Poem in your Pocket Day

Poem in your Pocket Day, as brought to you by the Kenyon Review:

KR celebrates National Poetry Month with a series of readings culminating in Poem in your Pocket Day. The idea is simple: select a poem you love during National Poetry Month then carry it with you to share with co-workers, family, and friends on April 30, 2009.

There's even get ready tips. And pictures of Ohio (and poems) in the spring.

(re)Found

I rediscovered this song/band last night. The band Straylight Run was in rotation at the super-alternative radio station I DJed for while I was an undergrad, so when I came across their name again I had to pull up the song/video for nostalgia's sake. I can't say the song made all that much of an impression on me, but the video is amazing. Last night was the first time I saw it.



"Existentialist on Prom Night," Straylight Run

I came across it because the woman my father is dating is a music teacher, specifically piano, and she has a talented student who wants to drop piano for guitar so that he can play his favorite music off the radio. Except boyo's fave band is Coldplay ... a band whom he obviously has not yet realized has a lead singer who frequently plays piano in their music.

So I was supposed to be the all knowing source of what bands are popular right now that feature piano and piano rock. I came up with Ben Folds (and that man rocks on a piano, no shit) and the Fray, but from there I had to do research. I had never explored this part of the web before, but it turns out that there are dozens of arrangements for piano of almost any popular song that you'd like. So I started downloading PDFs for this kid and his teacher. Coldplay, the Fray, Snowpatrol, Straylight Run, Augustana, John Mayer's "Neo," Daniel Powter, Five for Fighting, Keane, the Plain White T's and others. Most of those songs feature pianos or they feature music that easily translates from guitar to piano.

I also discovered that not only can you find the sheet music for all this but there are oodles of youtube videos on playing these covers. No, not just teenage boys that have taped themselves playing covers, but "how-to" videos that explain like a live teacher how to play pop music without having to read a single note off the page. Isn't the internet great, kids?

Editing Parties

Grades have been entered and the celebratory sushi has been consumed!

The cats and I are hanging out in Ann Arbor for a few days to see friends and family as well as relax. In preparation of our trip, I spent Sunday morning cleaning my apartment. It's looking pretty good now. Well, at least the living room/kitchen is, the bathroom and my bedroom are next on the list. The situation in those rooms never quite reached the crisis point.

It's amazing. My living room hasn't been that clean since Christmas ... basically since last semester ended and I went on a similar cleaning rampage. My coffee table is clean and clear of all paper. Since the end of January there's been at least a handful of student work on that table waiting to be graded. The cleanness was so pretty I had to leave it.

Sunday afternoon I went to an editing party -- a wonderful idea orchestrated by the Ms. Corey. Corey has written a young adult zombie novel, with a fresh (and really cool) new twist on "zombie." It's hilarious ... or at least the parts I've read are. She's gotten some interest in it from the publishing world but was asked to make edits -- which she has been furiously working on for the past month -- and this is where the editing party comes in.

She invited as many of us over as could fit in her apartment, gave us food and two chapters each to proofread. We sat with our diet Coke and our red pens and hunted out the last of the typos hiding out in the pages, flagged confusing phrases, and debated the usage of commas.

Dude, how many English grad students does it take to figure out comma rules? Apparently five and a librarian.

The thing about comma rules is that they become more rigid in formal academic work and they get more flexible in novels and then very flexible in commercial novels. So we're trying to find that sweet spot between confusion, proper English, style, and readability. It's a difficult place to find.

All in all, it was a really great idea and something I hope happens again and again while I'm at the writing program. We got to socialize, Corey got proofreaders, and we felt like we were helping. I believe Ms. Corey has been very smart about this. Particularly that she's asked lots of people to read very small amounts rather than begging us to read the whole thing from beginning to end. However, there's quite a bit of interest in reading the whole thing beginning to end now that we've gotten a taste of it!

Ad of the Week

For What It's Worth ...

For what it's worth, I'm now on twitter. Check it: @speakcoffee. I'm still learning the lingo ... and thus far my impression is that I'm too articulate in a standard manner and that I need to learn even more internet-developed shorthand.

I have no pictures to show the before and after of my messy apartment because there is no *ahem* after.

