. It’s a good place to be — bringing work into the world, preparing to send work out of the world — but it’s also an uncomfortable place. And it’s that, that discomfort, exactly, that makes it such a good place. When the writing gets too comfortable, I start worrying. I start thinking, this is not good. Because writing — good writing — requires risk, and that’s far from comfortable.

This has also made me think a lot about my students, who are all in a very similar place. I’ve often thought that learning how to write is a kind of apprenticeship: you learn the craft from reading and watching someone work, from listening to them talk about how they approach their work, and you learn the art from practicing the craft, from being willing to take risks and sharpen your skills and to work and work and work. Sometimes, I’ll think of the writing teacher as the leader of the apprenticeship, but more and more, I feel like that isn’t true. I feel like it can’t be true, because no one can really be a master. I feel like perhaps the real apprenticeship is to the art itself, to all of its mysteries and wonders, all of its moments of despair and whimsy and confusion. We’re all in the same boat, in a creative writing classroom, wherever we sit, and I often think that the teacher’s job is to start conversations, to nudge students towards risk, to give them a vocabulary to talk about their work and a way to apply those terms and techniques to their own pieces. I think it’s also a teacher’s job to learn — both through one’s own work and reading and from one’s teachers.

Every day, I walk to my office with my folder and grade-book and Diet Coke and Altoids and I feel — excited. Thrilled. Nervous. Lucky. Most of all, lucky. I’d say that this has been an exceptional semester in which I’ve been lucky enough to teach some exceptional students, but really, there’s nothing exceptional about it. Instead, it’s been the rule. I’m continuously grateful to be surrounded by such minds and such energy, such unfailing appetites for learning. I’m grateful to my students for being willing to talk through the routes they’re taking in this strange landscape language makes for us — and I’m grateful to them for the daily reminder that though we are all making our own way in this landscape, we are, none of us, ever truly alone.
October 1, 2013
“Home Is So Sad.”

I’ve found myself, as of late, sort of wandering around town in various levels of being totally disheveled and/or confused about everything, then saying to people, “I’m sorry, I just moved.” It’s something I’ve said for the past few weeks and something I will probably keep saying for the next few, well, years. Because, let’s face it, moving is both the best and the worst. It’s a chance at starting fresh in a new place, one that isn’t packed to the crown molding with memories. But it also means living in a totally new place, and one that’s unfamiliar, all the way to the crown molding. Every inch of every corner is a surprise. And, if you happen to live in a college town, as I do, the surprises aren’t always exactly pleasant. As in, Surprise! You can’t use your kitchen cabinets because they smell like the grim specter of death! Surprise, you can’t use your bathroom cabinet either because DOUBLE SURPRISE, BLACK MOLD! Surprise, these walls are constructed entirely of asbestos and the bubonic plague! And so forth.

This isn’t my mailman, but it is the post office. So.

There are a lot of things I miss about my old place: the usable cabinets, the absence of the grim specter of death, the screened porch, the frat

boys shooting arrows at a tree outside of my screened porch. But if there’s one thing I miss more than anything else, it’s my mailman.

How do you even know your mailman? you’re probably thinking. Well, remember that college town part? I mean, small college town. Which means a lack of certain amenities, such as actual grocery stores or Targets. You know, things that are necessary for basic survival. Which also means, of course, that I’ve been forced to spend quite a bit of time shopping online. You know, for basic survival. It was necessary.

And so, I got to know my mailman. He was always kind and never judged and agreed that yes, one can never have enough shoes. He realized

that I tended to write on my back porch in the summer and so he brought me my packages there. One day, he caught me crying after a Very Bad Telephone Conversation and he asked how I was. He said he didn’t know what was going on, but he could promise that it’d get better — and he came by to ask how I was the next day. When I broke my foot, he asked how I was and even sometimes brought my non-package-style mail to me, if it looked important. He asked about my cats, who eventually even stopped running away and acted like completely insane beasts when he knocked. When I had surgery, he told my mother that he’d been worried because no one had answered the door for a while. He asked how I was every time she answered the door. He always smiled, he always said hello, and he was always incredibly kind.

This is how things are going with my new mailman so far. Sigh.

They were all small things, just very small things, but they made a very big difference in my life, and at a time in my life when I felt very lost. And maybe, in the end, it’s the small things that matter — because, when you think of it, a life of such small kindnesses is a very big thing.

