Opening Day

Best tip on learning how to deal with rejection: become a Cubs fan. I've mentioned this several times in the last year, but being a Cubs fan is a sure way to become accustomed to the ups and downs of sending work out for publication.

Today was Opening Day at Wrigley Field: Cubs v. Brewers. It was a brilliant game through the 8th. We went into the 9th 0-0, where we promptly gave up 3 runs. Sinking low, beginning to despair, until, what's that, a rally, a tie 3-3 at the end of the 9th. A quick run by the Brewers in the top of the 10th doused the momentary rush of glee. Alas, we lost.

Still, I'm glad it's baseball season again. Every day is a new chance to win, and today, I did have a win. Marck Beggs accepted two poems for the next volume of the Arkansas Literary Forum. Thanks to Marck for the support and for the publication in support of Arkansas writers. Check it out, and get ready for the chance to play again tomorrow.

Thank You SIUC

Just arrived home from my trip to Southern Illinois University Carbondale, which was spectacular on all counts. The lovely Allison Joseph invited me to be this year's judge for the Roxana Rivera Memorial Poetry Contest, sponsored by SIUC's Creative Writing and Women's Studies Programs. The contest included entries from both undergraduates and graduates at SIUC, and I have to say making a final decision was made difficult by the number of strong entries. Congratulations to all the winners!

Both Allison and Jon Tribble excel at hosting, making me feel at home the moment I arrived. Many thanks to Jon for rescuing me from the Google Map directions, which had me exiting at Lick Creek and traversing the back-country hills for about 20-minutes before I broke down and dialed for help.

Thanks to all of the students, faculty, and staff who showed up for the ceremony and reading! I was glad to have met the wonderful poet Judy Jordan and fiction writer Jacinda Townsend, as well as students, Krishna Pattisapu, Amie Whittemore, and Travis Mossotti. I also got to reconnect with students Jason Lee Brown and Andy McFadyen-Ketchum, both of whom I met at AWP Atlanta.

All in all, this was one of the best trips I've made for the poetry side of my life. Thank to you all!

New Poem Available Online

Hey all, check out the latest issue of The Dirty Napkin. I've got a new poem there; the poem was written in an assignment exchange with poet-friend Angie Macri, so some thanks belong to her. Each issue features a picture of one of the poems written out by the author on a napkin of their choosing. This serves as the cover art, which I think is kind of cool. Check out 1.1's cover of Jane Mead's poem if you get the chance. As for my poem, "On the Fabric of the Human Body," it looks like you will need to subscribe to hear the audio.

We're in the midst of a major remodeling project, so not as much writing going on as I'd have liked. Still, the break is definitely a necessary thing.

What I'm Reading: Poetry March 2008

Spring Break! Finally a bit of time to sit and read, sit and think, sit and write. The first thing I grabbed this morning was the March 2008 issue of Poetry. I cracked the beautiful spine and began with the first poem "Nights on Planet Earth" by Campbell McGrath. McGrath is a poet I've struggled with in the past. Often, there are poets others are enthusiastic whose poetry I cannot get into. So, I was surprised today, when I immediately fell in love with this 3-part poem. Then, to my surprise, the magazine followed up with a mini-Q&A with the poet about the poem. While the poem stands alone, and I admired it before I read McGrath's comments on it, the comments were insightful and illuminating, opening the poem up again in a different light.

I glanced through the rest of the issue, and it turned out, there is a Q & A with each poet. Nice.

This journal is usually hit or miss for me, but I always find one or two poems that I feel justify the reading of each issue. In this case, many of the poems were hits for me, and I'm so glad to have the time to enjoy them.

Reality Check

Well, I intended this blog to be about the world of contemporary poetry and the writing life. Here is a reality check. Sometimes there isn't any time to write. Teaching at a community college means a load of 5 classes per semester and most of those classes are composition classes with a few lits thrown in. For those of you who don't know, comp classes are grading intensive. For example, I spent 10 hours of my weekend grading papers. Little chance of writing there.

If you want to write and think that teaching is the way to go, understand this: unless you have a tenure-track job in an MFA/PhD program where you teach 2/2 or 3/3, you might not get the kind of writing time you are looking for until the summer.

