Nothing Collapses

There are a few poetry books I read annually, mostly out of nostalgia but also because I find something new to appreciate each time. Every fall, I read Robert Hass's Field Guide. Each winter, Brigit Pegeen Kelly's Song. Spring, Mark Doty's My Alexandria. And in the summer, I read Song of Myself. The last in particular is so vast, there's only so much one can  absorb on a first, second, or third reading. I've read it each year since 2007, and since Madison has recently been struck with summer-like weather, I'm picking it up again.

It amazes me that it was first published in 1855. It could have easily been published 100 years later. How can you not love a poem with lines as fierce as this: "All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, / And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier"?

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I found out earlier this month that I've been named a 2012-'14 Stegner fellow at Stanford. My mind is a bit blown and my immediate life plan has taken quite a shift. Brandon and I are now moving to the Bay area. I've never been to West coast, and aside from a summer I spent on a Navajo reservation in Arizona, Wisconsin is as far west as I've really explored. I feel very lucky and very grateful.

In other good news, my manuscript was a finalist in the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize. I'd been hoping my book would place as a finalist somewhere this year, if only as validation that it's on the right tack. Many congratulations to Will Schutt, this year's winner and whose work I admire greatly. I read his poem "Sussing out" for linebreak a few years ago.

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Mark Doty gave a reading last week here in Madison, which was such a treat. He's one of the most important living poets to me. I first read  "The Embrace" on the top floor of the UMF library in the fall of 2006, and it was the first poem I really loved, the first poem that made me want to write poetry, and also the final impetus for my coming out. If I may be so sentimental, I would say this poem saved my life.

Poetry Is Hard

Poetry's been hard lately. I'm sure that has something to do with the end of the semester, but it's no excuse. When I am able to write a poem, I feel good about the work, but my productivity is slowing down quite a bit, which feels like a standstill coming off poem-a-day October. Perhaps my creative well is waiting for rain.

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I finished grading my students' long poem. No one told me that by assigning a 10-page poem to 13 students that I'd have to read and comment on 130 pages of poetry in a week. But it hardly felt like work; my students this semester are so talented.

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There's been a call for submissions to send "G-rated" poems to an Eat Local, Read Local festival in Milwaukee. My students have asked me to read a poem of mine at the class reading which we'll have on our final day together. All this has brought to my attention that my poems which make some reference to sperm much outnumber the poems which do not make some reference to sperm.

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I found out that Poet Lore has nominated my poem "Shank" for a Pushcart Prize. I'm very humbled and honored. They have also asked me to write a post about the poem for their blog, which I'll link here when it goes live.

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Dear Blog, have I told you I decided not to apply for PhD programs this year? I have decided not to apply for PhD programs this year. My heart just wasn't in it. I'm not completely ruling it out in the future, but I know what sort of steam it takes to roll through a doctorate program, and I think I just need to want it more than I do right now. I sent off some fellowship applications, but in all likelihood, I'll be moving to Georgia, finding some work there, hopefully still writing poems on the side, living with Brandon, and petting his three cats, and that all sounds great to me.

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Also, Brandon and I celebrated our two year anniversary this past Thanksgiving. I'm a very lucky guy. The luckiest, I reckon.

Happy News

After two close calls with the Stadler Fellowship and the Colgate Olive B. O'Connor fellowship, I'm thrilled to announce that outside judge Max Garland (poet and fiction writer) has selected me to be the 2011-2012 Halls Emerging Artist Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. Next year, I'll be teaching a creative writing class each semester at UW-Madison, writing new poems for the next book (and probably more for the first), and hopefully paying off a bunch of student debt. I'm overjoyed and humbled, but my heart is a little heavy at the thought of being so far away from Brandon, who begins his PhD at the University of Georgia. I plan to visit as often as I can, particularly the winter months, and write many romantic postcards.