The jury’s still out on my new mailman. He seems very nice and he always smiles. Still, I can’t help but miss my old mailman — and I can’t help but wish I would’ve thanked him more often for all of the kind things he probably didn’t even realize he was doing — which makes him all the more deserving of thanks.

August 6, 2013
Hobby Lobby (An Essay)

Listen, Hobby Lobby. You know how I feel about you. But you have GOT to stop trying to make the Thanksgiving Tree a thing. I mean, at this point, it’s just embarrassing.

July 23, 2013
There is no Frigate like Book

There are a few small but appreciable benefits from dealing with Circumstances, and all stem from the fact that Circumstances tend to make one re-evaluate and re-think — and Circumstances often give one the time one needs to re-evaluate and re-think.

That sentence was hella awkward.

In less vague and oddly formal third-person terms, I guess I could say that, every so often, it seems like I go through Circumstances that require me to sit back and think about what I’m doing with and in my life, about what really matters to me and on/with what I need to spend the precious-beyond-precious time I have. And for me, time and time again, the answer is always the same answer: words.

NOTE: Gertrude Stein does not necessarily share my enthusiasm for all things bookish.

I think that most, if not all, writers come to write because they love words, which means they love to read. Most, if not all, of us have a moment tucked inside of us, a moment when words suddenly became more than words, when words unfurled inside the mind into something as enormous and wonderful and even slightly frightening as Jack’s beanstalk, and with its power to transport.

That’s the frightening part — the power — and also the tremendously beautiful part. It’s what every writer, I think, is, in the end, chasing: the power to transport herself and someone else, in the same was as she herself has been transported, through words. When I was a little girl, my father took me to the library every weekend, and I remember walking from shelf to shelf, pulling books off the shelves and opening them into Vs, reading random paragraphs to find which ones I wanted to take home. I always knew when I found the right one: the shelves vanished, the library vanished, the entire state of Alabama vanished, and I vanished with them. It was just the words, the world that they made.

The Circumstances through which I’m currently moving and living have given me, wondrously, the quiet time I needed to spend with words — both with my own and with others’. It’s the kind of quiet time I need, from time to time, to recharge. I think it’s very easy, especially if you’re a person who’s trying to get published or whose job related to words, to get discouraged, to let the rejections overtake you, to lose faith in your own language. Or, at least, that’s what happens to me, and it happens far more easily and frequently than I often admit. It’s also very easy to get so wrapped up in publishing and competition and ego (or lack thereof) to the point where your own words aren’t necessarily your own. It’s easy to forget the small miracle that happens every time a pen hits a page. It’s easy to forget that more often than not, the writer isn’t the one in control. The words are. A writer’s place isn’t in speaking. It’s in listening.

Reading — living, for a few hundred pages or so, in another’s world, living and listening and loving through and in their words — is the way I remember this. It’s the way I return, again and again, to the sense of awe that made me begin writing myself. I mean this in several senses of the word: amazement, yes, but also fear, and the sense of reverence that comes from wonder and terror. I mean this in the sense of respect of language itself, of how letters and words and sentences build upon themselves, seemingly of their own volition and power.

Though the Circumstances I’m dealing with this summer aren’t necessarily the most pleasant Circumstances, I’m very grateful for them. They’ve given me the space I need to sit and be quiet and read. They’ve given me the space I need to remember: I’m still the girl standing somewhere in the vacuum of vanished space and time, a book an open bird in my hand. I’m still there, in awe of the words, of the world they make.

June 25, 2013
It’s that time again, folks.

Needless to say, I haven’t been blogging.

I haven’t been blogging because EverythingIsHappeningAndAllAtOnceHolyGodAlmightyKnows. There’s been life stuff and writing stuff and teaching stuff and job stuff and personal stuff and health stuff and angry feline companion stuff and just — well, stuff. There is, in fact, so much stuff I can’t even really think of words to express all of the stuff, so I thought I would instead offer a visual that represents how the end of a semester, especially spring semester, always seems to feel.

That? That’s it. That’s pretty much basically exactly IT.

The good thing is that there will hopefully soon also be this —

I HAVE NEVER IN MY LIFE YELLED AT A GIRL LIKE THIS.

— because really, at this point in my life, I’m at peace with the fact that I will never be able to recuperate after a long, hard haul through an academic year and all of its attendant stuff without Tyra Banks yelling through the television screen that her mama yells at her like that because she loves her.

