Little Marvel Stove

My Brilliant Students

2009-12-02T23:25:00.000-08:00

today did a little presentation about this poem

Poem

As the cat
climbed over
the top of

the jamcloset
first the right
forefoot

carefully
then the hind
stepped down

into the pit
of the empty
flowerpot

by, as they put it, William "CarLOL" Williams, which included a drawing of the cat's misadventure labeled "OH NOES! IT HAZ NO DURT/FLOWERZ!" It was extremely cute. (Background necessary for finding this funny here.)

My favorite lines right now

2009-12-02T15:03:00.001-08:00

Note that, in this bitterness, delight,
Since the imperfect is so hot in us,
Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds.

--Wallace Stevens

from the New York Times

2009-11-30T23:58:00.001-08:00

"One of the rare things known for certain about Bach, who did not leave much of a verbal trail, is that in 1705, as a young man, he got into a fight with a fellow musician. Mr. Siblin notes that the insult delivered by Bach has been variously translated by scholars as “nanny-goat bassoonist” or “bassoonist breaking wind after eating a green onion.”"

Some notes on "The Waste Land" which I am teaching tomorrow

2009-10-25T23:55:00.000-07:00

[I just wrote this to help me think. No pressure to read it. I didn't even proofread it or worry too much about making sense.]

To begin in the middle, at teatime, in the violet hour:

There are four characters in this episode: the typist; her lover, the young man carbuncular; Tiresias the narrator, blind seer, hermaphrodite, old man with wrinkled dugs; and iambic pentameter.

Eliot says in his notes that Tiresias is "the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest," that "the two sexes meet in Tiresias," and that "what Tiresias sees, in fact, is the substance of the poem." Eliot's note suggests that what blind Tiresias sees as he goes about his immortality encompasses all of human history, and that, after a while, this history appears uniformly dreary. Like the Cumean Sybil of the epigraph, who, granted immortality without eternal youth, interns her frail body inside a hanging jar, this Tiresias has age without vitality, knowledge without agency, and wisdom without consequence. And like the Sybil, the only sensation his body feels is pain; he "throbs" between two lives, the male and female, but not with pleasure.

The source of Tiresias's wisdom, and also his pain, is an unlucky involvement in the sexual lives of others. As Eliot notes, Ovid's account of Tiresias's blinding begins with the future seer disturbing a pair of giant mating snakes and ends with him attempting to mediate a sexual dispute between Jupiter and Juno; neither was a good idea. In both cases, the consequences of others' sexualities are enacted on Tiresias's own body, first with a change of sex, then with a change back, then with blindness, and then with second sight.

Because he bears the marks of others' sexual passions, the passionless Tiresias resembles the poem's victims of rape, Philomel most notably, though he can speak his hard-won knowledge intelligibly while she, as a nightingale, is reduced to pure lyricism, pure song. It is also arguably in this victimized capacity that Tiresias most resembles the typist whose story he narrates.

A question this episode suggests is whether the typist is doubly violated not only by her lover, the young man carbuncular, to whom she unenthusiastically acquiesces, but also by Tiresias and by extension the poem itself. The typist, opening cans, smoothing her hair, does not know she is being watched, and though the scene is intimate beyond narrative credibility--Tiresias tells us her thoughts--it is not not convincingly interior. We see what she does but not why, and so, in her blankness, we are invited to use her again, in a literary sense, to see her not as a person but as a symbol for modern decay, for hopeless passivity in the face of vulgarity, for the parallel destructions of passion and decorum.

The discomfort of this violation is both soothed and exacerbated by the beauty of the lines themselves. Pound called parts of "The Waste Land" "too penty," and much of the poem's original pentameter was varied and tightened in revision, but this episode is spoken in almost perfect blank verse, unwavering for forty lines. This prosodic allusion to English verse traditions reinforces the contrast between high and low, grand and banal, that structures this section and the poem as a whole, and uses the familiar and venerable English meter to triangulate the relationship between classical and modern.

At the same time, this triangulation makes it more difficult to read Tiresias as the true speaker of the lines, as do the many modern references, and the mind-reading. All of this suggest a uniting consciousness beyond Tiresias, a speaker-poet who is both complicit in and apart from the ambiguous violence of the scene. On the one hand, the poem, like the young man, uses the typist without allowing her agency; its vanity, like his, requires no response. On the other hand, there is tenderness in the attention paid to the details of the typist's evening, in the elevation of them into poetry, and there is sympathy, based on experience, in Tiresias's narration.

In this scene, then, in its strangeness and artificiality, juxtaposed with the intimate and potentially shameful everyday, the poem dramatizes the danger of witness and the difficulty of sympathy. There are no true connections, and yet there is feeling, and yet the scene dissolves without resolution, with a cinematic fade from the typist's gramophone to Ariel's song in "The Tempest," leaving the characters alone to enact the scene again.

Studious

2009-10-04T18:45:00.000-07:00

From Roethke's notebooks: "An eager young coed was poised with her pencil. What is the most interesting phenomenon in American poetry, Mr. Roethke? What I do next, he said, abandoning her for a ham sandwich. My Gaad, he's rude, she said. No, he's just hungry. His tapeworm just had a nervous breakdown."

After the initial excitement, dissertation writing is proving to be more difficult than anticipated. The more material I gather around me, the more like speculative bullshit my hunches seem. But even though I feel like I don't have any ideas and I don't know anything, on the plus side, for research and for teaching I'm reading and rereading poetry and the epiphenomena of poetry and feeling my appetite for it whetted rather than diminished by stress and obligation.

Speaking of appetite, I found the quote above while trolling Roethke's notebooks looking for inspiration for my first chapter and, despite its sexism, I find "his tapeworm just had a nervous breakdown" a kind of awesome explanation for unruly hungers.

In further "the lighter side of sexist [or fascist, whatever] poets" news, I was pleased to discover when rereading Ezra Pound for teaching a sentiment I agree with heartily:

"Winter is icummen in,
Lhude sing Goddamm."

Welcome back, fall.

2009-09-26T23:06:00.000-07:00

Welcome back, stove.

Tomorrow I teach my second GRE class and I am actually, I think, maybe more nervous for it than I was for the first. Will there be a disaster? What if I can't unlock the room? What if no one shows up? Why does the logo look so dumb? That's my mental soundtrack right now.

But I had another exciting-for-me small-business-owner first today, when I used my special business bank account, full of the money from the last class, to pay for printing and photocopying this week's materials. It's real money that can buy things!

Real school starts on Wednesday. I am excited but nervous about that too. I am still scrambling to put together my class on modernist poetry and just decided to have a course website for the first time ever. One reason is swine flu (we're supposed to make it easy for students to keep up from home so that they don't spread their piggy germs around) but really I just want to be able to add online readings throughout the quarter instead of choosing everything now.

We're mid-landscaping and my backyard is a field of dirt. It's scenic actually in an apocalyptic way.

It's official

2009-09-06T15:51:00.000-07:00

I own a business that actually does business. As suspected, my course is good. We were all tired at the end, but it is, as I'd hoped, completely possible to get through the entire GRE in one day without rushing madly or skipping important stuff. If you or anyone you know wants to take the GRE or GMAT, or just wants to spend a fun Sunday, I have the course for you.

An illustration of the problem of trying to emphathize with your audience based on what you think they are thinking and feeling, which is especially

2009-09-03T18:43:00.001-07:00

notable to me in the context of a lesson I recently received from a marketing professional.

Dear Zyzzyva,

In answer to your question, no, I am not "hurt because my manuscript was rejected." Are you kidding me? Anyone who has ever read for a journal or even just sent out poems knows that almost all of them get rejected and it's nothing personal and pretty random.

No, there's no need to ask for forgiveness "for returning [my] work and not offering comments or suggestions." After all, I didn't ask for your feedback, I asked if you wanted to publish my poems. If you don't, it's cool with me.

No, I am not "discouraged by this or any other momentary setback," and your letter does not alter or affect my sense of whether "the road is long and the struggle must go on." And frankly, I find it hard to imagine that anyone would want or need this particular pep talk. Anyone who knows your journal exists knows enough about the poetry business not to sweat a few rejections.

Definitely no, "when the Muse does visit again," I will not "give her [your] best regards." Ew.

And finally, no, I will not check the box that says "ZYZZYVA is beautiful and fun to read." I like a little modesty in my literary publications or at least charming immodesty in the name of interesting, articulated literary ambitions. I guess I am "grateful that such a magazine exists," but not so much for this magazine in particular. So, no, sorry, but I don't think I will subscribe, even for the low introductory price of $10.

