Asking the World for Money: Or, Poets as Orphans

45º ~ our highs won't get out of the 50s today ~ heat on briefly this morning, A/C on two days ago ~ bright sun today after the day and a half of rain & clouds ~ the world cleansed

What I've been doing this morning is probably my least favorite activity of being a poet, even beneath recording rejections.  Today, I've been working on a fellowship application; in other words, I'm about to ask the world for money to help support my art. 

This particular fellowship is open to writers of any genre and it has caused me to really think about the position of poets in practical terms.  For one thing, the application asks about advances received.  Ahem, Billy Collins, Rita Dove, etc., ...  probably not applying for this fellowship.  Still, the question applies for the prose writers out there applying.  For this question, I crafted an answer about why such a thing doesn't exist for most poets. 

In crafting that answer, I realized that in my day-to-day poetry life I am doing the work of both the artist and the agent.  "Well, duh!" you might say.  Of course, I've known this forever; however, today, I had to quantify what I do with my time.  Do you know how long it takes to submit one's work to publishers?  I spent four hours going through submission guidelines and preparing my manuscript/letter/check/SASE/etc. on Sunday.  On Monday, I spent 20 minutes at the Post Office getting the packets mailed out (including wait time in line).  Add to this the time spent sending out individual poems.  It adds up quickly. 

While I know that an agent isn't the 'magic bullet,' and I do acknowledge that prose writers have to court editors and research the market as well, not to mention going through the torturous process of landing an agent in the first place, I do think the poets are at a disadvantage here. 

Granted, no agent will work for free, and the whole system is based on advances and royalties, neither of which I know much about, unless you count the nominal prize attached with Blood Almanac's publication.  So, I'm not advocating to change the system, just to acknowledge it.

In the meantime, the application also asks for the normal stuff: bio, details of the work, financial situation & use of funds, reviews of past work, sample of current work, CV, etc. 

I've just spent a good half hour updating my CV.  Luckily, I do a pretty good job of keeping the list of publications up to date, as I've developed a habit of including updating my CV when I record acceptances and when the work is published; however, there are lots of things that have happened in the last six months that I hadn't included:  creating the Big Rock Reading Series, taking over managing editor duties for a student magazine on campus, reading here & there, etc.  Whew. 

Finally, there is the general sense of discomfort of blowing one's own horn that follows the whole process.  The application requires one to jump up and down, shouting "HERE I AM! HERE I AM! I AM WORTHY OF YOUR PATRONAGE! PLEASE, SIR, I WANT SOME MORE!" (Money that is, not porridge.) 

Mark Lester as Oliver Twist

This, my friends, is hard and perhaps harder for having to claim that what I do is worthy of financial support, which is not a message poets receive from the world that often. 

Improved Lighting Reading Series 10/22/11

48º ~ the left over residue of a dreary rain, but I found it lovely, the temperatures are courtesy of a cold front "sweeping in from the Canadian plains" (according to our local gurus)

Many thanks to Matt Henriksen for inviting me up to Fayetteville for a reading on Saturday and to Katy Henriksen for designing this beautiful poster.

Monday Bleck!

56º ~ reached the upper 80s yesterday and will do so again today, then Tuesday = a high of 65º, mercurial, temperamental, etc.

Dear Reader, this poet is empty.  I've got nothing today, nothing but a long to-do list at school and very little motivation.  Can we please rewind and have another Sunday?  I used mine up with grading and didn't get my day of rest.

To provide a little boost for me and a little reading material for you, I direct you to the new issue of the Valparaiso Poetry Review, available online.  In it, you will find a host of wonderful poets like Doug Ramspeck, Joannie Strangeland, Brian Simoneau, and others.  Along the way, there is the last of the saint poems:  "The Summer Saint."  I hope you enjoy it.

Until the next time...Bleck!

Draft Process: Long Sliding Toward Oblivion

52º ~ a squirrel with its jaws pried wide open around some treasure cautiously descends the tree in the neighbor's yard, bright morning sun begins to make its way over my shoulder, the revival of Wednesday's rain remains, no breeze to speak of

It's been a wild week with the death of Lou-Lou, the hosting of another successful reading for the Big Rock Reading Series, and the inevitable collection of papers to be graded.  This afternoon, there is an appointment at the auto-shop for the 60,000 mile maintenance & oil change on my Honda.