May 5, 2013
“And on the radio you hear ‘November Rain;’ that solo’s awful long, but it’s got a good refrain.”*

People of the Interwebs:

Listen.

It’s April fourth. I live in south Georgia. Like, coastal south Georgia. And it’s cold. It’s cold and awful and rainy and generally so terrible weather-wise that Gertrude Stein has been inspired to spend all day and night singing her “Cold and Awful and Rainy and Generally So Terrible

This is a picture of Gertrude Stein, taken as I type. She’s this close to my face. And singing. It’s a lot to deal with.

Weather” aria, which is the saddest song in Gertrude Stein’s entire repertoire, besides the “You Didn’t Set You Alarm and I Realize You Want to Sleep In But Hey, Treats?” aria.

However, it’s April. It’s National Poetry Month, and if poetry celebrates anything, it’s anything that’s cold and awful. Therefore, I’m making the best of the weather and looking for the best in today — and one of the best things is this announcement: I’m going to be on the radio tomorrow.

No, really. Someone is actually going to let me talk on the radio without the FCC present.

That someone is the wonderful and talented and generally amazing Katrina Murphy, who’s invited me to join her on her wonderful and talent-filled and generally amazing radio show, Questions That Bother Me So. The show will stream live tomorrow from 1:00 – 3:00 Eastern time (I think — Eastern time, right? Like the one that the East coast is on? Time zones are confusing and I can’t think about them too much because I start thinking about how time is just a construct and then I get confused). You can listen along here (go to “shows,” then “Questions That Bother Me So”), and I’ll be live-Tweeting the experience from my Twitter feed. There will also be a chat room. It’s going to be totally meta. Topics to be discussed may or may not include poetry, National Poetry Month, Maleficae, witches, witch trials, witch burnings, writing poetry about witch trials and burnings, cats, velociraptors, sloths, and more poetry. It’s going to be awesome. The last time I was on the radio, I had pink eye and a kidney stone, and I still managed not to drop an F-bomb, which was a major triumph, as you know if you’ve ever had a kidney stone or, like, been in a room with me. This time, I probably also have a kidney stone, but hey, no pink eye. Let the F-bombless awesome commence.

And there are other exciting things afoot, so please keep your eyes on this small section of the Intertubes. In the meantime, here are some pictures of how I tried to make the best out of this gray and cold and awful day.

If there’s one thing I’m very good at, it’s losing my reading glasses. I had a gorgeous green pair that I left somewhere in the Charlotte airport, or possibly on an airplane. Or somehow in the sky. I still miss them. I was thrilled when I came into my classroom today and found that my glasses were still where I apparently left them on Tuesday. Rainy day triumph number ONE.

Seriously, the weather today? TERRIBLE. I decided to make the best of it by making it into an exercise. My students had to complete this sentence — “The weather was ____” — fifteen times. If they used weather words, like cold and rainy and awful, they had to use a simile. I did the exercise along with them and ended up with my poem for today. RAINY DAY TRIUMPH TWO.

A few months ago, Alice took this Purr Pad out of a chair and pushed it across the room, right next to the front door. Today I found out why: she sits here to wait for me to get home from work. RAINY DAY TRIUMPH THREE. CUTENESS TRIUMPH INFINITY.

Chinese take-out once again proves it’s the best boyfriend ever. RAINY DAY TRIUMPH FOUR. Well, plus Chinese food in general, and food that’s delivered to the door, both of which are always triumphs.

* Bonus points to anyone who catches the reference in this post’s title!

April 5, 2013
Are There Things That Are Important Beyond All This Fiddle? Or NaPoWriMo and You

People, here’s the thing: it’s April. That means it’s National Poetry Month. That means it’s National Poetry Writing Month. That means I’m writing a poem a day. That means I’m participating in a poem-a-day writing challenge.

NaPoWriMo FTW!

And that means I’m writing a poem a day along with my fellow writers on campus.

Publicly.

As in, where everyone can see.

Yes, those were the sounds of panic you just heard.

Here’s the thing: sometimes, you hear people say that those who can’t do, teach. Here’s the other thing: that’s totally wrong. I mean, sure, maybe some people who can’t do teach, but I think there’s a qualifier there: they may teach, but they probably don’t teach well. And I’m not saying that as a teacher, really — I’m saying that as a student. I’m saying that as someone who learns, which I will, God willing, always be, teaching or no teaching.