It's graduation weekend and 79 degrees in Kalamazoo. This means the neighborhood can't decide if it's home visiting Mom, packing up and moving out, or partying. The schizophrenia is kind of amusing.

I want to be writing. Instead I'm longing to write. An activity which precludes both the writing and doing the thing that is keeping me from writing. It's an effective system, what can I say?

Last night I watched The Duchess. I expected a youthful story of romance, because, let's face it, anything set between 1750 and 1900 that isn't about war we expect to be about young love and an intricate courting dance. In The Duchess the marriage happened less than ten minutes into the film, what followed was a much more exquisite representation of live after marriage that was much more interesting than following the old pre-marriage patter. I also love-hate feelings about Keira Knightly. She's one of those actresses that usually comes across as herself in a film. Yes, that's a bad thing; I don't want actresses to seem like actresses, I want them to seem like their characters. In this film she seemed like the character not the actress underneath.

End of Term

People keep asking if I'm out of paper-grading-hell yet. When they ask they are certain I will say "Yes!" and we'll both engage in this moment of shared bliss -- a strange social construct of ours since the person asking has absolutely nothing to do with my bliss but feels the need to participate in it anyway. Alas, that bliss-shit ain't happening.

I sat (technically, I still am sitting) and waited for finals to be handed in to me this morning. I graded papers as I waited and watched the maintenance staff clean out Miller Fountain with a pool cleaner on a 40' pole. This was particularly amusing when they cleaned out the edge of the fountain and the pole was sticking 40' up in the air.

With the arrival of the finals I have moved into a different sort of paper-grading-hell. Are there layers? Has Dante categorized this? Whatever it is it simply means that there is more work to do; that the hell hath not ended.

Last night I attended the last workshop of the semester. We held it in the instructor's living room complete with wine and food. It was a nice change of pace from the oddly sanitary classrooms I've been sitting in all year. Scratch that thought. The stark and occasionally unsanitary classrooms (mystery sticky substance appeared on the floor a few weeks ago and garnered much discussion).

It feels odd to know I won't have a workshop for four months now. And when I do it will be in non-fiction not fiction. Although that's not entirely true: I'll be at the Kenyon Review Writer's Workshop in about two months. Just two months! Those workshops are always amazing, and this year I'm working with the ruthless Nancy Zafris, an experience I'm looking forward to.

The folklore and fairy tales class ended on Monday with my mad-dash term paper writing, but I won't have to wait for months for another lit class. I start another one of those at the beginning of May. Yea! for American Linguistics! (Pep rallies are good for the soul.)

But once I emerge from paper-grading-hell, these won't be the things I'm thinking of.

I'll be thinking of CLEANING MY APARTMENT. It's gone to pot these past ten days. My clean laundry is teetering precariously on top of a drying rack that was never meant to hold so much weight. The counter is half-covered with dishes. It was completely covered yesterday morning, but I ran out of coffee mugs and decided that unloading, loading and running the dishwasher was, indeed, a necessary use of time. The carpet needs vacuumed. (Do you like my southern Indiana dialect there?) The bathroom sink also needs cleaned. (Okay, I'll stop with the dialect.) And my bedroom/office is generally in shambles. It is a situations, and that is probably the nicest term I can use to describe it. I'll post before and after pictures tomorrow.

Recession Proof

Somethings in life are recession proof. I thought it was just alcohol and movies but this nicely done spot from ABC's Nightline tells otherwise: http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=7329822

Free!

Lynn Viehl has edited and re-released her collection of short stories Sink or Swim free to readers and available at her blog.

Viehl is so f-ing prolific that she offers oodles of short stories and her own "on writing" materials for free 365 days a year. She's also so prolific that she has to use several pen names to keep up with herself (Lynn Viehl, S. L. Viehl, Rebecca Kelly, Gena Hale, Jessica Hall).

Her blog, if you've never read it before, is frequently funny, (usually) patient and always candid.

The Procrastinator Wins Again!

I have now officially finished the longest term paper I have ever written. Fifteen pages double spaced on the symbolism of "red" in four novels.

Yes, I have a BA in BS: I can write fifteen pages about one color.