Still, I put my butt in the chair this morning.  Knowing that I might struggle I bit, I wanted the most help possible, so I returned to Lucie Brock-Broido's The Master Letters, a book which has been fruitful in suggesting titles, but which is also jam-packed with words that ricochet around my brain and make sparks.

Here's a picture of today's process.

I've really begun to like the idea of mapping as I go.  So that when two words wind up on the page together and suggest something (this is the hard part to explain), I circle them or draw arrows or lines & whatnot so I don't lose the energy of that combination as I continue to sink into the draft.   I included the book as well so you can see that I mark up the poetry I read.  In fact, the more marks the higher on my list of favorites. 

Today's draft "Long Sliding Toward Oblivion" gets its title from a line in Brock-Broido's poem "Into Those Great Countries of the Blue Sky of Which We Don't Know Anything."  It ended up being an epistolary poem to the sickly speaker's unnamed, female mentor (playing off Emily Dickinson's & Lucie Brock-Broido's letters to an unnamed 'master').  It begins:

Dear Madame—

There is news.  A range of mystics has arrived.

They shuffled me off to a sepia room,

a soft sieve for my fevered breath.

So, my speaker continues to suffer from fevers and weird sleep issues and her mentor continues to remain at a distance, leading to a bit of pleading in the tone.  

One cool thing that happened in the drafting was this.  I had gathered the word 'dormant' and then later the word 'rumor' and they landed near each other on the page of my journal.  Seeing them together I loved the idea of a 'dormant rumor' so I circled them.  The idea seemed to fit the sickly speaker whose illness remains a mystery to her and her doctors (as far as she knows...with a first-person point-of-view, we really don't know what the doctors know).  Then, Brock-Broido has a poem called "Rampion," and I had forgotten the definition of that, so I had to look it up.  It's a Eurasian plant with edible roots.  When I saw the phrase 'edible roots' in the definition, I grabbed that too, loving the sound of it and the feel of it on my tongue.  Seriously, say it out loud a few times.  Wonderful collection of vowels and the hard consonants of the 'd' in 'edible' and 't' in 'root.'  So, I wrote that in the journal and then *SMASH* I saw the two phrases come together so that the speaker says:

...I sup / on the edible root of a dormant rumor, 

Moments of making like this remind me that I love being a poet.  Silly, maybe, but there you go.

Quick Pic: BRRS Alison Pelegrin

62º ~ a bit more cloud-cover than usual, 30% chance of rain, running the sprinkler to guarantee it

I haven't received the official photos from last night's reading yet, but here are a few I snapped.  It was another great success, and I can't say enough about how wonderful Alison Pelegrin is as both a poet and a human being.  If you run a reading series, you should book her!  I know the Big Rock Reading Series is the better for having hosted her.

the crowd begins to form

photo by Tim Jones

Alison signs books for her adoring fans

my friends chat in the after

photo by Tim Jones

 Now it's off to school to start grading a new set of papers newly arrived in my inbox.  Ah, the life of a teaching poet.

Personal Poetry Updates

61º ~ sunrise on the east side of the house, still dawn on the west, predictions for beautiful fall weather (temps in the upper 70s) hold for the week

Amidst the turmoil of illness and the sadness of death (of our beloved cat, Lou-Lou), the world of poetry churns on.  Here are a few announcements.

I'll be reading in Fayetteville, AR on Saturday, 22 October, for the Improved Lighting Reading Series.  These readings take place at the fabulous Nightbird Books on Dickson Street.  We start at 7:30 that night, and I'm thrilled to be reading with Amanda Auchter, Tony Presley, and Mark Spitzer.

If you are in the area, please stop by.  There will be Earnestine giveaways of some sort.  :)

Having done my MFA at the U of Arkansas in Fayetteville, I'm super excited to be invited back to my favorite college town in one of its prettiest months.

~~~~~

Saturday, I received my contributor's copy for the latest South Dakota Review, which is under the new leadership of Lee Ann Roripaugh, the first woman editor and only the third editor in the history of this wonderful journal.

This issue is AMAZEBALLS and you must get a copy ASAP to read poems by Adam Clay, Mary Biddinger, Bruce Covey, Matt Mauch, Heidi Czerwiec, me, and so many more (not to mention the fiction and nonfiction, too!).  Also, I love the new larger format.  So weighty in the hands.

~~~~~

Tomorrow is our second event in the Big Rock Reading Series.  Wahoo.  I simply cannot wait for Alison Pelegrin to get to town and unleash her poetic powers on the PTC audience.  I'm not sure they know what's about to hit them.  If you are in the area, the reading starts at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday night.  All information here.

