the word cage

The week of the monster.

2012-01-26T12:01:00.002-05:00

I am a fan of all things retro, and generally I hold the belief that things were made much more sturdily in past eras. That said, I learned this week that even a meticulously maintained old furnace can be churning carbon monoxide into your basement, and that beneath the attractive teal painted metal may lurk an inner hull of corrosion.

So this has been the week without heat, and the week of feeling constantly unsettled, the week of freaking out about not being able to afford even a fraction of a new furnace, the week of celebrating that our home warranty covers much of it, and now the day of staying home, freezing my dupa off, huddled in my bedroom w/ pb&j and diet pepsi, bundled up next to the space heater, able to do nothing but look out the window and look at the interwebs as the workers tear down the old and install the new.

On Monday I was thinking, wow, I am getting quite caught up. Then the universe started laughing hysterically.

I am very happy we are safe, however, and glad that living without heat is not a regular thing for us. I am hoping to at least get some reading done later today, before the kids get home. We may all want to spend the afternoon in snowpants. Right now I feel like a sulky teeenager moping in her room. When the heat goes on (fingers crossed) later today, we'll rejoice.

Sticking-to.

2012-01-17T20:18:00.004-05:00

It took me several tries to photograph this crime scene. It's a super windy day here in Akron, OH, and I had to get the best angle (meanwhile, my car was running and the driver's side door was open, etc). Anyway, I'd like to jump out of the car more often (figuratively) for pictures and poems. Impulsive, but in a good way.

So far I'm doing well at sticking with my modified routine of giving everything its own time and day, and not allowing myself to be coaxed into one office when I've vowed to be in another. I am also succeeding so far in breaking up my annotations rather than doing a marathon. Next year I'll be teaching full time and thus having a full teaching load again, so it's important to start that now.

Last Thursday was a little complicated due to my kids having a holiday on Friday, and my daughter's spelling bee on Thursday afternoon, but I did accomplish things in my home office (new poem, new book review) and dang did that ever feel great.

All the snow melted. But they say it's coming back. Every day without harsh weather is a gift, as far as I'm concerned.

Saturday evening post.

2012-01-14T20:44:00.004-05:00

Yes, we have snow now, and yes, I am freezing my ass off, but you know what? The poems are back in town. The POEMS are BACK IN TOWN. Spread the word around. The poems are back. I've written three this week. I will write another tomorrow. I'm having some fun with it. So what if it's a polar waste land out there? The poems are red hot poems, and they are back.

Final mark-up.

2012-01-10T20:44:00.003-05:00

We are working on edits for BOR #5, and wow, this publishing thing does get easier with many years of experience. So hooray for that.

Two days into the new semester and I am really tired. On Monday I was suddenly hit with a massive urge to un-clutter my office, so that set things off, and now I am determined to execute the same plan at home. Some time. Maybe tomorrow or Thursday. Now my office looks bare and boring. But you can see the floor.

Teaching two poetry workshops = my ideal semester.

Hey, so AWP isn't super far away, and I am doing three readings and a panel, and hosting the BOR offsite on Friday. Already starting to plan for these various things. Exciting!

Suffering from a very angry shoulder (or two, really). Bad, bad posture.

Still waiting for First Poem of 2012.

Watch me now. Hey.

2012-01-08T20:25:00.005-05:00

I almost feel like I'll jinx myself by writing this, but I would really like to work this semester's schedule out so that it includes some regular "writing time" for me. Seriously, I spend more time cleaning my house than I do writing. I still write, of course, but I've never made time for it.

We'll see how this plan goes. I have yet to write my first poem of 2012.

In other news, tomorrow is the first day of spring semester. I am SO EXCITED, and not just because I have an orange pilot precise V pen, but that certainly helps. This is my last semester as an administrator, and I am looking forward to all the cool classes I am going to be able to teach now that I'll be only teaching.

Yeah.

Off to organize those pens, and to admire my new owl folders a little more. Speaking of owls, I typeset issue 5 of Barn Owl Review on Friday. It's a real show-stopper. I'll show some peeks once it's baked a little more.

It's too late to turn back now.

2012-01-04T12:54:00.003-05:00

That's a stray rose petal, not somebody's blood, but you have to look really close to be sure. Today I have made progress. I still have a long way to go, but it's progress. I thought I would get so many things done over break. I got a fraction of them done. But that's okay, because now I have motivation. I am triaging. Checking things off the proverbial list.

I did manage to get some housepainting done over the past few weeks, and I finished my third book of poems. Shouldn't that be enough, after all? If you'd like a peek at some of the new manuscript, check out this feature at Escape into Life, where the editors paired my poems with some bright, compelling artwork.

Super grateful that Saint Monica made Michael Meyerhofer's No Tell Best Books of 2011 list, and Kyle Minor was so kind to mention Saint Monica here.

Now I have to get ready to call it a day and pick the kids up from school. I was both sad and gleeful to send them back today.

I hope this new year brings new poems.

Penultimate splash.

2011-12-30T10:07:00.003-05:00

Hey 2011, thanks for the memories! Next year I vow to incorporate some new vegetables into our lives, to maybe give brown rice another try, to drink less diet soda, to be thankful more often. I would like to simultaneously be more aware and less aware.

I would like to write things down. I would like to jump back into my current book projects without trepidation. I would like to remember how little time I had to get things done over break, and therefore make better use of the time I do have. Syllabus-related anxiety dreams may go away once I figure out what books I'm using this summer and fall.

Thank you, 2011, for bringing Saint Monica and The Monkey & the Wrench into the world. 2012 will have O Holy Insurgency, spaghetti squash, more tea, more happy, some moving forward with life (see aforementioned more happy), heaps upon heaps of gratitude for all of the above.

Bright, All Is.

2011-12-25T21:06:00.002-05:00

It's Christmas night. We made it! I am feeling tremendously relieved and a million times more motivated than I did 24 hours ago. I just may be able to get a few things done over break, after all. This year the kids were visiting their dad for Christmas day, so we had a relaxing and quiet grownups holiday involving my mom's fabulous cooking (and my dad's panna cotta, surrounded by fresh pomegranate juice, procured in a process which my mom described as the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and finally she made my dad finish the task outdoors due to the pomegranate gore). Between the four of us, I believe we read every page of both the NYT and Plain Dealer at least twice. Now the kids are home and in bed, and I am ready to charge into this week like nobody's business. I guess the universe gave me the gift of motivation this year. Thanks, universe.

Status update.

2011-12-22T20:38:00.003-05:00

Um, yeah, so I have officially submitted my final draft of O Holy Insurgency, complete with blurbs and marketing questionnaire and so forth.

Champagne! Or champagne-ish!

And now it's time to really start figuring out what comes next.

Here's an Akron alley shot from today.

Snowflakeless, etc.

Yeah.

The end of the year as we know it.

2011-12-20T23:12:00.003-05:00

A break is not a break if you have to keep waking up at 6 to get your kids off to school. Thus, my break will not truly break until tomorrow morning, when my kids hopefully make themselves breakfast and let me sleep in a little.

And then, the shopping...

I was feeling super disoriented, then looked at last year's archives and realized I felt this way last year, too. Note to MB of 2012: you will not get extra work done over winter break. No extra reading, editing, junk drawers, painting, edgy and comic novel written, etc. Don't even try.

I still don't know what day it is.

It hit me that AWP isn't super far away.

I need to write my panel paper!

I can't seem to read The Cat's Table at any time when I'm not semi-comatose, so my reading has slowed down like everything else. So far it's not making me break through the wall of tired.

Speaking of which, it's time to call it a night.

Chainbreaker.

2011-12-12T14:51:00.003-05:00

Around this time of year I tend to issue challenges such as:

I will write three new poems before the new year.

Will you write three new poems before the new year?

Ideally, I'll write more than three poems before the new year, but it's hard to know how exciting this break will or won't be.

I just wrote a new poem. I've been averaging one poem every 1.5 weeks. That is not very good, for me.

I sat down this afternoon to write one of the more unpleasant poems of this book. And then I ended up making it nice.

Stockholm Syndrome by Poem.

Whatever. I'll take it.

Fall 2011 semester is done. I'm finishing up rec letters and some editorial projects, and then it's all snowmen and snow ma'ams and popcorn and laziness. And BOR typesetting. And, hopefully, new poems.

yes + no

2011-12-05T15:41:00.003-05:00

It's been raining all day, but this time last year we had snow. I wrote a new poem today, organized some existing poems, punched holes in some existing poems, and upbraided myself a little (sometimes I think I write silly poems because I don't like writing somber ones, and right now I am writing kind of a non-funny series of poems, but some of them are humorous, only not the one I wrote today).

Classes are done for the year, but grading is not. Just getting started on a new poetics project. Wondering why there's so much damn laundry in my house all the time. Glad I made the cat stay indoors today.

12

2011-12-01T20:14:00.005-05:00

Holy crap it's DECEMBER now. I've been thinking it was December for weeks, but now I am right instead of wrong. I just went to type "Winter 12" in the tag box and typed WINGER instead. Thank you, unintentional and horrifying musical allusion.

Anyway, it's December. I taught my last class of Fall 2012 today. I have, as they say, my work cut out for me. Big projects, small projects, projects that don't know they are projects, projects that shouldn't be projects, oh yeah. Still not writing, but feeling a hell of a lot more contemplative lately, and that is a good sign.

Homestretching.

2011-11-29T09:07:00.002-05:00

This blog post is my reward for finishing the last of my Fall 2011 annotations, and my Fall 2011 papers grading. This blog post, and a little chocolate too. Now I dive ahead into the last week of classes. Please know that my stairs are not filthy, as they appear above. I took this photo in the dark. That's a shadow-stair, not a filth-stair. Henri was obviously not pleased that I had turned on the dishwasher. I think that's what she's lamenting in the photo.

There is not much new to report. I am writing a lot of recommendation letters. Managing my daughter's fourth grade basketball career. Losing at fantasy football. Reading fiction, not writing poems. Hopefully the latter part of that sentence will change once the semester is officially done. Our weather is rainy and non-cold right now. Every day I wonder when the snow is going to start.

Nopoember

2011-11-19T20:37:00.003-05:00

Dang, y'all. I am totally uninspired lately. I had to force myself to take some pictures this week. I think I've only written one poem this month so far, a crappy one to prove to myself that I can indeed still write poems on my new laptop.

I ended up feeling strangely sentimental about surrendering my old laptop for this new one. After all, I'd written both Saint Monica and O Holy Insurgency on it, not to mention my new coin-operated manuscript, and my new risk management manuscript, and another project I have in the oven. I also used that old hunk of junk to typeset numerous issues of Barn Owl Review, and to edit and paste together all the essays and foreword for The Monkey & the Wrench. It was hard to say goodbye at first. But I'm hoping that the new laptop has even more awesomeness potential. It does seem a lot more reliable, for one. Now I just need the inspiration. Insert wild, cackling laugh here.

I found this post by Julianna Baggott to ring so true to my life, especially in terms of writing and not writing. I know that the not writing is necessary to the writing, but it's so uncomfortable to me. I feel like a machine. This machine does get a lot of student poems annotated and rec letters written and laundry folded, but it doesn't make poems. I am going to try to look around a little more this week, at the very least. I am hoping for one poem by next Friday.

Weather over/under.

2011-11-06T21:39:00.005-05:00

Universe, please accept today's offering of moderate laziness as recompense and allow me to wake up tomorrow okay enough to function. This message is being conveyed upon the heels of Nyquil, which will surely catch me in a few minutes. I apologize, here and publicly, for being so pleased with myself for making it to Week 11 without so much as a sniffle. I may have even smirked at the chorus of coughs resounding down the hall at work. I thought I was going to outrun it this year, but alas.

Currently hoping to beat this all down and not get really sick, as I have a tendency to do. Tried to watch as much football as possible today. I could really use a productive week. If you're out there, universe, thank you for your kind attention.

Artifacting.

2011-11-01T15:02:00.004-04:00

November is here! I'm so glad, but not sure why. I have been cold almost every day. Like, waking up in the middle of the night cold, and wearing two sweaters cold. Otherwise healthy and functional, however. Maybe it's the new freezeicism. I don't know.

This evening John Gallaher and G.C. Waldrep read at UA. I'm excited to hear them. It's always fun welcoming writers to Akron.

I printed out our November calendar and it looks deliciously empty. I am counting down to winter break and planning a few home improvement projects, like painting, which is way overdue. I may even replace the mead hall chic hardware on the kitchen cabinets, if I am ambitious enough.