Off-topic reality check: today is the end of year 5 in the Iraq War, beginning of year 6. By all accounts the number of soldiers killed in the war will reach 4,000 within the next days/weeks. When I began training to teach, I never would have predicted that I'd be in the position to have a former student killed in combat in a protracted war. It hasn't happened yet, but the odds of it not happening at all aren't looking very good.

UCA ArkaText

I've just returned from my appearance at the University of Central Arkansas and want to say a big thanks to Terry Wright, the Department of Writing, and all the students and faculty who attended my events.

The connection to the audience is one of the most important things for me, and being able to give a reading and just talk with others interested in poetry, gives me such a boost. Everyone was warm and welcoming and gracious to a fault, even when I flubbed the name of the department. What more could a writer ask?

Expertise

Well, we had a snow day Friday, and I promptly fell victim to the cold my husband has been fighting for the past week. I spent Saturday/Sunday sleeping, for the most part. I apologize for the lapse!

My appearance at UCA has been rescheduled for this Thursday, 3/13/08, which makes me happy. I really do love getting out and talking to other writers/readers.

On NPR this afternoon, during a discussion of the current candidates for the presidency, one of the guests talked about expertise, given how much air time the topic is getting for the candidates. This is what stuck with me. He cited several studies that apparently show that it takes ten years to acquire any kind of expertise in say chess, baseball, etc. Two things came to mind at almost the same time: teaching and writing. I've been teaching since the fall of 1999, and I think the 10-year rule is bearing itself out there for sure. In fact, it might be more like 20 for me. I'm only beginning to feel sturdy in my approach to teaching composition, lit, and creative writing.

Writing is a bit more difficult to age. I've been writing my whole life, so do I just count the years since my MFA program? Probably. It's when I learned how to make writing a serious part of my life and to pursue publication. Does having published a book make me an expert? I'm not so sure of that, either. It certainly has taught me a lot about perseverance and the business side of writing; however, every time I sit down to start a new poem, I sometimes think I'm starting from scratch with the blank page.

For Every 20 Rejections

there is one acceptance. Today's came from diode, a newish online journal that will be publishing my poem "What Makes the Body Universal" in May. The editor, Patty Paine, said some really nice things in her email, which always adds extra delight to the news.

Whee! Discoveries on the Web

Two websites you must all visit at once. We demand it.

Megan Chapman is an amazing up and coming painter whose work can be found around Arkansas and elsewhere. She is sister to my Mac Guru, Sean Chapman, a family of the finest stock. Here is her newly updated website. Visit often. Buy art.

Thanks to The Southeast Review's interview with poet Erin Murphy, I've just discovered FreeRice.com. This website donates grains of rice to the UN World Food Program to end hunger for every definition you answer correctly. It's addicting. Click often. (The rice is paid for by the advertisers at the bottom of the page. The program is run by a non-profit.) Go literacy! Go rice!

Tomorrow, taxes!

Horizons

I have some exciting ventures on the horizon that I'd like to share. Sharing good news makes me happy and helps keep me moving when the bad news (rejections) come rolling in.

Venture One: Next week, Friday, 7 March, I'll be driving on down the road to Conway to participate in UCA's annual literary festival, ArkaText. I'll be the featured poet on Friday. Each year, UCA brings in three writers with Arkansas ties: a fiction writer, an essay/non-fiction writer, and a poet. Each visits the campus on a different day of the festival. I'll be giving a "craft lecture" as well as a reading from my work. I'm looking forward to it!

Venture Two: Andy McFadyen-Ketchum, grad student at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and creator of Poem of the Week, has asked to feature my work in an upcoming posting. He just sent me the interview questions, and I can't wait to delve into them. The questions are insightful and pointed, focusing on the three poems he's chosen to use in the posting. I'll keep you updated on this, but you should check out the site ASAP.

Venture Three: In about a month, I'll be judging the Roxana Rivera Memorial Poetry Contest at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Aside from judging both undergraduate and graduate entries, I also get to visit SIUC and read alongside the winners! I am a huge fan of the faculty at SIUC: Allison Joseph, Rodney Jones, and Judy Jordan. Since this trip will coincide with my spring break from PTC, it couldn't have worked out any better.

In the meantime, there is surely a poem waiting to be written in the pages of my new notebook. I finished the last one on Monday. It's always fun to start again ~ all those blank pages of possibility!