Alison is a good friend and an awesome poet.  She has two full-length collections from the University of Akron Press:  Big Muddy River of Stars and the HOT OFF THE PRESSES Hurricane Party.  I've read both and YOWZA.  Also, I definitely think Hurricane Party should win some kind of design award for this cover.  Spectacular.

~~~~~
In the meantime, I also received two out-of-the-blue emails from poets who had read my work in other journals and wanted to let me know what they'd enjoyed about the work.  I've written here before about my own mission to reach out to those writers whose work speaks to me whenever I'm reading a journal or book.  Being on the receiving end of such emails reminds me to double my effort in the future.  It really is spectacular. 


One of those sending an email is also an editor for a long-standing and extremely well-respected journal.  He asked me to send in some of my work.  As we all know, there is nothing guaranteed about this kind of solicitation, but I wanted to mention it here for those who wonder if this kind of thing really happens.  Yes, apparently it does.  Apparently it is true that editors read other journals and seek out the work of those writers they admire.  (I hear tell that if you write fiction, this sometimes applies to agents as well.)



So thank you to the two people who took the time to email me last week about my poems.  It was a hell week on a personal level, and those emails dropped into my inbox at the perfect time.

~~~~~

Until next time, friends and fans of the Kangaroo, be safe, be happy, be content.

What Loss Looks Like

62º ~ beautiful fall weather abounds, a lack of rain, dry weather predicted throughout the fall & winter, squirrels are squirreling & the light is slantwise

Our Lou-Lou lost her fight with myelofibrosis on Friday.  And so, yes, Dear Reader, we are without a cat in the house for the first time in over seven years.  It's a quiet, empty feeling.  Most of you may remember that Libby died in June from hydrothropic cardiomyopathy.  Both of these deaths were unpreventable and proved just how little we can control in this world.  While Libby was fairly young at seven and a half when she died, Lou-Lou's death was even harder to bear as she had just turned three in July.  Her disease, where the immune system turns on the bone marrow and the red blood cells, usually strikes in cats between kittenhood and three years old.

Perhaps I share too much; however, in the telling of the details there is a way through the sorrow (for me).  I know that others prefer to grieve in silence. 

Many thanks to all who sent condolences on Facebook.  As I said with Libby, I am surprised at how much those small words "So sorry for your loss" help ease the grief. 

Finally, here's a picture of the desk to show what loss looks like for me.

There has been a lot of tossing things on the desk at random: receipts, journals, money, bills, clothing, half-hearted to-do lists, etc.  Yesterday was spent in lethargic repose; today I have a bit more energy to tackle some of this. 

Knowing that the poetry is out there waiting to be read, waiting to be written, is perhaps one of the most helpful things of all.

Fingernails

47º ~ rumor of frost in the northern counties of the state, low 80s for the projected highs all week, delirious fall weather

Today's title references 'hanging on by one's' rather that some statement about fashion and polish.  It also references an emotional state of hanging on rather than one of being overwhelmed by physical tasks.  We just don't know what is going to happen with Lou-Lou's health and that is difficult to say the least.  All of this emotion for a cat, and I struggle to imagine the magnitude of emotion for a close friend or family member suffering serious health issues.  Yes, I have been so lucky in my 40 years on this planet, but I see that the suffering will arrive at some point or other.  This is what my cat has to teach me.

The opposite of what I mean!

~~~~~

In the meantime, I did get some submissions out the door yesterday, although I did not follow my wonderful, orderly process, as detailed here.  Instead, I haphazardly sent out to several places that have special calls for which my poems my be a fit.  I also chose to send two groups of poems to non-simultaneous submission journals (well, one asks that the write wait six weeks before sending on to other mags).  It's odd, that normally I feel constrained by the non-simul. sub. journals, but yesterday it helped me feel like I was making some small progress in the face of chaos.

Rest assured, I have not abandoned my process method or simultaneous subs (as I still believe in them the most).  I have a stack of poems waiting to be sorted and my spreadsheet printed and ready to go.

~~~~~

Finally, I have tried to skim the blogs and keep up as best I can, although I know I'm missing much.  I did catch on in the middle of a discussion about Annie Dillard's policy on seclusion.  Here is Shawn Smucker's original piece, citing Dillard's statement on her website.

