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"?

**

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.

**

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.

Revamp, Revamp

Once again, I'm revamping the manuscript. I thought I had been writing toward The Next Thing, but I've decided that all those poems were was actually still The Old Thing. I reread the manuscript after putting it away for three months and found four poems I wanted to cut, and I added 11 poems from the new set I'd been working on. So the book's longer now, which is fine, as it still only clocks in at 59 pages. I reordered it significantly, and retitled a lot of older poems to fit the newer poems. I feel good about it but it's still so new that I'm having a hard time looking at it objectively. Whenever I come across a new poem, I know it didn't used to be there so it feels very out of place even if it's not.

Sometimes I wish I could pay someone else could go through all my poems and find a manuscript. I've written about 250 poems for this book and have cut all but 53. Which is a good thing. But a different reader might have picked different poems, and I always wonder about some I've left behind.  I know, I know; if I didn't order it myself it wouldn't really be my book anymore...

**

I got a copy of the Naked Muse calendar in the mail a few weeks ago, and I love it so much (but not too much). A great project and a beautiful product.

**

One of my New Year's Resolutions was to do more urban homesteading, so I've been making more a lot of staples from scratch and trying to use less products that have ridiculous and terrifying ingredients. My first experiment was to make my own deodorant, using coconut oil, baking soda, cornstarch, vitamin E oil, and tea tree extract (as adapted from Bonzai Aphrodite). It works super well! No residue on my shirts, and I like the way it smells. Other items on the list: soy yogurt, lip balm, cologne...

**

As of yesterday, I've been a vegetarian for 5 years. Couldn't be happier about that. By this time next year, I intend to be vegan.

**

Life in Wisconsin this week (via Underground Weather): "feels like -13 degrees," "5-7 inches of snow accumulation," "bitterly cold," "ice pellets," etc., etc.

I somehow always forget how walking outside this time of year is like your face falling off.

** 

Speaking of Wisconsin: 1 million recall signatures were collected, twice more than were needed!

Sending It Out

Crush, Hack, Calendar, Frost

Another semester, and my ducklings seem particularly lovely and smart. I'm having them read Richard Siken's Crush this week as their first adventure into the long poem (which my class is themed around). As I teach them about the long poem, I find my own poems are growing smaller and sparser and quieter. I've been reading a lot of Octavio Paz and now I can't seem to stop writing about abandoned houses.

*

Hacked the manuscript up one more time. I'm making October 1st a hard deadline for sending it out. I have a list of ten or so open reading periods and competitions for this year, and I'm starting to have second thoughts. The more I read other first books (mainly, the more I reread Crush), the more I think maybe it's not ready yet.

*

Since everyone keeps on asking for my opinion on the MFA rankings (read sarcasm here), here it is: I found Seth Abramson's rankings on his blog to be invaluable when I began to think about MFA programs. Not the rankings or the vote system themselves per se (I didn't even apply to the Iowa workshop, which is the top ranked school), but just how much information (stipend, teaching load, size, etc) was compiled into one place made a huge impact on my decision. Calling the methodology into question isn't an unhealthy practice, but the attacks directed toward Seth and the staff of Poets & Writers I find to be troublesome and childish. Laura Eve Engel writes more elegantly and in-depth on this topic here, and I find her post to be one of the best I've read on the matter.

*

Some friends and I got to discussing who we'd want to be included in a poet bathing suit calendar. I'm making my wishlist.

*

The weather has dropped, and now's the season for many late night walks. There are herbs (dill, rosemary, thyme) drying over our windows, and pickles pickling in a crock. The forecast mentions frost and an alleviation of migraines. Everything, it seems, is preparing for winter.

Escaping the Pen

It's been nearly 3 weeks since my last entry! I'm headed down a slippery slope.

*

After a stint in Maine and a stint in Georgia, I'm back in Madison for awhile and have been working on my syllabus and manuscript pretty non-stop. I feel like there's a 2-3 poem gap in my current draft of my MSS (which is now well past its 20th and best rendition), and so I'm hoping to write toward these. The way it usually goes is I'll write 6 poems and half of them won't be any good and the other half might make it in. We'll see.

I met with some brilliant friends and we swapped manuscripts and gave each other feedback. They advised me to cut a few poems that I've known for awhile needed to go. I've been hesitant because just over a year ago I thought one of them was the best poem I had written to date. It seems strange to drop it from the book when other poems are staying that feel weaker to me but are more thematically aligned. Oh these tough decisions! My hope is that Andrew the Llama will be escaping his pen in a future poetry project, if not this one.

*

I reviewed Melissa Stein's Rough Honey over at Devil's Lake.

*

Lately I've been feeling this very intense urge to go on a trip of some kind, to see more of the country. I feel like I'm getting to that age where one starts to become too bogged down by responsibilities to just go. Twenty four, and I already feel trapped by adulthood. So I've started planning a tenting / road trip for the end of the school year when I move from Madison to Athens. Via the west coast. Stops include but are not limited to: the Tetons, Yellowstone, Cathedral Arch, Zion, Big Basin, hot springs, Spider Rock + Canyon de Chelley, and Big Burgess. 

*

In an hour, my friend Liam will be in Madison for a visit! We've been friends since I was a freshmen at UMaine-Farmington. Here's a picture of us cleaning our bathroom back in carefree days:

The Waiting

Earlier this year, I planned on spending the summer working on a new writing project, as summer begins to wind down, I ended up writing more poems for the first MSS and trying to get back into that headspace. It's been good. I've been adding new poems to the middle section, the one that to me feels the most lost. These poems don't "fit" thematically as cleanly as I would have allowed myself in earlier drafts. I'm hoping these poems will reach further, or take the reader to more unpredictable places, or mature the book as a whole (cue Jackie Wilson's "Your Love Keeps Lifting Me (Higher and Higher"). Who knows. It'll all be different in another few months. I'm trading manuscripts with some brilliant friends in a few weeks, and I'm looking forward to hearing what they think (but not as much as I'm looking forward to reading their manuscripts).

I'm also looking forward to the fall when all the journals and book competitions and reading periods open. And then the waiting, the dreaded waiting.

**

Brandon left for Georgia, and since, I've been trying to fill that part of the day I usually spent with him. I can usually keep myself busy to about 6pm, and then after that I start pacing or bugging my roommates to watch even more reruns of RuPaul's Drag Race or Arrested Development. I don't usually like watching TV but it makes the time go by faster. Part of me is excited to reconnect with people I haven't seen as much as I would've liked. And I'm hoping I'll read and write more and be even more productive (because reading and writing for 8 hours a day was child's play). Still, despite all this, I'll be glad when June comes and all of this separateness is over.

**