I know I've been assigned eight or ten page papers as an undergrad (I tended to run short of ten as it was a scary two digit number), and I believe I was even assigned a twenty page paper for which I turned in ten pages and still got a B. (New professor that had just transferred from UNLV; he was just impressed that we handed in papers.) But never have I had to write a paper this long. Which is as it should be; I'm in grad school now.

The real measure of the woman though is not how many pages but how many hours. Twenty hours. That is, I had an idea and had annotated the novels when I first read them, from there I started typing those quotes into the word document at 9:00 p.m. Sunday night. I slept for seven hours and then at 5:00 pm Monday I turned the thing in.

I'm still in shock.

As I was typing I was certain I'd fall short on time or length. That I'd skip a conclusion. That I'd be doomed for sure. But twelve hours of butt-time within a twenty hour period seem to have worked just fine.

This is very bad news on the "prepare ahead of time" front. Because the more certain I am in my last minute capabilities the less likely I am to do work ahead of time.

Happy News: Melanie Haney got a very special Good Friday surprise. What a cute photo. Bet she spent more than twenty hours getting that guy ready.

Margosita wrote a nice post yesterday on blogs vs. personal essays. I particularly like the article she quotes that says the writer should start writing about something she hasn't figured out and figure it out through the course of the essay. That's what I think I've started doing with a post last week (it's the beginnings of a personal essay); I'm thinking about it, but I haven't found the the answers I need from it to make a truth just yet.

Reality and Money

Me: I'm writing a term paper about the color red in four YA novels loosely based on folktales. I've typed the word "princess" so many times that it now comes out "pincess."

Lynn Viehl comes clean about the money writers get from a NYTimes best seller. This short article is well worth reading as information like hers is so hard to find. There is a mystic attached to writer's earnings -- as there is in any profession that gets lump sum earnings -- but there's also a social taboo to speaking about it. And more than just the usual money-talk taboo. In other industries that are highly public (think sports) we always hear what the pitcher or point guard gets signed for. Not so much in the world of novels.

Last to Know

I finally figured out how to work back links. Although I didn't know I even had back links to this blog until doing a vanity search on my own name.

Which brings me to the fact that I soooo feel like the last to know that there was a WMU press release on my fairy tale reading last month.

I found out that I was listed here for having blogged about the AWP conference. And apparently people had left comments on that post (which they got to via the links) that I didn't see until today.

Good news: I have changed my settings so that I now get emails when people comment on the posts. That way I can respond when people ask me specific questions (like happened on the AWP post).

Other than that I'm supposedly writing a 15 page term paper (due tomorrow at 5:00 p.m.) and I'm anxiously awaiting my latest copy of Poets&Writers ... hey, I haven't checked my mail since Wednesday, maybe it's already there!

Ad of the Week

Bravo.




I love that song. Seriously.

From the UK to California, it's agent for a day

Dwelling on Coincidence

After reading Jud's post about the pre-wedding office party I was thinking of writing a post on how marriage scares the crap out of me (an often explored topic for those of you who knew me as a college student surrounded by a sorority of engaged women), it would have rambled on about how I would enjoy the stability, having someone to go to restaurants/parties/movies with as well as someone to help (godforbid) raise children, but then one of my students told me about this.

Yesterday a man walked out in front of an Amtrak train a few miles from where I live.

This town is crisscrossed with train tracks, they are the remnants of a blue collar town that can't figure out if it's future rides on the working class or on the creative class, but the Amtrak runs very close to my apartment.

The sound of train horns have never bothered me -- in Ann Arbor the train runs along the river (go figure) and I always have lived near the river -- which is good because both in Chicago and Kalamazoo I've been close to tracks. In Chicago the eL ran a block behind my building. But these people dying bother me.

Another incident happened a few months ago in this city. And then last summer/fall a woman died on the train tracks in Ann Arbor. I do not know the whys or whens of hear death, but when I think about it, I imagine it at sunset. The train rushing at her from the west. The sun gleaming off the train golden on her face. I imagine that she knows. That she's planned this. That she is calm. That she stands there like a Madonna with sad, knowing eyes, her palms faced up.

It's a silly image; one that has nothing to do with the truth. I don't know why I have these thoughts. I don't know why I only think of her when the sun has started to set. But I never, ever see the train hit her in my mind.

