Invitation to Read at the Library of Congress!

I got an interesting phone call Friday--the Library of Congress invited me to read my work (and at least one poem by another person) for their Poetry at Noon Series. I'll read Tuesday, Feb. 10, with 1 or 2 others, and the theme is Love (in advance of Valentine's Day).

Now, the director of the poetry program didn't pluck me out of thin air--I applied. In fact, I also applied in 2007, but the postage rates had just changed, so I put the wrong postage on the envelope and it was returned. I felt mopey, and thought, well, I'll try again next year. And hurrah, acceptance!

It's on a Tuesday at noon, so I’m guessing the audience will be similar to those who go to a weekday concert series at a church--office workers from nearby will drop in, as will tourists, as will local poets.

There’s no money for travel, either from the Library of Congress end or from my school. I don’t care. I have family in the area, so I have a place to stay, and I was lucky to find cheap airline tickets. I knew that there was no travel money when I applied, but I knew that I could afford it anyway. I wouldn’t have applied to read at, say, a New York City venue, because I don’t have resources in that city.

So, I'm feeling optimistic about 2009 as a year that gives us kudos for creativity!

Latest Poem Publication

I just got my contributor's copy of Ruminate. In issue 10 (Winter 08/09), my poem, "Eucharist," appears:

Eucharist


I knead the bread leavened with beer,
stew a lamb shank in a pot of lentils,
prepare a salad of apples, walnuts, and raisins,
sweetened with wine and honey.
No one ever had herbs as bitter as this late season lettuce.

My friends gather at dusk, a motley band
of ragtags, fleeing from the Philistines of academia:
a Marxist, a Hindu, a Wiccan, a Charismatic Catholic,
and me, a lapsed Lutheran longing for liturgy.

Later, having drunk several bottles of wine
with prices that could have paid our grad
school rents, we eat desserts from disparate
cultures and tell our daughters tales from our deviant days.
We agree to meet again.

Gnarled vegetables coaxed from their dark hiding places
transform into a hearty broth.
Fire transubstantiates flour and water into life giving loaves.
Outcasts scavenged from the margins of education
share a meal and memories and begin to mold
a new family, a different covenant.

In Need of Group Blog Wisdom

Yesterday, at one of our faculty development sessions, we decided to start a school-wide blog, where faculty can exchange ideas for how to inject more creativity into their classrooms. We're going to set it up with Blogger, which will let us have 100 users. I think we only have 300 or so faculty members, many of whom want nothing to do with one more technology application, so I don't think that will be a problem. People who only want to post once a quarter or so can just forward their postings to me (yes, I volunteered to be administrator), and I'll post them. People who want to post more regularly can sign up as members. I plan to have the blog open to anyone, who can visit and post comments (which I'll delete, if they're icky). So, students could read and comment, but only faculty would be posting (would administrators and staff want to post?).

I'm wondering if anyone has experience with group blogs that are made up of users that are bound more by their institution than by friendship or family bonds. I'm in search of good ideas, cautionary tales, any wisdom that the blogosphere has to offer.

Reading List 2009--One Miss

A few weeks ago, I posted my reading list for 2009. So far, I've made good progress. I'll post more about the positives tomorrow, when I have more time.

I feel terribly guilty about the one book that I've already abandoned, Mary Doria Russell's Dreamers of the Day. I read the first 75 pages, and then gave myself permission to stop. I hated the main character, even though I wanted to find her plucky. I hated her mother--although the woman died early in the book, she continues to be a voice in the main character's head.

When I was younger, I felt that I had to read every book I started. Some time during grad school, I gave up that idea. Life is short, and my reading list grows ever longer. It still feels strange to commit to a book for 75 pages, and then give up. I usually make a keep-reading-or-stop decision in the first 10 pages. So, for you fiction writers out there, those first pages really are as important as they tell you--or at least, for this one reader.

I feel particularly bad because I've always loved the work of Mary Doria Russell. Her book, The Sparrow, is one of the more startlingly original books I've ever read. I read a lot of books (or at least, I once did, and hope to again), and I rarely remember much about them very long. But this book stays with me and I find my thoughts wandering back to it far more often than most other books I've read.

