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...

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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.

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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...

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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.

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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.

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

New Year's

Resolution season. There's the typical: weight (to gain it, in my case), exercise (ha!), read more, write more, work harder, like more people, drink more tea and less coffee, more time outside and less internet, more patience and less cynicism.

Looking back at 2011, I had a really good year. I read more translated poetry, saw more of the country, made more friends, began learning an instrument, and started this here blog.

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New Year's Eve always makes me a little sad.

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New issue of Devil's Lake is live! I'm particularly proud of this one. Some of my last editorial decisions as its poetry editor, a lot of work done from the editor-in-chief side of things. It's been awesome watching this journal grow over the last two years.

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Poet Lore asked me to write a blog post about "Shank," my poem they nominated for a Pushcart. Here's the link.

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.

Fragments

I've been revising a lot of poems from the October poem-a-day challenge and am starting to think about which ones to send out. It's been awhile since I've sat on this much new work. The other time was after I took Quan Barry's boot camp workshop. Looking back, those poems became the framework of the manuscript draft I've been sending out, so I'm hoping that this batch will prove to be the foundation of the next thing. After some revision, I like the new poems more than anything else I've written, and I think that's a positive trajectory.

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I've been sick all week. This coincided with the week of non-stop readings (I think there were a total of five this week) as well as twelve conferences in one day. Whatever I have is breaking but I feel so winded.

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Many thanks to the editors of New England Review and Colorado Review for taking a handful of poems. It was very humbling to get notes from C. Dale Young and Donald Revell, two poets I've admired for some time.

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Am preparing and sending out job and fellowship applications. Didn't I just do this? Not that long ago?

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Recall signature collecting begins in four days. Walker, start taking pictures of your office. You may want to remember what it was like to be the kingpin.

On Quitting & Pillow Cases

This past October, some poet friends (and friends of friends) and I have been partaking in a poem-a-day challenge. I just sent off my 31st poem! I've tried doing the April challenge a couple of times and I usually end up quitting just over the halfway point, so I'm glad I stuck with it. It was a good exercise, and although half of what I wrote was utter crap, the other half is pliable and something I can keep working with. Some of the better poems I wrote this past month were on the days I wanted to quit, and would've quit if I hadn't felt the responsibility to write something down, and that's a good lesson for me.

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Recently had some poems taken by the editors of Cream City Review and West Branch. Many thanks to them!

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Halloween is here, and it's one of my favorite holidays and it comes in one of my favorite months. I've always loved costume parties, and I've always geeked out by dressing  as superheroes. This year I wanted to go as Robin (as in Batman's sidekick), and I wanted to sew most of my costume myself. Here's a roundup of some superheroes I've been in the past, and this year's final product:

Batman, 2005. Made from heavy-duty trashbags and a mask found at Reny's

Superman, 2006. Made from clothes I already had

Robin, 2011. Made from compression cloth, spandex, pillow cases, dish washing gloves, and American Eagle underpants

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Brandon will be back in Madison in just over two weeks, and I couldn't be more excited.

Sending It Out

Coming Out

Below is a video of a gay man coming out to his dad over the phone:

I wish everyone who came out could have an experience like this one. Mine wasn't. It was Thanksgiving, 2008. I told my dad I was dating someone and that his name was Ryan. My dad moved to the other side of the couch and turned the television's volume up. Later that afternoon, when my baby cousin spit up over her mom, my dad nudged me and told me that I never did that because I was a swallower. I nudged him back and told him I still was.

Jokes aside, it was a solid two years before my relationship with my parents returned anywhere near a stable place. Since then, coming out has become easier, and is something I do all the time. Whenever I meet someone new, I feel the need to drop the word "boyfriend," to make a joke about being as queer as pink peanut butter, or to act more flamboyantly than what I'm predisposed to, just to signify to that new person who I am. 

In poetry, I find the need to come out constantly, too. Like the Beatles who claimed every song they wrote was a political song, I feel every poem I wrote is a queer poem. For a reader who didn't know me to assume that my work wasn't queer (as our culture teaches us to do) would be to bypass the reason that poem exists. A queer perspective is the center of every poem I write, whether or not that poem confronts love and sex. If I write about a house, it's queer because the domestic sphere is different in a queer poem. If I write about death, it's queer because community and religious rites associated with death are different.

I think poets face coming out often, and not just the queer ones. Most poets stay in the closet (when asked what they do, they answer, "I teach"). We squirrel away in our little communities, and for the most part are ignored by the rest of the world. It was awhile before I could adopt the word "poet" as an identity. Even now it sounds a bit pretentious, a bit turtle-necked and forty-year-old Merlot to me, but coming out as a poet is another thing I'm getting used to.