Teaching Persona Poetry: Our Big Questions & First Set of Prompts

66º ~ and all the sun

This semester, I'm teaching a topics class on the persona poem, and as I mentioned in a previous post I'm approaching the semester by offering my big-picture questions about persona poetry to the class and gathering theirs as well. In a minute, I'll share that list, as we've now completed three class periods and are moving into the deeper waters of working toward answers. I'll also share the first set of writing prompts I created based on today's reading, which centered on historical personae. But first, I thought I'd share a clip from the syllabus.

**HUGE Shout-out to the students in this class, who are rocking it so far!

Instructor’s Description:

An elective for Creative Writing majors and minors, as well as MFA graduate students, this course will explore the contemporary use of persona as a poetic device. Reading largely from A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry, edited by Oliver de la Paz and Stacey Lynn Brown (Akron, 2012), students will delve into the many ways poets use persona today, whether tapping historical and literary allusions, playing with popular culture references, raising political awareness, or branching into the unknown with characters created out of whole cloth. Students will read to discover how masking one’s personal identity offers new opportunities of expression and the class will discuss the risks and responsibilities of the form. Along with readings from the anthology, each student will select a poet working in persona from the last two decades and make a presentation to the class on that poets’ work.

Key to the course, students will be expected to experiment in the form itself by writing their own persona poetry for workshop. Students will draft poems from prompts and free writes, working both inside and outside of class, with instructor mentoring and peer response. At the end of the semester, the class will form their own chapbook anthology of student persona poems.

*The most successful students in this course are enthusiastic, curious, and open-minded.

Our Big Questions

Why did the poet choose persona?

How much can we know about where the poet blends with the character?

Is there any danger in the poet straying from fact, presenting misinformation or otherwise slanting the poem?

What is the poet’s responsibility to TRUTH?

What is the range of distance between the poet and the persona? How do the decisions about distance made by the poet help or hinder EMPATHY?

What is the poet’s responsibility to the persona?

Does it always have to be in 1^st person?

Can you really extricate the poet from the persona?

To what degree when using persona does the poet manipulate the audience?

What can a writer do to better put themselves in their character’s shoes?

The subject can be a person or a thing…can it be an abstraction?

What benefits are there for the audience by not viewing the persona as the poet?

What benefits are there for the poet by writing in persona?

Stay in your lane: To what level is writing about other cultures / experiences appropriate?

When writing a poem, the poet might ask “is it necessary?” where the “it” could be genre, form, persona, etc.

Does it matter if we know the poet is from a different ethnicity, gender, geographic region, etc. from the persona?

What is political about the poem? Is the political view of the persona accepted or rejected by society (or some segment of society)?

How much common knowledge (or not so common) does the audience have to know in order to “get” the poem?

How much does the audience have to research to “get” the poem?

How much does the poet owe to any known historical truth about a persona or an event?

Prompts:

Google phrases like “old photographs” “Arkansas historical society” “old family photos” and click on “Images.” If you have a specific time period in mind, you can also search “photographs 1920s Paris” or the like and find something more specific. Pick a person in one of the images and create a poem from their point of view. Incorporate research about the place and time if necessary.

Write a dream/nightmare of an historical persona that incorporates some artifact from that time period.

Take a well-known historical event and retell the account from the point of view of a minor character/participant. How would the telling change from this person’s point of view?

Read the writing (preferably diaries and letters) of an historical figure. Tell about a minor moment in that figure’s life and incorporate some of their own language.

Research an occupation that no longer exists and write about that job from the worker’s point of view.

Write from the point of view of one of your ancestors based on family stories you’ve heard.

On Entering the Arena

44º ~ brilliant slanting sun, some cloud cover moving in, the hours of light are lengthening, campus is crawling with all manner of folks

Tonight, dear readers, I will teach my first "live" graduate workshop in poetry. I write "live" to distinguish this from my teaching online for the University of Arkansas Monticello for several semesters. While that job offered me a great chance to get my feet wet with teaching at the graduate level, I confess, I'm thrilled to be now engaging with grad students face to face.