The only other news is that I fear I have become addicted to sending poems out. I've been doing it almost every day. I took special joy in sending out a number of print submissions. The downside to all this is that I haven't been writing much.

As in the past, I have found a bunch of poems that I forgot about after writing. Some of those are getting slapped around a bit and then put into envelopes and mailed away.

Horror, The

2011-10-26T20:17:00.002-04:00

About once or seven times a day, I think I've lost my _________ (phone, wallet, keys) and then begin to panic. And then all the ransacking. That's pretty much my mode right now concerning poems, too. Doubt, terror, ransack, repeat.

I wonder if this is a third book thing. I wrote an entire third manuscript, but now I want to just keep running with my current project and not return to issues in the previous.

This weekend I am going to let about 50 poems hang out together on my living room floor (cats permitting) to see if there are some connections I haven't considered previously.

So that's where I am right now. Making messes, many of them imaginary. There should be a literary term for that.

Tiny panics.

2011-10-20T22:34:00.003-04:00

I don't have any large things to report except that I've had a nice handful of poems (many very new) picked up by several magazines that I love, and this has made me giddy. It has also made me totally dismantle most recent manuscript and wonder what I should be doing with all these poems (hacked down by 26 pages, etc). I'm not sure I'll have time to ponder this until winter break.

We've had some very rainy weather in Ohio. It's making me think about winter, which makes me think I better get the cupboards stocked up. Many of this week's plans derailed by being home with a sick kid, who is thankfully better, and I guess I welcomed the break from reality after all.

I may have written a new poem or two since I last posted. Trying to be diligent about sending work out. Trying to find a journal or two that likes funny poems. Realizing that liking some of my poems is, um, an acquired taste.

Wild and _____________.

2011-10-09T20:15:00.003-04:00

Akron is a great place to be right now because SUMMER is BACK. Sure, it gets pretty cold at night, but who doesn't love a good pair of pajamas? And yes, the leaves are at their peak, but they look much prettier when you don't have a hat pulled down over your eyes and a coat zipped up to your nose.

Above please find this wall-climber we found today. Eric says in the picture it looks like a turd but it is not.

Lately I have had a lot of moments such as: Wow, this glass of water tastes delicious! Or: Just look at this tiny white flower! Or: My cats are so cute, I want to bring them to work with me! Maybe it's just being able to have a little more sunshine than expected for this time of year. I don't know, but I'll take it.

Partydown.

2011-10-04T15:16:00.002-04:00

Today is one of those Tuesdays that feels like a Wednesday. But you know what? Who cares, because on the Friday of AWP we're having an amazing offsite reading for Barn Owl Review and Diode.

Barn Owl Review & Diode Offsite Poetry Reading
Friday, March 2nd, 7:00 pm
Fine Arts Building, Curtiss Hall
410 South Michigan Avenue (mere steps from the conference hotel!)
Chicago, IL, USA

Readers:

Jason Bredle * Traci Brimhall * Peter Campion * John Gallaher * Brent Goodman * Matthew Guenette * Rebecca Hazelton * Sandy Longhorn * Erika Meitner * Aimee Nezhukumatathil * Alison Pelegrin * G.C. Waldrep

This is the very first Barn Owl Review offsite reading ever, so we are extra excited, and I have to admit that this lineup make my heart get all a-flutter. So many awesome writers in one place.

In news not of the future, it seems warmer weather is back in Akron this week, and thank the dear lord for that. Several days of bone-chilling cold and rain made it rather difficult to be motivated. Now, sunny skies and temps in the upper 60s are making it rather difficult to be motivated. But I'm catching up nonetheless. It's week seven. I am already pining for the glory of winter break, even if it has the word "winter" in it.

Last-ish splash.

2011-09-30T23:46:00.004-04:00

Dear blog, I have not abandoned you. I was in New York! I spent 20 hours in the car with two kids under the age of ten. And I have (obviously) lived to tell about it. But mainly I want to say that September is almost over. I think it should be over. I'm already thinking about November, etc. Anyway, now that the trip is behind us (family wedding, etc) it's all about catching up and moving forward and acting shocked by chilly gusts and orange leaves.

The most exciting part of this week (aside from returning home) was this incredibly insightful review of Saint Monica in The Rumpus. There's nothing quite like perusing the sites you check every day and seeing your own book cover there. I'm incredibly thankful. I am totally going to squeal with glee in front of their table at AWP Chicago.

In other news, while I was out of town the folks at We Who Are About to Die posted this little interview with me about parenting. It's about parenting, but I think the whole "how to write like you're desperate to write, because you are desperate to write" idea applies widely. Cheers to all the folks who checked it out.

I need to post this because soon it's going to be October. I'll neglect the blog less this month, promise. I can report back that I have 16-ish pages of new poems from the new series, so I haven't been spending the whole time filing my nails and dreaming up new recipes for butternut squash.

Night + moves.

2011-09-12T14:10:00.005-04:00

Oh dear. This day became incredible hectic, in the "well, I guess I'll leave my desk looking like it's been ransacked" kind of way. Where did that come from, huh?

My poem-writing productivity has slowed a bit this week, but there's still exciting news.

I have some new poems here at Toad. Yeah!

And it has officially been announced that I will be judging two awesome things in the future. I'll be the poetry judge for the 2011 Best of the Net anthology (attention online magazine editors--submissions accepted until 10/31/11). I am also the judge of this year's Mid-American Review James Wright Poetry Award competition, which has a postmark deadline of 10/1/11. That's practically right around the corner!

One thing I can share about judging contests is that my aesthetic is incredibly eclectic. I can honestly say that I like all different kinds of poems. I like dark/chilly poems, and hot love poems, and silly poems, and dark poems that turn into silly love poems. I like lyric poems and narrative poems. I love poems that seem really felt by the author (even if they're funny--sometimes they can be the most moving poems). I'd rather poems take risks and have a few runs in their stockings, rather than being impenetrable in a cold veneer. If that makes any sense. Anyhow, it's an honor to be judging, and I can't wait to read what folks send my way.

On Saturday I'll be reading with the amazing Susan Grimm (who arguably has the best reading voice in all of poetry--downright mesmerizing) at Mac's Backs Books on Coventry, at 7 pm. I'll read some Saint Monica poems, but also a handful of my brand new, hot of the press series that I've been having so much fun with. I hope to see you there, local poetry fans!

And then there was _________.

2011-09-08T13:57:00.003-04:00

Man, it's feeling autumnal here in Akron, OH. I am completely obsessed with a new series of poems I am writing. I just had to grapple with whether to use quotes and italics or to make a quoted part of a spoken passage non-italic. But that's pretty much the only thing I don't love about these new poems. I'm not bragging, just enthusiastic.

Maybe I do have a little extra swagger thanks to Kyle Minor's incredible reading of some poems from Saint Monica over yonder at HTML Giant. What a delight to wake up to. I am filled with gratitude!

For some reason, a poem doesn't feel completely real until I print it out on paper. I wish I could get past that, because it's silly. Somehow the screen just seems temporary. Like a bunch of stray light.

I guess that's what it is, technically.

I printed all these new poems up and I am taking them home with me.

Longweekender.

2011-09-05T20:20:00.002-04:00

Wow, this long weekend was something else! All of the best things (bestest friends, poetry, beers of quality, curry cauliflower, my writers' group with amazingly inspiring girlfriends, broken things being fixed, new poems even though allegedly "not writing," cooler weather that makes one think about flannel pajamas, two poems accepted by supremely awesome journal, a little relaxation, not doing the stuff supposed to be doing, catching up on laundry, cats that like to walk across your chest while reading, and reading!).

It's hard to believe we're entering week THREE of the semester, and already a day ahead, at that.

My yard is starting to look like a real jungle, and not in a nice way.

I hope the universe doesn't consider this an invitation to throw me yet another curve ball, but I feel as if I am finally getting some things in order and figuring out a workable routine.

It's also not really Sunday night, so I shouldn't have insomnia.

Having some revelations about a new book project!

I'd really like this week to be a good one.

A farewell to August.

2011-08-31T19:11:00.003-04:00

Doesn't Lulu Barnes make an imposing shadow? That shadow says, "It's almost September, even though it feels like the middle of summer, and the AC is running, and it's still light when the kids go to bed."

It's a chatty shadow. One of those.

Golly, we're knee-deep into week two, and everything, for the most part, is okay.

The super awesome, independent Akron reading series THE BIG BIG MESS has its latest installment on Friday, featuring Matthew Guenette, Nate Pritts, Adam Fell, and Matt Hart. It's going to be so fantastic.

Don't wear your wool sweater, though, because that place gets a little hot.

In other news, did you know that I write book reviews sometimes? Here's my review of THE TREES THE TREES by Heather Christle, at Read This Awesome Book.

Dear reader, I am looking forward to the long weekend that they say is ahead of us.

I have a batch of student poems to comment on. I somehow, despite major childcare challenges, managed to write well over 40 pages of poems this summer. Life is just where it should be. Please stay that way, life. Thanks.

And just like that...

2011-08-26T23:46:00.003-04:00

One minute I was contemplating witchcraft to get rid of ants, and the next I was in the classroom telling students about contemplating witchcraft to get rid of ants, and how that connects (maybe) to the craft of writing poetry.

Yes, this week was hectic. It took me a really long time to line all of those metaphorical cones (see above) up just right. But I did, and here we are.

At this time of year I am always extra thankful that I get to do what I do. I'm also kind of shocked that I get to do what I do, even though I've been here in Akron since 2005. I am very aware of the fact that my 1:2 load is going to be a thing of the past as of next year, when I am no longer program director, so I am trying to enjoy it. Less administration, or rather, NO administration, will be nice.

The Monkey and the Wrench is getting some rather awesome reviews in magazines, including ALA Choice:

As editors of the "Akron Series in Contemporary Poetics," Biddinger and Gallaher have compiled an exceptionally fine sampling of reflections on contemporary American poetry. The first selections are playful, pithy examinations of noteworthy trends; the last section is devoted to ongoing debate in the field on attempts to classify American poets and their work into distinct schools--a debate to some degree launched in Cole Swenson's American Hybrid." A Norton Anthology of New Poetry, ed. by Cole Swensen and David St. John (2009). Less experienced audiences, including lay readers, will find the essays refreshingly clear and the threads of the discussion easy to follow, and they will appreciate the wealth of illustrations and suggested further reading. At the same time, practicing poets and instructors in MFA programs will find the critique of such programs invaluable. Delightful in terms of style, broad and perceptive in subject and treatment, this book is a must-read for those interested in writing poetry. Though not exhaustive in coverage, it represents the current conversations of some of the most prominent writers and critics publishing today. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers.

--C. E. O'Neill, New Mexico State University at Alamogordo

I am so excited to hear what people have to think of the book, especially because we're working on volume 2 in the series right now.

The biggest development of the week: I now have a 4th grader and a KINDERGARTENER. Ray's first day was today. He loved it. Then we went out for Thai food. He didn't want the mild-ish pad thai I ordered for him, and instead ate Eric's spicy vermicelli. I think he is ready for the real world.

First day crack-up.

2011-08-23T20:56:00.004-04:00

School: it's back in session! I am only teaching one class this semester (I am on a 1:2 again this year, which will change next year, as I will no longer be directing the MFA program, which, coincidentally, has a nice new website). Anyway, I am teaching an intro to poetry writing workshop, which is one of my favorite classes to teach. It seems like an awesome bunch. Totally odd time of 12:15-1:30, but everyone was still awake and not gnawing on gigantic sandwiches or anything. It was great. Then I went back to my office and got knocked out of my chair by an earthquake.

I sometimes have problems dealing with my blood sugar and thus end up shaky/loopy/vertigo-esque, so I figured I'd had another one of those 120 calorie Lean Cuisines by mistake or something, but then the building was really swaying, and we stood in the doorways and felt queasy. I'm not sure why I am compelled to document this, but it was quite eerie and strange (not to mention the flurry on twitter afterwards, like everyone was getting quaked at the same time). Afterwards I went out and took a bunch of pictures and I'm super happy with them. So thus rests the first day of school 2011. An auspicious start, for sure.

Wherein the summer ends, and our heroine ponders cheering.