Sincerely,
Me

New Favorite Thing

2009-09-02T18:05:00.000-07:00

One of the nice perks of having a sister who does amazing human rights work in China is the pirated DVDs. On the cape, we started watching my birthday present, 30 Rock, which is hilarious, and although we didn't get as far as this clip, my sister and I watched it just before I flew home just because it's so funny. It has been in my head all day and is my new favorite thing:

Watch it! Even without knowing the show I think you will find it delightful.

Boys becoming men! Men becoming wolves!

Today in Misrememberings

2009-09-01T16:55:00.001-07:00

Say what you want about Crazy Uncle Ezra [Pound], not to mention about Orientalism and cultural appropriation (all of which would be justified); I still think "The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter" has a taproot down into a deep and mysterious gorgeousness. I had a simple but stunning line from it in my head today:

"They comfort me. I grow older."

(Referring to "paired butterflies.") But of course, that's not the line at all. The line is:

"They hurt me. I grow older."

It's a strange transposition I made, and I wonder what it means.

Good things

2009-09-01T00:12:00.000-07:00

Obviously, this here blog's magic, because since my last post TWO good things have happened:

1. Yesterday morning in the space of 10 minutes the enrollment in my next GRE class (for this coming Sunday) went from 0 students (and therefore canceled, like the others) to 4 students and a real thing! I've been trying to get this going for 6 months and it's very exciting to get to hold an actual class. Now for real I'm a small business owner!

2. I just got home to Seattle and found out that one of the poems I sent out recently got accepted by a great journal, and one I actually subscribe to, one I have been given gift subscriptions to by very beloved family friends! The envelope not only contained a handwritten letter from the editor, there was also a check for $200, which is by far the most I've ever been paid for a poem. Maybe the most ANYONE has ever been paid for a poem. That's not the best part, of course . . . I guess I'd say, little kiddishly, that the whole thing is the best part.

And now I'm here typing while Kitcat prowls around my legs, and even though I miss my New York family and friends a lot, it is nice to be home.

Maybe

2009-08-29T23:29:00.000-07:00

Maybe something good will happen. Has happened. Is happening. It is not impossible.

Blue sky, mobile office

2009-08-23T10:41:00.000-07:00

Hurricane Bill seems to have blown over. My summer class has almost blown over--only 4 portfolios left to grade and they have, on the whole, been very good and I'm pleased.

I'm in what passes on Cape Cod for an internet cafe (O modern technology, my student portfolios are online and my grade submission is online too) but I'm looking forward to some internet-reduced detox time over the next week. Swimming, family time, reading books. An attention-span adjustment, I hope.

Kiss Me, I'm Falling

2009-08-21T11:47:00.001-07:00

The red-eye's not made for sleeping, at least not when you arrive in NYC at 3 am Seattle time. In a daze I stumbled to the baggage claim, the air train, the Long Island Rail Road, the subway, and eventually found myself lying on my mom's couch with a phrase running through my head:

Kiss me, [something], I'm falling through darkness into [the world].

Nice phrase, isn't it? I had no idea where it came from, but as I lay there sleepily, I started playing a game with it, which was to replace the words in brackets with whatever came into my head. Like:

Kiss me, arugula, I'm falling through darkness into Long Island.
Kiss me, ordnance, I'm falling through darkness into green light.
Kiss me, nowhere, I'm falling through darkness into a taxi.

Fun, right? I recommend it for your insomnia. (The ones I was coming up with on the edge of sleep were better than these, of course, but I don't remember them.)

Partway through I remembered that it was a line from Theodore Roethke, which I now see that I got closer to right than I would have expected: "Kiss me, ashes, I'm falling through a dark swirl."

Ad hoc

2009-08-20T09:56:00.001-07:00

I just met with a student who wants to "ad-hoc" my fall class, which apparently means doing more work and getting honors credit for it. I don't know what I think about an honors program that teaches students that "ad hoc" is a verb. I feel like kids these days have enough problems without introducing that kind of confusion. (It kind of reminds me of when my boss at the Atlantic was consulted by the American Heritage Dictionary on the issue of whether it is acceptable, despite the redundancy, to use "the" with "hoi polloi"--he said no--the whole situation of which, for some reason, kind of blew my mind.)

Also, in today's moment of bad form, when he turned his computer to me to show me the ad hoc requirements, I saw that he had been googling me (a totally useless enterprise, of course, given my name--maybe he found my double's Pulitzer prize!--but still).

I really don't like the last day of classes, which is today. Last quarter I had an actual panic attack while attempting to sum up everything they had learned. Today before we do evaluations, I am bribing the students with brownies and making them recite their favorite poems from the quarter. Then I'm hopping on the red-eye.

Funny Cause It's True

2009-08-17T17:32:00.000-07:00

I gave this sample paper to my students today and I think they all recognized themselves in it. Imitating bad student writing is one of the major joys of my job.

What is Northwest Poetry?

Theodore Roethek was one of the most important poets of the Pacific Northwest. He moved to Washington in 1947 after having grown up in a greenhouse in michigan. His teaching was very popular with students including Carolyn Kizer, from Spokane, and Richard Hugo, originally from White Center, who became poets themselves. These three different poets wrote about different things, but also some of the same things. Northwest poetry is defined as a very influential kind of writing in the region where the poets thereby find out what is so important about the northwest.

Carolyn Kizer wrote the poem “Semele Recycled.” In this poem, a woman is split a part into different body parts because she loves the Greek god Zeus. Kizer writes, “comfortable odor of dung.” This suggests the earth and a determination to accept the less pretty side of nature.

Greenhouses sound beautiful but can also be unpleasant and full of rotting plants. “Dank as a ditch.” He even describes some plants “long evil yellow necks.” It doesn’t seem here like he likes plants very much, but actually it may be that his problem is more with his father, who owned the greenhouses. There is a clue to this when he says “battered on one knuckle.”

Alki Beach can be very pleasant but Richard Hugo doesn’t think so, despite having grown up in White Center, a suburb of Seattle. “Spray, / abandoned, falls from the statue / by the marked-off, unused picnic grounds.” Hugo was too busy with worries about what people are doing to have awareness of what is in the beauty of the space that is all around him everywhere his eyes can take a moment to find the time to look at what is in front of them. His poems are very depressing.

All in all, Northwest poetry means different things to different people, but it can also mean whatever you want it to mean.

Portland

2009-08-15T14:58:00.001-07:00

So I pull into Portland with a little time to spare, navigate my way to an old haunt without looking at the map, instantly find a cute little coffee shop and one of the abundant free parking spots, pass a sign pointing to a "Free Pile," and am stopped for by a car with an "I love my library" bumper sticker. In the coffee shop, there are crayon drawings by adults and good-looking young people comparing indie t-shirts. Portland, could you be any more yourself?

My Day

2009-08-13T00:29:00.001-07:00

This has to be one of the weirdest and most varied days ever:

1. Morning coffee and chatting with K
2. Work on op-ed about police brutality in China with sisterkins
3. Teach class on Pacific NW poetry
4. Meet with student, finish and deliver recommendation for former student
5. Teach class on how to perform a "man overboard" recovery in a sailboat (and then supervise and coach 10 kids attempting to rescue lifejackets: DON'T HIT ANOTHER BOAT EVEN IF IT MEANS YOUR BUDDY GETS EATEN BY SHARKS!)

and finally, why not,

6. Opera! 5 hours of Wagner, gorgeously staged and kind of a major change of gears from everything else.

The Triggering Tuber

2009-08-02T16:55:00.001-07:00

I just wrote a poem about beets expressing some of my thoughts about relations between men and women.

Right now

2009-07-26T17:16:00.001-07:00

Last night I simultaneously added and checked off "skinny dip in Lake Washington" to my list of things to do before I die. It was
"cold dark deep and absolutely clear," and very wonderful. I also went on a jog with a friend's dog that was great until the dog collapsed from overheating (but then she went in the lake and was fine), helped other friends move into a really great house, and made mango lassi "ice cream."

Now I must must must do laundry and clean up around here. Why does everything feel weird right now?

Adventures in the city

2009-07-25T10:44:00.000-07:00

Dog-sitting, Helping-moving, Sailing-instructing, Biking, Bar-crawling, Poetry-teaching, Business-mentor-seeking, Librarian-consulting, Fancy-new-phone-buying, Potlucking, Getting-out-of-the-city, Not-enough-working, Everything-rolling-along-in-a-way-that-resembles-life. Today I was almost brought to tears by a 3-legged cat who appeared to be lost (but wasn't). A phrase I often think of is, "a door opens and you walk through it."

