Category: writing life

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
“Back in black / I hit the sack / I been too long / I’m glad to be back.”

Hey.

Are you still here?

Okay. I hope so. And I’m glad if you are.

When I first sat down to write this, I thought, I am going to write about how all of a sudden we are halfway through 2013 and I didn’t even realize it. And then I realized that I’d been writing “7” for the month for, like, oh, thirty-one days now. And then I mathed and realized that half of twelve is six, not seven, which means we are over halfway through 2013 and I didn’t even realize it.

Needless to say, I haven’t been blogging. Or, I guess, I’ve been trying to blog, but I haven’t been able to put much of my energy into a post. For a while I told myself, Self, you are totally experimenting. You’re just micro-blogging. You’re a revolution and that revolution is CUTTING EDGE. Then I remembered that I am not a revolution, nor am I particularly cutting-edge at anything, and that illusion lay shattered, like the shards in the Delicate Vase Aisle at Hobby Lobby after being visited by a mob of grammar school kids who have just eaten too many M&Ms.

Like I mentioned in my ~~revolutionary and cutting-edge~~ micro-blogging entries, there have been Circumstances, and these were the kinds of Circumstances that require most-and-I-mean-most, if not all, of one’s energies. These were the kinds of Circumstances that require a re-routing of one’s life and how one lives it, the kinds of Circumstances that — very, very literally — stop one in one’s tracks and require one to Think. A lot. And then to Adjust.

That is all very vague, you are probably thinking. Why are we talking in such vague terms and using David Foster Wallace capital letters to try to make up for it, you are probably also thinking. Those are both perfectly legitimate things to be thinking, and I guess the thing is that I have, after Thinking and then a lot more Thinking and then Adjusting, come to the place where I am ready to say that there have been Circumstances but not to talk about what they were/are. I mean, I have been writing about Circumstances, sure, but in the Let’s Put This In Creative Nonfiction Form So I Can Go As Slowly And Carefully As I Need To And Then Use A Couple Of Metaphors About Christmas Lights To Help Me Out Kind Of Way, not the Very Public As In Immediately Very Public Blogging Kind Of Way.

And that’s the strange and spectacular thing about writing, I think, and, really, reading — there’s something terrifying about the blank page, and that’s the thing we tend to talk about. But there’s also something amazing and transformative and meditative about the blank page, and then about the way one puts words onto it. The blank page gives a person the space — and the safety — that they need to think things through. And I mean really think things through. When I write poetry, I’m often prisming off of my personal experience, but in very extreme and sometimes even absurd ways. I’m taking myself to the edges of language and seeing what’s there. I’m taking each situation to its extreme, and then every angle of each situation, to see how it looks. I’m turning it over and over again in my mind, and with each turn it becomes something new. I’m speaking about things in a way I can’t speak about them with everyday language, which also means that I’m speaking about things I can’t speak about in everyday language. That’s because everyday language belongs to everyday life, and there are things that I just can’t spend a lot of everyday time with. There are things that will shut you down, will stop you from moving inside of everyday life, where there are things that have to keep moving. There are groceries to buy and student papers to grade and cats to feed.

The everyday world keeps moving, and one must move with it. Everyday life must be lived. And so, in these Circumstances, I’ve been grateful for that blank page. I’ve been grateful for the moments of respite it provides, for the sacramental space it creates, for the place where I can take a break from moving and just be still for a while with my words and the realities they represent, so that I can keep moving, keep doing, keep living.

July 31, 2013
Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Alice B. Toklas*

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about myself and my writing, it’s that major breakthroughs and advances — well, they don’t come easy. Sure, from time to time a breakthrough will come hurdling through the clouds and sky and onto my laptop or notebook page, but I know that I can’t depend upon that. I also know that these breakthroughs only come hurdling through the clouds and sky and onto my laptop or notebook page if I’m there at my laptop or notebook page. In other words, I do sometimes have breakthroughs out of the clear blue sky that make everything very much easier,

This is a photograph of the feline Alice B. Toklas, who is the hero of today’s story.

but said out-of-the-clear-blue-sky everything-easier-making breakthroughs only come from hard work.