2011-08-21T23:37:00.003-04:00

Ultimately, I shall not cheer for the end of this summer, because even though it was a difficult summer (ants! flooding! 70+ year old house breaking every five minutes! no money!) it was still pretty amazing. I'd never spent so much time in my house before, or with my kids, and I loved both of those things. Most days I'd sleep until almost-8 (thank you, Raymond, for finally learning how to sleep) and spend a lot of time chilling, catching up on emails, scrutinizing then purchasing fruit, writing lists, getting sun, eating whatever Eric would bbq for us (hello, zucchini and squash...since when did I become smitten with you).

It was a summer with a leisurely pace, and I learned so much. I read a ton of books FOR FUN. I have over 30 pages of new poems, and the month isn't over yet. I got some poems picked up by magazines. I learned how to bargain shop (and now it totally pains me to see inflated prices--it seems like all I ever buy is food, but I can list strawberry prices for at least five different markets in Akron).

Things I did not do this summer: clean and organize closets, make significant progress on basement organization, lose a ton of weight, go to the shore multiple times, invent a secret cat language, make some art. But oh well. There's always next summer.

The Week of the No Turning Back

2011-08-14T22:46:00.003-04:00

There once was a week of no turning back. On the Sunday night before this week, everything seemed normal, except--what the hell?--it was a lot colder outside. And there were navy blue pants everywhere, some for a kid girl, and some for a small boy. (Note: there were no new clothes for other inhabitants of the household, though some wore exclusively fur, and others had no $ for new clothes, having purchased all those navy pants).

Anyway, so this is a limited edition post, because I won't be able to use the "Summer 2011" tag for much longer. Fall is almost here, and there's absolutely nothing we can do about it except get excited about football, sweaters, and stuffed peppers.

Tomorrow I will write my syllabus, which will be dramatically different from past years. I'm revamping. I'm using American Busboy by Matthew Guenette and I Was the Jukebox by Sandra Beasley. Okay, maybe it won't be DRAMATICALLY different, but it will be different. Due to the lack of childcare, I will have only tomorrow to get the thing done.

Tomatoes are in season. I've gotten some poems accepted by magazines. It's 8/14 and I have written 14 poems in month 8. And that is the Sunday night report from Akron, OH.

The week of the ominous and the anxious and perhaps a little silver-lining-ness.

2011-08-11T22:54:00.005-04:00

What's creepier than a blimp sneaking up on you? Well, lots of things. But the blimp is such a happy Akron feature for me that I'll forgive the strangeness of it. The first time I saw the blimp (pretty much overhead, on Market Street) I was about ready to roll under a parked car and start praying. Now it's one of my favorite things to see here.

And how is that connected to today's post? Well, because hopefully the anxiety of this week and next week will result in happy progress and useful moving-forward and such. Maybe that's a friendly blimp hanging overhead, not the concrete representation of impending doom.

I thought that right about now I'd be super sad about Ray going to kindergarten. Instead, I'm super freaked out at how much it costs to buy uniforms and school supplies for two kids. I never thought I'd be the mom bringing shitty tissues from Aldi instead of Puffs Plus with cool little school designs, but apparently that's who I've become. And apologies in advance for the generic classroom wipes. I'm sure they'll sanitize just like the fancier kind.

Anyway, this week I caught up, I freaked out, and I wrote poems. I'm happy with what I have been doing, though nothing's finished, and I am forever lamenting the fact that I only get like 20 minutes max to write anything. I thought my childcare woes would soon diminish, but Ray is home for an extra week, causing a radical clash between my return to work and my ability to be at work without a five-year-old. So this is where the "anxious" comes in.

I have absolutely no idea what I am doing with the new poems, but they are a bit more serious than before, and I'm trying to be a little less rhetorical. Huh. We'll see how that works out.

A thrilling night of poetry awaits tomorrow night, as Jason Bredle and Noah Falck visit Akron for The Big Big Mess Reading Series. What's even better is that I have absolutely nothing to do with curating or implementing this series, so I just get to show up and listen and relax.

Perfect weather in Akron today (low 70s, fluffy clouds on blue sky, some creepy clouds mixed in). There was a crazy orange storm-sunset on Tuesday night, but my photos didn't do it justice.

Currently reading Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell. I hope I can keep reading so much once the academic year is back.

As always, there's a skunk outside my bedroom window this late evening. I play a trick with my brain where I tell myself it's the scent of coffee instead. Success: mild to moderate.

Friday: almost here, and I am very ready.

Announcement: The Saint Monica Library Project

2011-08-08T11:53:00.004-04:00

Dear Readers, thank you so much for your Saint Monica Library Project nominations. I am very excited to announce that the following libraries will receive a copy of Saint Monica, and a lifetime subscription to Barn Owl Review.

Flint Public Library (Michigan)
Waterloo Public Library (Iowa)
Wayne County Public Library (Wooster, Ohio)
Martin Luther King Memorial Library (Washington, DC)

I am thrilled to send these libraries their donations. Thank you to everyone who nominated.

In semi-related news, I'm on Verse Daily today, with "Saint Monica Wishes on the Wrong Star." Thanks, Verse Daily!

Okay, now back to our previously-scheduled Mondayness.

The week that was the foil of the other weeks.

2011-08-04T23:47:00.003-04:00

This week was the good-natured buddy of all the other weeks, the one who doesn't smash a wall full of pickle jars at the grocery store, or swear at old ladies for driving too slowly. If the other weeks were Goofus, this week was Gallant, for the most part. If the other weeks were cherries overripe enough to constitute an icky, slick mess, this week was a nice, firm, tart cherry at the top of the bag, maybe even with two stems (good luck).

In other words, we kinda got our shit together. We got things done. I have in my possession several obsolete to-do lists which I should probably toss out, because those things are finished. I am 2/3rds of the way done with back to school shopping. Aside: back to school shopping, for kids' uniforms and school supplies, really sucks when you don't have much money. Anyway, I am getting things done, and the universe hasn't been getting in my way, except for right now, as I am craving to eat a cookie, but I absolutely will not. It is not on the list.

For the next five minutes, it's still 8/4/11. I have written five poems since the beginning of the month. Things are going to be okay (I hope).

Spontaneous undertow of _______________.

2011-08-02T23:19:00.003-04:00

It's really not a summer until you've waded in ankle-deep or higher water. That's why I don't put on any sort of real shoes between mid-May and mid-September. Because you never know when the real summer experience will present itself.

In case you haven't heard, it's August. I'm writing again, hopefully a poem a day. I have also been feeling more "motivated" overall, like making phone calls and stuff. I hate making phone calls (to strangers) unless I am giving them good news. I wish I could do that every day!

Sorry, right now I'm being totally distracted listening to This Mortal Coil via Spotify. It's like all my disappeared cds are back on my shelf. I do not recommend this if you dislike flashbacks to 1991 (or 1984, if you were cool/born).

When I was a kid I thought it was undertoe. I swam in Lake Michigan a lot. Nobody corrected me. It was just a much simpler time.

The dog days: are they really over?

2011-07-31T22:35:00.003-04:00

Unless I do something stupid, like staying up for hours reading, I will go to bed in July and wake up in August, and that will be great, because July kinda sucked. Everything broke, we got a lot of stupid ants in our house, and the ants didn't turn into dollars like we hoped. Thanks a lot, July.

So now it's August and I begin to buckle down, even though school is looming in a few weeks, and Ray will be home for the first week of school, then starting kindergarten the second. I'm going to start writing poems again, and I will cross things off my to-do list, and I will send more poems out, and I will cease posting dark photos on my blog. I'll jazz it up. Just you wait and see.

Sacrifice to the god of household machinery.

2011-07-27T14:48:00.004-04:00

I'm not sure exactly what I've done to anger the god of household machinery, but it's time for me to sacrifice something and make amends. Maybe I don't cook with enough garlic. Maybe those ants I've been battling are somehow in cahoots with the household machinery, and the broken garage door, AC system, and dryer (all in rapid succession) are payback. Whatever it is, I need to do something. Would sage help? Some kind of spell?

I haven't written anything but essays and blurbs this week, but I will write a poem. It's just not going to happen this afternoon.

If the sacrifice doesn't work, maybe a machine voodoo doll. I wonder if there's such thing as a poem voodoo doll. I wonder if that's why I haven't written so much lately.

Wherein our heroine fears she has disappointed herself, and perhaps others, too.

2011-07-24T22:46:00.006-04:00

Is it silly or ungrateful to ask the universe for fewer revelations? Because I feel like I'm about a week behind in understanding what's going on, and basically what's going on is that I have been feeling rather proud of myself for getting by and moving along, but I am really not accomplishing anything. The closets I vowed to organize over the summer? Even messier than before! The weeds I promised to pull? Raging. And I'm not even going to mention the poems, or non-poems, or the meandering.

I did take some nice pictures this weekend, though. And I've read more this summer than I usually read in a year (mostly fiction and nonfiction, for fun), so that can't be bad. But I fear it's Time to Buckle Down in a big way, as in: learn how to write poems with the kids home, and clean those damn closets. I will not even get into what we've been eating, because summer food on a budget is not the healthiest, though we are earning A+ grades for produce consumption, so that is a good thing.

The poem-writing might be easier if I had some kind of series or project, but my series concepts are a little willy-nilly right now. I was describing to Eric tonight that the best quality of my most recent poem (written today, because I forced myself) is that its lines are very symmetrical. I guess this means I need to try again, and again, and again.

The week of all the surprises.

2011-07-23T10:58:00.004-04:00

This week contained surprises big and small. The big involved epic rainstorm and subsequent wet basement and flooded "three-seasons room," a kid who started some epic puking with very little warning, epic heat, and epically-awesome acceptance of two poems, one of which has the working title of my newest manuscript. Also, epic news for other people, which made me really happy, and also threw me a bit off schedule in the to-do list department.

The small surprises: having to call in for jury duty every day, and never needing to report. Kids who somehow managed to mostly behave while locked in the house due to sickness and ungodly heat. Trying a really tasty quinoa salad. Getting two extra, kid-free hours this morning due to softball game being cancelled, then opening all of the windows in the house (it's still hot and humid, but I'm so happy to actually have the air moving around) and then pretty much wasting those two hours.

Other highlights: ordered uniforms, backpacks, lunch boxes. I have a feeling that as soon as I really figure out how to thrive being at home sans childcare, it will be time for back to school. Or maybe I will have a week, and then it will be time for back to school. This week was a little better in terms of "being economical." Also, I am finding that I rather enjoy being home. Ray + kindergarten = not completely sinking in yet.

Next week may be "the week of nothing," because we don't have any plans aside from the usual softball practice and softball games and piano lessons and library, etc. I am very impatient for Raymond to learn how to read. It's so nice watching Gabi devour books. We made multiple book runs this week. I'm not reading as much as I would like, either due to no time, or the fact that I never want American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell to end.

It would be okay if next week had fewer surprises. Seriously.

Major update.

2011-07-20T14:05:00.003-04:00

Okay, just kidding. There's nothing major here. Still calling in every day to see if Akron Municipal Court wants me to make any judgments about my fellow citizens. Also not writing (no time! at all!) and falling behind on other things (" "). I've pinpointed the waning battery life of my laptop as one possible reason for some of the behindness, as I can't sneak around the house and take care of multiple obligations at a time. I should probably also blame some of it on the weather, right? I don't hate the heat, but that's easy to say when you own a central air system built in 1980. I had to sink $326.00 into it for maintenance, but it still kicks out the jams. I am trying to organize myself with sticky notes, but I don't write them clearly enough. But time is moving along, and so am I.

The week of the ________.

2011-07-15T15:01:00.003-04:00

One thing about me that's not so great is that I'm not one of those people who counts things. So if you ask me how many weeks of summer are left, I will just look at you funny. In a continuing effort to improve myself, I just ~~ate a bunch of twizzlers~~ counted the number of weeks left until school starts, and the answer is five. And now that, as of today, all summer camps for my children are done, perhaps I should give each week a name, if not a theme. This coming week's name is "on call for jury duty," which is extra awesome when you have two kids home with you and obviously can't bring them along. So I am looking forward to the week after next week, unless miraculously next week I don't have jury duty, or I'm put on a case where I may bring justice to the world, though hopefully via an unusually brief trial.

Have written a few poems, but none this week. I am, however, getting a pretty nice tan.

X (literally) marks the pedwalk.

2011-07-10T22:22:00.004-04:00

I hereby mark this as yet another super-fun summer weekend. It was so cool seeing Saint Monica on the shelves of Visible Voice books, and for the first time I read out of the actual, physical book. Many thanks to Black Lawrence Press for getting me the luxurious "natural" colored paper for the book, which is a lifesaver because I sometimes have migraine with aura, and the color is so much easier on the eye/brain. Big ups to my co-readers, Eric Morris and Aleathia Drehmer, and to the Free Union Reading Series.