As I crossed campus earlier, taking a mid-afternoon break from my prepping for tonight's class, I turned all golden with nostalgia as I remembered my first workshop as a grad student. I was, then, wired with a combination of excitement and trepidation, and what I remember most is that very little of what I thought might happen in that room actually happened. Some of what happened was great; some of it horrendous, and in preparing for tonight's class, I've thought a lot about what worked best for me as a student and what I would have liked to have seen done differently. I've thought about different learning styles and different personality types and how the leader of the workshop might attempt to offer something to everyone. I've thought a lot about balancing the excitement and the trepidation that I seem to be feeling all over again.

True story: At some point near the library, I stopped mid-step as I realized that it was another century when I was a graduate student. Ok, just barely, as I entered grad school in the fall of 1999, but still.

Returning to 2016, here's a glimpse at the agenda for tonight.

**Introductions:
The UCA Arkansas Writer's MFA Program is a small (18 students total at the moment, I think) 3-year program that is only in its 4th year. As such, most all of the grad students know each other on some level, and many of the 2nd- and 3rd- years have had overlapping classes. I'm the new kid, since I only started at UCA this past fall, and I didn't teach any grad classes last semester.

With this being said, we are going to do the typical introductions and exchange our set of writers who take the tops of our heads off. There's really no better way to get to know a writer than to talk about who they read (and idolize).

**The Syllabus:
Chaucer writes, "The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne."

Perhaps my biggest point here will be that the class is one of exploration and that I am more interested in the students' questions and poetry obsessions than in my own. We will read as well as write/workshop, and we are using Cate Marvin and Michael Dumanis' Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century (Sarabande) and Dean Young's The Art of Recklessness (Graywolf) to kickstart the semester. (Hat tip to Molly Spencer for recommending the anthology and who might, through her own reading/posting, have introduced me to the Graywolf series as well.)

My second biggest point here will be that I believe in careful attention to craft and that revision likely plays a big part in that. In other words, I'm going to push back against the rush to publish, even as we talk about current issues in the publishing world.

**What is Poetry?
This question might seem basic and simple, but it really isn't.

One thing I lacked as a grad student was a good picture of the history of Western poetry, so I'm going to start with a brief, very brief timeline from Aristotle to today. Most likely, this will be old hat to my students and they will probably yawn. So be it.

Then, I've designed a little worksheet (egads!) and will ask students to rank which poetic elements (e.g. sense, diction, sound, form, lines, &etc.) rise to the top for them as readers (i.e. which of these elements seem to make a poem STICK with them after reading a poem). From this, I hope we will have a freewheeling discussion about the craft elements that make up "poetry" today.

**Assignments:
We are heavy with reading assignments at the beginning, and I'll give my spiel about "reading like a writer" (annotating to excavate craft lessons) and the value of sticking with readings that don't particularly set one's hair on fire.

We will also create a class anthology next time, so each student will be bringing 3 poems published by others that do set their hair on fire. Students will bring enough copies for the class and we'll go old school with a stapler to create our own supplemental textbook.