I’m sorry. I’ve never promoted myself or my books, but I used to give two public readings a year.

Now I can no longer travel, can’t meet with strangers, can’t sign books but will sign labels with SASE, can’t write by request, and can’t answer letters. I’ve got to read and concentrate. Why? Beats me.

Apparently, this caused quite a lot of commenting and Dillard-bashing, leading Andi from Andilit.com to post this response.  My favorite part of Andi's post is this:

Plus, whose to say she isn’t helping us, her community of writers, with her very writing? Like Shawn, my favorite writing text is hers: The Writing Life. In those pages she has given me more wisdom than she could ever give in an email.

I completely agree and have no problem with Dillard's seclusion.  She is fortunate that her amazing writing talent has been recognized and celebrated to the point where she can choose seclusion.  And even if we aren't able to financially sustain ourselves on our writing alone, we can all probably take a lesson on turning off the noise for a bit.

However, on the flipside, I will say that I gain much from my internet community, and I love to talk with writers of all skill-levels.  These relationships nourish me and encourage me in times of doubt.  I hope to always be able to engage in those relationships, yet I recognize that when one rises to the level of superstar of Dillard's proportion, the requests for one's time might become burdensome.  I would hope, then, that my writing will provide its own dialogue with my readers as Dillard's does with me.

Here is one Dillard quote that lights the fire within:
"The secret of seeing is, then, the pearl of great price.  If I thought he could teach me to find it and keep it forever I would stagger barefoot across a hundred deserts after any lunatic at all."

That's what writing is for me, an attempt to discover the secret of seeing, a staggering after wisdom in whatever guise it chooses.

So be it.

Camille Dungy Reading: 3 Photos

72º ~ that wonderful October mellow sun, the air a bit too cool for all windows open

Many thanks to Camille Dungy for posting pictures from her trip to Little Rock in September, as my pictures from that night did not turn out.

The beautiful Camille Dungy with me.

Camille Dungy & my former PTC student, Toby Daughtery

Camille Dungy & my former AGS student, Jessica Otto, also a former student of CD

Draft Process: Small Forgotten Fevers

61º ~ bright autumnal sun shining on the slant, small breezes move the smaller branches

Dear Reader, today, I did not feel much poetry, but the old B-I-C (butt-in-chair) rule did not fail me.  I am uncertain of this draft, but I am happy to have written some few lines in the midst of stress and chaos. 

Sticking with my tried and true method of drafting since early August, I picked up the nearest text and began.  Today's draft is brought to you by work from the recent issue of Copper Nickel, one of my top 5 favorite lit mags in the whole wide world.

I word-gathered from work by Laura Eve Engel & Adam Peterson, Elizabeth Cheever, Zachary Sifuentes, Ann Fisher-Wirth, and A.E. Watkins.  At first, I thought I'd found a title/jumping off place when I matched two words in my journal: rivalry & miracles.  So I started trying to draft "A Rivalry of Miracles" and my sickly speaker remains, never fear.  However, after eight lines, I needed to use the phrase 'a rivalry of miracles' in the draft and I no longer felt like it served as well as a title, so I moved it.  Then, mid-draft, I was sort of stuck, so I went back to the poems and scanned for possible titles or guidance.  In A.E. Watkins' "from Allerton in Winter" section IV, I found "some forgotten fury."  I love the alliteration there, and as my sickly speaker always has a fever, I changed 'fury' to 'fever,' and thus today's draft:  "Some Forgotten Fever."  It begins:

Here the bed is made of iron,
flat & straight.  My cursive spine

breaks the line.  To sleep, I turn

Like the other poems in this series I've ended up writing, this draft is in couplets; however, there is much more enjambment going on here and the lines are shorter than before.  Perhaps my own sense of urgency is filtering through. 

In the meantime, I am wary of sticking with this process so long.  What say you: should I abandon the process of word gathering and stand on my own as it were?  Should I move on from this sickly speaker?  Or should I let it all ride and see where it takes me?

Status: PPD

61º ~ glorious weather after a high of 91º yesterday, a cold front arrived in the night and wiped the heat from our memories, all is sun and slight breeze and chill

Today's drafting process is postponed, or in the parlance of baseball, PPD.  Lou-Lou has had a bit of a crisis this past week and needs to have some treatments at the vet today.  All are hopeful because she has responded to her medications in the past and the docs have ruled out secondary infections and the like.  It looks like a change in the dosages and times per day they are given is in order.

from creativecommons.org ~ click for link

I shall return to the desk tomorrow with pen and journal and attempt a draft.