In other news, I am the featured poet at Anti- right now. Would you care to take a peek? These poems are pretty darn new. I have more to send out into the world, once I get a little more organized.

I have indeed been writing new poems, by the way. 5 pages, 1,203 words. I'm not especially in love with any of them, but I am rather glad they are here.

Creepy Train.

2011-07-08T23:33:00.004-04:00

Thankfully this train is no longer in town, but do you know what is? A really fun Saturday afternoon reading in a place that has WINE and BOOKS: Visible Voice in Tremont, 4:00 pm. Eric and I will be reading poems with Aleathia Drehmer of New York. I will read some Saint Monica poems and there will be copies for sale, and Eric & I will read the newest installment of our Scenic Birds of Ohio series, wherein we write poems imagining that the shuttlecock is a bird of Ohio. Oh, it will be so fun. We hope to see you there.

Ordinary-ish time.

2011-07-06T16:10:00.004-04:00

This anecdote is really dorky, so please stop reading now if you dislike tales of otherwise cool people getting dorky, or exhibiting dorky behavior, or whatever. So lately I have become ADDICTED TO READING. Like, I read A Visit from the Goon Squad in just a couple of days, sneaking it on the sly like cigarettes or tablespoons of verboten peanut butter.

The upside of this is that I am very passionate about reading books for fun right now. The downside is that this is at the expense of writing poems. Thirty spare minutes in the evening? Read book, not write poem. Will write poem once finished this chapter, I mean this book, I mean this next book. I'm not sure when I last felt like this, but it must be a good thing, so I won't totally fight it. It's like when I lie to myself and say that I crave particular foods because my body must need them.

Otherwise, this week being confused about what day it is. Feeling kind of anxious (understatement) for no reason. Next week Gabi is in more camp, and I have some meetings. Week after that: on call for jury duty all week, rescheduled from exam week Spring semester. Then: several weeks of blank calendar (hooray).

Yesterday I got to wade in a spillway. Maybe when I get less addicted to reading I can write a poem about it, or about something else.

Born thirsty.

2011-07-03T22:47:00.005-04:00

Yeah, so, like six Julys ago I left Chicago and moved to Akron, OH. Since then I have only been back once, and that was for AWP 2009. But you know what? They have water here, too. Just look at this picture that was not taken in Chicago or on Lake Michigan, but right here in Ohio. Sure, there are some things I miss about my former home town, and I am counting the days until I visit again (for AWP 2012, of course). But this is where I live now. And here's just a little homage to where that is.

[instrumental interlude featuring inanimate grin]

2011-06-29T13:59:00.004-04:00

One of my offices is in historic Quaker Square, which is currently undergoing a massive road and bridge reconstruction project, and it has been difficult to remain subtle when trying to photograph the various wonders of the site. Sometimes I feel self-conscious, so then I just pretend I'm playing with my phone. But look at this fellow, so excited that Wednesday is here at last, and that the weather in Akron is so darn balmy. And nobody else has taken his picture. He stood nice and still for me and just kept grinning.

July looms at the end of the week, which means the end of the lo-to-no-po diet, and thus I will have to learn how to get more writing done when my children are home. So far it's been fine and non-taxing having a summer without teaching, but the summer without childcare will begin in earnest next week, and I am going to have to get crafty. I am also going to have to get frugal. Hopefully I can do both at the same time. This is going to be an interesting experiment.

I have lately been really interested in 1) reading fiction and nonfiction, 2) Goodreads (I'd neglected it for a long time, but now I'm totally smitten), 3) puffy clouds of the "happy" variety. I hope these aren't symptoms of anything serious.

Will begin writing again in two days. Sending some poems out, too. Upbraiding myself over shoddy, ridiculous system of keeping track of submissions. Checking the mailbox, but unsure of why. And that's about it.

Counterproduction.

2011-06-27T12:56:00.002-04:00

According to the poems I have been reading lately, the world is pretty damn full of birds and trees that keep waving branches around for various reasons. Sometimes the birds are on the branches, but not always. Sometimes the birds and the branches are somewhere other than America, and the poems usually clue us in to that fact in the title.

Birds haven't been on my radar much otherwise, though we did have a creepy squirrel incident a while back where twenty or so of them rampaged a neighbor's tree, then crossed the street in a mob, and then rampaged a different neighbor's tree. So far I have not seen this phenomenon appear in a poem, but who knows. I have a lot of poems yet to read.

May and June have been my po-diet months. As in: no-po. I've written one poem since the end of April, and I think I will keep it that way. Maybe two, but I'm going lo-to-no-po, kind of like a cleanse but without any grapefruit juice or whatever. I feel as though I have lost pounds upon pounds of productivity. I need not-writing time, however, and I think my poems will be different when I dive back in again.

In the meantime, I will amuse myself by photographing the ground, which has more personality than you'd think, even though it is wingless and flapless and branchless.

Move it or _______ it.

2011-06-22T10:58:00.003-04:00

So far this has been the summer wherein I repeatedly lose--or almost lose--various things (keys, phone every five minutes, important paperwork, books, outdoor cat) and scare the shit out of myself, and then find the various things again, and it's like Christmas morning. I can speculate that this is the universe teaching me:

1). To be more careful with where I throw things.

2). To be more appreciative of the things I toss on my counter.

3). To be more organized.

4). To think a little more about what it means to lose something.

Anyway, it's rather disconcerting. Normally I'm not a person who freaks out about her keys all of the time, etc.

Perhaps all of this losing/finding is to blame for the utter poem drought around here, since April. I've written one poem since 5/1. It was just fine, too. Perhaps this is due to having the kids home from school, and doing a lot of reading other people's poems. It makes the most sense for me to consider May and June to be poem hiatus months (officially, not just by default) this year, and to pick up like a bat out of hell on 7/1. Or thereabouts.

In not-lost news, I am getting some exciting nominations for The Saint Monica Library Project. And holy cats, I am selling a lot of books, too. I need to chill and stop checking the Amazon sales rank so obsessively, but I'm just so excited. If only I could translate that energy into new poems, I'd be all set.

Right now I am officially "out of the office" until August, with the exception of my work at the Press. We celebrated on Sunday by going to the beach without the kids, and I spent a lot of time just staring at the sky. Then a monster thunderstorm rolled into town, but I don't think I caused it with all my cloud-gazing. Or maybe I did. You never know.

The Saint Monica Library Project.

2011-06-20T09:36:00.007-04:00

[We interrupt the usual musings for an important public service announcement.]

Saint Monica isn't the patron saint of libraries, but libraries were a saving grace to Mary Biddinger. That's why she is donating four copies of SAINT MONICA to libraries in need, along with a lifetime subscription to Barn Owl Review for each library. Ideally, several of these libraries would be in rural areas, like the setting of the book.

To nominate a library in need, send links + a brief rationale (300 words or fewer) to mb at marybiddinger dot com by 7/5/11. The four libraries will be selected by Mary in consultation with the Barn Owl Review editors, and announced here and elsewhere.

Note: while the book does contain some adult themes, it's not "blasphemous" in a way that would be unwelcome at libraries. Please share this call for nominations, and support your local library whenever you can. Thanks!

---

Throughout my life, libraries have been a church for me. There's nowhere that I feel more peaceful and safe, and reverent. Working in libraries helped feed me in undergrad, and the cramped confines of a study carrell eased me through the panic of studying for doctoral exams. I plan to donate copies of Saint Monica to my various alma mater institutions, and to libraries in Northeast Ohio, but I'd really like to broaden my scope, and to reach readers in places like the town where the book takes place (and beyond). To make this a more enduring commitment, I will also donate lifetime subscriptions to Barn Owl Review to these four libraries, in the hope that there's somebody like me back in the day, checking the magazine rack obsessively for new journals to arrive. Thank you so much for sharing this, and for nominating, and for supporting your local library.

~MB

Tumbleweeding.

2011-06-15T13:57:00.004-04:00

Sometimes I just don't like epigraphs. But I also don't wear jewelry, so what do I know. I've noticed an epigraph-y trend in some of the manuscripts I've read this year. As in: a lot of epigraphs. I have a brief description of Saint Monica (the original saint) in Saint Monica, but it's not an epigraph, it's more like a preliminary note. I used to wear jewelry, sometimes a lot of it. I'm not sure what happened. And I do believe at one point I had some epigraphs in a book manuscript, but then I took them out and renamed it Prairie Fever.

Is an epigraph more like a charm bracelet, or an epi-pen? Or maybe it's the opposite of an epi-pen. Yikes.

My paper clip bins are all teeming with paper clips of yesteryear, which means only one thing: I've cleaned my English department office because I'll be away from it for a while. In the next few weeks I'm making the transition to being home with the kids most of the time, with a few exceptions (Press work, etc), until August. So far I've been surprised by how busy I am, despite not teaching. My house is probably about 25% cleaner, too. I'd like to raise that percentage a little.

The sleeping...wow. Not having to wake up at 5:30 every morning? Awesome. However, I have noticed that by sleeping until 7:30, I somehow lose several hours of daytime. How is this possible? To compensate, I occasionally stay up until 1:00 am reading. Must discontinue that. Anyway, that's how things have been going so far this summer.

I am incredibly happy that Saint Monica is selling like a little hotcake. Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who has bought a copy. You RULE! The only other tidbit is that I have an interview up at Midwestern Gothic. Do you know about this journal? It's really cool. The first-ever litmag I've read as an e-book, too, which was scary for about 1/18th of a second, and then it was really, really awesome.

Okay, back to counting epigraphs, maybe writing some of my own.

Underpinnings.

2011-06-06T15:30:00.004-04:00

Wow, I sure am making up for my poetic binge of April. I haven't written a new poem since 4/30. I was thinking I'd welcome June with a bang, and write a new poem on the first day, but it simply didn't happen, and it hasn't happened. I've been reading more than writing. As always, reading makes me want to write differently. That is, if/when I ever write again. Ha ha.

The next two weeks are a flurry of having to tie up a number of loose ends, before my childcare disappears completely and I am On Vacation for the rest of the summer.

I am still in kind of a tizzy over Saint Monica being here and all. I help my authors with this stuff all of the time (review copies! press releases!) but it feels different doing it for your own book.

I send many, many thanks to Sandy Longhorn for her thoughtful review of Saint Monica. I'm usually kind of terrified to read what people have to say about my poems, but the experience of reading this response may have cured me. I feel like I learned something about my own poems through Sandy's thoughts on them.

In a silly way I keep asking myself questions about the book, in anticipation of other people asking me. For example:

Saint Monica is a fairly lengthy/substantial chapbook. Why didn't you make it into a full-length collection?

How much of Saint Monica is true? Is Monica you, or someone you knew?

Will you ever write Saint Monica poems again, or is she a closed book?

If Saint Monica is a cautionary tale, what is the message that you are trying to convey?

I guess today I will answer that last one, there. If I had to boil the book down to thematic elements, I would say that it's about the way that girls--especially girls of a certain milieu--were taught two things: a) to submit to a higher power, whether that power is God or your best friend's older brother, and b) that there is a connection between domination, pain, sexuality, and obligation. The book also tries to make the case for some kind of mentorship, whether it's having a best friend who knows more about the world than you do, or having a patron saint who somehow keeps you from tumbling into ravines, or being bound with tape and tossed into the trunk of a car.

Until my most recent project, I wrote constantly about violence. I also wrote, or tried to write, about the difficult task of determining your own moral bearings in a world that imposes so many rules upon us, including senseless ones. Although Saint Monica is in many ways focused upon the adolescent experience, I hope that it is useful in showing how often our adult decisions relate to mistakes we did or did not make when younger. It's a book about alternate possibilities, with the hope that readers recognize that they exist. It also has a pretty decent classic rock soundtrack, but that's unrelated.

[Thankfully, the poems themselves are a lot more interesting than this analysis. Saint Monica blesses you if you made it through both paragraphs.]

In related news, if you missed it earlier, Nick Ripatrazone has some fantastic commentary on one of the poems in Saint Monica here, at The Fine Delight, as well as an interview with me about the book, where I talk about Catholicism, and many other things.

I promise you that I will write a poem again some time soon, perhaps by the end of this week.

Saint Monica on the loose.