And when I say hard work, I mean hard work. I mean hard, frustrating work. I mean minutes and hours and days and years of hard, hard, hard frustrating work. And sometimes it takes a very long time, and always it takes being honest with myself in a way that isn’t exactly comfortable.

It’s a funny thing, being a writer — often, when I finally figure out how to do something and do something well, it’s exactly the point when I know I shouldn’t get comfortable. If I get comfortable, I do the same thing over and over again, kind of like my treat addict of a cat, Alice B. Toklas — she’s figured out that if she goes in the kitchen and meows and looks up at me in this certain unbelievably pitiful way, she will receive two treats. But writing isn’t like that, no matter how pitiful the look I give my laptop. Eventually, the treats stop coming. Or else the treats do keep coming, but they’re increasingly stale. Like, moldy stale. Yes, I’m doing something I figured out how to do, and sometimes even to do well, but I’m not growing. I’m not moving to the next level. I’m not taking risks and challenging myself and thinking, really thinking, about what I’m doing. I’m not engaging with language and the way it’s built. I’m not doing myself or my work any favors.

And so I keep pushing myself to push myself, even if I don’t get the treats. And usually, when I’m moving towards a breakthrough, there are no treats anywhere to be found (apparently, I have decided to stay with this metaphor and stretch it beyond its capacity. Which is, incidentally, one of the things that I do when I’m not pushing myself the way I need to push myself as a writer. Harumph). There are just — pardon me, but Anne Lamott’s phrase is too perfect not to borrow — shitty first drafts. And shitty second and third and fourth drafts. There are hours of staring at a screen, putting a line in one place and then moving it and then deleting it completely, only to put it exactly where it was the next day.

See? Frustrating. Like, beyond.

And that’s the state I was in a while ago, when I realized that I had no idea where Alice B. Toklas was (the feline Alice B. Toklas, of course; it’s pretty clear where the actual Alice B. Toklas is, or was). This is generally bad news because it could mean that she’s eaten a couch or gotten arrested for spying on my neighbors. I started walking around the house very slowly and saying Alice very softly, both because I didn’t want to scare her and

This is the ball and the corner in question. I’m posting a photograph of it mostly to remind myself, in the future, of what kind of ball Alice B. Toklas likes for when Alice B. Toklas eats it or gives it to the cicadas or something and I have to buy more of them.

because a disappeared cat is a generally terrifying situation. When I found her, she was in the corner of my bathroom, trying to wedge her let’s-call-it-big-boned-and-just-very-furry body between the toilet and the bathtub. At first I thought this was just another thing that Alice B. Toklas likes to do, like licking the windows or hiding under things by only putting her head under them and closing her eyes. Then I started hearing a bell, and I realized that there was a reason for her hiding behind the toilet, besides, you know, hiding behind the toilet: she was trying to get her ball out of the corner, and with the kind of complete and total focus my cats usually only give their food bowls or my feet when they want to bite them. I decided to help her out and picked up the ball and threw it, expecting her to jump joyfully after it. Instead, she just looked up at me in great confusion — or, at least, more confusion than usual, which I admit is quite a bit of confusion. I said what and she just sat there, staring with great confusion until, finally, she walked off in defeat to chew on a sofa or something.

That’s when I realized that it wasn’t the ball itself that Alice B. Toklas wanted; it was the challenge of getting to the ball. She enjoyed the struggle, the fight. She loved the work itself — and then the bell went off in my mind. I realized that’s what I needed to do, too — to let myself relax, to allow myself the shitty first, second, third, fourth, and nth drafts, and to just enjoy playing with language, finding new ways into words. I may get the ball. I may not. In the end, really, I think it’s not about the product but the process — not the solution, but the struggle — and learning to be happy with both.

* That is, the feline Alice B. Toklas, of course. Everything I learned from the human Alice B. Toklas is only legal in Amsterdam, Washington, and Colorado.

July 14, 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
Houses are jerks.

This blog has been on hiatus. I’m sorry. There have been circumstances.