In the meantime, I've finally got a stack of poems ready to go out into the world and I haven't had a lick of time to do submissions in the entire month of September! Time to re-prioritize!

Photo Prompts

86º ~ yep, summer is back, going to be near 90º tomorrow, clear, clean skies, sparkling sun

Life is cluttered right now, but I try to keep my poet brain engaged by observing the world.  These images may become fodder for later work.  Here are two from yesterday.  Sorry about the size, no time to download and adjust.

surprise lilies are my favorite

this bee wanted to read from The Lorax at our Banned Books Week reading

Alison Pelegrin @ the Big Rock Reading Series

55º ~ looking like mostly blue skies today, with a high below 80º, then a warm-up predicted through the week, topping out at 88º forecasted

Draft Process: Before & After Photos

55º ~ it is hard to express the joy of these cooler mornings after a summer of endless, beating heat, cloudy today, foggy too, wonderful soaking rain last evening, replenishing us all

I was eager to return to the desk today, to set aside all the clutter and muck of day-to-day life and just be in a world of words and my imagination.  Of course, I'm not good at completely divorcing myself from my life (thus there is a bit of autobiography in nearly everything I write, but just a bit, don't be saying the speaker of my poems is me, please).  Therefore, today's draft continues with the sickly speaker and is informed both by my recent battle with sinus infection / head cold and Lou-Lou's seeming relapse that is puzzling the vets.  (Yes, that is plural.  There are three doctors on her case.  We are lucky!) 

Here is how I prepared to clear my mind, to make a path for poetry.

With the desk clear and Aaron Copland's Billy the Kid on the iTunes, I sat down with Camille Dungy's books.  I bought her two most recent volumes at the reading I attended: Suck on the Marrow (Red Hen Press) and Smith Blue (Southern Illinois University Press). 

I've really fallen in love with my current draft process.  Read and collect words haphazardly in the journal.  Read and collect lines that hint at titles that might work for my sickly speaker.  Let the title and the word bank coalesce into the beginning of a draft.  Knock on wood, it hasn't let me down yet.  Today, I added a new twist.  As I collected the words I started adding arrows and circling two words together that jumped out at me.  My journal page is a lovely mess.

I started with Dungy's Suck on the Marrow but put it aside as the subject matter is the terrible history of slavery and much of the language is so charged with that history that I was having trouble divorcing individual words of that charge.  This is not a slight on the book at all, and I look forward to reading it for its own sake very soon.  Smith Blue, while still quite political, is a book of conservation, recording what is being lost in our world due to climate change, war, and the other devastations we visit upon ourselves.

In fact, that word "devastation" is part of the line that led to the title of the poem.  I read the first few poems and gathered words at a furious pace.  Then, in the poem "Daisy Cutter," I found this line "You taught me devastation / ... ."  Dungy's sentence continues, but I was caught by just those four words and I made them the title of the draft: "You Taught Me Devastation."  It begins:

Madam, it is your skill set to which I cling.
Most ingloriously, I confess.

Again, the poem is drafted in couplets.  They seem to fit this speaker's voice so perfectly.  I hope I'm not missing an opportunity by sticking with them so much, but time will tell.  This speaker is a bit disjointed and abrupt.  She makes associative leaps, and the brevity of couplets works for that.

So, this is what the desk looks like after the process is over and the draft as a whole has been printed.  Yes, Lou-Lou insisted on "helping" me from start to finish today, although now that the process is over, she has disappeared.  Muse anyone?

As always, thanks for reading.  Knowing someone is out there, wondering if I drafted on Friday, helps. 

Reading Attended: Camille Dungy at the Central Arkansas Library System

62º ~ sound the bells, it's foggy out there friends and fans of the weather, we're on the cusp of fall & temperatures are finally stabilizing into a more comfortable pattern

Life has been fast and furious and a bit stressful these days.  Lots and lots going on with school and I received papers from all of my students on Monday.  In the meantime, Lou-Lou's blood work is not good and we continue to go through testing to find a better approach to her treatment.  My own health is nearly back to normal after a three-week stint of sinus infection / serious head & chest cold.  All of this is not to whine but to set the scene. 