2011-05-25T09:02:00.004-04:00

Yeah, so nothing's new here in Akron, OH. Nothing at all. Nope. I'm just busy reading manuscripts and getting ready for the Barn Owl Review reading period to open on 6/1, now using Submishmash. Doing a little yard work, having a few cookouts. Yep, that's it.

Oh, ha ha. I am very funny. The news is that Saint Monica is finally here. Hot off the press, and should be shipping very soon. And it looks great! I have such a hard time meeting and interacting with my own books because much of my business is spent proofing books, and so the prospect of my own work in print is a little terrifying.

Imagine my relief when the book arrived and looked spectacular. Technically Saint Monica is a chapbook, but it weighs in at 42 pages, so it's a bit more on the bookish side. Of course I am biased, but I think it would be nice for a creative writing or lit class, especially one interested in both lineated poems and prose poems.

If you'd like to get a copy, here's some info:

Directly from Black Lawrence Press, ships by June 1st.

From Amazon (to be "released" officially very soon, as it is now in print).

At Powells (on backorder, but that should be remedied soon).

If you're a journal interested in a review copy, you can contact Black Lawrence Press directly.

Okay, now back to the reading and paperwork and other miscellany. Thank you for considering Saint Monica as an addition to your summer reading list! I am so glad she is here.

_ in the time of _ .

2011-05-19T13:29:00.003-04:00

So there's pretty much nobody on campus, except for the summer school students, and there aren't many of them. This afternoon I did some mild jaywalking, mild being the type where you stand at the crosswalk like an idiot because you aren't paying attention, and then you're like, oh, there aren't any cars, and then start walking.

Only today some strange man decided to yell at me when I jaywalked. His was the only vehicle on the road, stopped at the intersection. He yelled, "Nobody's going to ticket you for jaywalking" and drove past me. But then he slowed down again and leaned out of his window and yelled "...because you're a goddess."

Usually when strangers speak to me I pretend I don't hear them or can't speak English, and that's what I did here, but I keep wondering what am I the goddess of. Please let it be bees, or cake. We had ice cream cake for my birthday and it was awfully good.

Now I am reading a lot of poetry manuscripts for the Akron prize, and getting ready to read lots of poems for Barn Owl Review (submissions open June 1st, via Submishmash). I am pretty damn busy for someone without summer classes and with only a few weeks left of work before the kids are home on break and it's all swimming pool and public library.

My new hobby is purging the house of items such as empty cardboard boxes and baby toys. I need to find a good place to recycle cardboard in Akron. Yes, this is the most fascinating thing I have ever said on this blog. Perhaps of greater interest is the fact that my first box of Saint Monica is said to be shipping out today. That means another box to recycle.

Yesterday, in a flurry of procrastination, I revised a bunch of poems and sent them to journals. I haven't written a poem yet in May, after writing one a day for all of April. I think it's about time. Only not just now. Etc.

That's a wrap.

2011-05-09T16:11:00.004-04:00

So long, academic year 2010-2011. I'm not teaching again until the Fall. It's like an enchanted forest on campus right now. It's super quiet, and I believe I may be the only one still here. Perhaps I will scream and see if anyone notices.

I am doing administrative work and reading manuscripts for the Akron Poetry Prize until the end of June, and then I'm pretty much home full time with the kids until school starts in August. I'm pretty much home full time with the kids in June, too. I am going to have to "get creative."

I have an interview here at the Best American Poetry blog with Nin Andrews, who is one of my favorite people on earth. Thank you for taking a peek.

There are about 200+ books in my office that need to be shelved, and many stacks of paper to recycle. Somebody should invent a sort of office thresher that can do both of these tasks at once.

We've had some nice weather lately (yesterday, today). I hope it stays this way for a while.

_ is for ______.

2011-05-04T20:41:00.003-04:00

Raymond is unusually excited about Mother's Day this year, and I have no idea why. Maybe because I've been so busy with grading and administrative meetings and visiting writers, or maybe they're making crafts for moms at preschool, but whatever the reason, he's talking about it constantly. Tonight he asked, Mama, can we pray that Mother's Day gets here quickly?

I hope he's not incredibly disappointed. Somehow I think he isn't going to be, though.

May is here, and classes are over (I don't want them to be over!), and (figurative) little birds are leaving the nest, but new birds are arriving. Being a professor is really weird because you are always there, in pretty much the same office, but the students change and then change even more. And then you write a blog post about it. And another. And another.

So it looks like I won't be teaching a summer class after all, as enrollment is back down. I am thinking about making a separate blog about having a lean summer and putting the creativity to alternate use.

In the meantime, I'm making slow progress on the to-do list, and watching Ray count down to Mother's Day. Today he made me two versions of the same picture: one on a standard piece of paper he took from my printer, and one on a smaller piece of paper. To be PORTABLE. Wow...

Putting the cart inside the cart.

2011-04-29T16:07:00.004-04:00

To continue the theme of my last post, April has been a month of many poems, and very little blogging. I've attempted numerous NAPO and NAPO-eque exercises in the past, but this is the only one where I stuck with it 100%, and where most of the daily entries were actually full poems. Having a project seems to help. I'm glad that May will be here soon, but I might keep writing a poem a day for as long as I can.

I do have a few things to report, such as my poem "A Genesis" being picked as a Verse Daily web weekly feature. You can read the poem here at Waccamaw. Thanks, Verse Daily folks, and Waccamaw. The poem is from O Holy Insurgency, forthcoming in 2012 from Black Lawrence Press.

Here's a poem and a little interview for National Poetry Month over at the BLP Blog.

Also, I got to recommend five recent poetry books over at the 32 Poems blog.

And somebody is selling a used copy of Saint Monica on Amazon for $367.02 plus shipping. It will be out very soon. I promise!

In the good news department, I seem to be strepless, and my summer class now has enough students to remain afloat. It's been an anxious few weeks, but things are (hopefully) looking up.

I encountered the above items the other day, and just had to catch them in the act.

Happy weekend to all, carts included.

holy / unholy / holy

2011-04-21T14:24:00.003-04:00

I'm not completely sure what makes this April so much different from last April, but this April I haven't been blogging much, and last April I was blogging fairly much, and this April I am writing many poems, and last April I was writing no poems for a goodly chunk of the month, so what gives? I am sure there is no connection whatsoever. But I'll take it.

So far I've written a poem a day this April. If I knew the date of today offhand, I'd tell you how many poems that adds up to. Minus the one for today, which isn't written yet. I am writing at the same time every day, right after I put my kids to bed. I'm exhausted, but sometimes that's good, in the way that I can say Meh. This image is kooky but I will leave it. Without serious fatigue, I might revise something away.

Today is my second day off antibiotics. I was on various antibiotics for almost three weeks. I am hoping that I am able to stay healthy this time. I hate right now because I am constantly thinking I am getting sick again. Like, there's a bird in the tree outside my window, and there was a bird in the tree outside my window last time I got sick, so I must be sick. Or bird-sick.

Beyond dodging germs, I have a bit of exciting news to report. Saint Monica will be released very soon! I just approved the final version of the whole cover, and the pages look amazing, and I am super excited and feeling so lucky to have two books released this year (M&W was released in January, but that seems like a long time ago).

I can't wait to meet Monica in person. I almost mistyped in prison. Oh dear. Here she comes.

Progress(ish)

2011-04-09T17:10:00.002-04:00

So, we're ankle-deep in April, and I have yet to make any comment here. You may thank strep for that, a very bad case that knocked me thoroughly out of commission for over a week. I'm only just starting to feel like myself again, and even then it's slow going.

After canceling a week's worth of classes (and not being able to answer emails or annotate poems, or anything, really) I came back this week and made it through. I really hope that the rest of this year is smoother sailing. It's been a real bummer in the health department lately.

Three more weeks of the semester. Trying to keep up with it, but kind of in disbelief.

Two new poems in the very awesome Devil's Lake. A bunch more forthcoming in other places, which makes me happy.

We have a plethora of new reviews over at Barn Owl Review. Check 'em out. We begin accepting submissions of poetry on June 1st. Holy cow.

Tomorrow it's supposed to be 81 degrees. Right now I'm wearing three shirts and I have the heat on.

Spring and Un-Spring

2011-03-24T23:24:00.004-04:00

This week just whipped right past me like an express train that couldn't stop if it wanted to. It was a maelstrom of girl scout cookies, student poems, appointments filling up the month of April in my calendar, and the ever-drama of Snowflake, No Snowflake. Last weekend we decided to relax a little (it was the end of spring break, after all) and did the traditional "leave the leftover leaves in the flower beds" move that has saved my crocuses and daffodils year after year. And behold, this morning a coating of wicked ice, and snow in all the deep pockets, and by afternoon the flowers were blooming again.

Note: Please don't take this as an invitation to throw one more bad storm our way, mother nature. I do not trust you one bit, but I do fear you.

Today I finished formatting my newest manuscript. I didn't want to get the new version of word, but it actually makes things much easier. I began feeling like a page-break-inserting machine for a while, but otherwise it was a pleasant experience, after needing several rounds of sequencing (I eventually gave up on the floor and opted for the long conference table; the book is in three sections, and I spread each section end-to-end along the table).

The book has a lot of funny poems in it, so I was surprised that it wasn't funny overall--there's definitely an undertone of sorrow. Maybe all the elegies have something to do with that. Anyway, tomorrow I will print it and see what it has to tell me.

[Instrumental Interlude Deux]

2011-03-17T22:31:00.004-04:00

If you were trying to use the ladies' loo at the Linda theater last Saturday afternoon, and saw some shady character with a camera lurking in the shadows, that was me, and I'm not sorry, and I hope this photo is worth your annoyance/trauma. It certainly is to me. Thanks.

At the beginning of this break I was determined to let myself exist out of the office and off the office grid as much as possible. I'm happy to say that I have achieved this goal. I've spent much time with the kids, in the outdoors, at the gym, and away from my desk. Miraculously, my crippling carpal tunnel is now so much better that I can get back to boxing and arm-wrestling, my two passions! Just kidding. But it's so nice being able to fully function again. Add to list of things I will no longer take for granted: hands, and full use thereof.

This Saint Patrick's Day was different from many in the past (for example, we took the kids golfing, which is pretty darn wholesome compared to logging twelve hours in the bar; we logged a few earlier today, but that's all). Now I'm thoroughly relaxed and happy and ready to go to bed. Hardly a raucous party, and I'm rather pleased.

Oh, and back to the break. I haven't sequenced the manuscript yet, formally, but I do have all the pages ready-ish, and I'm sending more poems out. I think I've sent out more poems in the past three months than I have in some years. I need to do some revising. I want to write more poems. I need to figure out what this book is about. But I'm trying to make this spring break a break, so no pushing.

Saw some crocuses today, and can't wait for mine to bloom.

[Instrumental Interlude]

2011-03-15T20:15:00.004-04:00

Welcome to the close of day #2 of Spring Break. I am 1) Not working on academic or administrative stuff, 2) Not answering emails for academic or administrative stuff (unless it's truly urgent), 3) Deep in the throes of some Spring Fever, made even more potent by playing outside yesterday with my family: multiple sports, hats and mittens, but snowdrops at the edges of the lawn.

I have some goals for the break (it's a week), but they're loose ones. Like, it would be kind of awesome if I managed to organize my workout clothes. But it's probably not going to happen. Etc. My big goal has been to sequence my new collection of poems. Step one, after printing the poems up, was to be crushed by self-doubt. Will the different types of poems work together? Is it just trail mix, or a real book?

I was prepared to give it more time, but then I reread everything and was like hell, this is a book, 64 pages when some lukewarm poems were taken out. It includes two poems written today. So I will indeed be sequencing and formatting, probably tomorrow. And revising on the fly, too. Such dangerous living!

And there is absolutely no name for this book yet, which is strange. Tomorrow morning I will vacuum the living room, move some furniture, and put 64 pages on the floor.

To be continued. Yeah.

Rebirth of the Same.

2011-03-11T13:22:00.006-05:00

I've always wondered where barrels go when they are feeling less than peachy. It takes a lot of energy to be that bright and directive. Or maybe there's an imminent safety issue under this trailer. In any case, I think we're covered.

Portrait of an Unfinished Bridge that Has Had Enough of Winter and Isn't Afraid to Shout This Fact from the Rooftops of Downtown Akron, Ohio. Dumpster and Distant Steeple Included.

Gratuitous tree-shot, because this is why we still live here.

In fifteen minutes I will be on spring break. And I'm taking a break. Not from the blog, but from work in general. Hoping to sequence a new book of poems. Hoping the week doesn't go by too quickly.