The horn blares; the blue, gray steel comes into view; blocks the sun; her eyes adjust to the darkness, the horn still lowing an unheeded warning. And then I see nothing.

Now there comes another instance. One delivered to me by one of the four people I spoke to today. I speak with only four people, and 25% of the people I speak to speak to me of dead men on train tracks.

Why all these people? Why all of a sudden? Why do I keep hearing about it? And why does it bother me?

Lately I have come to dwell on coincidence. Not in a sinister, horror movie sort of way. But in a what now, why now, what-can-I-make-out-of-the-chaos way. I'll keep turning this one over in my mind and I'll see what else I find buried in memory and association, for I am certain I will write about this. These past few months since I have realized that I am both able and inclined to write non-fiction essays I have let myself dwell in coincidence, and I have not been disappointed with the results. Previously, I would have tried to turn this all into a short story. And I would have been disappointed with the results. What turns into mind blowing coincidences in memoir become over worked cliches in fiction.

I do not know, yet, what will come of this, I only know that something will.

Fin

Taxes are done. Last day to accept MFA awards is done. Semester is done. Fin.

Now begins a different sort of waiting game. A hope filled waiting game.

Well, hopeful in the sense that people are moving to new cities, getting ready to start new programs; I am looking forward to summer and the hopes that I'll be writing more (long pieces) in that time. I am definitely looking forward to my tax refund. It is small but it is mighty. Any time when I don't have to pay in to the government is happy on that front.

The grading slush, the grading backlog, and the not so pleased with the backlog students is making me grumpy. But I am working on it as best I can.

But I just realized that I don't have to come up with and perform a lesson plan for the next four months. That's a crazy feeling after the past eight months. Not having to wake up at 8:00 am and coherently lecture is a wonderful feeling. When I worked in a coffee shop I was in the store by 6:00 am -- but that is a totally different feeling. Very few people show up before 8:00 in the morning and those who do aren't usually looking for you to explain grammar and the theoretical aspects of writing. They're just looking for you to make change and dole out caffeine. A dozen words max. I can do early morning small talk. Early morning teaching grew on me slowly. It grew slowly on the students as well. They're much more relaxed now than they were at the beginning of semester in that early morning class, but man was the first month strained. I don't have a class schedule for fall semester but I'm hoping to not teach at 8:00 am again.

Calm. Calm will be good.

Collecting my thoughts will be good.

Writing a term paper and grading ... will have to come before the calm. Darn it.

Movies

So I broke down and reactivated my Netflix account. I think it was a good move for me. Much more rewarding than when I spent the same amount of money on a newspaper subscription.

What I saw this weekend was Ghost Town and it was much more delightful than I thought it was going to be. I don't want to say too much about it because the true delight in this film is that it's just different enough to make you stop and take notice. It could easily become cheesy or cliche or wander in to any variety of things that "have been done" but it didn't. It kept my attention throughout. And I even cried at one point. Although I cry at Kodak commercials; you know, the one where the little girl holds up the picture from the 1940s of a woman pitching a baseball to her grandmother and asks "Grandma, can you still through like that?" yeah, I get all sorts of sloppy and it's only a 30 second commercial.

Ad of the Week

For the first time ever, Michigan is running a national tourism campaign. And to be honest, it's a great time to come visit as it will never cost as much as a trip to Florida or Hawaii ... unless of course you live in Florida or Hawaii.


"Let's take a walk"

Journal Submissions

Fogged Clarity, a Michigan based online journal is seeking submissions. Particularly they feel that their submissions do not adequately represent their home state of Michigan.

elimae journal (also online) has the world's fastest turn around time between submission and rejection. My highly unscientific findings place this one man show in a league of his own. Time submission was out: under 10 hours.

And this intrigues me greatly. Blackbird is looking for video essays. Blackbird is an online lit mag to begin with, and they see nonfiction naturally moving over into the video medium. Their guidelines are ambiguous in part because the genre is ambiguous. Written non-fiction covers memoir, personal essay, lyrical essay, critical essay and others. And a video essay? It appears that they want more than just a Vlog entry. They mention image and narrative overlay. But what else? What else? I can't figure out if the possibilities intrigue me or frustrate me. I will consider.