I’ll be back from hiatus very, very soon, but in the meantime, here’s a poem of mine published in B O D Y. The poem is about houses and how they know way too much about the people who live inside of them. I’m really happy to have this poem published because it’s one of those gifts, one of those poems that feels like it comes out of no where, a poem that’s completely unplanned but alters the course of your work. That’s absolutely true of this poem. Though it was the first poem in what would become a lengthy series, which then became the backbone of the manuscript I’m putting together, I have no idea where it came from.

Really.

See? See what I mean here? This house? Totally a secret-blabbing jerk.

I mean, I really have no idea where this poem came from. It just appeared. I suppose that my mind has been working on it for quite some time. I’ve always been fascinated with houses — I’m not sure how anyone who’s driven around at night and accidentally looked into an accidentally-still-standing-with-the-lights-on-and-without-the-blinds-drawn window isn’t fascinated with houses. They seem like such solid, impenetrable structures by day — they seem trustworthy, willing and able to keep all of your secrets — and then, by night — no way. Leave a single one of them without the blinds drawn, and that house is telling everyone what you’re doing inside. This is a problem, obviously, because I think it’s pretty obvious that we as a species began building and living inside of houses so we could walk around at night in extra-extra large t-shirts, knock-around-shorts, and knee socks, singing songs with lyrics

Gertrude Stein appears not to have the same anxieties about houses, possibly because she’d just be embarrassed by me.

altered to feature your cats’ names and hobbies, eating frosting out of cans and watching Snapped marathons (all of that is completely hypothetical, of course. Completely, totally, absolutely hypothetical. I mean, who would do any of that? Certainly completely, totally, and absolutely not me).

It’s possible that my mind has been rock-tumbling these ideas around for a while, without my knowledge, and polished them into a poem. Much as I’ll never know the source of most of my ideas and decisions, I’ll never really know. All I know is that I was in the middle of a Grind and wondering if I’d actually be able to finish the month, and then the poem appeared to answer my wondering. It was a pleasant surprise, and I’m happy to have received it — and happier still that the good people at B O D Y liked it and wanted to share it.

(While you’re at B O D Y, by the way, you should check out fellow Grinders Ross White and Matthew Olzmann, two incredibly talented and all-around awesome poets whose work has inspired me and then inspired me again.)

June 3, 2013
The Story Behind “The Damage”

Today, one of my dreams came true, and I say that without exaggeration: a piece of mine, from Inch magazine, is featured today on Poetry Daily. I found out about this a while ago but didn’t really believe it was actually happening until I saw it today, and I’ve had to look at it again and again to make sure that I’m not just dreaming. I mean, I’m not, right? You can see it too?

Here’s a picture of the beheaded cherub. I miss it, still.

I thought I’d write a short blog entry about the piece, since I’m always curious about the poems that pop up on Poetry Daily and, well, like, everywhere that poems tend to pop up. I won’t tell the whole story behind it because a.) I already did that, and b.) then where will the mystery be? Suffice it to say that the story behind this involves a huge move, which is a new beginning, and a huge break-up, which is, of course, an ending. Besides the relationship, a few things were broken during or missing after the move: a couch cushion, my bicycle, and the head of a cherub on this terrible and beautiful planter my grandmother had used as storage for cotton balls. It was a strange time, a time when beginnings were muddled with endings, and I could hardly tell the difference between the two anymore.

Flash to September of 2012, over a year later. A friend and I had just finished a stint on The Grind (explained beautifully here by Grind founder Ross White) and were following it up with a submissions grind. We promised each other that we’d send out at least one piece a day. One Saturday, I was poking around for places to submit short essays and I came across Press 53, (which, as it turns out, published a remarkable collection by fellow Grinder and all-around amazing poet and person, Shivani Mehta — Useful Information for the Soon-to-be- Beheaded) and then Press 53’s Tumblr, with their weekly 53-word story prompt. The prompt for that week was to write a 53-word story about moving. I read the prompt and the rules and then promptly shut down my computer and headed to Hobby Lobby for some emergency crafting supplies (the emergency, as always with Hobby Lobby, was just that it was Saturday, and they’re closed on Sundays, which always sends me into a crafting/quilting/crocheting tail-spin — what if I need very fine glitters on a Sunday? It happens more often than one would think). As I wandered around trying to figure out why there were so giant zebra-striped flowers, I found that my mind was working on a poem. When I got home, I wrote it: and word count showed me that it was, miraculously, 55 words. I cut two, and submitted it. Boom.