Here, I guess, is the thing I really mean: I learned how to teach from those who taught me, and I praise everything out there that those who taught me taught very, very well. They taught very, very well because, well, they did. And they weren’t afraid to let me watch them doing. My writing teachers wrote with us: if they gave us an exercise in class, their pens were always moving, and they read their drafts when we read our drafts, no matter how terrible or wonderful any of our drafts were. They read poems and puzzled through poems and thought through problems and they did it all out loud, in front of me. And from their thinking, I learned how to think. From their writing, I learned how to write. And I learned, about writing, about everything, the most important thing: keep doing. Do and do and do. Yoda was right: there is no try, there is only do — because trying is its own form of doing.

If there’s one thing I have learned as a teacher, though, it’s that that? That’s not easy. Writing along with my students means that I could write something that’s terrible, and reading along with them means letting them know I wrote something terrible, right then and there, before their very eyes. Sometimes, it’s easier to hide behind the screen, like Oz trapped in a cinderblock room. Sometimes, it’s easier to pretend like I’m the expert, the all-knowing, and they should listen to me just because I’m in the front of the room.

Easier doesn’t mean better when it comes to most things, teaching included. When I first started teaching, I was so terrified of doing and failing that I came into class every day with a full script, sometimes one that I’d rehearsed in the bathroom mirror beforehand. I even wrote out jokes, which, of course, failed, as the classes themselves tended to fail. I told myself that perhaps my humor was just too awesome for my students to get, but eventually, I had to realize that they just weren’t funny. They weren’t spontaneous. They were fake, and rehearsed, as was everything that happened on my end of the classroom — I wasn’t doing anything except reading lines, and when unexpected things (like, say, questions) came from the other

This is how I know my writing’s going well.

side of the room, I hadn’t rehearsed a response. I didn’t know what to do.

All right, I’ll say it: my classes sucked.

And I wasn’t the only one who thought so. Within three weeks of my first semester teaching, my name popped up on The Website That Shall Not Be Named, and there was a nauseously green frowny face next to it. One student wrote that she would rather jump out of a building than be in the same room with me. I drove to the gas station up the street, bought a bottle of cheap red wine, and sat on my couch and cried.

Looking back, that comment still has its sting, but most of the sting comes from the fact that I don’t blame her. I wouldn’t want to be in a room with me either, especially a classroom. Not long after that, I realized that I couldn’t keep up being a robot in class, even if being a robot was far more comfortable. I realized that in order to teach, I had to do. I had to show my students how I think, how I work, how I write. I had to get comfortable with acting out that process instead of some lame script, and I had to get comfortable with the fact that sometimes, I would falter. I’d be wrong. I’d fail. And I’d recover. I had to get comfortable with being uncomfortable — because what else would I ever want to teach?

Now, I’ve reached the final frontier of discomfort: writing a poem every day and posting it for my students and colleagues — and, well, the Interwebs — to see. Sometimes, I will falter. The poems will go wrong. They’ll fail. I’ll recover. And in doing, I’ll do the most important thing: I’ll learn myself and let the language teach me, which is, after all, all I could ever want to teach.

April 4, 2013
Dear Mr. Coffee

Dear Mr. Coffee,
I have, yet again, felt the terror of your hatred and disdain.

At this point, it’s all too clear: we have grown apart, and so have our wants and needs.

It’s over, Mr. Coffee. I wish you the best. And no, we cannot be friends.

Good luck with your future endeavors at the Humane Society Thrift Shop.

Sincerely,
Emma

March 21, 2013
Things 20/20 Has Made Me Fear
(An Incomplete List)
- Automatic door locks
- Rivers
  This is the most accurate depiction of John Stossel’s view of the world that I could imagine.
- Bridges
- Automatic windows
- The human jaw
- Social Security
- People who try to scam old people
- Old people who try to scam people
- People who smile too much
- People who don’t smile enough
- People who wear too many sweaters
- Bees
- Bee stings
- Bee pollen as a nutritional supplement
- Nutritional supplements
- National parks
- The outdoors
- Automatic garage openers
- Cars with computers in them
- Planes with computers in them
- Computers
- Exorcisms
- Weather radios
- Movie theaters
- Move theater popcorn
- Movie theater patrons
- Gorillas
- Movies about gorillas
- Cats
- John Stossel
March 19, 2013
AWP: Traditions, Revisions, Permissions (Or I’m Okay, You’re Okay, Let’s Skip The Dance Party)

The Association of Writers and Writing Programs’ Annual Conference and Bookfair (henceforth known as AWP) has been over for, like, a while now, which means it’s time for the tradition of Very Belated Wrap-Ups of Events that Probably Don’t Really Need Wrap-Ups, Or at Least Wrap-Ups by Emma Bolden, Since There Are Far Better and More Timely Wrap-Ups Out There in the Intertubes, Let’s Be Honest to continue. But first, a disclaimer.