Next Thursday I start occupational therapy for my carpal tunnel. Apparently it's pretty bad, especially in my left hand. I have to sleep with braces on, and every night I try to take them off in my sleep. The braces are velcro-operated, not coin-operated (yet).

Over and out, from Akron.

The somethingscape.

2011-03-03T15:13:00.004-05:00

Dear Readers, we are no longer snowbound (for now, knock on wood, etc) here in Akron, Ohio. I'm sorry I didn't check in sooner to tell you that. Last week's Universe-Imposed Hiatus (UIH?) was helpful in terms of getting sleep and hanging out with children, albeit sick children, and observing what the cats do all day, which is pretty much nothing, then a little stampeding, but it sure set me back in the poems-annotating department. Last night I finally called it quits at 10:00 pm. Tomorrow morning I'm taking care of some stuff at the Press, then getting my hand checked out again (some crazy tendon pain thing, though thankfully it's my left not my right).

In other news, I've put together a rough compilation of my newest manuscript. You can find a sampling of its poems here in the new issue of diode. I still feel like I have a thousand more poems to write, but I'm putting it together nonetheless. And I have to say that I'm proud of myself for getting motivated in the sending-out department, as I've had a bunch of poems accepted in the past couple of weeks. I keep telling myself that once I get _______ manuscript finished I will begin properly tending and cataloging my poems, but then I just write too many poems. Maybe a better option would be to print them out and keep them in a binder? I don't know.

Lately I've been trying to interpret what the world is telling me (well, not this, which is just awful, especially for someone like me who expressly wanted to get a job in Ohio, I mean, intentionally searched for a job in Ohio, but other things). I guess the UIH made me a little more relaxed or something. Or maybe just taking some time to think about how much I love my job, and how much I like it here. I took a walk across campus and every time I do that it just makes me glad.

Onward toward the weekend, which I hope will be a restful one.

When snow calls all the shots [and all the shots are bad].

2011-02-25T09:04:00.004-05:00

I was born in California, but didn't live there so long that it made me less snow-worthy. I'm pretty much a die hard Midwesterner now. But nature, what the fuck? We're snowed in again here in Akron, Ohio. The kids had a snow day on Tuesday, and everything (universities included) is closed today. Add to that the fact that Monday was a holiday, and I have two sick children who were out of school the days that we didn't have a snowtastrophe, and you get the strangest, least productive week ever on earth, I fear.

I had such ambitious hopes for this week! Working on sequencing my new manuscript. Writing poems. Reading (for work, and for fun). Annotating student poems in a leisurely fashion. But instead I've had kids coughing, puking, whining, thankfully not fighting because too sick, waking up at night, crying, making extravagant demands, etc. I did manage to teach my one class of the week and make it to my meeting, but shortly after I had to speed home to the infirmary.

So no new poems, no gym, no catching up (though I did get more sleep than usual, which is always welcome), very little reading, but you know what? So far I am not sick. I'm not sick! And that makes this all sort of okay. I also thought ahead and brought my student poems home with me, so hopefully I will be able to do some work. I need to learn how to annotate while being pestered.

Hoping the kids' strep tests come out negative, and that it stops snowing eventually. People looked at me like a lunatic yesterday when I was frantically filling my grocery cart, but I am rather glad I stocked up while I could.

Could this please be the last major storm of the winter?

Please?

Pictured above, this year's incarnation of the wind chime icicle.

Just like [ ].

2011-02-21T14:28:00.003-05:00

I'm destined to be confused all week, but in a good way. Kid out of school today, but university closed tomorrow (good news for those of us who teach on Tuesdays, since we actually get a day off). That means no night class, and an extra week to hang out with student poems and the two books we'll be discussing: Money for Sunsets by Elizabeth Colen and Destruction Myth by Mathias Svalina.

One of my favorite parts of discussing single-author poetry books is the day when everyone (hopefully...) brings the book to class, and you get to see the vast sea of lovely covers flooding the entire classroom. It makes me so happy.

Snowing like crazy out there. What the heck. Goodbye hint of green lawn. Yesterday I (optimistically) put out our "Welcome Spring" garden flag, and observed some daffodils growing around the foundation of the house. This morning the flag was stiff with ice and snow. It crunched like a potato chip when I unfurled it.

The daffodils should be tough enough to hack it.

In happier news, I read my new poems last night and I think people rather liked them. They were so much fun to read. I feel like a traitor sometimes because I always want to read my very newest poems and not my hits and dusties.

In the update department: Submishmash is even awesomer when you get an acceptance. Yeah!

I am trying to get back to writing formal, disposable daily to-do lists. I have a few items left for today, so will now sign off. Hope I don't need to add major snow removal to the list.

Underpin[n]ings

2011-02-17T14:56:00.004-05:00

Thanks to the special miracle called Presidents (Presidents'? President's? Presidentses?) Day, my work pile is currently stabilized. Please do not interpret this as meaning that I am bored and idle and hankering to write a last-minute recommendation letter or to help you polish the gravel on your driveway. I have plenty to do. But I'm somewhat caught up, at least for this afternoon.

In most urgent news, there have been some new poems. Written by me! I am not especially in love with them, but they exist. I also found18-ish pages of poems I had forgotten about, written over the summer, so I've been chasing them around the yard with a paring knife. Or at least thinking about it.

In unrelated news, it's funny how a piece of lemon pound cake can completely turn my mood from gloomy to happy. Maybe it was the walk to get the pound cake. Or the fact that I told myself that it was okay to eat the pound cake instead of the last clementine lingering in my office fridge. I'm sure I will eat that too, by EOB today.

It's pretty empty here in the office right now. Where is everybody? It's warm out (my phone says 56 degrees) but too cloudy and gray to be truly frolicworthy.

I must confess that I've fallen a bit in love with Submishmash. I was a stalwart paper und envelope girl until now. This week I started kicking my ass a little in the submissions department, and wow, that Submishmash is just plain fun. We're even thinking of maybe using it for BOR.

Making a big trip to the post office tomorrow. Doing two readings in Cleveland this weekend. Hoping for more poems, and perhaps some relaxing, too, if I am lucky.

Ordinary(ish) time.

2011-02-15T22:16:00.004-05:00

Can tomorrow really be just Wednesday? I think we have weathered enough (literally and figuratively) to deserve at least a Thursday, if not better.

AWP went by so quickly that I barely got to process it before it was over. Two of my UA Press homeboys, Nick Sturm and Michael Goroff, did a pretty sweet wrap-up over here at the press blog. Now I am heavily planning for AWP Chicago. It's going to be the fifth anniversary of Barn Owl Review, and there will be festivities. Stay tuned. In related BOR news, contributor copies and subscriptions are going out this week. It's a really awesome issue. So excited to get it out into the world.

Right now I'm full of energy in the ideas department, which is frustrating because all I can do is comment on poems and undertake administrative tasks. I'm doing two readings this weekend and I would really like to have a new poem for one of them. I am finding it hard to block out time to write lately. I believe I have written only 2-3 poems in 2011. I need to get my urgency back.

Still under ice and snow here, but there was some sunshine this afternoon, which made a rather enormous difference.

Rough drafts [and the people who do not love them].

2011-02-12T23:25:00.003-05:00

Don't tell anybody, but my closets are disastrous, and my files of poems are even more disorganized. With my closets, sometimes I toss stuff (boots, etc) in there and just turn my back and slam the door and hope for the best. Mind you, that is very much not my standard operating procedure for anything else in my life. Sure, my office(s) are messy, but that's because I have a shitload of work, not because I'm sloppy.

So here I am with a landslide of poems that are 65% rough drafts (as in, some came out more finished or are revised, so I have sent them out) and I need to at least get them their immunizations and have their claws trimmed (cancel that) and ready them for the showroom. But it's just so daunting. There are so many of them. What if they overpower me? There's so much revising to do, which means that I got something wrong the first time around.

And then I find something like the above, which was waiting on the counter at the post office this morning, and it all seems so incredibly worthwhile.

We went away but then we came back.

2011-02-08T13:42:00.005-05:00

Yeah, so we took our act to Washington, and now we're back. The snow didn't go anywhere. See that street up there? It's not covered with ice, is it? Sigh.

Between not having any readings or signings of my own work, and Panel Struck Down By Act of God, this AWP was all about celebrating other people's books. I felt like I went to this AWP as an editor rather than as a poet. I'm not sure that I feel completely comfortable that way. Okay, I know I don't, but as someone who tends to prefer promoting others over herself, I did like that part just fine.

And of course there was The Monkey & the Wrench, which sold out of our regular copies so we had to start selling the comps I'd brought. It was such a busy bookfair. I had flashbacks to being a barista in Ann Arbor. No downtime at the table whatsoever, which meant not being able to sneak over to signings, and subsequently missing a lot of friends. Such a bummer!

I arrived a day late and missed probably like a third of the people I wanted to see. I couldn't go to or stay at some of the offsites and parties due to claustrophobia. But otherwise it was a very fine AWP.

We did get to do some sightseeing, and that was one of my favorite parts. I always kick myself when I don't get to go to at least one museum, etc.

It's hard to believe it's all over.

Let's do it again next year.

Preemptive looting...

2011-02-02T23:29:00.001-05:00

...and I haven't even left Ohio yet.

Bring it on.

Little House on the Tundra

2011-02-02T14:37:00.009-05:00

Yeah, so there's been this certain weather situation. Water pouring from the sky, ice falling from the sky, snow eddying around in little freeznadoes. I know that a lot of folks have it worse than we do right now. I'm so thankful to have electricity (I have been charging everything constantly, just in case).

My shoulders are aching from smashing up ice and shoveling it, even though I was only able to make discernible progress on my front walk and steps, and back walk. The driveway is a lost cause. I think it may be a Chicago thing, but I always have to have my front stoop and walk cleared off. I remember the old ladies of the west side always clearing off their stoops. It's a courtesy thing.

The kids have had two snow days in a row. The university has also been closed for two days in a row. Yesterday we made a Funfetti cake to keep busy. Cabin fever aplenty.

So here's where we are. Right now 90% sure that we'll be leaving tomorrow for DC. Had been planning to be arriving there about now, but with the situation pictured above (that's my street), we are not going to chance it.

Other folks on my panel have suffered similar problems, and unrelated ones, and ultimately we are going to have to cancel our panel on geography and religion. It would be really nice if the AWP folks would let us do it next year.

Here's an excerpt from my paper.

AWP Panel Struck Down By Act of God;

Or, Two Jews, a Catholic, a Buddhist, a Mennonite Sufi Shaman, and a ________ walk into an AWP Panel: Geography’s Influence on Writers Writing Religion and Culture.

A Snuff Film Starring Your Childhood Home: Urban Devastation, Crumbling Steeples, and Midwestern Poetry as Testimony by Mary Biddinger

I was a strange sort of transplant. Chicago childhood. Michigan adolescence and coming of age. Obsession with Detroit (literary, historical, photographic). I drove around Detroit’s neighborhoods in a Jeep and took pictures of houses, though the best shot was of the 14-story mural of Barry Sanders on the side of the Cadillac Tower. I wrote a hundred poems about Detroit. Moved back to Chicago. Picked up where I had left off.

So this is how you become so indelibly tainted with a harrowing landscape that you find yourself getting angry in a museum.

Your anger isn’t just because of the economic injustices that created a Detroit of the kind we see today.

It’s because the people in the gallery are beginning to touch the photographs. They are running their tongues along the information cards. Some of them are pulling out mirrors and tossing their hair around a little bit. Pretty soon it will be a room full of naked bodies, but not because the museum-goers wish to be reborn into the frames.

What I mean to say is that it becomes borderline pornographic.

Of course we all, in some way, want to help.

--- * ---

So we're leaving tomorrow, and hopefully we will arrive in DC by late evening. I will spend some time at the Barn Owl Review + University of Akron Press table, which is A11. I also hope to make it in time to check out the Cleveland State University Poetry Center offsite reading at Asylum, 7-9 pm, knockout lineup.

At table A11 we will have BOR 4 for you to come marvel at (and purchase! please! it's our best issue yet!), and copies of all the new UA Press titles, including The Monkey and the Wrench.

Unrelated news:

I have an interview at The Fine Delight. Oh, and a really awesome profile here, also by Nick Ripatrazone.

Safe travels to all going to AWP, or anywhere else, for that matter.

Hope to see some of you soon!

Into the wild blue wherever.