But I will consider after semester ends. But still, I've been itching for an excuse to use the nice video editing software I had to buy last fall.

More Free Fiction

A short story collection called Federations is coming out from TOR shortly. This collection of news works of science fiction has many of the heavy hitters in the field (e.g. Lois McMaster Bujold, Orson Scott Card, Anne McCaffrey, L. E. Modesitt, Jr.) and there are four stories currently available for download before the collection comes out in print.

True to previous statements, I never say no to a free book. In workshop last week I carted off several back copies of literary journals I'd never heard of. One of the editors working on our literary journal came to class with "swap copies" or "sharing copies" or whatever they call 'em, that were several years old and cluttering up the lit journal's office. He'd brought as many as he could easily carry in one hand in hopes that someone would at least take one.

Oo! Free books! I cooed much to his surprise.

Have I read them yet? No. Have I read the free books I got at AWP? A couple.

What can I say? I'm a book-magpie. Even if I don't read them I want them to line my nest on the hope that I will read them. And I will. Hopefully.

Little Red Riding Hood and Other Performances

A brief email from John has updated me on how the primer of Cake the opera went. Both casts did a great job in both performances and John is still in love with the projection based scenery he and a buddy created. The producer loved it and wants to try and get a scene or two performed again -- my layman's understanding is that there are frequently productions that aren't full operas but are more like opera samplers. That news is great and I'm really excited for John and all the opportunities he now has to choose from.

Monday night was the reading given by my lit class. This is my Folklore and Fairy Tales course. Since the course is made up of a mix of students (primarily teachers working on getting masters degrees in English education, but also a couple of undergrads about to graduate, a woman about to get her PhD in medieval literature and two MFA candidates) the professor offered us a range of options for the reading. Most of us read poems that had been published by well known authors -- all about fairy tales, of course -- and the rest of us read poems we'd written ourselves. Given those options I figured that as an MFA candidate it was my duty to write a poem instead of just find one. So I did.

I was incredibly amused by my poem in the end. I retold Little Red Riding Hood from the point of view of the friendly neighborhood woodcutter and I just ended up burying this thing six feet deep in innuendo. I finished with the three page long poem Monday morning (roughly seven hours before I had to perform it -- fear of humiliation and a deadline are great motivators) , stepped back and said, woah, that's a dirty poem.

The reading wasn't recorded but I did a quick recording on my computer of one of my practice runs (yes John, Audacity is amazing) and you can now listen to the recording on my website. I have the typed copy but it's so rough right now that I don't want to put it up right now. However, after some editing, I do hope to submit it to the Fairy Tale Review (literary journal) as they're currently putting together their "Red" issue all about you-know-who.

I'd also like to put in a plug for Kazoo Books, the locally owned and operated book store where we had this reading. The space over at Kazoo Books is great, big enough to have a reading, but small enough that you feel really excited to have 30 people in the room. They sell new and used books and I think I'm going to have to spend some time at both of their locations next month.

Sing Me the Writerly Blues

I've been feeling "out of it" for the past three weeks. Occasionally, a flurry of activity or excitement (like submissions going out or hearing that my story is now an opera) will distract me and I'll begin to think that I'm feeling better and that this depression-like-feeling is lifting. A few days later the feeling returns.

It's a feeling of being generally useless. It's inspired by grading student papers, by not grading student papers, by reading, by watching TV, by sitting at the keyboard and pulling 500 words out and feeling like there are no more to follow it. It's doubled by scanning the Amazon.com backlists of writers I enjoy. She kicks out how many books a year! no way! Not human.

I've come up with a couple theories of how I can break this feeling. That I can go out and take walks (very The Writer's Way of me) and that I can give myself an hour a day of story-writing-time. Except it's not the time that's the issue. I can find plenty of that to spare on all sorts of idleness.

I've said before that I cannot wait for this semester of grad school to be over, and I really, really mean it. There's only 20 days of it left.