Thinking about Reading Habits

I've just read Michelle Slatalla's New York Times article about reading habits that really resonated with me. In the article, a mother observes the reading habits of her daughters during the recent holiday break. She envies her daughters' abilities to lose themselves in a book.

I agree. I miss the reading habits of my younger self. Of course, when I was younger, I was usually reading as an act of desperation. I couldn't stand high school, and reading took me away. We didn't have cable TV or a VCR, and since it was the 1970's and early 1980's, we didn't have Internet access. Books provided the only escape I had from the boredom that often came with life in a safe, suburban neighborhood.

Now that I'm older, I'm reading more, but less of the material comes in book form. I read several newspapers a day online, but am I really increasing my knowledge? In a broad sense, yes. In a deep sense, I'm not so sure.

My restlessness has led me to a reading resolution for 2009, and so far, it's working. It's like taking any kind of public pledge: I'm more likely to accomplish what I've said I would do, if I'm being held accountable. It's that kind of dynamic that makes me think about going back to school: nothing makes me buckle down more than the fear of an F on my permanent record.

But for now, let me focus on my reading list. Let me prove to myself that I can have an administrative job that requires 40 hours a week in the office and still be able to be a reader.

Writing Prompt #4 (from Kelli's blog)

This prompt comes from Kelli Russell Agodon's blog. I'm in a lazy mood, and thought I'd end up with one of those strange, food-obsessed poems that come out of my brain occasionally. Instead, I focused on my computer that didn't want to work on the first day of the new year, which I'm trying not to see as a harbinger.

Here's the prompt from Kelli's blog:

Writing Exercise--

New Year's Poem

***Make a list of at least 10 specific items or images that you saw, touched, tasted, or heard on Dec 31st or January 1st. Now write down 4 things that you did either on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day.

Now write a poem that includes two of the things you did on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day as well as 6 of the items/images from your list.

-------------------------------------------------------------

My list of 10 images included sweet potato chips and bacon wrapped dates, the black screen of death and seeing the earth from an airplane.

My list of activities: sorting mail, flying back to Florida, wrestling with the recalcitrant computer, and sitting around a fire pit.

I wrote a prose poem:

On this first day of the year, the computer gives us a blank stare, the black screen of death. We have eaten ourselves sick with sweet potato chips and bacon wrapped dates, so we stare sullenly at the screen. We wish we could return to the airplane, so many yards above the planet, where we aren't allowed to use personal electronics. We go back to bed, no Internet to distract us.

Is it done? Will it stay in prose poem form? Does it have potential?

I have no idea--but it was fun to play, and it always amazes me that I could start with no ideas (complete blankness, in fact) and a few minutes later, have something bubbling up from my brain.

Back to the Blog with my Latest Publication

I've been away, visiting family in the D.C. area. While I was gone, my contributor's copy of Interdisciplinary Humanities arrived. It's the "Quiltworks" issue (Fall 2008), and it's one of the more enjoyable reading experiences of an academic publication that I've had in a long time. It's a great mix of scholarly articles, interviews, book reviews, poems and film reviews.

I love the fact that the journal is organized around the theme of quilting. I think that having a theme really, REALLY helps, whether or not it's a blog, an academic journal, a book of poems, or a novel. Of course, I have a PhD in English, so it makes sense that I think a theme is important.

Here's the poem that appeared in the journal:


The Precious Nature of Junk

If God is an old woman,
She uses no recipe.
Long ago she learned
what she needed to know:
how to make do with scarce
resources, how to create successful
substitutions, how to create
magic from simple kitchen chemistry.

If God is an old woman,
She saves all our old clothes. She alone
has a vision of a collage of cloth.
She cuts new shapes out of our discards
and pieces them into an intricate quilt,
even though she knows we will fail
to appreciate her demonstrated skill.

If God is an old woman,
She longs for closer connection.
She sends cards for every occasion
and fills the answering machine with cryptic
messages. She has such important
information to pass on and such little
time left. We listen
and wonder at her mental state.

If God is an old woman,
She knows that everything could have a larger
purpose. She hoards items we’d have discarded
long ago. She understands the precious
nature of junk.