Of course, the micro-essay (though I guess now I should probably call it a prose poem) was rejected. I revised and sent to another magazine. Rejected. Repeat. Rejected. Then, I saw a call-for-work for an all-micro-essay issue of Inch, one of my favorite magazines, and I sent to that. Miraculously, it was accepted — and so began the road to Poetry Daily. I’m especially happy that this is the poem that made it, since Inch is a journal I really love and a journal that shines light on oft-ignored micro-forms, and since they were willing to give this triply-rejected piece a fourth chance.

Sometimes, I’ll end up with a poem or essay that just feels like a gift. It feels like a well-made thing, though I don’t feel like its maker. This poem/essay was just such a thing: I hadn’t intended to write about this part of my move — ever, really — and I didn’t set out to focus on the beheaded cherub. But there it was, and then it was on the page, called into being by forces which didn’t seem entirely under my control.

I suppose, when I think about it, it does make sense that I wrote this poem at this time. It was a time when everything seemed to be changing, again. My relationships changed, my friendships changed, my health changed and therefore my body changed, and therefore my world and the way I lived in it changed. I didn’t make a move, but the world around me moved. It was a time of muddled beginnings and endings, and I again couldn’t tell which was which. It was the beginning of a moment of great change, from which I am only now starting to emerge, to look around, and to assess what was damaged beyond repair and what remains.

And this, I suppose, is the greater gift, the greater dream come true: to have a poem that acts like a lens and focuses on what damage is, and what beginning and ending, for me at least, really means.

April 14, 2013
Radio Free Gertrude

Here’s my call-in radio show call-in station. Please note my fourth cup of coffee. Please also note that telephone. Children, that’s called a “land line.” It’s an ancient artifact from the days in which people didn’t need everything to be so terribly confusing and realized it was totally gross to have your phone with you in the restroom.

So, on Friday, I called in as a guest on Katrina Murphy’s excellent radio show, Questions That Bother Me So. I must thank Katrina for what was, all in all, a totally awesometacular experience (I’m thinking at some point that the archives will pop up here, so keep an eye out) (keep an eye out — that’s a really, really weird thing to say, isn’t it? I mean, if your eye was out, you wouldn’t really be able to see, would you?) (that’s not a tangent, as it keeps with the theme — I mean, if any questions bothers you so, it should probably be that one).

I have to admit that I love talk radio, especially live talk radio. There’s something about the cadence of the human voice, the magic of language happening in real-time, that’s absolutely captivating. That is, it is as a listener — while there is a fascination with how you are the human whose voice is cadencing over the Interwebs and the air, and it’s your language that’s happening in real-time, I have to admit that, as a participant, I was a little terrified.

This could be due to the fact that I prepared for my on-air appearance by drinking five cups of coffee and attempting to lure my overly vocal feline companions into other rooms by plying them with treats. Or it could be due to the fact that I spent all morning obsessively repeating to myself the following mantra: for God’s sake don’t say um and don’t say like, for God’s sake, please. Or perhaps I was nervous because I was wearing owl pajamas and Muk-Luks, as I often do, because I am a grown woman, which of course I knew no one could actually see, but perhaps they could just sense it.

This is what I suppose Alice B. Toklas was doing when I was talking, when she wasn’t creeping out the neighbors or eating a stack of firewood or something.

Thankfully, I was in very good hands, and Katrina calmed my nerves immediately. Gertrude Stein, who’s part Siamese and really loves to talk about that, did make her way into the living room, but somehow managed not to meow and to only bite me once. Alice B. Toklas, thankfully, held to her belief that watching whatever the neighbors are doing and chewing on cardboard boxes is way more interesting than anything I’m up to. And I found myself letting go of my fear and just having a great time talking to someone — which is also, I think, why I love talk radio so much: it’s like eavesdropping, at its best, on a really juicy conversation.