Star-struck?

2009-07-22T14:39:00.001-07:00

Today I discovered that one of my students is the son of a famous intellectual. It came up in a weird way: in a report on a reading he attended, my student mentioned that the author had cited but misrepresented the famous intellectual's most famous work. Since it's rare for any of my students to be aware of the work of any famous intellectuals, let alone able to evaluate representations of it, this stuck out to me as interesting. Then my eye jumped to the last name at the top of the paper which, I suddenly realized, was the same as that of the famous intellectual. I thought . . . hmmm. So I asked the student about it in his conference today and he said, sheepishly and cutely, "he's my dad." I'm not sure how to feel about it. I've never taught the progeny of famous intellectuals before.

(I will tell you who it is, but obviously I'm not going to make it google-able.)

I did two interesting things today

2009-07-16T00:32:00.000-07:00

One, I went for a half-hour long run on the track at the gym . . . barefoot!It's part of my campaign to get stronger, better ankles. It actually felt pretty normal, and I don't think it slowed me down or made me more tired. I'm curious about what it will feel like tomorrow.

Then during sailing class my prescription sunglasses fell off my head into the water while I was rigging my boat. So I sailed blind all afternoon and then at the end of the class I had to dive to the soggy disgusting bottom of the lake in order to retrieve them. It was unpleasant but doable. Have I mentioned that I love summer?

My vet said that based on recent research she has started recommending that people make indoor cats work for their food more. So I just made a little contraption out of a tupperware container with holes cut in the top that requires Kitcat to bat his kibble into position below the only hole big enough for his head. Right now he is kind of cautiously stalking it, but I know he is going to LOVE it.

Cat in the light of day

2009-07-14T17:07:00.001-07:00

Well, Kitcat got a clean bill of health from my regular vet and today's visit was way more pleasant than last night. It's funny that the thing I always didn't like about my regular vet is that she didn't seem to realize how good and special and beautiful and sweet a cat Kitcat is. But today she was full of love for him, and she told me that she likes adult cats better than kittens and enjoys watching them grow up into who they're going to be.

The experience last night made me realize, in terms of human health care, how totally inhumane a health care system is that makes people pay piecemeal for their own medical treatment. It's traumatic enough when you're dealing with animals but in a reasonable society no person would ever have to get on the phone trying to get a loan for a lifesaving procedure.

In other news, I think I totally have a crush on Sonia Sotomayor. I maybe kind of wish I'd tried to become a judge instead of an underemployed poet. Hearing her calmly parse words in the face of the blatant (and racist) misrepresentations of nincompoop Jeff Sessions is inspiring.

Cat Woes

2009-07-14T00:12:00.000-07:00

This evening I got home from doing some work and noticed that my cat had become distressed. As I tried to figure out what he could have eaten that was making him sick, I discovered a corner of a door jamb that he had gnawed off. Chunks of plaster on the floor, insulation tufting out. So I took him to the late nite emergency vet and after almost four hours and $248 he is more or less back to his old self, though I'm supposed to keep getting his lead levels checked throughout the week. Also, alarmingly, he keeps returning to the now cleaned and blocked off scene of the crime.

I hate going to the vet. It just seems like such a rip off. It's not that I begrudge paying for actual care, but the only thing they actually did for Kitcat was to give him some subcutaneous fluid to rehydrate him; but it was $95 for the "exam" and what that basically consisted of was a $75 call to poison control, who, of course, didn't really know anything and just advised taking lots of expensive precautions. I shudder to think what tomorrow will cost--and, of course, I'm still also worried that Kitcat is not as much improved as he seems.

The vet trip was particularly stressful because the waiting room was occupied the whole time by a young couple who had just moved to Seattle and whose dog had also had an unwholesome snack of some kind. The woman spent hours on the phone begging her father to co-sign a loan to cover the several thousand dollar surgery that the vet was waiting for approval to start performing. She was weeping and incoherent; her boyfriend looked more and more miserable every time she forgot what she was asking for and said "we'll pay you back." I could kind of feel for the father too--she kept saying "we'll have jobs," and $4,000 is a lot to spend if your job is in the future tense--but the situation was pretty awful.

The Hot Shop

2009-07-12T21:54:00.000-07:00

After a hard spring term and no break before a hectic start to summer, I've been feeling like it's important for the "likes fun" part of myself to perform a little coup d'etat against the "feels guilty if not working" part, which has been getting awfully comfortable in power. So while I did do some work this weekend, I also did a lot of things that were not productive in terms of meeting any immediate goal but that turned out to be an important reminder that there's more to life than grading the next set of papers.

Including: walking a dog, sailing a boat, receiving a free burrito, chatting at a bar with the wryly reticent son of a famous author and his talkative wife, going to see Shakespeare in the park with a big group of gay Mormons, and, today, going to the totally awesome Museum of Glass in Tacoma where we spent a long time watching a bunch of guys working with blowtorches and a 2000 degree oven on what, after a lot of rolling, wrestling, cradling in a frying pan filled with water, caressing with a wet newspaper, and direct application of flames turned into what looked like a mad chemist's super-vial. We also saw a talk by the awesomely-named Preston Singletary, who makes versions of traditional Northwest native art out of glass. They are conceptually interesting as well as gorgeous (based on the slides--we got distracted by the "hot shop" and the museum closed before we got to the exhibit).

The whole experience made me remember what I think is hard for writers to really feel, the "it's just cool" aspect of art. Glassblowing, though I often don't like the results aesthetically, is, from a craft standpoint, obviously and inarguably cool. Some of what I found interesting: a lot of the artistry is clearly motivated by technical challenges (both the limitations they impose and the imperative to transcend them). The process is inherently collaborative and literally can't be done alone. We watched the hot shop guys try to put a little topknot on their vial three different ways before one finally stuck and was not too uneven, and my friend who is a glassblower said that "you always have to have a Plan B."

There's a lesson there I'm going to think about. In the hot shop I also got an idea for a poem, and I'm also going to think about trying to remember what that was.

What Ankles Know

2009-07-10T01:35:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking recently about proprioception--the body's ability to know where it is in space. I only recently learned about this as a distinct attribute, and, as a naturally klutzy person, I feel particularly able to appreciate how amazing it is that the body can coordinate with itself and its environment--even as prone-to-spillingly as mine does.

The New York Times has an article today about how ankle injuries are correlated with poor balance and the most interesting point it makes, I think, is that after an injury the nerves that allow your ankles to know where they are, where the ground is, where the rest of your body is, and how everything is moving--or whatever information you need to be able to balance on two little toothpicks like we do--that part of the healing process is that these nerves need to be retrained. (The article suggests doing this by standing on one foot while brushing your teeth.)

This is interesting to me because I've had some ankle problems recently, and have noticed that just in the past year or so I can no longer jump in and out of boats the way I used to. Or scramble over rocks. I've described the feeling as "not trusting" my ankles, but really the article gets at it more precisely; it's not really a confidence issue or that I don't trust my ankles, in the sense that I consciously expect them to fail me (I don't), but that they themselves seem no longer to know what they're doing. Since my goatlike springiness and confidence on rocks and boats has always been one of my few and prized physical abilities, I am pleased that I might be able to get it back while brushing my teeth.

I was also thinking about proprioception and boats because as I was sailing a Laser yesterday I was marveling at how much more gracefully I can move around that little boat than I can do almost anything else. I'm still klutzy compared to other people who know how to sail, but it is an odd but extremely enjoyable sensation to do easily what you know intellectually to be an awkward movement. I was having a really good time and realizing that that was a big part of why.

Proud

2009-07-07T00:52:00.000-07:00

Today I changed a tire for the first time! Yesterday I tried and the lug nuts just wouldn't budge, but today I decided to jump on them, and they cranked right off. The rest was actually really easy. Still, I feel like I've become a different category of person now: a Person Who Can Fix a Flat. Just call me if you need me.

I'm continuing my genre fiction odyssey, and can report that John Le Carre's "The Night Manager" is awesome at first but ultimately kind of unsatisfying. I never thought that grad school would really change my relationship with reading but it actually has made me more reluctant to read anything literary outside of "work." It's unfortunate, but still, even if it's a mystery or or whatever, having a novel that I'm reading makes life so much better. I should start another one, stat.