2011-01-26T16:34:00.003-05:00

I don't know anything at all about Washington, DC, except that in a week I'll be going there. I didn't have one of those junior high trips to DC. My parents took me to Paris instead of DC. My friends and I road-tripped to Toronto instead of DC. The other day I realized that my dad only recently went to DC for the first time (a business trip).

I think I am a complete freak of Americanness! Or un-Americanness?

Today was a day of headaches. I hope they go away soon.

I love my classes this semester. Like, I am sad when it's a non-teaching day. I have so many talented and fun students who are generally awesome people.

Talking about The Endarkenment in my undergrad poetry workshop tomorrow. Yeah!

After a big scare, BOR 4 is finally on its way from the printer. Whew.

If the snow would melt and my sinuses would disappear, the world would be a completely happy place.

Washington, DC. I guess I'm on my way-ish.

[discipline & publish]

2011-01-24T09:02:00.005-05:00

For whatever reason, I almost always pack up all of my work on Friday and bring it home with me, even on weekends when the kids are home the whole time. So then on Sunday night and Monday morning I'm all eff this, why did I bring this home. But for once, I am glad I brought it all home this weekend, because now I'm sick. And who doesn't want to annotate and edit a fever away, right? Or feverishly plan an AWP table schedule? Or cough all over somebody's thesis?

I am not taking any chances this time and I am not going to work. I will not repeat Lungtastrophy 2010. Oh no. And yesterday's football games certainly did not provide me with a shot of penicillin (or similar).

The not-writing is starting to really bother me.

But I've been understanding a lot more about my current project thanks to an interview I'm doing for The Fine Delight. I'll let you know when it's posted.

Sent in the final edits for Saint Monica. Subsequently fell in love with the poems all over again, if that's possible to do with your own poems.

BOR 4 is at the printer. Hooray! It might just be the best issue ever.

Still basking in the afterglow of The Monkey and the Wrench being released. It's a paperback, and also my first e-book. I don't have an e-reader, but some of my friends think it's cool. Thank you to all the folks who have bought a copy. We'll be giving out a mini-galley (to treasure! to bring home for the kids / cats!) at AWP.

I'm in AWP disbelief. Maybe because it's been less than a year since the last AWP.

I think that's about it for now. Thera-Flu, here I come.

For your calendar.

2011-01-13T22:57:00.003-05:00

Reading poems from O Holy Insurgency as well as some coin operated poems that will thrill the spare change out of you.

Wingspannery.

2011-01-11T11:02:00.003-05:00

You can barely see it, but some nice spider stretched a web from one angel wing to the other. Sometimes it's the little things that charm me. I had to make it b&w for fun. I'm trying to figure out what it means, but I have no idea.

First teaching day of 2011 for me, and two poetry workshops (advanced undergrad, and grad). Aside from having classes eight hours apart, I'm happy with the schedule, and feeling the usual giddy things I feel with a new class. I don't ever think I'll stop loving this.

Speaking of love, and labors thereof, Barn Owl Review 4 is off to the printer. This has to be my favorite issue so far, and my favorite cover. It occurred to me a few minutes ago that this is the third document I've dispatched to the printer in the past four weeks or so. Whew.

I have a lot of things simmering right now. Will rewrite, and then subsequently shorten, the to-do list now.

And then everything was pretty much the same...

2011-01-05T20:25:00.004-05:00

...only, you know, emptier.

I feel like it's a little wrong for me to like this photo so much. I took it, after all. That's gross. But the parking lot is the real star.

So back on the chain gang, and all that. I succeeded in not doing work over break, for the most part, aside from BOR work. Hence, I had many nasty little tidbits awaiting me when I returned to my office(s) this week. Today I had some uninterrupted hours to get things done, and actually felt as if I managed time effectively.

Now, to add writing poem to that time management.

My shoulders hurt and I don't have very many ideas in my head.

I have a lot of projects right now. But The Monkey and the Wrench is alive (and almost officially on shelves), and BOR 4 is in pages, and we have a really kickass new interview with David Dodd Lee over on BOR Online, thanks to Nick Sturm. Now that I've progressed my web design skills past 1999, we'll have a lot more content rocking over there at BOR.

So that's 2011 so far, in a nutshell. I imagine next week it will get a bit more hectic.

For now, I will just enjoy the cracks in the parking lot.

[Re]calculating route.

2010-12-31T15:59:00.004-05:00

Yeah, so I had very cleverly, in my mind, named this The Year of the Lung, because everyone in Northeast Ohio quit smoking this year, and then I got my ass kicked by pneumonia. However, this week's bout of family stomach flu has made me think of this year in general health terms, not just lung-terms, so I'll be all 1980's confessional-ish and call it The Year of the Body. Or not. Anyway, 2010, it had some good stuff, and it had some bad stuff. Exactly what the sages predicted!

One of the ways that 2011 will be different: I now have a real, legit GPS for my car. No more faulty Google maps, shitty Blackberry GPS telling me to drive into buildings in Pittsburgh, finding myself lost on country roads that look exactly like country roads in other states in other decades. And so on. The only other time I've been in the presence of such a fine GPS device was when driving to New York with Jeannine. So of course I was instantly terrified. What if I broke it by looking at it? What if it yelled at me in some Southie accent? Drove me down a ravine?

But it's my friend, and I think it's going to really keep me on track. The only thing that makes me uncomfortable is that it's all grassy on the GPS, and here we have snow. But it's melting, so that takes care of that. And what will terrify me now? What will be my new reason for white-knuckling all the way to ___?

I think my only real resolution is to try to be healthier. I found out this year that while I can survive on 5 hours of sleep and diet pepsi and granola bars, maybe I shouldn't. It's really hard to get everything done when not healthy.

Kids off to their dad's in an hour and fifteen minutes (not that I'm counting, of course), then a cozy dinner for two who have survived 2010 and look forward to not getting lost on the way to 2011.

Snowscaper.

2010-12-26T18:36:00.004-05:00

I'm not sure how I feel about the winter. I mean, I know I don't like it. But sometimes I think that's because it's inconvenient, and it makes things difficult. I would really miss it if I didn't have it. I've been feeling (already) pretty revved up for the new year. I always like New Year's because it helps me organize a lot of abstractions. I'm kind of at this mini-crossroads right now deciding whether I will solidify the ms I've been working on and send it out, or if I will chill for a bit longer instead. Just looking at all of those deadlines has me a little riled. I need to give this some serious thought.

I am taking a real break from my university work. I thought it would be difficult. Ha ha. We had an awesome Christmas, and I am ashamed to admit that one of the (silly) highlights was having the house to myself for a few hours in the evening, wherein I cleaned the shit out of the place and put everything away. Almost everything. But now I have a clean house, and some good things to look forward to, including not waking up early to get my daughter to school for another week.

So I guess if you have to have a winter, you should be thankful for having one like this.

Even if the Browns did not win, and your cheeks are all red from the cold.

Historical society.

2010-12-22T10:15:00.005-05:00

That's really all the calendar I need.

Disorientatrix.

2010-12-21T20:37:00.004-05:00

So I'm not working right now, but somehow my time is totally eaten up anyway. And I had all of these grandiose plans, right? Every junk drawer in the house organized, etc. And none of it is happening. Getting some things done in tiny increments between pulling cats out of boxes and agonizing about assembling certain items that will need to be assembled before 7:00 am on Saturday. My kids are home for Christmas this year, so I am far less sulky than I would be otherwise. And there are really good things afoot, you know? I am realizing this was a very good year. I don't have any writing goals right now, but I'm not aware of it enough to be inspired or concerned. I do want to send more poems out. I need to write them first. Such a dilemma.

My biggest problem may be not knowing what day it is. What day is it? What year is it, for that matter? It's pretty cold out there, but I've got wool, so everything should be just fine.

Where you won't find me.

2010-12-18T14:08:00.003-05:00

1. In this--or any other--Toys "R" Us store.

2. In my office. Either office. Any of the three offices.

3. On the answering-end of any email regarding: the letter of recommendation you meant to ask me for, but didn't until now, and it's due in 10 hours; cialis, viagra, etc; administrative questions about any of the entities I am involved with; special offers for gifts that keep on giving; the mysterious funds I have inherited; random rants and whinges; etc.

4. Baking cookies. You can buy them already baked!

5. Taking advantage of Super Saturday sales.

6. On a vacation getaway. This vacation is figurative, not literal. We are not taking a cruise to Mackinac Island, or similar.

I'm on winter break until January. I will be spending my time working on BOR 4, attending various CYO basketball games, scraping Play Doh out of hardwood floors, and loafing.

Although Snowtastrophe 2010 shut down school for two days, it was nothing at all like this. We have maybe four inches out there right now. It'll be a white Christmas. I am hoping for some big-ass flakes (and not terribly brutal temps) for when I prove my insanity and devotion at the Browns game on 12/26.

That's all from Akron as of now.

Babes, woods, etc.

2010-12-10T11:23:00.001-05:00

There are some good things about living in a midwestern polar wasteland, I guess.

Rampant cheer.

2010-12-08T13:54:00.002-05:00

I may not be able to take a decent picture of the moon, but this photo proves that I can indeed photograph snowflakes.

When not busy photographing snowflakes, Mary Biddinger is juggling two books to be sent off to the printer, final grades for undergraduate poetry workshop, various and sundry administrative matters, waving her fist at the weather, and making resolutions for 2011.

Sometimes I wonder why anyone ever settled in a place like Ohio. Even though I moved here by choice (twice), and didn't grow up here, Ohio is the land of many Biddingers. But why? Did the winters remind them of the old country? Were they just a lot hardier than their frail little great (x ?) granddaughter?

I am trying my best to make this winter break an actual break.

That's a pre-resolution.

Yeah.

[Where] Do We Go [Now] ?

2010-11-30T15:47:00.003-05:00

We've got some top-shelf gloom happening here in Akron, Ohio today. But at least it's kind of warm gloom. If you have to have gloom, it might as well be warm.

This time of semester I feel like I'm skidding on a patch of ice. I did manage to catch up on my grading, though, and that was a relief. So I'm skidding on ice but not spilling coffee on myself in the process.

Just when I started feeling better from pneumonia, my kids came down with a cold, and then (surprise) so did I. This morning at 4 am I thought I was a goner. Right now, though, I believe I will survive. Perhaps this is just the universe underlining my resolution to take better care of myself in 2011.

I usually prefer the even years to the odd years. I did get tenure this year, and got my second book of poems picked up, but you know, I kind of have hope for 2011, too.

Lots of hope for 2012, namely no longer being an administrator and being a teacher and editor again. Just a teacher and editor. Oh, it sounds so heavenly right now.

I haven't been very creative lately, but I'm starting to take more pictures (and see pictures everywhere--so distracting), and I reckon I am going to be like a loaded poem gun come December.

Hang on to your [ - - - ]

2010-11-23T13:05:00.004-05:00

Hello from the headquarters of a person who can breathe. She can also talk and sleep and eat food. She can take pictures of the moon. It's hard to take pictures of the moon. I mean, really hard. I want--I mean, she wants--to take a lot of pictures. Perhaps this is to compensate for the lack of poems lately.

She is already making her New Year's Resolutions. One can be summed up as : Get the Fuck out of There.

By "there" I'm sure she's referring to the office. Not Dodge. Dodge is just fine, for now.

The person who can breathe, she realized (from the time when she couldn't breathe) that she can get a lot more done at home. As a bonus, she can get these things done with cats nearby, which is almost always a good thing.

The person who can breathe, she's not happy that her kids will not be home for Thanksgiving. However, the person can breathe, and has thereby made some fun holiday plans, including a day (Friday) dedicated entirely to laziness. So if you are fixing to email somebody who can breathe on Friday, please forgive her if she does not reply. It is not because she is waiting in line to purchase electronic gadgets at a bargain basement price.

Updated BOR contrib list here, and a list with some good friends on it here.

Thanks so much for all of the well wishes on the book. The person who can breathe feels tremendously grateful, and thoroughly oxygenated.

O Holy Insurgency

2010-11-19T09:17:00.005-05:00

My Exile in Lungville was seriously uplifted by the tremendous news that Black Lawrence Press will be publishing my new collection of poems, O Holy Insurgency, in summer or fall of 2012. They've been an absolute dream to work with on Saint Monica, and have taught me a lot as a book series editor as well as a poet. I feel much more comfortable shouting other people's good news from the rooftops, but I wanted to share this here because I am so damn excited about it.