I want, really, really want to write novels this summer. I attempted NaNoWriMo and JanNo and failed at both because of coursework. I just don't have enough time in the regular semester to devote the energy to a novel. Not even that it's the time (the time I can find) it's the energy that the novel takes. The thinking through and piecing together and really getting to know the characters I'm writing about -- that all takes mental energy or focus. And with so much coursework my focus shifts elsewhere several times a day and I get writerly-ADHD. I write (consistently) 500 word blocks of stories. At 500 words my mind blanks and wants, begs, throws a tantrum until I go on to something else.

I just don't know what to do with myself other than whine and wait out the next three weeks. However, it's going to be a scary three weeks: I've started to doubt my novel-ing ability given the novel-agony of the past few months. I just want a big ol' juicy project to really sink my teeth into. I like my short stories, yes, but I want to fall in love with my characters and that really doesn't happen for me in 10-30 pages worth of story. I know my short story characters but I do not care about them one way or another.

Short stories, in my humble opinion, are about craft and concept. They should be insanely well written and they should be intriguing. They should make the reader go hmm.

Novels are about storytelling. They are about finding people you would want take an eight hour car trip with and then doing so. Novels, no matter the genre, are about pure fantasy. A fantasy so real that as readers (and writers) we begin to love and hate the characters like they are people, like they are real, like they matter.

Those are the worlds I want to build. And I am terrified that as I gain the time to write at the end of this month, that I will not be able to be that storyteller.

Just checking to see how video posting works. This was from when I first brought Ash home nearly five months ago.

I think the pitch of my voice in that video is in line with the following study:

Ad of the Week

Interesting overlays.

I never say no to a free book

Harlequin is giving away 16 titles. All of them ebooks, all of them free -- free! -- and not that free-if-you-join-the-club free but serious-free. Just click and download free. No account needed.

Now, I don't know if I'm ever going to read a NASCAR romance novel or one where the word "faith" appears in the description -- I quickly get sick of the characters offering a prayer to the Lord like that's a detailed description of what's going through their minds! what, precisely, are they praying for? how are they wording that prayer? is it more fear or faith that makes them utter it? now those are details that make characters real and human -- but they're releasing one title for each (or most) of their lines so in their theory there's "something for every woman." And lord knows that after all my grad school work I need a little fluff reading.

In the end a few K of storage costs me very little, and I never say no to a free book, no matter how stodgy or fluffy it is.

Book Reviews

Three books to talk about this time. Between Panic and Desire by Dinty Moore, The Princess and the hound by Mette Ivie Harrison, Princess Ben by Catherine Glilbert Murdock.



I've only read the first 35 pages of Between Panic and Desire but I already love it. The book (a memoir of sorts, by his own definition) is a collection of essays by Dinty Moore, some of which have been published elsewhere. One of those I read in my randomly selected back copy of The Pinch while at the AWP conference. "Nine" amused me the first time around so I was pretty excited when I picked up this book and realized it was a collection of similar essays. Moore plays with the essay form and gives us such things as an alphabetic listing of absentee fathers.



The Princess and the Hound is a young adult novel assigned for my folktales & children's lit class. It is, unfortunately, the first book in a series. Now, I used to love series because that meant that after I had invested all this time/love/energy in a set of characters they would return back to me and reward all that time/love/energy. But for a book I'm expected to discuss and analyze in class I'm not so fond of it continuing on and not explaining or tying everything up. Harrison has created a world where "animal magic" exists. Primarily the ability to speak in the tongues of animals. And people with this linguistic ability are feared, hunted out, and burned at the stake. The young prince must therefore conceal his own magic abilities from everyone. As a whole, the book is quite charming and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in the genre. There's also a theme of motherlessness in this book (both animal and human) that would be worth critical exploration but at this point in the semester it's too late for me to write that paper so I'll just stick to my 15 page assignment on the color red.



Princess Ben was more of what I'd consider a "tween" novel. I guess YA novels target that crowd depending on the reading ability of the individual, but in this case we have a protagonist who is about 14 and spends the first half of the novel completely self-absorbed in her own misery and her own desires. She is a completely believable fourteen year old. And her selfishness sets her up nicely for redemption by the end of the novel. The other really interesting thing that goes on is how she secretly begins to learn magic. This novel does stand on its own and it has enough twists to it (as does Princess and Hound) to be fresh and interesting. And it gives me plenty of fodder for that term paper on "red."

Paperweight