Gertrude Stein decided to help me with the poem I needed to read.

I think that part of my nervousness, too, has to do with the fact that in conversation, I’m not very focused. That’s because everything is interesting. Seriously. I could talk for three hours about the Statesboro formal wear store, Frills and Fancies, on the corner of Main, Main, Main, and Main, and then for six more hours about how, in Statesboro, there’s a corner of Main, Main, Main, and Main. Every single detail — from the revolving mannequin in a feathered prom dress to the fact that their Hunger Games-themed prom window display seemed to be made Hunger Games-themed only by the edition of an old-fashioned big screen TV — is interesting to me. That’s largely why, I think, I was drawn to writing in the first place: in writing, every such detail has a place. It has a weight and a significance and it works with other details to build an entirely new world. And I think, too, this lack of focus is why I was drawn in particular to poetry: it’s a form that, by its very nature, demands focus. It’s a way I learned to sift through the details I collect every day and weigh their significance. It’s how I learned to learn from them, and how I learned to focus enough to find the words to show other people what I’ve learned.

And if I end up with a collection titled Frills and Fancies, well, now you know why.

Gertrude and I. Sigh.

April 7, 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
Are We Après The Avant?*

I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately — like, a lot — like, an AWP-followed-by-Spring-Break a lot. A lot of what I’ve been reading circles around one of my continual curiosities: the avant-garde, and what we consider to be the avant-garde. This week, I delved into page after page of avant-garde poetry and prose. It was very exciting. And then it was, well, a little boring.

I was shocked at my own boredom, but, at the same time, I couldn’t help it. I also couldn’t help realizing that I was reading, well, the same thing. Over and over again. The same kind of poem, prancing across and down the page in the same kind of way, breaking its lines at the same kinds of places.** The same kind of realist-turned-surrealist story, with the same kind of title (“And A Gathering Of Words Which When Gathered Together Sound Ominous And/Or Biblical”). The same kind of essay, twisting through hybridity, moving from lyric to narrative to back within the same kind of fragmentation.**** Yes, the turns each author made within the form were very often electrifyingly brilliant — but I couldn’t help but think that they were that, exactly, turns within a form rather than complete formal innovation and experiment. And I couldn’t help but think that the fact that each piece inhabited a similar form meant, de facto, that they weren’t avant-garde.

Perhaps the issue is that, at the same time, I have been reading authors who are very definitely doing their own thing, making their own forms, creating their own shapes for their own thoughts and working them out on the page, sometimes over the course of multiple texts. I’m thinking of Anne Carson, who has a mind unlike any other mind at work today, and who makes that mind work on the page through a dizzying, unclassifiable, inimitable collision of form and genre. I’m thinking of the piece she read at AWP, a collaboration with a California artist, in which she explored the idea of sleep through a searingly brilliant academic critique of the character of Albertine in Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. This piece s both a brilliantly constructed essay and an immaculately built poem — a true innovation in form which might be unique to Carson’s work, starting with “The Glass Essay” ******in her 1992 Glass, Irony, and God, a text which is itself a mind-blending blur of genre and form and forms of thought. Perhaps the most striking quality of the Albertine piece, to me at least, is that her reading revealed something truly shocking: it’s funny. Like, actually, legitimately funny. As in the audience couldn’t help but laugh out loud from time to time. I now wonder if this — combining poetry, legitimate scholarship, literary analysis, and humor — is what puts the avant in the garde of Carson’s work.

Of course, we can’t all be Anne Carson — which is precisely the point. A mind like Carson’s, with its ability to shatter form both in terms of structure and of content in order to do something that’s really, truly new, comes along only once in a little while. Emily Dickinson’s mind was another such mind, which is another point. Though even elementary school students know Dickinson now, she published fewer than a dozen poems in her own lifetime — which is, I think, yet another point. Good doesn’t necessarily mean published. Brilliant means published even less, and truly innovative and new? Rarely does that mean published.

