This Blog is on Vacation

I'm sailing off into the sunset for a few days--time for family and friends. But I'll be back to regular blogging on July 1.

More on Meaningful Work

I spent the past few days alternately reading Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft and quilting to apocalyptic movies. I thoroughly enjoyed the Crawford book, although I did contemplate the gender issues that Crawford doesn't address. I doubt that even if I had the repair skills, I could make a motorcycle repair shop successful. Despite several decades of feminist successes, most men still wouldn't trust a woman to repair their bikes.

My fingers throb from quilting, but I suffer no illusions that I could translate that interest into a small business. Nor would I want to. I can't imagine quilting for 8-15 hours a day. And very few people would pay the amount of money I would have to charge per quilt to make a small quilting business profitable.

The New Yorker recently ran an article about several books on work (including Crawford's), the idea of craft, and the slow food movement. The author, Kelefa Sanneh, rightly notes some misogynistic strains in some of the books just emerging, and makes some interesting observations about our current work lives, and how we may later mourn their loss: "This nostalgic tribute is, of course, proof positive that hard jobs get much easier to love as soon as they start to disappear. If Crawford is correct about the decline of America’s information economy, we should brace ourselves for a series of mournful, indignant books that eulogize the modern office—a highly networked, quasi-social, semi-autonomous refuge, where turn-of-the-century workers spent their pleasant days solving problems, exploring the limits of coöperation, and wasting valuable company time on the Internet."

Over at The Valve, there's a discussion of the recent spate of motorcycle books, which focuses on Matthew Biberman's Big Sid's Vincati. The author of the post, Amardeep Singh, points out that many academics have work outside of academia that they find more satisfying than their primary work. What relief! You mean this condition is normal? Hurrah!

Perhaps it's not just limited to academia. It makes sense to me that many people, particularly those of us close to the midpoint of our working lives, would find passions outside work. That assumes, of course, that we have the luxury of working only one job that allows us personal time. I continue to be alarmed at how work insinuates itself into our time that's supposed to be off the clock.

But for now, I'm on vacation from work--using up the last of my leave days before the new fiscal year starts July 1.

Inspirations for Summer

While I understand that some of you in the upper 48 (as I like to call the rest of the U.S., excluding Hawaii) are experiencing cold and rain, and it doesn't sound like summer at all, we down here in South Florida are experiencing an odd period of dry heat. It's like a milder version of Arizona: we awake to temps in the 80's, but no humidity (odd, odd, odd--it's usually very moist this time of year) and the temps soar into the 90's during the day. Our record breaking temps are usually in the neighborhood of 96 degrees--we're really summer heat amateurs. It's so different from most places I've ever lived where summer is swampy, muggy, and usually comes with at least one stretch of several weeks where the temp soars into the 100's (that's the actual temp, not the heat index). Down here, we usually have a sea breeze, so even our heat, while intense, is bearable. I do miss having nights that cool off. For the next several months, our temp will not dip below 80. Sigh.

This heat can make me feel lethargic. I just want to sit on the sofa and watch movies. I spent much of the week-end watching the 1994 miniseries The Stand. Then I watched it again with the commentary track on.

I did a lot of quilting so that I wouldn't feel like a complete slug. Still, my Inner Critic berates me for not working on poetry. My Inner Critic says, "Oh, honestly, Kristin, you could have assembled a book manuscript in the amount of time you spent quilting."

I like Rebecca Loudon's approach to poetry. In her June 19th entry on her blog, she says, "I’ve been having an interview with Tom Beckett which I don’t like to think of as an interview because that makes me choke up, and so it has become a conversation with Tom Beckett, with me doing most of the writing most of which I delete as soon as I write it, just as I do here. One of the things that I wrote in our conversation was that as a writer who aspires to be a poet you eventually get to a place where poetry is happening all the time whether you’re physically engaged in the act of writing or not. You no longer have a choice. You have stepped into the river and you can’t get out. You can ignore it certainly or bend down and drink if you choose or pick out those flat rivery rocks and fling them at other poets, but you are, indeed, in the river."

I love this idea that poetry is happening all the time. I tell my Inner Critic something similar: "My subconscious is busy at work while my fingers are stitching."

I've been writing long enough to see that the work occurs in cycles. Some months I send out a lot of submissions; some months, I send out nothing. Some months I write a lot of new poems; sometimes, a month will go by with no new work (and yes, I still feel a bit panicky).