And, I'll send them off to write, write, write.

~~~~~~~

That's the plan. However, anyone who has taught even one class, be it in academic, at the local community center, or in church/temple/mosque, knows that plans have a funny way of morphing in the moment. I'll keep y'all posted.

Also to look forward to, I'm hoping to post after this week's Persona classes with an update on our class' big-picture questions on the topic.

And, I'll be starting to polish up poems to send out for submission this week, so there's another possible update to come, time allowing. (I've posted a lot in the past about sending out work, so feel free to use the search tool at the top to find out my process if interested. The technology may change, but the method stays mostly the same.)

A Semester in Preview

36º ~ winter settling in to the mid-south, still much remains green and the sun is vibrant, electric heater on my toes, dusk seeping in


As promised, following my last post, I'm here to give folks a glimpse of what's ahead this semester. By all accounts, Spring 2016 is shaping up to be a good degree calmer than Fall 2015 (knock wood).

To begin, I have no readings scheduled for the spring semester, and I'm okay with that. My only travel looks to be attending AWP in LA at the end of March - early April. While I will miss having the chance to read my work and meet new people at individual readings, AWP packs a big enough wallop to cover all of that.

My teaching schedule is stellar! I will be teaching one section each of Intro to Creative Writing (mixed-genre, 20 undergrads), Special Topics: Persona Poetry (combined lecture, discussion, workshop; mixed undergrads and graduate students), and Advanced Poetry Workshop (graduate students). I'll have one night class and one class each on MWF and TR. This magic is made possible due to a one-semester, one-course reduction for pre-tenure publication efforts. Submitting work really suffered in the chaos of Fall 2015, so I'm super excited to get back to focusing on getting my poems out there. I'm also looking forward to more concentrated writing time and hope to continue the buddy system with my colleague and friend, Jennie Case.

As I prepare for classes to begin on Thursday, I'm fine-tuning my approach to Intro and setting some new goals for how I'd like the class to unfold. After 10 years teaching at the first- and second-year level, I'm heading into the topics class and the workshop with equal parts excitement and uncertainty. Uncertainty is not necessarily a bad thing; it's simply been a long, long time since I've built a new-to-me, on-campus course from scratch. I'm thankful for my few semesters teaching in the online MFA program at the University of Arkansas Monticello, as I'm going back to those files to help me frame how I'll approach my new courses at UCA. As always, regarding assignments and readings, I fear that my eyeballs will be bigger than my stomach (or my students' stomachs), as my mom often said of me at family gatherings where I heaped far too much food on my plate.

I'm also headed into this semester thinking, again, of the instructors who taught me the most. Frankly, aside from one professor in graduate school, the ones I think of most often taught me in my undergraduate days at the College of St. Benedict / St. John's University. These standouts all had one thing in common: a sense of shared wonder & curiosity about the subject matter at hand, rather than a need to be "right." Yes, I want to be seen as knowledgable and as a resource for my students, but I'm not in academia to proclaim resolutions and chisel theory in stone. I'm in academia because I was born a life-long learner & maker and I don't see that quest diminishing anytime soon. I also know that the best classes I experienced as a student at any level provided a balance of structure and room for student-driven inquiry. Preparing for new classes allows me to rethink my pedagogy on many levels, and that's another reason to be thankful.

Outside of the classroom, I'm feeling optimistic as well. For the moment, my TMJ seems to be on the way to healing, and I'm off muscle relaxers entirely. It's been quite jarring to realize exactly how foggy I'd become. Also, not having to spend so many hours in doctors's offices is going to be a delight (again, knock wood).

I'll continue co-editing Heron Tree, reading for One and Trio House, all of which allows me front-row interaction with my fellow contemporary poets. My biggest goal is to make Monday my blogging day. Sure, I always hope to blog more than once per week, but I'll be thrilled if I can make weekly reports a pattern.

As ever, the entrance to a new semester fills me with much the same elation as New Year's Eve, which evokes Samuel Beckett from Worstward Ho: "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

A Semester in Review

38º ~ bright sun, the first "chilly" weather of the winter, sweet gum and hackberry leaves all fallen, gathered on the grass and waiting for the rake


Fall 2015, my first semester on the tenure track at the University of Central Arkansas is in the books, and it was a doozy. In no particular order, I list below some of what has occupied me.

* Two sections of Intro to College Writing (Comp I): This was my standard course at PTC for ten years and for the most part my materials transferred well. While my heart really belongs to creative writing, and I probably won't be teaching composition again, it was wonderful to transition to UCA with these bright and energetic students following along to a plan I knew by heart.

