A Great Mentor is a Great Thing

I just received my first MFA packet back from Greg Pape, and it was a doozy. I sent far more original poems than I should have, and he was utterly gracious about it. Greg works by annotating the packet, sending a letter, and speaking into a cassette tape. Can I just say - - Best. Evar. If you've ever met Greg or heard him read, you know he's got a mesmerizing voice. Getting his advice both in writing (which I require for academic processing, because that's how my brain works) and via audio (which lends a wonderful personal note to the packet exchange) is wonderful.

Greg is also one of the most diplomatic workshoppers I have met so far. He manages to blend his critique (always to the point and very useful) with non-pandering praise so that you really do feel you have some worth as a writer and that there's something salvageable in whatever you sent that needs work. I sent Greg a goodly chunk of my Lilith collection, which none of the other faculty has seen yet. It's been niggling at me, and I've been stuck - something seems off, although I'm still enamored of the project, and this rut has really derailed my writing.

Greg hit the nail right on the head. I was paying so much attention to rhetorical structure, language and rhythm, I got lost and forgot about how essential crisp images are. (Um, yeah. IMAGE, Poetess. How do you forget a thing like that? Idiot.) There were other criticisms that were also on the money - like that staying too deep in mythic language without dipping into the contemporary is overwhelming, and some other things, but the overarching fixable thing is image. D'oh. Anyway, Greg pointed out some of the weaker areas that can be shored up or rewritten, and now that I have a handle on the areas of suckitude, I feel empowered and able to write again, and do some serious revision work.

I'm frustrated that it is something so obvious (though pleased that it's something fixable and not a flaw with the idea of the project itself) that has been holding me back on this. Then again, it's a nice reminder as to the importance of having an outside reader who is willing to wrestle with your work on its own terms and ferret out exactly what it keeping it from being excellent. I'm lucky enough to have not only friends who are willing to read and critique for me (and friends who write in different genres at that!) but that I've got access to great mentors through Spalding's MFA program. Every once in awhile I ponder at the selfishness of pursuing an expensive degree that doesn't net me much other than personal satisfaction and better writing...and then help like this comes along, or a kind comment from a fellow writer who understands the frustrations of being a writer, and I realize that my life is better for this.

I'll admit that my anti-hippie stance led me to laugh at all the self-actualization hooey you hear about from life coaches (and, um, Maslow). But I'll tell you what - absolutely nothing beats having a career you actually love, and pursuing the things that are important to you and make you feel whole and right. And if that's selfish, well, then let's count it a good thing that I don't have kidlets.

And back to the mentor topic - yes, get someone who reads your work. They don't even have to be a writer, or in your genre - just genuinely interested in helping. I'm always amazed at the great insights that the quote-unquote-untrained come up with. It's often more insightful than what you can get in a workshop because they're not constrained by 'rules' or what they think they should say. Go for it. Can't hurt!

Hard to Write

Ugh, I've been violently ill these past few days (and this post is also being written in between bouts of unpleasantness). Been wrestling with some decisions I've made in the past, and someone I know online was also mentioning how difficult life's choices are. Good fodder for poetry, though I'm not much a fan of confessional mode. This'll likely get chopped up and the pieces used in separate poems, but here's a first shot at it.