O Holy Insurgency is dear to me personally, which made sending it out for publication a terrifying prospect. It's also hard because I'm a poetry book publisher, which makes me overly-informed about some elements of the process. I am very glad that it's found such a good home. I feel like I can breathe a little (and now I literally can, thanks to modern medicine).

If you'd like to read some of the poems from the book, you can find them online at diode, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Verse Daily (via The Journal), The Rumpus, Thermos, ducts.org, and likely some other places that I'm forgetting right now, due to the excitement.

Thank you so much to all of my spectacular friends for all of the support as I worked on this manuscript. Here's a little blog flashback to July 2009, when I was up to 49 pages of the ms.

Now back to the real world. Thanks again, everyone!

Tall, dark, and branchsome.

2010-11-17T14:55:00.004-05:00

This big guy lives behind me with his friends and some wires. It was windy yesterday and he took off all his clothes and threw them in my back yard. I wonder if he's regretting that decision right about now.

In other news:

I'm on the mend. I'm not coughing so much. I have tried (especially per Lyle's advice) to get more sleep. I took some measures (new alarm clock, revamped bedding, etc) to get Ray to stop waking me up every three hours. I think lack of sleep is much to blame for the current state of things.

The Monkey and the Wrench is getting paged, and it looks gorgeous. I am so excited. The design features real monkeys. Well, drawings at least.

The past few weeks I was wandering around wondering when I'd ever get some good news of my own. I'm probably the only person who has ever felt like that (ha ha). I may have even said it out loud. I'm pretty sure nobody was around.

I'm having one of those days at work where I am totally distracted and borderline useless.

Let's just say that I got some really good news today, and that I'll share it soon.

I've already told the big guy who lives behind me, but he's not going to let the cat out of the bag, or the bird out of the hand, or whatnot.

Iron [Lung] Maiden

2010-11-14T09:50:00.002-05:00

It's a very strange thing being knocked at random out of normal life, which relies upon a great deal of fortitude, and sequestered to the house and the couch, where I don't know how to watch tv other than sports, and I don't know how to relax, and I don't have the sense to make tea or eat crackers. I'm beginning to learn, however, because apparently if you don't do the above, you wake up incredibly more sick. If you forget to take painkillers at regular intervals, or to use your inhaler as directed, you will feel rather deathful.

I've been under the weather since early-ish October. But I just keep on moving, you know? Because that's what I've always had to do. I can live without food or sleep. I can teach even if the room is spinning (who says you don't learn any valuable skills in grad school?). I can put my mind elsewhere. It's just what I do.

Except, apparently that's hard to keep up if you can't breathe, so here I am, pondering the spaciousness of my house, and the fact that somehow I have a house, and knowing that some time this morning I need to get to the grocery store for some produce, and then make a lazy display of myself until the kids get back from visiting their father.

I'm great at taking care of sick people. Even sick pets! But I am physically restraining myself (overstatement) from doing work right now. When I was a wee bit delirious I kept making promises (to whom, I am not certain) that I will take better care of myself from now on. Like, really try to be healthy, or whatever.

Meanwhile, my little Saint Monica has been getting a bunch of pre-orders on Amazon, which has brought me endless amazement and thankfulness from my sick bed. I spend so much more time editing and commenting on other people's poems than I do writing or pondering my own. It feels almost unnatural or wrong to think about my own work before the work of others.

I think I sense a theme here.

Anyway, please send me some lungtastic vibes. When I make it to the grocery store, I will buy healthy things, and I will consume them. Oh, and the above is a hyperbolic segment of my Japanese maple, not a cross-section of my lung, but it sure feels that way lately.

Done.

2010-11-10T09:27:00.001-05:00

Have creepshow, will travel.

2010-11-01T10:03:00.005-04:00

Yesterday was the first time I read a novel cover to cover in, like, I don't know. Maybe two years? Maybe five? And I remembered how that used to be a weekly thing when I was a grad student. Nowhere to go but couch and cat and book. At the time I thought it was a really shitty way to live. I was obviously an idiot to think that. I would love to have more days of nothing but read. Note: there is a difference between day of nothing but read and day of evaluating 50+ poetry manuscripts in a sitting. Just wanted to clarify.

This week I am going to Jackson, Mississippi with the amazing Erika Meitner to visit students of Steve Kistulentz and to read some poems and to be on the radio and to bring our poetry taboo craft talk to a new audience. With my family situation and all it's been a while since I have been able to travel far away aside from AWP, so this is really cool. Things are finally better. I have never been to the south aside from AWP Hotlanta. I have no idea what to expect. I used to travel quite extensively. But I also used to be able to read for eight uninterrupted hours. Think there's a connection between these things?

Haven't written many poems. Have, however, started planning for a major fiction project. I have no idea what's gotten into me. I've just been thinking in prose sentences lately. Perhaps it's the weather. Who knows.

Oh, and the novel? Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee. I'm reading it for the book club I moderate, but I probably would've read it in one day even if I wasn't under the gun.

A slight case of overbombing.

2010-10-25T12:04:00.004-04:00

I was one of those girls who really liked horses. Shocking, I know. Anyway, I don't ride horses now because there's no time. I'll probably have to teach my kids eventually. But lately I've been thinking back to when I rode horses, and they were other people's horses, because we lived in the city and my mom never agreed that we could keep a horse in the garage behind her 1978 Chevette.

Some semesters are like the sad ponies that walk around in a circle under a tent. Other semesters are like sad horses that wish they were walking around in a circle under a tent. This semester, however, is like a horse that gets spooked by a dragonfly and proceeds to gallop into another county.

So what's there to do? Just hang on, I guess. And that's what I'm doing. Because it's week ten here, and soon it'll be week eleven. I'll be in Jackson, Mississippi in week eleven, reading at Millsaps College with Erika Meitner. I am a little ashamed to say that the only time I've been to "the south" was for AWP Atlanta. Thankfully Alison Pelegrin is helping me out with what to pack, because I have no idea what the weather will be like. I'm so happy to be able to take my poems somewhere they've never gone before (at least not out of my mouth).

The aforementioned runaway Appaloosa of a semester is to blame for my lack of new poems. Some people beat themselves up about not going to the gym. I beat myself up for a total lack of creative activity! I haven't even been taking decent pictures lately. I was glad to snap the above, which is my contribution to the season.

Week ten started out with good news for somebody who really deserves it, not to mention the magnificent Browns win last night. At least a runaway semester eventually makes its way to a lake and has to stop, at least for a few minutes. I'm looking forward to making up all of the creativeness that I'm keeping in jars for the time being.

I hope those jars are watertight.

Fallstuff.

2010-10-15T13:41:00.004-04:00

Oh, fall. You are so damn funny. I found all of those leaves you left out. I hope you don't mind that I blew them onto the devil strip. I'm sure you'll make more.

Do they say that no two leaves are alike, or is that just for snowflakes? I suppose no two falls are alike, either. If I had to name this fall I'd call it The Runaway Fall. Because here we are, going into week fucking nine, and I'm just like, "huh?" The Forgotten Fall. The Fallen Fall. The Fall O' the Whoops it's Fall. The Unfall.

I have spent almost all of my time on The Monkey and the Wrench.

New poems? No.

Will this stop soon? I really hope so. I feel all dirty when I don't write poems. And not in a good way.

This weekend has been designated for lazy. Let's see how it turns out.

PS: Monkeys and wrenches not included.

Runaway horizon eats everything in sight.

2010-10-11T14:55:00.003-04:00

I wish I could take better pictures of the night. But it's uncooperative. Sometimes I feel like all I ever do is take pictures of the night, or try to take pictures of the night.

A few very busy weeks. Falling behind on: everything.

I've realized how much I need at least one day per week for work only, without meetings, appointments, and such.

In less cranky news:

a) My head is tingling from the latte I am drinking. That is a really good sign.

b) My co-editor John has posted a sneak peek of our new book over here. People are pre-ordering it on Amazon, and everything.

c) My Yurt Master poem was up a while back.

d) I have some things to say about poetry. But just not now, or here.

Hideaway.

2010-09-20T10:13:00.004-04:00

Want to become invisible? Then find yourself a really big project. Then find yourself ten other big projects. At the same time, figure out what the hell it is you're doing in a book manuscript that you didn't realize was a book manuscript. Somewhere in all of this, spill tea on yourself. Repeat. Repeat.

That's all you have to do. Trust me. I'm doing it.

All I can think of is what on earth I'll do with all of my spare time once The Monkey and the Wrench: Essays into Contemporary Poetics is finally all done.

We have some spectacular new covers at the Press, by the way. I can't wait to show them to you. I will, promise.

Barn Owl Review is still taking submissions. Send us some poems, if you haven't already.

PS: Nic Sebastian reads my poem "Miniatures" over at Whale Sound. It's amazing!

Final damage report.

2010-09-03T08:49:00.002-04:00

One summer. 34 pages of poems. Most of them worth keeping. The ending of one project. Some scrambling. A revelation about a new project. Then realizing that maybe the new project should be a funny one, not quite so serious. All of a sudden: prose poems! I can write those. Then back to school. Ready to send poems out. Ready to stop picking on finished manuscript. Totally engulfed in editing The Monkey and the Wrench: Essays into Contemporary Poetics. Realizing that MLA format has really changed since I last needed to use it with seriousness.

Oh, and cleaning out my attic (literally and figuratively).

That's it in a nutshell.

The inevitable.

2010-08-25T10:38:00.004-04:00

Just as predicted, summer has moved out and turned in its keys.

Even the sky looks fall-ish lately, like it has something up its sleeve.

I'm teaching an intro to poetry writing class this semester, and I already love it. A while back I felt a little burned out on these classes, but then something happened. Not sure what that was, but I'm glad for it.

This week Verse Daily featured two poems from BOR 3. That made me super happy.

Two current book projects are feeling awfully real to me lately. Saint Monica has a cover (you can check it out on Goodreads!), and we're putting together the first volume of the Akron Series in Contemporary Poetics, titled The Monkey and the Wrench: Essays into Contemporary Poetics.

It's funny how a project can hang out on the back burner for a while, and then next thing you know it's boiling over. In a good way, of course.

I had to order all new business cards this week, since I am now a fancy Associate Professor.

I am still waiting for my special tiara.

Full disclosure.

2010-08-18T20:58:00.001-04:00

Four more days of "summer."

23 pages of poems, not counting revisions.

I am, well, kind of surprised.

This summer was nothing like what I thought it would be.

Cruel Summer

2010-08-16T10:58:00.001-04:00

You gave me some poems and now you're gone.

It sure doesn't feel like Fall on the outside.

Hidden metaphor du jour.

2010-08-09T22:09:00.002-04:00

No, you tell me what it means.

I believe today (for the next few hours, at least) is day eleven of fifteen in the pocation.

I have written at least fifteen pages of poems this summer, and that's fine with me.

This summer isn't last summer, and vice versa.

I like some of the things I've written.

And that is all I can hope for, really.

Day three.

2010-07-28T21:01:00.006-04:00

In case you wondered, I am not counting a day two.

It was a day wherein administration and other bothers managed to seep through my firmaments.

It was no pocation, that's for sure.

Today was better. If you've followed this blog for a while you know that my beloved cat Schubert passed away in April. I've been sad ever since, and I was very much unready for a new black kitty until now.

Yes, I do have a couple of other kitties. But if you know me you know that I need a black kitty in the house.

So we went to this to see if there might be somebody to help solve that problem.

Now there's a new baby in the house. Ray named her Meg White. We named her Meg White Sheba.

I've been doing some serious decompressing. Today I mowed the lawn and it was triumphant. I hope taking this break changes me somehow.

I have an adorable black kitty to pet now, thank you very much.

Day one.

2010-07-26T20:50:00.004-04:00

Day one is not representative of the entire three-week pocation. I never want to think about percentages of time spent cleaning versus percentages of time spent reading and writing. The cleaning always wins, especially when the pocator can't get anything done in a messy house.

So I cleaned the shit out of this place today. And it feels pretty awesome. I am trying to eat mostly things that grow in the ground, and their near relatives, and serendipitously our neighbors gave us a lovely bag of home-grown produce today. This has totally changed my meal plans for the week, but not in a way that involves eating goldfish crackers (do not grow in the ground) or granola bars (ditto), so this is good.

Raymond is learning how to ride a bike. He's a little off today and ended up "getting injured," as he called it. He wanted me to write the below on his band-aid. How could I resist?

This is all the writing I did today. Tomorrow will be better.