Now this is weird . . .

2009-07-01T22:06:00.000-07:00

I'm writing an assignment prompt for my students about attending a poetry reading and, as usual, I searched google images for an illustration for the assignment sheet. As I often do, I used a bland search term literally describing the gist of the assignment, in this case "poetry reading." High up on the second page of results, I saw this:

And even though it was random and a tiny thumbnail, I thought, hey, that looks familiar, could it be . . . ? And I clicked on it. And it was!

It is, or at least it appears to be, a photo of one of the trailer park poetry readings back in Irvine, back when there was a trailer park, and there were poetry readings in it. Those were good old days.

The weird thing is that this photo was on a Minnesota arts blog. Huh?

Where were the greenhouses going?

2009-06-30T20:59:00.000-07:00

As you can see from the quote up there, I'm getting into Theodore Roethke these days. Right now I'm teaching his greenhouse poems in my summer class and I thought it would be fun to have my students draw the poems to get a sense of the full scope of his weird greenery. I love drawing poems--it not only produces cool results (new art for my office!) but also demystifies the interpretive process since it feels natural and not scary to decide how to draw something, even when it would be intimidating to say what it "means."

I drew the poem "Big Wind":

Where were the greenhouses going,
Lunging into the lashing
Wind driving water
So far down the river
All the faucets stopped?—

It's a cool poem. I wish I could draw better.

Floating Bridges

2009-06-26T18:56:00.001-07:00

So I was thinking of starting this up again. I'm trying out a moody gray photo.

My Day at Work

2009-05-13T18:30:00.000-07:00

9:30 am Arrived at the conference room to lead daily meeting with my 35 clients.

10:25 am Concluded meeting. Walked to office, settled in at desk, chatted with co-worker.

10:45 am Began client paperwork.

1:00 pm Chatted with another co-worker.

1:30 pm Continued client paperwork.

2:00 pm Took a break from paperwork to prepare for tomorrow's meeting.

2:30 pm Continued client paperwork.

4:00 pm Left office for coffee break.

4:30 pm Continued client paperwork.

6:00 pm End of the workday. Decided not to finish paperwork, but instead to re-negotiate deadlines with clients and thought of plan whereby this would be advantageous to all.

6:15 pm Left the office, opened umbrella, and walked home.

Of course, clients are students, the meeting is class, and client paperwork is really grading essays. It's just interesting to me to try to align my day with a typical workday. It's not so different, I guess. Though we don't have a water cooler.

Conversation of the day

2009-04-22T12:12:00.000-07:00

At a campus convenience store:

Me: Sorry this $10 bill is a little ripped.

Guy at the counter: That's okay. I can understand why someone would have rage against Hamilton.

Me: I know! He's the one who got us into this mess!

Also, Josh pointed me toward this amazing tidbit for NPR junkies.

Teaching

2009-04-20T18:30:00.001-07:00

So I have been trawling Flickr today, and one of the amusing but frustrating fruits of my labors has been the discovery that this is the first image that comes up when you search for "teaching." Of course! Who wouldn't want to illustrate some text about teaching with an image of a tender avian moment involving worms?

Strange Life

2009-04-14T23:53:00.001-07:00

Damn you, Mr. President and the adorable and needy children of the United States, you now have my $642.

Today when I got home from school my apartment was unexpectedly wrapped in plastic and some people were cutting a hole in my bathroom wall. I was planning to practice the cello, but even though that didn't happen, I felt on during orchestra rehearsal and it was exhilarating. I always wonder these days why I didn't think more in high school how physically intense orchestra playing is--it's exhausting, and also sometimes a big high. We are playing a great program with all these very Eastern European pieces on it that stay in your head and make you feel like doing a gypsyish dance all the time. I am writing a program note for this concert, on Dvorak's Symphonic Variations, and I'm excited about that, too, and keep pondering what I'm going to say.

I'm also making delicious potato salad. The potatoes are in the freezer, and I must rescue them soon.

Tomorrow I have to give a lecture in Construction Management. My life is strange.

Anger

2009-04-13T22:48:00.001-07:00

Doing my taxes tonight I discovered that the test-prep teaching company I was fired from almost a year ago (for being insufficiently devoted to the cause, not wanting to give up every weekend day forever, etc) is continuing to screw me over by calling me a "nonemployee" for tax purposes. That means, technically (I now know thanks to H&R Block), that I am a business owner, and that means I have to pay a big whopping tax on a very small amount of income.

Of course, looking at the tax stuff more carefully, I discovered that out of the 10 or so criteria for having a "nonemployee," the only one that my company met was that they didn't give me any benefits (everything else clearly pointed to a normal employee arrangement). But I'm pretty sure that this status was in my contract, so there's probably not much I can do. Except destroy them with my own test prep business!

Comforting myself, because, while the situation seems a little ambiguous and I really don't want to pay a big tax when I was expecting to get a refund, it's against my morals to be a tax cheat, I thought . . . at least I'm giving it to OBAMA! It really is nice to know that my taxes might not go straight to Halliburton but instead could be used to provide, say, $642 worth of picture books for adorable children. That's what I'm going to think about.

Poetry update

2009-04-10T16:56:00.000-07:00

One of my post-exam goals is to try to take a couple of weeks to do some serious poetry-work before getting deep into my dissertation. I can't believe this, but it's been over a year since I've sent out submissions, so it's time to get out the ol' SASE operation again.

I'm also trying to figure out how to get beyond the one-poem-at-a-time paradigm, and after literally years of having no idea how to transform my (ever-growing and increasingly-unwieldy) pile of poems into a manuscript with shape, today I decided to take the empirical approach. So I sat down with all the print-outs of poems I could find, and just started sorting. At first, there was no principle other than what felt right. Pretty quickly I realized that I was making sections with a nice combination of direct and oblique approaches to a recognizable (I hope) general theme. I don't know if it would feel that way to anyone other than me, but it was kind of exciting still to feel a larger work taking shape. I was kind of surprised, too, at what the sections turned out to be. The working headings (not to be part of the book itself) are a funny mismatch of different kinds of topics:

1. History
2. Family
3. Boats
4. China
5. Evil
6. California

Spring fever

2009-04-05T22:35:00.000-07:00

Hi again. Anyone who might still be reading this, I'm sorry about disappearing. I think I'm back now. It's felt like a long, disorienting hibernation.

All last week and this weekend I was sick. I barely left the house except to teach and go to Petco for cat toys, read two mystery novels, ate popsicles, and tried to be patient and rest and trust that I was building up strength to use when I became human again. I think it worked.

So while I was sick, I did not take stock or reflect on anything. But now I have a few things to say, including . . . I passed my exams. I think I could have answered the questions with interpretive dances and still passed, but still being done feels more momentous than I expected. Everything feels new and different, like anything could happen, like I've slipped an anchor. It's both freeing and alarming. If I don't paddle, I'm just going to drift, but if I do paddle, I might get somewhere.

Today the weather, which had been rainy and snowy, finally turned balmily springlike, and I thought about how I used to have spring fever when I was in high school, how I would get these feelings of longing and excitement and melancholy and would daydream about the future and of course, those daydreams never included still having the same feeling half a lifetime later. It's funny how you think it's you, when it's just a condition of the season.

Limbo

2009-03-07T12:27:00.000-08:00

So . . . my written exams are over and since yesterday, when I met with my adviser and got some feedback, I've been starting to see my way out of limbo, though I still have orals to do next week. The short version is, I passed. My committee didn't like everything I did (some of it they thought was pretty bad), and what they liked most was not what I would have expected (which suggests that I should always write in a state of utter depletion at four in the morning . . . ), but it's pretty clear that the only one who is seeing this process as a referendum on my basic worthiness as a thinker, writer, and person, is me. So I should stop.

The really great thing about my meeting with my adviser is that he liked my proposed dissertation topic. So that means . . . I have a dissertation topic! It was so easy, and was really an incredible, existential transformation. One minute, I was a grad student with some vague interests, which is what I've been for so long I can hardly remember being anything else. Ten minutes later, I became a person with a project, a person who will be able to produce an answer when someone asks me what I write about. And I'm super excited about the topic. Our brainstorming session was really fun and my adviser had some good ideas about how I could structure the different chapters. It's exactly what I want to write, I think. (And yes, I will say what it is in some other post soon.)

So this means that if all goes well with the orals (which I am nervous about but my adviser referred to as "a doo-dad") I will be able to start shedding the "perpetual grad student" identity and be what I have always wanted to be: a writer writing a book.