There were three or four literary events in central Arkansas last night.  I'm not sure why this happens but it seems to happen at least once a semester when people at different institutions all decide one day is the perfect day for their reading/performance.  I had narrowed my choices to Kevin Brockmeier reading just down the street at UALR or Camille Dungy reading downtown.  Then, all of this other stuff seemed to get in the way and I was ready to say 'uncle' and just sit on the couch.  Somehow, I rallied in the afternoon and made my decision.  I am soooooooo glad I did, as the night uplifted me and energized me in a way that only literature can.

I chose to attend Camille Dungy's reading in part because I've seen Kevin read several times and I know I'll have other chances to hear him because he lives here in Little Rock.  If he ever comes to a town near you, do yourself a favor and go hear him.  He's an amazing fiction writer and a great reader.

Wish my author photo was this glam!

I had heard Dungy read at AWP as part of a panel in the past, so I knew I was in for a great night.  Dungy came to Little Rock as part of the Poets House "Language of Conservation" program.  We were so lucky to have our zoo chosen as one of five across the country to be funded for poetry installations (Joseph Bruchac was our curator for the project and each poet-curator traveled to the other cities to give readings at the various libraries).  While Dungy is the author of three books of her own poetry, she is also the editor of Black Nature, an anthology of poetry that explores nature writing by African-American poets.

I loved Dungy's set list.  She began with a poem from her first book What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison (which just may be the best damn title ever).  Then she read a few poems from the anthology: Lucille Clifton (may she rest in peace), Ishmael Reed, Marylin Nelson.  Then, a few poems from Dungy's most recent collection Smith Blue, an amazing book from Southern Illinois University Press, one of my all-time favorite poetry publishers:  "The Blue," "On the Rocks," and "On Ice."  Then back to the anthology:  George Marion McClellan and Arna Bontemps, two poets new to me whom I plan to find out more about, especially Bontemps.  On to Dungy's own Suck on the Marrow (she is awesome at book titles!) for "Aspire" and "Survival."  Then the anthology for Robert Haydn (favorite!!!), Gerald Barrax, Sr. and Anne Spencer, another I really need to find out more about.  Dungy concluded with two of her own poems "What a Snakehead Discovered in a Maryland Pond and a Poet in Corporate American Have in Common" and "How She Keeps Faith."

Yes, I was scribbling furiously to get this all down, but I was able to stop and absorb the poetry, too.  Dungy is an AMAZING reader.  She gives each word its due.  No rush, no fuss.  Pure love of language embodied at the podium. 

I found myself intrigued by her comments regarding black nature poetry.  She pointed out that for African Americans, a relationship with nature is not one of the Romantic ideal.  It involves a tie to having once been considered property and a part of nature itself.  It involves a tie to toil.  That was the word she used, 'toil.'  And this set me to thinking about my own relationship to nature in my work.  As a lot of my poetry is based in the landscape of the rural Midwest and the agriculture that includes, I realized that the word 'toil' rang true for me as well, although certainly not to the extent of an African-American history with slavery.  Still, when you grow up around working farmers, there is a love of the land and a respect for the natural world, at the same time one is fighting against the elements as well. 

I also loved what Dungy had to say about being a nature writer.  She said that to do so one has to observe closely, that it is a matter of what we look at and how we look.  So, when she was on a cruise in the Antarctic to mark her father's retirement, Dungy watched and watched and wrote observations of everything.  She was able to see that this land of ice of "millennia on millennia of cold" was melting.  She was able to see that the penguins in Antarctica were being plagued by ticks that should have died off due to cold but were now thriving in warmer temperatures.  Then, she was able to take all of the political and emotional importance of those observations and weave it into her poems.


I'm still stunned.  


Here is the beginning of "Survival" from Suck on the Marrow (Red Hen Press, 2010)

The body winnows.  The body tills.  The body knows

sow's feet, sow gut, night harvested kale.  The body knows

to sleep through welted dreams, to wake

before the night succumbs to morning.

If you don't own one of Dungy's books, then go out and remedy that as soon as you have enough change in the cookie jar to do so!


Finally, I was so happy to see two former students in the audience, both of whom attended the Big Rock Reading Series last week.  Talk about growing a community!  Jessica Otto was once a student of mine at the Arkansas Governor's School back in the day.  Toby Daughtery was a more recent student of mine at PTC and I've written about his inspirational story before.  I was so happy to see them both in the room!  (Sorry y'all, the pics we took didn't work out.  Next time!)


Many, many thanks to Camille Dungy for coming to Little Rock and sharing her work.  Her reading was just what this weary soul needed.