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.

The Professional - if Pooped - Poetess

Finally back home in Chattanooga after what feels like too long away. I have to admit I'm a bit of an introvert, despite my bubbly and funny social persona when I'm in a group, and being around so many people for so long has me exhausted. A colleague picked me up from the airport (thanks, Bevvie!), and dropped me at home, where I promptly did laundry, groceried, and scrubbed down the bathroom and decreased the height of a few piles of 'stuff.' All in all, relatively productive. And while I am not in the least looking forward to meeting the trainer at 8am tomorrow, I am indeed looking forward to rescuing my basset boy from the animal hospital where he's been boarding. I missed his furry little butt - he would have come in handy at the hotel, which was positively frigid. And I do love a cold room, but it's easier to fall asleep with a pupster bundled up behind your knees.

Anyway, home and looking forward to Getting Sh*t Done for the next few weeks at work. Very pleased to report that this afternoon when I got home and checked my email, I found one that included a contract from Familia Books, who picked up my poem "crochet" for their forthcoming anthology Wisdom of Our Mothers. (Please note that the contract also noted that I could collect my $100 payment upon publication, or wait until a year after publication and collect $200. Either way, this is my first paid piece. The Peripatetic Poetess is now the Professional Poetess!)

MFA Residency: Day 5

Day 5 is just ending of the residency for my low-res MFA here at Spalding University in Louisville. A lot has happened so far, adn I'll cram as much as I can into this post before I feel the tug of poetry draw me back to my notebook.

I got in on Thursday night (after being completely raped by a Chattanooga cab company - $28 to take me one and a half miles to the airport! WHAT?! Mental note: call Beverly and beg a ride home from the airport on Sunday), and the Brown hotel is as beautiful as ever, and equipped with the same decadently absorbent towels. I love crossing back into Kentucky - even Louisville, though my heart is closer to Danville and Lexington. It always feels like coming home.

Residency started on Friday, and I amazed myself by remembering the map of Spalding's small downtown campus - I got myself turned around regularly in November, but now I'm pretty adept at getting around our little 4-block cube of the city, and its homeless folk. (Thanks for the catcalls, guys. Seriously. You have no idea how that makes the day of a big-bootied woman like myself. I heart the looeyville homeless!)

Coming here is really like coming home. As a writer, there's little better than finding an entire gaggle of people who understand your random frisking of yourself for a writing implement to jot down (on paper, or your bookbag strap, or your arm) a thought that you think might grow into a nifty little sapling of a poem or story. Folks who understand the devastation of those teensy little impersonal rejection slips that count as responses to your deepest secrets sent off to editors. Folks you don't feel guilty with when you press your latest pieces into their hands for workshopping, because you know they're really interested in your work, and you know you'll get honest and constructive feedback from. Smell that? That's beer mixed with artistic potential. Those stains? Ink. I love it.

So far, I have attended lectures on:

Pico Iyer's Sun After Dark: Flights into the Foreign, lyric essays on travel

Creative Non Fiction: Where the Public Meets the Private

The Life of the Place: Ko Un's Abiding Places

A Rhetorical Approach to the Sentence

There are No Zebras Among the Roses: Negation & the Imagination in 20th Century Poetry

The Art of Poetic Failure: Identification, Method & Practice

Metaphor as Analysis: Transparency, Translucence, Opacity in Language

the Shapely Poem

On Translation

Writing in Animal Time

The History of Every Country

Structural Screwity: A brief Guide to Reading & Writing Experimental Fiction

Sudden Physical Moments in Short Fiction

And we're not even done until Saturday night!

I've been workshopping daily with my small group and Greg Pape, who will also be my mentor for this upcoming semester. He's not only a hell of a poet with a real eye for the details in nature, he's also Montana's Poet Laureate and an all-around interesting guy with a really intense reading presence and a good sense of humor. (He's going to need it, with me as a student.)

Tomorrow I've got my small group discussion on syntactic doubling and line breaks, an expository writing workshop where we'll go over each other's critical essays (on a book we all hated, so that should be particularly painful), poetry workshop, a lecture on fiction for the book in common for this coming semester, and a play at the Bunbury Theater, Rabbit Hole.

All told, it's going pretty well, though not quite as gangbusters as last residency, when I seem to remember staying up until past 4am drinking beer (um, I do not even like beer), and there may have been an occasion or two where I raised my shirt above what was proper to show off some ink. So far it's been pretty tame, with folks quitting for bed before 10pm. I do hope that we end up hitting Fourth Street Live again sometime this residency, because the poetess desperately needs an excuse to shake her tucchus on the dance floor sometime in 2008. One more dance while I'm twenty-eight, before I turn the big two-nine next week.

Anyway, among the great workshopping and the notes I've made on lectures, I've also been hitting the student and faculty readings at night, which are really impressive. Last night I read "Love Letter from a White Woman," "Intercession" (a rewrite of the ail Mary prayer), "For my Unborn Son" and "Thorns," and they seemed to go over really well with the crowd. (It was getting on 9pm, so it is also altogether possible the crowd was simply pleased to be getting out, since I was the last reader.) Anyway, it was a good time, and I was re-impressed with the crop of talent in my classmates.

That's about it for now, and you likely won't hear from me for awhile, since I don't get home until June, and then I've got three book chapters and one poster session to complete before July hits. I also had a conference presentation pitch that I made with a gaggle of other librarians picked up as a half-day preconference at one of the big librarian conferences (Internet Librarian 2008, in Monterey) picked up, so the fun never stops! For now, I need to go back and make margin comments in this batch of critical essays, and try to crank out some of the poems - or at least flesh out some of the ideas for poems - that have been growing in my head. Much love from a poetess steeped in her element...