I try to do something every day that will move me towards the poetry life I want to have, towards the poet I want to be. Ideally, it would be an hour or two of that activity. Lately, I'm happy for crumbs.

But maybe you're having an energized summer, and you wish that more journals read in the summer. Diane Lockward has done us all a favor with her list of journals that read in the summer. Go here for part 1, here for part 2, and here for part 3.

Maybe you're wishing for a group that would encourage you to read one of the great books. Why not read Charlotte Bronte's Villette? Yes, I said this would be the year that I read Anna Karenina, but maybe I'll start with Villette. I'm inclined this way because there's a reading group over at The Valve. There's a reading schedule and promise of good conversation. By July 7, we're to have read the first 8 chapters, so there's not much time to get started. Go here for all the details.

Part of my dissertation discusses Jane Eyre--in fact, when I read that book again in grad school, I got the idea for my dissertation, as I noticed that victims and perpetrators of domestic violence act in just the way that we now know that they do--but Bronte wrote long before sociological studies of the problem existed. I was baffled by critics who talked about the book as fairy tale fantasy or Gothic or otherwise non-realistic. And voila: a dissertation topic was born! A study of domestic violence in the Gothic, with the thought of proving that the Gothic was actually dealing with some real life scary stuff (domestic violence)--it wasn't just a supernatural spookfest.

I feel guilty confessing that I've never read any other books by Charlotte Bronte. So, let me give Villette a try. I don't think of Villette (or any other 19th century novel) as typical summer reading, but I'm not doing much of that kind of reading either.

Maybe I'll migrate back to my high school self. I was terrified that I wasn't adequately prepared for college, what with my public school education, so I put myself on a reading regime. For every 2 fun books I read, I had to read a classic. Look back with me, to that girl lying by the pool, reading Dreiser and Dickens and Hemingway and Hawthorne, looking forward to a future that she knew would be challenging, but rewarding. Maybe I can find that girl again.

Fractal Geometry and Poetry

I'm close to deciding that I will never watch Nova again. Of course, I'm kidding. But I have noticed that those programs make me feel so inadequate when I consider my own creative life and work life.

The other night, I watched a show about Fractal Geometry. Fascinating stuff. And then, the next night, I was hearing and reading Barbra Nightingale's poems that utilized some of the same ideas. Intriguing how the world works that way.

Part of the Nova program focused on the mathematician Mandelbrot, who did some of the most important work on Fractal Geometry and in doing so, changed his whole profession. I thought about my own professions. However much I might like to completely reshape them, I have a hard time imagining that happening these days.

What would change the Poetry world in the same way that fractals changed the Geometry world? Some might argue that the changes in the publishing market are doing that, but I would argue that the basic form of the poem has stayed the same, even as the delivery mechanism is shifting.

What would change Academia the same way that fractals changed Geometry? Again, I see changes in the delivery system--the widening acceptance of online study--but the content seems to have been the same for almost 100 years. I'm thinking particularly of Composition. Perhaps, if I widen my thought, I could argue that the widening of the Canon has done to Literature what fractals did to Geometry.

Since I was little, growing up listening to stories of Martin Luther King and other Civil Rights workers who had an impact on society and changed it forever, I've longed for similar work. But it's good to remember how hard it is to be that kind of trailblazer. And it's important to remember that these changes require a sea of people to come after the trailblazer, to consider the possible changes, to help birth the new world that the changes will demand.

And with academic disciplines and creative pursuits, it's rare that we just toss out everything that came before. We still study Euclidean Geometry, after all. Even if my poems don't blaze down a different path, we still need poems written, even if those poems won't change the way that people will write poetry forever. Some of my favorite poems are centuries old, after all. My quilts are not trailblazing, but they still serve to give warmth and comfort. Most days, I'm not doing any interesting fusion cooking, but I can whip up yummy, nourishing food in the kitchen.

So today, as we celebrate Father's Day and the Summer Solstice and the end of the term (and whatever else we may all be celebrating), I think I'll write a poem. Or maybe I'll quilt. And as I stitch, I'll let my brain think about the ways I might want to be innovative that I haven't thought of.

Could I quilt my poems? Could I make some sort of creation that involves fabrics, beads, words, paint, and other mediums that interest me? A bookmaking kind of project, but with an outcome that remakes the book?

Stay tuned.