* Two sections of Intro to Creative Writing (three genres): Again, I'd taught this course many times at PTC, but with only two genres. I also switched from a Tuesday/Thursday plan to teaching on Monday/Wednesday/Friday. My students were engaged and engaging and quite resilient as I fumbled a bit at the beginning of the semester to get my UCA legs under me. I'll be teaching this course nearly every semester at UCA and I'm looking forward to having the time to really fine-tune my approach.

* Two visiting writers (Dinty W. Moore and Cristina Garcia), both of whom held three events (one public reading, one craft talk, one interview or workshop).

* 24 meetings (one hour minimum) with my colleagues in the Writing Department, the undergraduate Creative Writing Program, and the MFA Program. To be fair to UCA, there's a lot going on and some major changes coming our way that include strategic re-alignment of departments, accreditation reports/visits, and growing the nascent MFA program.

* Three all-day training sessions in August.

* Five mini-training sessions throughout the semester to get up to speed on the UCA systems.

* A half a dozen dinners / receptions / parties involving many colleagues / grad students or just a few.

* Seven readings to support The Alchemy of My Mortal Form (four out of town: Tennessee on two occasions and Illinois on the other two) and one conference presentation (Missouri).

* At least 90 minutes each week (minus the last couple) sharing writing time with one of my also-new colleagues, Jennie Case, who works in both poetry and creative non-fiction. If I publish anything in the next six months, it's because she helped keep my BIC (butt in chair).

* 10 new drafts of poems, of which I think maybe five will survive into full poemhood.

* Five journals accepted poems, most of which were written in 2014 or early 2015.

* Continued editorial work for Heron Tree, One, and Trio House Press.

* Nowhere near enough reading of journals and books of poetry.

* Too many hours to count in physical therapy and doctors' offices as my TMJ progressed to the point of living with daily pain from the beginning of September until Dec. 15th when I got my new precision dental appliances that are working to sort out my joints and muscles. I talk funny, and I drool when doing so, but the bulk of the healing should happen over the break, and then the doc can adjust the daytime appliance so I can talk straight.

* The new 40-minute commute each way (just over double what my drive to PTC was) has also carved a bit more of my time away. But it is an easy drive on the newly expanded I-40.

Lest anyone think this is a list of complaints, let me say that this may have been a challenging semester time wise, mostly due to my out-of-state travel and my medical issues, but it was also an invigorating semester. I feel like I've settled into the UCA culture and am getting a handle on all the nuances and procedures. It will take a few years to gain the institutional knowledge on the level I had at PTC, but I've made a start.

Overall, I'm happy with the way the semester turned out, and I'm beyond satisfied with the work of my students. I've got a list of areas I want to change for next semester, and have lounged around for a few days and gotten my energy back to a level playing field. Sometime between now and the new year, watch for the next blog post, A Semester in Preview, to find out what's in store for Spring 2016 (hint: the blog will be back on a more timely schedule).

Conway ArtsFest 2015 Reading with Jennie Case, 1 October

82º ~ sunny days, very dry for the past month, a wee chance of showers tomorrow and Tuesday


This week, I will have my first official reading in Conway, AR, as a faculty member of the UCA Writing Department. I'm super excited to be reading at Conway ArtsFest with my colleague, and fellow new faculty member, Jennie Case. Jennie writes in both poetry and prose, largely influenced by place and environmental themes, and she hails from Minnesota. Jennie is also the assistant nonfiction editor over at Terrain.org, so we've had editorial stories and issues to discuss as well. We are aligned on many planes. Knowing the existing faculty at UCA prior to landing the job, I knew I'd been granted an amazing opportunity to work with some excellent folks. Adding Jennie to the group has been the bonus icing beyond my sweet-tooth dreams. I can wait to share the stage with her on Thursday, 10/1, at 7 p.m. at the Faulkner County Library in Conway.

Thanks to Mark Spitzer for making our poster!

In true literary event form, this reading conflicts with at least two other major events in central Arkansas, including the Porter Prize Gala and the fall membership party for the Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre. While I'm bummed to miss out on both of those opportunities, I'm thrilled that central Arkansas is now rife with literary goings-on.

I'm also doubly pleased to read with Jennie because we are both negotiating the demands of a tenure-line job and realizing exactly what that means in terms of our own writing time. If you are a long-time reader of this blog, you will remember that PTC was a community college that did not look for publication by its faculty (some CCs do, some don't). I always said that I was thankful to not have that pressure, and now I realize just how much I was thankful. I'm glad I had that space to learn how to balance writing, writing business tasks, teaching, service, and professional development. Now, the workload has been ramped up, though, and I'm struggling to re-adjust.