Perhaps, then, there’s a reason why the avant-garde feels less like individual formal innovation and more like a group form. Perhaps what we term as “avant-garde” isn’t necessarily the work of individuals quietly bulldozing and disposing of the boundaries on their own, but of groups of people who run the bulldozers together, for support. I’ve been reading Maggie Nelson’s The Art of Cruelty this week. Nelson herself, I think, is an interesting case — hers is a mind that blends and bends genre, but rarely inside the same text. This is not to say that Nelson’s work isn’t absolutely brilliant, because it is — it’s just to say that her brilliance fits inside of forms that have become, well, forms. I don’t mean this as a critique, in any way, because I think her work fits well there: her brilliant criticism is brilliant criticism, her brilliant lyric essays are brilliant lyric essays, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

It does, however, seem symptomatic of what Nelson describes in The Art of Cruelty, in which she explores the work of various performance artists. After a while, all of their pieces began to blend together for me; they started to feel the same, as though each performance artist worked off of the form and content of other performance artists. Though each of the performances Nelson describes is unmistakably avant-garde, they are also avant-garde in the same way. These artists use the same forms to express their ideas. They push the same boundaries, test the same limits, and in the same way. This doesn’t make their work any less important or useful, but it does, I think, make their work part of a movement.

I guess what I’m arguing here — if I’m arguing anything, if there’s anything to be argued — is that what we typically think of as avant-garde or experimental writing is writing that is part of a movement. It’s the work of a group who are facing the same limits in the same ways. That’s not to denigrate this kind of writing at all, but to say that perhaps we need different definitions — and different ways to talk about the work of writers who are really, truly doing their own thing. This isn’t to say that the former is better than the latter, or vice versa, but to say that there’s a difference, and it’s one of which we should be cognizant when we talk about experimental writing.

After all, I think there’s value in pushing one’s self as an artist, in testing limits and boundaries, no matter how that’s done. The truth is that Emily Dickinson did only publish a handful of poems during her lifetime, and we have her work now through what seems to be essentially a series of accidents. The truth is that there might be hundreds of Emily Dickinsons out there, whose work didn’t reach us through the same sort of happy accidents. The truth is also that if there is a group of people working together to test boundaries, their work will be more likely to reach readers, as they will be more likely to publish each other. And they may be more likely to continue their work: as a group, human beings love groups. More and more it seems to me that we’re pack animals. We need company. We need the support of people who think the way that we do. Every human institution — from kindergarten classes to University departments to corporations — splits, eventually, into groups of like-minded people who like to do the same things. The literary world is no different. And the existence of a group means freer communication, which means the development of ideas, and it’s difficult to argue that there’s anything wrong with that.

Still, I think of Anne Carson. I think of Emily Dickinson. I think of the writer and artist and thinker working, quietly, on their own, thinking and putting their thoughts on the page in ways which can be thrilling and terrifying all at once. I think of the artist who eschews the group and walks out, alone, into what might be a field of flowers, what might be a minefield, and keeps going. I can’t help but think that there must be a way to support this kind of writer, or, at least, to talk about their work more clearly, without classifying it out of existence.

Though, of course, that might be just the point: if we do classify it, if we do have names for it, then it no longer exists in the same mind-scorchingly brilliant way.

In that case, let the Carsons be Carsons. We can, with them and through them, rejoice in their ability to let the unnameable go without name.

*That’s right, people. I did that IN FRENCH. Somewhere, Madame Lee is suddenly forgiving me for pronouncing English words in a French accent for years.
** I feel it’s only right for me to go ahead and say that I in no way excuse myself from this, as I’m as much a part of the sameness as anyone — I swoon over a couplet, I love a single-line stanza, I die for a transformational line break. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.***
*** That was Latin, which is also another language. THIS ENTRY IS HELLA DEEP, Y’ALL.
**** Here, too, I admit that I am complicit. I hesitate to say guilty, because I don’t think that “guilt” is an applicable term. “Prey to the zeitgeist,*****” maybe. But then again, is “prey” the right term? Or is this just the form thought is taking on the page, in the age of electronic information and publishing?
*****THAT WAS GERMAN. BOOM.
******There’s a link right there to the poem, posted on The Poetry Foundation’s website, because if you haven’t read it, you need to. Believe me. Just fasten your seat-belt and get ready.

March 24, 2013