Barbra Nightingale's Poetry Reading at Books and Books

Last night, I went to Books and Books down in Coral Gables to hear Barbra Nightingale read. It shouldn't feel like such an undertaking: one of the reasons that my spouse and I chose to live where we live is that we thought it was close to equidistant between Ft. Lauderdale and Miami. Still, it's a much easier zip up to Ft. Lauderdale than Miami (and Coral Gables is south of Miami).

On the way, I passed not one, but two accidents. You know, I can't remember ever seeing a vehicle flipped upside down on the highway before we moved here in 1998, but down here, it's a fairly common occurrence. Even with the two accidents and lightning flashing in all directions ahead of me, I made good time.

I LOVE Books and Books. It's easily one of the best bookstores in the Southeast U.S.; only Malaprops Books in Asheville comes close. Every time I'm there, I think, why don't I come here more often?

I enjoyed seeing area poets and chatting before the reading. I'm always amazed at how many people I know, and from such a wide variety of experiences. I've taught with some of them, taken workshops with some of them, and attended events at the Florida Center for the Book with some of them. Before the recession squeezed us so severely, I could even hire some of them as adjuncts, if they were in the market for work.

I've liked Barbra Nightingale's poems since I first knew her back in 1998, when I taught at Broward Community College. She read from her just published book Geometry of Dreams. She made sure that the wine was open before the reading, so we sat and sipped our wine and savored her poems. It was such a perfect way to spend a Friday night.

I've noticed lately that after a poetry reading, I'm not in a mood to stand and make small talk. On some nights, I feel bad about this. I feel like I should be a better socializer. My inner critic sees all the opportunities for networking that I pass up by leaving early. But my poetry self wants to prolong the mental state that poetry provides. I want to continue to think about the images I've just heard and the connections that the poems have made. I want my mind to zing to all the inspirations for my own poems that a good poetry reading provokes. I want to curl up with the poetry book I've just bought.

So last night, I slipped away. I drove past the neon lit skyscrapers and the highway construction and devoured Barbra Nightingale's book in one fell swoop. I love that she references Math and Physics and Languages. I love her Miranda character, who shows up in this book. I love that her poems are both smart and accessible. I love coming home from a poetry reading, with the poet's voice still in my head, to read the work; I find the poems I've just heard, and appreciate them again, and then I move on to the unheard poems.

Here are some lines to whet your appetite. They're from the section of the book called "The Ex Files," which is from Geometry of Dreams (WordTech Editions 2009):

"but when a storm knocks out power, / can openers are for cans, not veins."

"I should have known, somehow, / that your fascination for dying stars / would lead to your death."

"Your mother plaits her bony fingers"

Great Graduation Speeches

My school operates on a quarter system, and we have a graduation ceremony at the end of every quarter. As a result, I have the opportunity to hear a lot of graduation speeches. And most of them are dreadful. I've spent the better part of the last decade thinking, what would I say, if I had a chance to speak to graduates.

During the hottest part of the recent economy, when that economy was expanding and the most ramshackle of our homes would fetch half a million dollars in the South Florida market, we heard a lot of speeches that told graduates that they could be whatever they wanted to be and the only thing that would hamper their ability to make gobs of money would be that inconvenient human need for sleep. There was no talk of giving anything back, no reminders of obligations to society. There was no mention that there might be more to life than money. Frankly, these speeches disgusted me. I know that I'm a liberal arts kind of girl, a poet steeped in Liberation Theology, so I know that I'm vastly different from many of my fellow citizens. But there are times when I get so depressed by being bombarded by evidence of my outsider freakishness.

Last night's speech was blessedly different. We had Steve Leifman, a judge from Miami-Dade, come up to be our speaker. He reminded the students that they had great talents and great opportunities. But he also reminded them of how much their communities need them. He reminded them of the great difficulties in our current climate, and he asked that they get down to the artistic mission of envisioning a different world. He's also Vice Chair of our Board of Trustees, and he talked about how much comfort he got from serving our school, after a hard day of watching (from the bench) all the people whose lives had blown apart in so many disheartening ways.

The speech reminded me of Barbara Kingsolver's speech at Duke in 2008, which you can read here. I liked that speech so much that I've been using it in my classes as a model of great persuasive writing. Plus, I use it to lead to a fun writing assignment. I think it's a wonderful writing exercise for students to write a graduation speech: what would you tell graduates and how would you effectively tell it? We've all sat through dreadful speeches. It's eye-opening to try to do it better.