Enter my thankfulness for Jennie. Early in the semester, we struck a deal to write together for 90 minutes weekly. So far, we are on track, and I confess that if I didn't have a partner to whom I felt responsible, I would have thrown that schedule out after the first week. Instead, I have three new, teeny tiny poem drafts, each about 14 lines long (no sonnets). Now, I'm thinking book #4 may be a book of sister poems (not the angry sisters from two years ago) all in 14 lines. Hmmmmmmm. A glimmer emerges.

When a Visiting Writer Nails It (Dinty W. Moore Comes to UCA)

77º ~ summer is a-lingering awhile longer, though the calendar signals otherwise

Combining the new tenure-track job and travel for the new book means that this semester is a "fingernail" semester (aka hanging on by one's fingernails), but in all the best ways.

One of those ways occurred this past week when the Department of Writing (and the College of Fine Arts and Communication) hosted Dinty W. Moore as one of UCA's Artists in Residence this semester.

Prior to his visit, I'd read a few of Dinty W. Moore's essays, but not many. Now, I've got another book on my stack to read and a new writer to admire. Moore is a professor at Ohio University, the editor of Brevity, an online journal of brief creative non-fiction, and the author of many books of creative non-fiction, most recently Dear Mister Essay Writer Guy, from which he read for us. His essays are poignant and funny at the same time, as Moore is able to look at his own life honestly and poke fun at himself, no matter the subject. Through that humor, he shares the wisdom he has found from contemplating the important people and moments in his past. It was a real joy to hear those essays come alive in the writer's own voice.

The day after Moore's reading, he led two class sessions. The first was a Q&A about CNF for undergraduate students. In this session, Moore used his friendly and funny demeanor to provide a very brief overview of the genre's history, and then took question after question from a packed room. His knowledge, patience, thoroughness, and kindness were all exemplary. Finally, he wrapped up his visit with a more private workshop with graduate students in the Arkansas Writer's MFA Program at UCA.

With two full sections of Introduction to Creative Writing, I asked my students to attend one of Moore's two "open" events. It was an awesome feeling for me to sit in the audience and soak in the words of a great writer, and then to look over and see my undergraduate students doing the same thing. We were all scribbling in our journals like literary chipmunks storing away bits of wit and wisdom. (I did ask them to do a written assignment during Moore's talks, but I do think they seemed to be as fully into capturing Moore's gems as I was.) In class the next day, they exploded with enthusiasm.

I had to laugh because Moore basically repeated many of the basic writing tips I'd already covered in class, but hey, he was the visitor, so his words had a higher impact. (When I shared this observation with Moore right before he left, he confided that the same thing happens to him when another writer comes to his campus.)

After Moore's visit, I turned my attention to Comp I, as I'm now hip deep in grading essay 1. And now that I've gotten my thoughts about Moore's visit down on the page, I need to turn back to that grading. For anyone worried, I've developed fairly strong fingernails over the last four weeks.

The Mid-South Book Festival Recap

87º ~ but with the low dew points, it only feels like 87º ~ bright sun, strong cooling breezes gusting


This past weekend, I was in Memphis for the second Mid-South Book Festival. Last year, in its debut the festival hosted 50 authors and saw 3,000 visitors; this year the scorecard leaped upwards with 80 authors and over 5,000 visitors. Speaking as one of the authors from this year's event, I can testify that the folks from Literacy Mid-South had it all going on!

The festival began on Wednesday with an all day summit on literacy efforts from grassroots to national organizations. While I couldn't make that event with my teaching schedule, from what I hear the summit sold out and presented motivated educators with great opportunities to network and learn together.

I joined in on Friday for another sold out event: The Well Read Reception, held at The Playhouse on the Square in Midtown. This was a social outing where authors mingled with readers, got an advance chance to buy books, and feasted on some tasty noms. I had a great time re-connecting with the folks of the Impossible Language Reading Series (where I read in April...or was it May?) and meeting new writers I can't wait to read.

On Saturday, the festival shut down a section of Cooper Ave. in Memphis and the book fair spread out into the street. Luckily, we only needed the tents to shelter from the sun. At the book fair, I got to spend some time with two of my favorite Little Rock poets: Bryan Borland and Seth Pennington of Sibling Rivalry Press. They graciously allowed me to chill out from time to time behind their table.