Choices

I

He swept twenty-six years aside

in a bout of midlife crisis fueled by crack

but he calls every night between ten and two

in the grip of paranoia just to hear my voice

and to ask if I sent them if I sent these

low men to watch him through the walls

and every no I send hurtling over the line

gets lost in the fury in the shadow of a life

and he tells me he’s coming he’d like to

take a trip he’ll drive so when I buy the gun

he can take it back to New York with cops

none the wiser not knowing a thing

and the images of broken glass and mom

cowering in a corner while Meaghen called the cops

haunted me in the hours it took to choose sides

to place the call that made him call me

lucid enough to know what he meant

when he said aloud You are not my daughter

II

I stopped taking the pills from the beginning

they didn’t help the pain they dulled me

I didn’t want to be dull when you came to me so seldom

so seldom in the night when I left the candles lit

and you loved me in vanilla light

I thought maybe a miracle maybe a chance

maybe some small sign God is kind

could cure me and bind us and fix things

you kissed my throat and I wrapped my legs

tight around your waist wishing

for a different ending with tiny fingers a different

cure than tears and the great wide emptiness

and I loved you and the thought of you

as a father as mine I thought of us forever in the morning

but I bled and the doctors took my womb and you left

and now the only crying at night now is mine

III

My mother is never sick but she called

sounding like she had hauled water up a bridge

sick so sick she said she couldn’t move

when she hasn’t missed work in three years

in tears when the doctor pooh-poohed her away

but I knew I knew it was more when she was so weak

and a new doctor found the thyroid wrong

which was more than nothing but less than cancer

and she always sounded so strong I was new

at work I was broke and tired and far away

and a trip to Anaheim breathing down my neck

so I accepted her fine because I needed it

and when she had to swallow the iodine pill

that was radioactive I didn’t ask her if she dreamed

of her mother and father and uncles and aunts

and all of her cousins who died after chemo

and Anaheim called right after mom did

and she gave me the fine a bit stronger like a gift

so I could believe and I could look at myself

without too much hate that was her gift and when

I stepped onto the plane it was not to go home

Conscience: Another Rough Draft

Another rough draft - am not quite sure this one captures what I'm going for. I think it's obvious what it's about, but what I'm wondering is if it adds anything new, or just rehashes what we already know in a tired way. Still not certain I'm happy with it. I'm also trying to work my way away from punctuation, and am still a bit uncomfortable without my commas and periods.

Edit: Poem removed due to pending publication

Apologies and a Draft

Hey all, apologies for being incommunicado for so long. Between the MFA residency, book chapter writing, and the ALA conference in Anaheim (from which I am recently returned), my poetry writing (and blogging) has suffered a bit. I have a few rough drafts of some new pieces which I'll post on here as I'm working on them. I've got two I'll post tonight, this is the first. (Again, in super-rough shape, so any and all criticism welcome. The shallow rhyme scheme was just a tool to get me working.)

To the Soldiers of the World

Kiss your mother, soldier,

she hears mortarfire in her dreams.

Kiss your mother, soldier,

she recognizes your face

through the coat of greasepaint

and the rictus of your screams.

Kiss your mother.

Kiss your sister, soldier,

she sees tracers in the dark.

Kiss your sister, soldier,

remember how you pulled her hair

and threatened her first dates

as your bullets find their mark.

Kiss your woman, soldier,

she is as soft as you are hard.

Kiss your woman, soldier,

she sends letters sealed with perfume

that seeps into your fatigues

and often catches you off-guard.

Kiss your woman.

Kiss your children, soldier,

they recite your name in their prayers.

Kiss your children, soldier,

they are too young to know it now,

but later they will judge all men by you

and find none other compares.

Kiss your father, soldier,

feel his scars beneath your hands.

Kiss your father, soldier,

he has been where you now go,

a picture of a man who lived

through war’s hideous demands.

Kiss your father, soldier,

and head off to those foreign lands.

One Word Meme

A meme that PinkandChocolateBrown tagged me with (likely because she knew I had important things to do and would be fascinated with the whole one-word thing). I have to admit that I don't find the one-word thing too challenging, since I've been Twittering so long that I'm accustomed to communicating in 140 characters or less *grin*.

Answer the following questions using one word only:

1. Where is your cell phone? …………desk

2. Your significant other?…………………nonexistent

3. Your hair? ……………………………………black

4. Your mother? ………………………………sick

5. Your father?……………………………………assmonkey

6. Your favorite thing?………………………huggles

7. Your dream last night?…………………horrific

8. Your favorite drink? ………………………free

9. Your dream/goal?…………………………ISBN

10. The room you’re in?……………………library

11. Your ex?………………………………………which?

12. Your fear?……………………………………alone

13. Where do you want to be in 6 years?……happy

14. Where were you last night?…………bed

15. What you’re not?…………………………slender

16. Muffins?………………………………………depends

17. One of your wish list items?…………moneys

18. Where you grew up?……………………BayShore

19. The last thing you did?…………………wrote

20. What are you wearing?…………………undies

21. Your TV?………………………………………smallish

22. Your pets?……………………………………bassety

23. Your computer? ……………………………dying

24. Your life?………………………………………full

25. Your mood?…………………………………cranky

26. Missing someone?………………………Mom

27. Your car?………………………………………Jeepy

28. Something you’re not wearing?……mascara

29. Favorite Store?………………………………tattoo

30. Your summer?………………………………busy

31. Like(love) someone?……………………………many

32. Your favorite color?………………………cranberry

33. Last time you laughed?………………today

34. Last time you cried?………………………months

35. Who will re-post this?……………………hunh?

On Delicious Men (and CNF, sort of)

Ok, so I get a wee bit manhungry when I get to about the 6 month mark of singledom. Right now I'm at...well, a lot more than six months.