Bird Signs

2009-02-19T13:20:00.000-08:00

I've never learned much about the ancient technique of prophesy via bird-watching, but I've always liked the idea of it. So I was pretty excited when, during a morning run around Greenlake I saw two eagles. I'm not sure I've ever seen even one before. They were pretty awesome, huge and fierce and surrounded by crows. One flew, perched briefly, and then headed out across the lake with his retinue. The other was absolutely still at the top of a tall pine tree, where he'd apparently been for a long time because someone walking the other way told me to look out for him. Anyway, I think this must be good luck.

Exams

2009-02-18T22:30:00.000-08:00

As you can see, there are 44 books on my kitchen table right now. This is only a field station; at the base camp for the books in my office there are probably four times as many in the "exam lists" pile.

And now is the time, or almost the time, to mobilize all these massed forces: my written exams will start Friday morning and end 72 hours and 30 pages later. I don't feel prepared, but I do feel ready and excited.

I'll be in kind of a weird state and don't know if I'll be too busy to take breaks or so busy I need breaks. But I do know that any messages, funny stories, cute pictures, brilliant ideas, and general good karma would be lovingly received.

The most awful thing I've read recently

2009-02-16T10:56:00.000-08:00

This, in a New York Times book review by Janet Maslin, is one of the most terrifying passages I have ever read: "Ms. Gershow has been a teacher at the University of Oregon, where some students’ online ratings of her sound like a continuation of Lydia’s high school nightmare. Being regarded as neither popular nor hot seems to be territory that Ms. Gershow knows well, maybe in the classroom and certainly on the pages of her unusually credible and precise novel."

This is so awful. Obviously, Maslin must have googled Gershow (ratemyprofessors is the fifth hit right now) and just plucked out what she found without thinking much about it. Equally obviously, Maslin can't have ever been on the receiving end of student evaluations, or she would have more sensitivity to their unreliability and, more importantly, to their essentially private nature, which is what makes online ratings so uncomfortable and makes decent people stay away from or at least not discuss other people's.

I just keep imagining what should be a wonderful moment in the life of a young novelist--her first book, favorably reviewed in the New York Times!--marred by a gratuitous and humiliating invasion of privacy, the decision to trumpet to the world that the author's students didn't like her AND (this is where Maslin is really in poor taste) didn't think she was hot. (The students, judging from the author photo, are totally mistaken--but the fact that I immediately scrolled up the page to look at the author photo illustrates exactly what is the problem here.)

Students should be more sensitive when they are tempted to post mean things online and, of course, that words have consequences is part of what we try to teach them. But there's no excuse for professional book reviewers.

Remember this

2009-02-12T22:48:00.000-08:00

A few summers ago I wrote a sonnet every day for a week or so, trying to get poetically limberer. I was looking at old drafts today, and found them. They're awful. In the same word document, there's another one from a year or so later about the experience of reading the earlier ones. It's even worse, barely even comprehensible, except for the final couplet, which kind of struck me. Or really just the last line, but it needs its penultimate friend for set up. It's one of a genre of pleasurably stark statements of bitterness that I find in my drafts and notebooks but usually edit out of anything I hold onto, and I'm sharing it . . . well, I'm not sure why, but here it is:

So records kept bring joy but also pain.
Remember this before you write again.

But in my case I am right

2009-02-11T15:49:00.000-08:00

Are there many little boys who think they are a
Monster? But in my case I am right said Geryon to the
Dog they were sitting on the bluffs The dog regarded him
Joyfully

from Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red, a book many of you have received as a gift from me at one time or another. I always think of this quote when I feel like an academic fraud. I know everyone feels that way, so it's probably not as dire as I think, but still. I really don't want to fail my exams. Also, it turns out that I need to come into the orals with a dissertation topic which, though it's not like I don't have ideas, was a bird I was planning to kill with a different stone. Which leads me to this:

Magnanimous as Bird
By Boy descried —
Singing unto the Stone
Of which it died —

Emily Dickinson is such a master of what Jakobson calls congruity leading to equivalence; she conspicuously doesn't say the boy killed the bird, but just by putting him there, she creates the unavoidable impression that he did. Which leads to all kinds of interesting possible readings. The poem is about shame. I would be really ashamed to fail my exams.

"Magnanimous As Bird" would make a pretty good title for something.

Things I have recently discovered that I like: earplugs (while studying in public places), sweet potatoes (baked in the oven), NPR podcasts (especially All Things Considered while making dinner).

How About Never?

2009-02-10T11:51:00.001-08:00

I thought I should clarify that I have not been rejected by any journals or dates recently; I just thought the NYT headline was funny and needed exaggeration. Still, I have been remembering how, after the worst break-up of my life, I cried all night but knew that if I could just get myself to my classroom to teach, I would be all right. And it was true. Afterwards Zanni and I had Chinese food. Oddly, what was a really horrible experience has turned into a nice memory.

Now that I've taught for longer, being in front of a class doesn't necessarily give me that life-affirming adrenaline boost anymore, but it does still get me out of my head. Today after class I had a nice meeting with a student who always writes to me as "Professor Sarah" and signs his emails "Doctor [Name]." Which is kind of charming, although, as the one who is supposed to improve his rhetorical savvy, I feel a little guilty about just enjoying it without comment.

Also, my oral exams got slightly rescheduled; in response, one professor wrote, "The later the better. Ok for me." That made me think of this:

Wait, why is this news?

2009-02-09T18:29:00.001-08:00

In today's New York Times: "Journal Rejects Essay About Nixon Tapes". Next week: "Magazine Rejects Poems," "Another Magazine Rejects Poems," and "Man Had Fun But Does Not Want to Go On Second Date."

In other non-news news, it's hailing and thundering out, so I guess I'm not going running. Right now I am putting off writing the questions I want to get asked in my exams. I went for a long productive walk to think about it, because I like to think while ambulatory, and looked in a lot of windows. I saw lots of cats in windows, and lots of Barack Obamas on people's TVs. It was nice.

Hmmm

2009-02-06T12:33:00.000-08:00

This is strange, but seems true: Roman Jakobson says "When we ask whether /i/ or /u/ is darker, some of the subjects may respond that this question makes no sense to them, but hardly one will state that /i/ is the darker of the two." Well, of course not! That would be wrong.

And while we're on the topic of nonsensical visual correspondences, let me take this opportunity to remind you that

1=white
2=yellow
3=blue
4=green
5=peachish brown
6=red
7=purple
8=brown
9=orange

For some reason I often feel the need to assert this. I experience it so strongly!

Considering this further, I wonder if one of the reasons I've been sort of on low for the past few months is because I'm 30--blue being a sort of cool, oceanic, unpassionate color (and the 0 is clear, transparent). I wonder because when I think back to other times in my life, I get a visual picture based on my age at the time; and, now that I think of it, also the year. 2009 (yellow and orange) is prettier than 2008 (yellow and brown), and I think, actually, that I feel a little bit relieved about that.

I realize that this sounds insane but I'm telling you, I experience it strongly!

Unusual forms of patriotism

2009-02-05T22:59:00.000-08:00

Like Laura Palmer, my apartment is totally wrapped in plastic. We're fixing the Zen dishwashing situation, which is ultimately all to the good. Pictures of the current un-Zen like situation to come.

Meanwhile, via a blog I barely remember and certainly won't admit why I read, this super cute and totally random thing: various children's books characters wearing Aretha Franklin's inauguration day hat.

Most Awkward Conference Ever

2009-02-05T11:58:00.001-08:00

Three students, and we're peer reviewing their papers. The last one we do, I haven't read before because the student handed it in late and I'm trying to stick to my draconian no-feedback-for-late-papers policy.

It's a major paper about men's magazines. Even with a distracted glance at the first paragraph, it's instantly obvious that it's at least partially plagiarized. Still, I give the student the benefit of the doubt and, chipper, ask him to paraphrase his own claim. Nothing. One of the peer reviewers, who has understood his paper better than he has, explains it.

The paper isn't taken wholesale from a single source, clearly, so I have no idea of the extent of the problem . . . maybe he just called in the cavalry for a couple of sentences in the intro and the rest is okay. So I continue the conference. The peer reviewers keep commenting on how difficult and academic the language is. The plagiarizer has frozen up like he knows judgment is upon him. By now, I think it's obvious to everyone what's going on.