It's interesting to read her speech, which was written before the various economic collapses in the Fall of 2008 (and I mean that word Fall in many senses). Here's the last part of her speech. Barbara Kingsolver has always been one of my very most favorite writers. I love the way that she uses language, especially here:

"You could walk out of here with an unconventionally communal sense of how your life may be. This could be your key to a new order: you don’t need so much stuff to fill your life, when you have people in it. You don’t need jet fuel to get food from a farmer’s market. You could invent a new kind of Success that includes children’s poetry, butterfly migrations, butterfly kisses, the Grand Canyon, eternity. If somebody says 'Your money or your life,' you could say: Life. And mean it. You’ll see things collapse in your time, the big houses, the empires of glass. The new green things that sprout up through the wreck –- those will be yours.

The arc of history is longer than human vision. It bends. We abolished slavery, we granted universal suffrage. We have done hard things before. And every time it took a terrible fight between people who could not imagine changing the rules, and those who said, 'We already did. We have made the world new.' The hardest part will be to convince yourself of the possibilities, and hang on. If you run out of hope at the end of the day, to rise in the morning and put it on again with your shoes. Hope is the only reason you won’t give in, burn what’s left of the ship and go down with it. The ship of your natural life and your children’s only shot. You have to love that so earnestly –- you, who were born into the Age of Irony. Imagine getting caught with your Optimism hanging out. It feels so risky. Like showing up at the bus stop as the village idiot. You may be asked to stand behind the barn. You may feel you’re not up to the task.

But think of this: what if someone had dared you, three years ago, to show up to some public event wearing a big, flappy dress with sleeves down to your knees. And on your head, oh, let’s say, a beanie with a square board on top. And a tassel! Look at you. You are beautiful. The magic is community. The time has come for the square beanie, and you are rocked in the bosom of the people who get what you’re going for. You can be as earnest and ridiculous as you need to be, if you don’t attempt it in isolation. The ridiculously earnest are known to travel in groups. And they are known to change the world. Look at you. That could be you."

In Which I Desert Poetry for Quilting

The end of our fiscal year comes June 30, and this year is the first one where I've been an administrator--which means I've had more discretion about how to use my leave days. I'm not very good at this yet, so I've ended up with unused leave days at the end of the fiscal year; I didn't want to run out of leave time, so I took leave time sparingly, and so I have lots left at the end of this fiscal year. I'm diligently trying to use them up!

Yesterday, I took a day of leave and spent much of it quilting. Every so often, it seems that everyone is having a baby, and this year is one of those times. I like to make a baby quilt for friends and relatives who are expecting, and yet, it's a project that can't be put off for too long, regardless of the demands of work and regular life.

I like making a baby quilt. I do all my sewing and quilting by hand, so I appreciate a small project. Unlike the larger quilts I have that are only partly done, baby quilts are manageable with a 40+ hour a week administrative job. It's satisfying to make so much progress in just a few hours. I love the festive fabrics I choose for baby quilts. I love how soothing it can be to sit and stitch--I don't feel that way when I use a machine.

Since I was making so much progress, I decided to keep quilting at mid-afternoon. I thought I might switch to poetry, but I wanted to finish my project for a baby-shower-imposed deadline.

It was a satisfying day, and yet, I feel slightly guilty for not giving equal time to poetry. But I have many creative interests, and increasingly, I have less and less free time. Part of me wonders, would I have a book with a spine published by now, if I had devoted all my free time to poetry?

Of course, I think that all my creative interests feed each other. I've gotten some great poems that I wouldn't have gotten, if I hadn't been quilting or cooking or painting or playing with clay.

I used to hope that I would write myself out of my job. That was back in 1992, when I started my first full-time job at a community college. I wasn't exactly sure how I would do that. I had vague ideas about a best selling novel. I wrote several novels. I couldn't get them published, much less translate them into best sellers.

I like having creative interests that I don't need to turn into money generators. I certainly wouldn't mind if I published a book of poems that turned into a surprise best seller. Given the state of publishing right now, though, I still wouldn't quit my job. Even my job has given me some delightful poems. In fact, as I sift through them, I realize I might have enough for a chapbook of poems about life in the modern workplace.

I'll continue to think about that possibility as I sew. Like walking, sewing is a great activity to help my subconscious start working on solutions and start ups.