I also had the chance to read not once, but twice. In the morning, I took the mic out on the street for the Street Fair Reading Tent. The wind was strong but the mic was stronger. I spent quite a bit of time hanging out on the street listening to folks share their work with the audience and the wind. Then, at the end of the day, I had the good fortune to read on a panel. In both cases, the sickly speaker got a warm welcome, and I'm thankful to everyone who helped organize to get me there!

On Sunday, I had to leave town to get home and take care of school work; however, the festival continued on for the day with writing workshops for both adults and children.

The long and the short of it is this: If you are anywhere near the mid-south, or can manage to get to Memphis next fall when year three comes around, you should check out this festival. It gets a big Wahoooooooza from me.

Draft Process: The Legacy of Our Sister Sleep

89º ~ feels like 92º ~ after a stretch of glorious weather in the low 80s, here we are again rising to the sweat-inducing 90s with high humidity ~ the hummingbirds continue ~ a neighborhood cat slinks through the yard next door, in and out of focus through the fence slats


This week was my first full week of teaching at UCA, so I'm trying to be patient with myself as I adjust to a new schedule. At PTC, I only had one face-to-face class, since all of my Comp I sections were online. At UCA, all four of my classes are face-to-face. This is taking quite a toll on me physically. I feel like I'm always hungry, and by the end of the week, I was physically exhausted (and my back went wonky yesterday). None of this is meant to be complaint. I know my body will adjust and so will my brain. That takes about three weeks for me, given past experiences.

FYI: I prefer teaching face-to-face because I can really get to know each student. Even after years of teaching online, I never mastered getting through to all of them.

Now, I was all set to ignore writing this week, and then I read Stephanie Vanderslice's tribute to Alan Cheuse, who left us far too soon. Stephanie is one of my new colleagues at UCA and I'm looking forward to talking writing and teaching with her as the years unfold. In any case, as I read this tribute to Cheuse, I was struck by his / Stephanie's "gargantuan word count in the sky" idea. This was a reminder to get back to the page, even if I only had 15 - 30 minutes in the mornings.

So, I renewed my effort. Things are a little more complicated this year as I've added some brief yoga stretching and 15 minutes of mindfulness meditation to my morning routine as I struggle with a seriously painful and unrelenting case of TMJ. At this point, I'm getting up at 5:15 (leaving the house at 7:00). It looks like I need to get up at 5:00 to extend my drafting time. All of this piles up at the end of the day to me being ready for bed by 7:00 p.m. Luckily, C. and I are hermits and this is usually not a problem.

But back to today's draft. I fiddled with words and lines each morning, in fits and starts. However, on Wednesday, some lines coalesced. Six lines in fact. On Friday, I added two more. Today, I drafted the full poem, all 14 lines (no it isn't a sonnet). If you had asked me a month ago, I'd have told you that I "don't work that way," that I can't write in bits and pieces and then bring it all together later on. Well, whadda ya know? Look what I just did. Here's the opening of "The Legacy of Our Sister-Sleep"

The moon, Sister, bright disc upon which
we spent our wishes, has reset itself to zero.

The poem goes on to be both memory and current accounting. It seems I'm stuck on addressing "Sister" in my drafts at the moment. Let me say that I actually have two sisters, whom I love and am thankful for; however, this "Sister" in the poems has come to stand more broadly. I do think of my sisters, but I also think of the relationship my mother has with my aunt. I think of women friends I have who have come to be as close to me as sisters. So, the poems broaden out, I hope.

The process of this week does not fit my ideal, but it is a process and it netted one cohesive draft. That deserves a Wahoooooooooooza (and a huge "Thank You" to Stephanie).

Getting Called Up to the Bigs, Or, Leveling Up

75º ~ at the tail end of a 40-minute thunderstorm, featuring three massive lightning strikes and three flickerings of the electricity, along with lots of cloud-rumbling and sky-flashing


After months of anticipation, and five days of orientations and meetings, the first days of teaching at the University of Central Arkansas arrived for me Thursday and Friday. On Thursday, I had my Introduction to College Writing students. The majority of these students are recent high school graduates, and part of my first day discussion included a comparison / contrast of high school and college.

I've had this conversation with many classes over the years, and the analogy I always use is one from baseball (Go Cubs!). I announce to my classes that the move from high school to college is like being called up from the minor leagues to the majors (also know as the big leagues). For those who aren't into baseball, I extend the discussion to include moving from college ball to the NFL, NBA, WNBA, MLS, NWSL, etc. Finally, for those who aren't into sports but might be into gaming, we talk about leveling up.