So awkward! I didn't want to confront the cheater with the other students there, but also didn't want to ignore the obvious. I think it went okay, though. I cut the conference short on a different pretext, asked the cheater to stay while the other students were there so they knew I was going to deal with it, and then gently prodded until the student confessed. I knew what to do, having had a different plagiarizer to confront last week, which didn't go so well. WTF, students???

It's a sunny day . . .

2009-02-02T14:49:00.000-08:00

. . . . and I've been in this coffee shop doing teaching stuff for four hours now. Only 2 1/2 papers left to grade! Here are some greatest hits from my thoughtful, professorial responses to the intellectual questings of my students:

"I think you might be on to a promising source of more complexity when you talk about hidden messages in 'The Baby Beebee Bird.'"

"Huh? Is Jay-Z saying it's ok to be racist?"

"That Perez Hilton quote is a great find, but you need to discuss it, and show that you understand what he means by 'moral arbiter'."

It is time

2009-02-01T11:55:00.001-08:00

I love that in an essay on W.S. Merwin, Marjorie Perloff suddenly declares: "It is time to look at a concrete example."

As if the author looks at her watch and says, "My, how time flies! We've just been sitting here chatting, and it's getting on toward evening. Do you hear that bell? That means it is time to look at a concrete example."

Where the Magic Happens

2009-01-25T19:35:00.000-08:00

Kitcat looked so cute curled up on that box that I started taking pictures instead of grading.

2009-01-24T18:01:00.000-08:00

I am making bread pudding and reading. I think D.H. Lawrence is driving me crazy with his excessive, repetitive sensual adjectives. I just looked at my lists and realized that I have committed to reading a whole selection of supple mental texts.

Bismarck

2009-01-24T11:44:00.000-08:00

is the name of the rabbit in Women in Love. I had to read 262 pages to get there, but it was worth it. I was somehow afraid that there wouldn't really be a rabbit, or that it would be there but I would miss it, that it would be some kind of arcane allusion that I would be expected to recognize as a reference to Plato's Allegory of the Burrow, or, more likely, Nietzche's uberbunsch. But no. It's just what I'd hoped, an imaginary garden with a real toad in it.

On a different subject, I know it is much maligned, but Wait Wait Don't Tell Me is really funny. I like to listen to podcasts of it while I run. Today, I heard a riff on financial and government-themed porn: "Bear Naked Stearns," "AIG-spot," and, of course . . . "the Stimulus Package." And then my favorite "Diane She's So Feinstein" with . . . "the Minority Whip." Maybe you had to be there, but I was laughing out loud and all the other wholesome Seattlites propelling themselves around Greenlake on Saturday morning gave me strange looks.

T.S. Eliot says:

2009-01-22T11:23:00.001-08:00

"A poet ought to know as much as will not encroach upon his necessary receptivity and necessary laziness." Exactly! I'll have to remember that if I get really stuck in my exams.

But also: "that most dangerous kind of critic: the critic with a mind which is naturally of the creative order, but which through some weakness in creative power exercises itself in criticism instead." Uh-oh!

An early valentine

2009-01-21T12:50:00.000-08:00

"Over here is word, over there is thing, at which the word is shooting amiable love-arrows." (Lyn Hejinian)

I like the idea of amiable love arrows. It's kind of an oxymoron but kind of not. Word knows thing is never going to say yes, that they're never going to get together, but it's going to keep asking anyway. But it's not going to be a creepy stalker about it. It's going to have the kind of unrequited love that turns into a general love for the world, the kind that people around can feel and be a little sustained by. For everyone else, this unrequited love is sustaining partly because it's not directed at us--in a way, because of its impersonality. And this is what poetry is. It's a neat idea.

Too Roo Too Roo Llama

2009-01-19T19:12:00.000-08:00

After a day reading James Joyce, it was somehow really perfect to hear a song called There's No One As Irish As Barack Obama on the BBC Newshour. It's really cute: "O'Leary, O'Reilly, O'Hare and O'Hara / There's no one as Irish as Barack O'Bama."

Wow

2009-01-14T09:01:00.000-08:00

When I walked into my adviser's office yesterday, for a meeting about which I had been sleeplessly worrying for days, he was tromping around his computer screen in the person of a tiny adorable elf with purple hair and a big gun. It turns out he was playing World of Warcraft. He said it is restorative, after his departmental responsibilities, to kill things.

Then he bemoaned the willingness of grad students to write personal blogs, and I kept quiet.

zzzz

2009-01-12T15:35:00.001-08:00

Afternoons are just sleepy times. I'm going to take a walk after this to stave off the inevitable nap.

Last night I discovered, while procrastinating, that in the entire history of this blog (four years!), a grand total of two posts have been linked to by other people. That's not very many. One was good old JK, and the other was a Boston site that randomly found a post I wrote about a visit in the summer of 2006. Weird.

In looking back, I also note how great my friends were (are) and how happy I was. I was really, really happy. Not all the time, of course. But it was special. Irvine was special. I miss it.

Sunday in the Books

2009-01-11T16:18:00.000-08:00

Well, I avoided yesterday's problem by going to the library. I'm in my carrel right now. I love the library when it is squirrel-free.

I was very productive. Unfortunately, almost all for teaching. I'm still making some course materials for this quarter, but at least I'm totally set through the end of next week and mostly set for about a month after that. Being so ahead is a totally new experience for me and I think it might take some time for my anxiety to really be assuaged, which is the point--for me to believe that I am, indeed, ready for my classes so that I can concentrate on other work.

I decided that my spring class, which is my first upper-level course ever, is going to be on "Literature and Autobiography." That way, it will help me with my other work. I'm alternately excited and terrified as I think about it.

I'm working my way, right now, through a book of poets' essays about poetry. I was looking forward to this, but it's actually kind of hard going. A lot of manifestos. A lot of dense language. And a lot of tiny variation on similar points, which are kind of laborious to figure out how to distinguish.

Now I'm off to the gym. It's cold and dark.

Stress nap

2009-01-10T18:44:00.000-08:00

Today I did something that is really dangerous for me. I finished reading a novella, which hardly counts as work, and then, on the couch already, I decided to take a nap. I didn't even want to take a nap--I felt awake--I just wanted to not deal. I had to force myself to lie there until I got sleepy, which was hard, because I also felt anxious. When I woke up, it was 4:00 and I was mad at myself and all off my game and massively behind on my schedule to the point where it seemed most sensible just to give up on the schedule and start over. I have to stop doing this.

Two thoughts

2009-01-08T18:12:00.001-08:00

1. Today by the fountain I walked by a little flock of waterfowl and, when one came close to me, I said to it, "Goose-cat!" And then felt silly. I love animals, but they all remind me of Kitcat.

2. While all the living former presidents had lunch with Obama yesterday, I think all the losers should have gotten together too. Kerry, Gore, and Dole could have welcomed McCain to their fraternity of disappointment. (I guess Bush I and Carter would have had to be in two places at once . . .) I don't know, I think it would have been an interesting event.

For today

2009-01-07T23:09:00.000-08:00

It is raining like the end of the world and people are paddling around the streets in kayaks.

I thought I'd start posting every day again. It helps me feel less alone while I'm reading. Therefore I've got to get this finished before midnight so it'll have today's estimable stamp on it, and then I can post again tomorrow.

I just ate a Caesar salad, roasted carrots with walnuts, a grapefruit, and an apple. I feel very full.

I also feel very sad. Very, very sad.

Today

2009-01-06T22:48:00.000-08:00

Today I feel sad. It is raining. The squirrels in suits are still scuttling my study plans. Brahms in orchestra rehearsal makes me feel sad. Other things make me feel sad. Henry James makes me feel exquisitely frustrated. One of my advisers makes me feel terrified by promising that during my qualifying exams she will ask me the name of the bloodthirsty rabbit in Women in Love. ("Bunnicula?")

On the plus side, I have gotten some really delightful emails recently, and today is a day of people I know randomly being famous on the internet, so that's always cool. I'm going to take a shower, do my dishes (which is a very Zen experience, because something happened to the water pressure while I was away and now the kitchen sink can only produce a trickle) and then read some HJ in bed. That will be nice.

Interview

2009-01-05T19:30:00.001-08:00

Also, if you go to the main page of the Atlantic Monthly you will see my latest interview! At least, it should be there for the next few minutes before being superseded by some cutting-edge discussion of a cutting-edge development in the world of important things. After that, my little discussion of the news that stays news will still be here.