In the Mail

Happy Friday! I came home to find, stuffed precariously in my mailbox, my contributor's copy of the new Quarterly West, featuring my poem "Of Mortal Men and Women."

This is one of those milestones for me. I have always admired this magazine, and when I look at my file folder, I see that I've been submitting once or twice a year since May of 2002! I am awed to be published alongside Gregory Orr, Donald Revell, Brenda Shaughnessy, and others, including my fellow Anhingan, Joshua Poteat. If you haven't checked out his work, I highly recommend it. I haven't fully read the issue, but from my first skimming, it seems to be stellar. A shout out to Stacy Kidd, who was at Fayetteville with me and is now a co-Poetry Editor at QW, as well as being a stupendous poet herself.

The issue is beautiful and smells of fresh ink on good paper.

Speed of Light

Wow! A whole week slipped away from me. I hope a few of you are still out there. Life has been quite full lately. We've had several good friends experience the loss of beloved family members (Condolences, friends) and good friends experience the joy of a new baby (Happy BIRTH day, Rome!). We've traveled to celebrate a good friend's bowling birthday (Cheers, Anne!), and now I'm grading as fast as I can.

In the midst of all of that the writing world goes on. I try to read Poetry Daily and Verse Daily to keep my foot in the door, and already the tower of books to be read over the summer is building itself Lego fashion on my desk. I feel like my niece counting the days until Christmas, as I count the remaining weeks in the semester. This will be the first summer of my life, ever, as in since I was 11 years old, when I have not had a "paying job." I will be able to devote 10 full weeks to writing. Yes!

These days I am surprising myself. After a friend challenged me to write a triolet, I seem to have become addicted to them. Me, writing in form! I hardly know if I'm doing it well because I'm not a formal poet. Time will tell. I do think that the shortness of the form and the ability to repeat lines fits with my franticly paced life. I'll let you know if anything ever comes of them.

Yesterday, I had the delightful experience of recording the poem that will be in The Dirty Napkin. (See last post.) Jeremy C. Ellis, managing editor, was great at the technology and the whole thing was over in a matter of minutes. Again, watch for a post in March for when the issue comes out and you, too, can hear me reading "On the Fabric of the Human Body."

Until then, anyone know a good way to cram more minutes into the few hours of daylight left today?

Happy Email

Check out this new online magazine, The Dirty Napkin. The editors have just accepted one of my newer poems for publication in 1.2, coming out 20 March 2008. Hopefully, you will also be able to hear an audio clip of me reading the poem. I'll keep you all posted.

Sweat

I've done it. I've just submitted my application for the NEA. They changed their system this year so that the entire process is done online, using Adobe. Last weekend I had a meltdown because the whole process seemed so overwhelming. Today, it went more smoothly than I could have hoped; however, like filing taxes online, you do have to sweat the small stuff...down to an exact system for naming the files.

Kudos again to my Mac Guru, Sean Chapman, who pointed out the button for converting Word files to PDFs (as required by grants.gov, the website handling the submissions). So much easier than I imagined.

Two things were different this time around. One, I didn't have to submit the 20 journal publications, much thanks to Blood Almanac and Anhinga Press. (Although, it is much easier now. You don't have to copy anything, just create a list of publications. It's basically an honor system with a stern warning not to cheat.) Two, I have been submitting applications to summer residencies, which require a 10-page manuscript, so I already had the poems mostly selected and didn't fret over them too much.

Grants.gov has confirmed that I sent the whole thing correctly. Now, I wait for an email saying the NEA has gotten it and it checks out. One reason to submit early--if there is an error in your file(s), and you submitted before the March 3 deadline, they will apparently tell you and you have time to fix and resubmit.

Exhausted and off to nap.

Sweet Congratulations, TARA BRAY!

I am truly pleased to announce the fact that my good friend Tara Bray has won this year's Lexi Rudnitsky Poetry Prize!!!!! The book is announced as What Comes, What Goes, but will appear from Persea Books under the title Mistaken for Song. Please watch for it next year. Don't worry. I'll keep you all posted.

Tara is one of the hardest working poets I know, and it shows in her work. Her images constantly have me falling backwards into the chair, bowled over by their beauty. Cheers, Tara!