DISCLAIMER: I hate AWP.

Okay, that’s a little extreme. I usually hate AWP, but I also usually hate doing things like picking out fruit and vegetables at the grocery store (I mean,

This is the map of AWP I made while I was waiting for a panel. I accidentally skipped a letter because apparently being a writer and working with the alphabet every day doesn’t guarantee that you actually know the alphabet, at least not in order.

really, why is this so difficult? Why isn’t there a central method for testing for fruit and vegetable freshness? Why must I smell mangoes and thump other fruit? And why can’t I remember which fruits must be thumped?) that are ultimately very good for me.

Maybe the problem is that I came late to AWP. I never went when I was in graduate school, and so I started attending AWPs when I already had a job in academia and enough rejection slips to Dementor-suck all the joy from my tender, hopeful heart. Perhaps it’s for this reason that AWP has always left me feeling overly exhausted and inadequate and like I would never make it anywhere, ever, so much so that I wished I could just throw all the swag I got at the Bookfair out of the airplane window and then go back to school for something else, like gardening or slothology.

Or maybe it’s the kinds of panels I attended back in the day, when my mailbox regularly belched out rejection slips (that’s a disgusting image but it was totally necessary) and I stood and looked at them and despaired, knowing they meant that I would never, ever, ever get a job with more than a three-year contract and less than seventeen thousand classes. Maybe I chose panels based on my desperation, based on my desire for someone, anyone, anywhere, to unfold in front of me the map with the pathways to “Acceptances Instead of Rejections!” and “Permanent Job with Insurance!” and “Not Endings Up in Someone’s Attic Dressed All in White with Ten Thousand Cats and Their Ten Quadrillion Fleas!” marked clearly.

At this point in my life, I know there is no such map (there is no such map, right? Right? And, um, if there is, can you get me a copy?) — or, at least, no universal map. There’s just the path we each tread, in our own lives, in our own ways, to our own lives and ways.

At previous AWPs, though, I didn’t know that, and so I hung desperately on every word from every member of every panel, every writer I passed hustling from table to table in the Bookfair, every man and woman handing out business cards and manuscripts and cocktails and questions. What I ended up with, what exhausted me so much, was a series of directions that I could never follow: you have to go to these parties, these conferences, these retreats; you have to get these residencies and publish in these magazines and get this kind of job at this kind of institution and wear this kind of Chucks while you’re doing it; don’t publish chapbooks, publish full-lengths; publish your full-length before you apply for a tenure-track; on Mondays you wear colored shoes, Tuesdays shirts with cute slogans, Wednesdays pink … It was overwhelming. To say the least.

But this year, things just felt different. There were a lot of writers, and all of the writers were — well, different. From each other. Sure, the majority of us were probably academics, but there were people with day jobs, people who wrote for money, people who did nothing that had anything to do with writing for work. There were people who went straight to the full-length and others who started their writing careers through e-mail lists. Suddenly, there were many, many maps, and many, many people being more honest about the maps they used, how they got where they are and how they earn the money they need to stay there. At one panel, Steve Almond mentioned that the old adage that time is money is especially true when it comes to writing: you work to finance the time you need to write, and, as a writer, you have to do what you have to do.

I think, perhaps, that’s what made this AWP feel so different to me. In the end, that’s the one thing about which everyone agreed: the writing is what’s important. Not the press, not the position, not the invitations to attend secret and exclusive hotel room parties or to sit with The Plastics for a trial week. It was all about the work, the real work we all come home to do, the real work in which we all find our homes — and, as I flew back to Georgia, I found myself smiling as I flipped through my notes. And if I could make a cake made of rainbows and smiles, we could all eat a piece and be happy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUFT35S7Jb4

March 18, 2013