First Day of School

2009-01-05T10:32:00.000-08:00

Last night while I was busy being nervous for the first day of school it snowed. It was beautiful, and then the power went out so I reread my syllabus by candlelight.

The library is no longer in the blissful state of pre-term emptiness, and the carrel I wanted turned out to be taken, but even with everyone around me eating an early lunch it still has a certain broad and scholastic peacefulness. The thing about teaching is that, even when you have done a lot of planning and photocopying in advance, there's still a lot to do on the spot. My goal of having to do nothing but show up isn't going to work. Still, my class seems nice and it was good to see my returning students again.

Update: Okay, this is just weird. In the assigned-carrel section of the library, there are all these undergrad guys in suits, all eating lunch. It's must be some kind of fraternity thing. They're also working--the one closest to me is reading photocopied poems--but still, like ants or mice, what in the singular would be harmless or even cute is horrifying when encountered as a swarm.

Update: I feel like I'm in some kind of performance art piece. Every time I look there are more of them. And now they have reached the critical mass at which the imperative to be quiet in the library stops seeming important. Most are working but at any given moment two or three of them are walking around, crunching potato chips, whispering. What I don't understand is why, if they must make of the library their private lunchroom, it has to be here in the assigned-carrel section where people obviously only go if they really want to study.

And your hair looks great today!

2009-01-03T10:02:00.000-08:00

I'm procrastinating from looking at someone else's edits of my writing. Looking at them is making me nervous. I'm very much aware that I'm out of practice from writing. This is weird since of course I write all the time, but it's been a while since I have tried to construct large numbers of artful sentences. (Interestingly, to me, my poems, which have been described as elliptical, tend to have very simple, stripped-down sentences that don't really work translated into prose.) That writing is not like walking or breathing but is a skill that needs to be kept up is one of the true things that they say in MFA-land.

Anyway, I'm writing this from a coffee shop with "complimentary wifi," and I'm taking solace from the way I can't help but misread the sign. I'm expecting a little window to pop up any minute saying "Great job!" "That was a terrific sentence, that one there!" "Just write a few more like that one and you're golden!"

UPDATE: Well, it's okay. Also, yesterday I hatched this great plan to freely and essayistically write out my thoughts and impressions at the end of every study session, so as to get into better fighting form for writing, and also to keep a better record of what I read, and to try to develop ideas that might be useful later. There might be some blogging connection to this; I'll keep you posted.

Also, (a propos of my coffee shop neighbor, who wasn't able to get a word in around her friend's earplug-penetrating conversation) isn't "edgewise" a great word?

Forty-nine pounds . . .

2008-12-30T23:06:00.000-08:00

. . . is how many books I checked out of the library today. I know because I lugged them to the gym and, as soon as I arrived, weighed them on the scale in the locker room. A friend I ran into on the bus pointed out that if I had tried to take them on an airplane, they would have just barely squeezed under the oversized-baggage cut-off. (Actually, the book-filled suitcase I struggled back from New York with also weighed forty-nine pounds, so maybe the number has some kind of karmic significance.)

New Years' is well-known to those who know me as my least-favorite holiday but I feel pretty okay about it this year. It's hard to be too freaked out when one's cat is so unruffled.

Exciting

2008-12-11T09:29:00.000-08:00

You should all check out this news story. It's upsetting and alarming, but also exciting because all this information is only out there thanks to MY SISTER! This report was years in the making and it is really great to see it in the news like this.

Speaking of depressing . . .

2008-12-10T20:23:00.001-08:00

... this is a real quote from a student portfolio: "I was always taught that English that is well written and well spoken can get u very far in this world."

Or is it a joke?

Down down down

2008-12-10T17:23:00.000-08:00

Between fights, work, and the weather, I've been feeling down all day. I just went to the meeting of the poetry board of a journal, and that was depressing--the poems were bad, the criticisms were bad in the most depressing way--dismissive but superficial--and I couldn't see any point in trying to improve the conversation, since the poems were bad anyway. It reminded me of Lit Review in college. Now I'm skipping my office party--which is not, as it sounds, a miserable reindeer-sweater affair but actually a really fun event with my friends in our TA office--in order to grade papers I didn't grade earlier, but obviously I am not grading papers yet. They are hanging over me, though, so once I'm done I think I'll feel better. Then I'm going to go run. And tomorrow I'm going to read. This week is proving less productive than I'd hoped. And I have approximately thousands of books left to read.

Best Conference Ever

2008-12-02T22:05:00.000-08:00

In my reading, I learn that in 1911, Ezra Pound went to Germany to ask Ford Maddox Ford for an opinion on his new book of poetry:

"He recalls the incident in his obituary for Ford. Ford, writes Pound, 'felt the errors of the contemporary style to the point of rolling (physically, and if you look at it as mere superficial snob, ridiculously) on the floor . . . ' The roll 'saved me at least two years, perhaps more. It sent me back to my own proper effort, namely, toward using the living tongue . . .'"

A week later, another take on the same event:

"Ford saw that it would not do. The Incense, the Angles, elicited an ultimate kinesthetic demonstration. By way of emphasizing their hopelessness he threw headlong his considerable frame and rolled on the floor. 'That roll,' Pound would one day assert, 'saved me three years.'" (Hugh Kenner, The Pound Era)

Perfect Day

2008-11-29T16:39:00.000-08:00

I have often said that the perfect day is one where you wake up and work hard and productively at your intellectual work all day, and then exercise in the late afternoon, and then get together with friends in the evening for food and conviviality. I think I would like it if my life were a series of these days, broken up occasionally by all-day hikes, travel, and the occasional orchestra rehearsal. In reality, though, I don't know why, but it hardly ever happens. But today I've been at a coffee shop since this morning working the whole time not on teaching or other short-term projects but on actual reading and writing for my exams. In a few minutes, I'm going to go to the gym, and then to dinner at the Ogre's house.

And lo, the miraculous has happened: I have finally had a thought about what I've been reading. More than one thought, even. I am very relieved. And interested! I wish I could stop reading for coverage and start writing about the poems I happen to have read today.

Happy Gimme

2008-11-27T09:10:00.000-08:00

I'm off for Portland.

Trust Falls Off the Broken Obelisk

2008-11-22T14:47:00.001-08:00

I just received an email with that phrase as its entire content. Pretty deep stuff.

Seattle

2008-11-21T11:46:00.001-08:00

It seems like every other week the New York Times has a travel article about Seattle. This is nice, though infelicitous at this time of year, when Seattle is wet, gloomy, perpetually dark, and conducive not to fun and travel but only to hibernation.

But I like it as a way to measure my increasing connection with the city. This time, there are lots of places I've been featured in the article, and there's even a place I work, the Center for Wooden Boats! Which is one of the best places in Seattle. (Though, like everything, even better in other seasons.)

2008-11-16T16:24:00.000-08:00

It's 4:24. It's dark. Have I mentioned how I feel about daylight savings and, for that matter, winter? I'm supposed to be covering Derrida today but all I have done is to make a peer review activity for my deadbeat students. Maybe it's time to break out the sad light.

Also

2008-11-10T12:54:00.000-08:00

I forgot to add yesterday that one of the highlights of my day was a discussion with my mom about the possibility that she might write an opera based on the Berenstain Bears. I think this is a brilliant idea--just imagine the dramatic trio as Brother, Sister, and Papa squabble over their junk food, and Mama's aria as she worries about their bad behavior. I am also into the idea of a Bearathon, where people would get sponsored to read as many of the books as they can at one sitting.

In the library

2008-11-09T19:55:00.000-08:00

Someone in the belltower is way overenthused, so that I am trying to read this: "If there exists a "discourse" which is not a mere depository of thin linguistic layers, an archive of structures, or the testimony of a withdrawn body, and is, instead, the essential element of a practice involving the sum of unconscious, subjective, and social relations in gestures of confrontation and appropriation, destruction and construction--productive violence, in short--it is "literature" or, more specifically, the text"*

and hearing this:

Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells
Of the bells, bells, bells
To the sobbing of the bells;
Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells
Of the bells, bells, bells:
To the tolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells
Bells, bells, bells
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.**

It's been going on for at least half an hour. "Bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells" indeed. If it continues I'm going to have no problem achieving the "schizophrenic flow" of which I have been reading.

*Julia Kristeva
**Edgar Allen Poe

Just a typical day in the ivory tower

2008-11-06T12:50:00.000-08:00

Just a minute ago, as I was sitting here in the UW student center looking at a Michelle Obama fashion slide show, a guy came up to me with that look of someone who wants something, and said, "Have I read you a quote yet?" He told me that "in honor of Gandhi" he was reading people Gandhi quotes, and then took out a folded, crumpled piece of paper and read, "Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes."