I didn't realize there's a celebrity crush etiquette. I mean, I think it's silly in general to lust after people you'll never likely meet in real life anyway, not to mention who wouldn't give most of us a second look. But when a few girlfriends and I were discussing celebrity crushes, I was informed that I should be *embarrassed* by my inexplicable affection for certain stars. Like, say, Mark Wahlberg. Or the oft-mocked Keanu Reeves. (That's right, Keanu - smooches from Chattanooga!)

I'll admit, though, that with regards to real-life men, my crushes tend to sway in the direction of Hugh Laurie and Shemar Moore (my latest tv crush) - I do love me a wickedly smart and arrogant man. That's right. The Poetess suffers from the NerdLove. (Much to her detriment - how many women do you know whose company have been turned down by a guy who preferred to spend the evening with his NightElf character?)

So, yes, I love that Russell Crowe not only looks scrumptious, but also like the sort of guy I'd like to have my back in a fight in a divey irish bar. And I refuse to hide my scathing derision for prettyboys like Clive Owen and Brad Pitt. Meh, I say. Meh. Plus, it's better to prefer slightly unpopular celebs. I figure it gives me that much more of a shot, since I'm competing with fewer women for their attention, right?

And in a vain attempt to make this post somewhat address writing, I will report that I've submitted my first CNF piece ever to Copper Nickel for their "Women Writing the West" issue due out in October. I expect them to add to my lovely list of rejections I've received this month, but that's okay. I was just proud to bust my CNF cherry. Now if only Shemar Moore or Hugh Laurie would ask me to lunch or dinner to celebrate...

Writing on Deadline

I have a serious love/hate relationship with deadlines. I love deadlines because they give me a drop-dead date to get things done by. Given my natural state, I'd simply plod along revising, revising, and gettign nothing actually finished. And I hate them, of course, because they give me palpitations when I think about them looming above me with scythe-like blades.

I have a number of pre-6/26 deadlines I have to meet. (6/26 because that's when I leave for the American Library Association Annual Conference, and I won't be back until July 2.) Given that I'm still semi-wrecked from residency, and still recuping from the drive to and from Lexington this weekend (no, really. I just turned 29. I'm old, and need serious nap recuperation time), my upcoming deadlines make my head spinny.

The good news: I have already written and sent off (and made the editor's suggested revisions for) two book chapters, "MLS, MFA: The Librarian Pursuing Creative Writing" and "The Poet-Librarian: Writing and Submitting Work," that should appear in The Published Librarian: Successful Professional and Personal Writing, a volume edited by Carol Smallwood, published by the American Library Association sometime in 2009, if all goes according to schedule. Yes, those are done. Deep breath, deep bow, pat on the back, relaxation.

Now for the stress. The big chapter I need to get written and polished before I leave is "The Haves and the Have-Nots: Class, Race, Gender, Access to Computers and Academic Success," for inclusion in Gen M: A Handbook for Educators and Librarians, edited by Vib Bowman and Robert Lackie, and due out from Neal-Schuman in 2009. But I was granted research leave by my generous colleagues and Dean to get the major portion of that done, which is what I'll be doing Wednesday and Thursday of this week, and polishing over the weekend. Happily, the research for it is already done and scattered on my desk. Unhappily, the citation format needs to be in Chicago, which I've never used. Blugh.

At some point I also need to create the poster I told ALA that I would present at the Annual conference: "Academic Library 2.0: Self-Paced Guided Training for Faculty and Staff." It shouldn't be bad, I've already started it in a .ppt poster template, and should be able to upload it to Kinko's and have it ready for pickup at the convention center. God, I love living in the age of the internet.

Anyway, these are the major deadlines, though I've got others for various other workstuffs. Those I can deal with. And I'll have much time for more local projects that affect the library - not to mention my creative writing and MFA work - once July hits.

Also, Dear July: When you come, if you could be slightly cooler than June, it would be much appreciated. Love, The Poetess.