We talk about how the freedoms and responsibilities grow with the promotion and how the physical environment changes as well. I address specifically how my role as their professor is different from the role of their high school teacher. I also point out that faculty have a lot of jobs outside the classroom and office hours. This is a shocker for many of them who are used to their teacher being in one room all day.

In the end, my goal is to be crystal clear about my responsibilities and theirs. I promise to come to class with passion & enthusiasm every day, to present them with the material they need to tackle the course skill set, to give clear directions and specific expectations about assignments, to be available to help them as needed, to treat each of them fairly and consistently, and to assess and return their work in a timely manner. I then outline their responsibilities and the fact that students in my classes don't "get" grades; they earn them. This is not the most entertaining day of the semester for the class, but it is crucial to starting off on the right foot.

On Friday, when I switched to my Introduction to Creative Writing students, I didn't have to hit this topic as hard, given that the class is 2000-level course. However, on Friday afternoon, with teaching completed for the day, it struck me that I am experiencing a similar shift in dynamics to that which my first-year students are experiencing.

I, too, have been called up. In my case, I've been called up from a non-tenure track job at a community college** to a tenure track job at a four-year comprehensive university. At heart, the tasks are the same, but everything is "bigger" now, and not just the campus. I'm having to learn a new physical environment, yes, but I'm also learning a new relationship environment as well. I'd been at PTC for 10 years. I was a seasoned veteran with all the confidence and exhaustion that entails. At UCA, I'm a rookie, and I need to navigate a whole new set of people and responsibilities. I need some time to figure out who everybody is and what role they play. I need some time to figure out what is expected, specifically, of me and what role I want to play within my department, my college, and the university as a whole.

As these first few weeks unfold, I'm going to try and be mindful that the stress I might feel as I set off on this new level mirrors the stress my first-years will be feeling. Hopefully, this will help me be a better professor along the way.

I'm also going to be mindful that my writing is taking a hit at the moment, and that's okay, for now (but only for now). Give me two weeks to work out the kinks in my schedule and I'll be back with my BIC (butt in chair) doing the work of drafting.

**I want to make clear that I don't think those folks working in community colleges are "minor" in any way. I know how much talent they have and how much effort it takes. My analogy extends more to the infrastructure around and outside of the classroom. Also, most community colleges are first-and second-year institutions. At UCA, I'll be teaching upper-level classes in a creative writing major and graduate students in an MFA program. That will be another adjustment.

Poet on the Move: Readings and Conferences, Fall 2015

86º ~ feels like 92º ~ yup, after several glorious days without it, the heavy humidity is back, the sun continues, no rain in sight


Last night, I attended my first-ever "Welcome Back" party for the Arkansas Writers MFA Program, where I am now an Assistant Professor. After two full days (Thursday and Friday) of new faculty orientation on the UCA campus, it was a relief to be able to relax a bit with good people, good food, and good conversation. I'd say it's going to be a wonderful year if last night is any indication.

In the course of the evening, I had a conversation about all my goings-on for the fall. I surprised myself with how many events I have scheduled. Here's the list so far:

Mid-South Book Festival (9/9 - 9/13), Memphis, TN
Where I'll be:
The Well Read Reception, Friday evening, 9/11
Street Fair Reading Tent, Saturday morning (time TBA), 9/12
The Mind as  Broken Mirror (reading/panel), Saturday, 4:00 p.m., 9/12

Conway Artsfest (9/26 - 10/3), Conway, AR
Where I'll be:
UCA Writing Department Reading, Thursday 7:00 p.m., 10/1
I'll be reading with my fellow new faculty Jennie Case (CNF) at the Faulkner County Library.

Hendrix College ShopTalk, 10/8, Conway, AR
Sponsored by the Hendrix-Murphy Foundation
Where I'll be:
The Murphy House, Thursday, 4:00 - 5:30 p.m., 10/8
I'll share the stage with Jo McDougall.

Southern Festival of Books (10/9 - 10/11), Nashville, TN
Where I'll be:
Schedule TBA, but I'll be there Friday night through Sunday.
Look for my reading on a panel of poets on Saturday.

Creative Writing and Innovative Pedagogies (CWIPs) Conference, 10/16 - 10/17, Warrensburg, KS
Sponsored by the Creative Writing Program at the University of Central Missouri
Where I'll be:
Panel: Inspiration: The Benefits of Irrational Thinking, Schedule TBA
Co-panelists: Garry Craig Powell, Lynne Landis, Rose Bunch

Poets in the Parlor at the Vachel Lindsay House, 10/18, Springfield, IL, 
I'll be sharing the mic with Matt Minicucci at 2:00 p.m.
This is a new addition, and my details aren't on the VLH website yet.

Eastern Illinois University, 10/19, Charleston, IL
Hosted by the English Department
Details TBA

Big Rock Reading Series, 11/3, North Little Rock, AR
Sponsored by Pulaski Technical College's Division of Fine Arts and Humanities
I'll be sharing the mic with good poetry-friend Angie Macri at 6:00 p.m.

In feast or famine news, I have 0 events scheduled for Spring 2016 (outside of attending but not presenting at AWP). This could be a good thing, as I might need the spring to recover!

Invest Your Ego Elsewhere

81º ~ feels like 88º ~ one more day of heat advisories with a temp of 102º before the index and then we cool down to the low- to mid- 90s. Ah, summer in the mid-south.


While I've been away from the blog these last two weeks, much poetry work has continued on. I've been revising and polishing, and I did start sending out new submissions. I'd sent out a few in June as well, and as the timing would have it, just as I started to send out new work in August, the rejections from June started rolling in.

Yes, rejections still sting, even when they are "good" rejections as two of these were. Yes, the rejections mean I have to dig a little deeper for the motivation to submit more work to the world. Yes, this is the nature of being a working poet.

All of this recalls to mind some advice I received in the late spring of 1999. Lo those many years ago, I traveled to Fayetteville, Arkansas, to check out the MFA program there. On that visit, I met the amazing poet Alison Pelegrin. As we chatted over drinks, I must have asked her for some advice about entering the program. She turned to me and said, "Invest your ego elsewhere."

What followed from there was a discussion on group dynamics and competitive natures in workshop, but we also talked about writing and publishing in general. The truth is, as it ever was, there will always be someone out there publishing in your "dream" journal when you get rejected, receiving the award you were just sure you would receive, getting the slick 2/2 teaching gig at one of the top 5 grad schools, and etc. Sadly, there will also always be people who need to talk down the work of others in order to feel better about their own writing. This is human nature.

To deal with what it means to be repeatedly rejected and disappointed, Alison's advice has never let me down. Yes, I celebrate my poetry victories and I am proud of every accomplishment I've achieved in writing, but victories and accomplishments can not sustain me and bring me back to the blank page. More importantly, they are fleeting, so there need to be other relationships and activities in my life that offer a more stable emotional reward. For me those include family and friends, my cats, collaging, and teaching. And chocolate, of course, you can never go wrong with good chocolate.

Revision and Preparations

93º ~ feels like 106º ~ the sun unwavering, cicadas and humidity constant


In anticipation of August 1 and the re-opening of submission periods for a good number of journals (although not as many as will open on September 1), I've spent the morning reading over all the poems I've written this summer. I am happy to report that despite my fits and starts, I do have a solid group of drafts that I think will eventually make it as publishable poems. Given my lack of success last summer, this is a relief.

However, it's been a long time since I've made a regular habit of submitting work, and I have to say, I'm nervous and hesitant. Already, I've received a few rejections of poems written last year, even a few where poems were solicited by editors. I bear those editors no ill will. The poems in Alchemy, the ones that have appeared most recently in journals, bear little resemblance to what I had on hand to send those editors. I'm sure they wondered about the shift in voice, subject matter, and style. I wondered, too. I was lost.

Now that I've found a way to continue working in that baroque colloquial syntax and diction, but to move on from the sickly speaker's voice, I think I might be more on the right track. I think. I'm waiting to hear back from another poet-friend-peer on a handful of poems, and this morning I went about my usual revision routine. It looks like this.

I open my folder of drafts (printed copies of the latest versions). I begin to read each poem out loud, pausing between poems to clear some head space and try to get a new and separate look at each. If after one read-through of the poem I still have confidence in it as a complete piece, I re-read, out loud, for clunky lines, for cliches, for any place I can trim and cut. I make these changes on the computer and print out a new draft. If the poem then seems ready to meet the world, I move it to a new folder that will be waiting for me on Saturday to make new submissions.

[I find it interesting that with the work I'm doing now, work that is more autobiographical, more familial, my biggest fear is in being the wrong kind of sentimental. I never wondered this when working in the sickly speaker's voice, and now I find myself having to navigate that old problem once again. Le sigh.]

In the process described above, there is also a chance a poem will continue to founder. The doubt may still be too strong and the whole refusing to coalesce. In these cases, I simply leave the draft alone after one re-reading. Often, I simply need more time and distance from the piece to understand what it needs. Sometimes, the poem will never make it out of this stage. I've learned to live with this and recognize that the time and effort were not wasted, as I believe:

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." ~ Beckett from Westward Ho.