(Explanation)

2008-11-05T13:53:00.000-08:00

In the waiting room at my vet's office, there's a bird and a guinea pig, and on their cages are signs that say, in a child's handwriting:

The bird's name is Tweety. Say: Hi Tweety! I love you Tweety! Yeahhh, Tweety!
The guinea pig's name is Mr. Pickles. Say: Hi Mr. Pickles! I love you Mr. Pickles! Yeahhh, Mr. Pickles!

Ever since I first saw the signs I have loved the idea that this is the form proper greetings should take, and have often applied it in various life situations. And I kept thinking it last night.

2008-11-05T01:14:00.000-08:00

The president's name is Barack Obama. Say:

Hi, Barack Obama.
I love you, Barack Obama.
Yeaaaah, Barack Obama!

2008-11-02T18:50:00.000-08:00

I've been in this coffee shop for about five hours. In that time, I made an insane schedule of reading that I will have to complete to be ready for my PhD exams in late winter (Week 5: Barthes, Wittgenstein, Bakhtin, Lowell, Bishop, Berryman, Jarrell). I also reserved about 100 books from the library. I'm going to have to bring a wheelbarrow to school every day this week.

Look at how dark it is! Despite the extra hour of sleep (or five, in my case), daylight savings might be my least favorite holiday of the whole year.

Liveblogging the Debate

2008-10-15T18:02:00.000-07:00

Why not?

The candidates seem to be sitting at a table, perhaps, like newscasters, not wearing pants.

Nope, pants are there.

McCain plants a naysayer. "Now I know the criticism of this."

Bob Schieffer (henceforth, BS) asked for new information not talking points. So far, no go.

Joe Six Pack seems to have become Joe the Plumber.

Obama really does stick with his talking points.

Oh my god, I hope Joe the Plumber gets a book deal out of this. Someone certainly needs to be interviewing him right now.

I love that Obama is talking about education.

McCain smirks and interrupts. He just seems creepy.

(This is kind of hard.)

I love that Obama brings up education so often.

McCain takes a strong stand on pronouncing it nu-clee-ar.

The overhead projector is back!

This is just like the last debate only they are closer together. Someone should do a performance art piece where the candidates repeat the same talking points but in increasing physical proximity until they crash into each other. It would be interesting, no?

Is there any activity in which one would simultaneously use both a hatchet and a scalpel?

**Guest joke from LRR via text: "Forget this sharp shit! We should take a plunger to the budget."**

Obama really is preternaturally calm, yet energetic. It's weird.

Obama "commends" McCain. Very condescending.

BS baits McCain to talk about Ayers.

McCain: The campaign wouldn't have become negative "if only Obama had agreed to my urgent request to sit down."

Segregation is the worst chapter in our history??!? Uh, slavery?

Education reference #3!

I think Obama needs to answer that accusation that he lied about campaign finance.

Hi Joe the Plumber! We didn't forget you.

Obama isn't even referring to Palin by name, just "your running mate."

McCain=Interrupting cow. ("Knock knock." "Who's there?" "Interrupting cow." "Interrupting c--" "MOOOOOOOO!")

McCain is just drowning.

Obama hearts Joe Biden. Joe "the Plumber" Biden. Weird--this morphed into a stump speech. He doesn't mention Palin at all--good job.

Education #4!

Why would your running mate be a good president? Impossible question for McCain! He starts lisping: Sarah Palin is a breath of freth air who will thweep away the old boy network. Special needs kids. Huh?

BS to Obama: Is she qualified? Obviously he won't take the bait. He turns the special needs things back on McCain as an example of a program that shouldn't be cut in a blanket spending freeze. He is good!

McCain: Why do we have to spend more? Why can't we just pick money off the money trees?

In the other debates I haven't felt this as much, but here it just seems like it's not an even match, like Obama is just a much better debater. I wonder if the talking heads and polls are seeing it the same way.

McCain advocates more poetry classes: "You have to pay more attention to words!"

Trade, oddly, is the one subject on which McCain sounds like he has real expertise. I've noticed this in all three debates.

Obama: "We have to stand for human rights." I wonder what Jane and Katie (my human rights gurus) think of that. Is it a big deal that he said that?

McCain: health clubs for all! Yes!

Hi again, Joe the Plumber!

The stuff about health care is just too confusing. I don't think either candidate is explaining things clearly.

Gold-plated Cadillac health plans for cosmetic surgery and . . . transplants? How are those the same??!!

McCain calls Obama "Senator Government." Nice.

I wonder when the spell-checker will start recognizing "Obama."

Obama is better at looking at the camera. McCain is looking off to the side. Also, he is only smiling fake smiles. Obama's mouth doesn't smile as much, but his smiles seem more genuine.

I hope Sharpie is paying McCain for this moment of visibly twirling his . . . marker? Who takes debate notes with a permanent marker? What does this say?

Obama seems to be using a humble ballpoint. Well, actually I have no idea. It just looks like a regular pen. A Joe the Plumber type pen.

Obama makes the instrumental case for education (economy, national security). Stanley Fish would disagree.

An army of new teachers! Wow. Terrifying.

McCain: Education is the civil rights issue of the 21st century. Huh. Oh I get it, he means school choice. He's referring to that NYT magazine article about New Orleans school. "We find bad teachers another line of work." He's talking about raising standards by removing teacher certification and testing rules? Huh?

Autism is getting a lot of play in the debate. Weird.

McCain ends the debate with incomprehensible sarcasm and sinister chuckles.

Now he "My friends" us. First time of the night!

Well. I'm smitten. (With Bob Schieffer's mother.)

Spring cleaning

2008-10-13T09:28:00.000-07:00

You know how some people can live in total squalor and not see it? My band plays shows in the residences of lots of those people. Last Friday we played what turned out to be a fun show (despite my early misgivings and the many get-me-out-of-here text messages) in a transcendently filthy loft. We played in a bedroom that was, seriously, smaller than a Ford Explorer. It contained nothing but a big homemade bunk bed, draped for privacy with a kids bedsheet with fighter jets on it. We were the first people to arrive, and I watched the guy who lived there halfheartedly pick up a dirty sock, toss it behind the bed, and then look right past a whole bunch of wrapper scraps and other bits of trash.

These shows always make me think about how there is, I think, a capacity to see dirt that most people develop at some point as they reach adulthood. I remember its arrival for me, when I was helping my mom to get our house ready to sell. I would think a room was fine, ready to go, and then she would point out all kinds of chaotic or disgusting nooks and crannies that I hadn't even registered.

So yesterday I spent the whole day trying to eliminate all hidden pockets of clutter and dirtiness from my apartment. It was hard, and I didn't finish, despite spending all day on it. It was fun, too, though; I listened several times to the Dvorak cello concerto (which my new orchestra will start rehearsing on Tuesday), several times to my new Massachusetts songs mix CD, and to a bunch of NPR shows online. And then I invented a dish and named it "chicken with deliciousness." Fruit and olives--so good!

Ipod 8Ball

2008-10-10T17:03:00.000-07:00

At the gym today I discovered a new game, probably already enjoyed by many. I called it Ipod 8Ball. Basically, you ask your ipod a question and then shuffle it to a new song and interpret that song as the answer. Today my ipod told me all kinds of interesting things about my love life. For instance, it informed me quite insistently that I would not be meeting any interesting men at the first rehearsal of my new orchestra, but I would find a good female friend (or lover? not clear). It also predicted, and wouldn't be swayed over several songs, that an ex and I would only ever get back together somewhere out of the country. Hmmm.

Hail

2008-10-09T14:52:00.000-07:00

Let's all move to a civilized climate, please.

Tuxedos On, Heads Held High

2008-10-08T14:24:00.000-07:00

There's just something so resolute about these penguins marching back into the sea after getting stranded in Brazil and being flown back to the coast by animal rights activists in a military plane. It's amazing the way strength comes flooding back when you understand your place and your purpose.

Full Circle

2008-09-30T18:10:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago, I wrote this:

Last night I had an odd nightmare. I was walking with my favorite professor from last quarter on the way for him to observe me teaching my class (though I don't actually have a class right now). He showed me how to whip my head around in a weird way, and then said, "Your class will think that's really funny."

I said, "I'm not the kind of teacher who does tricks."

He said, "Doesn't your class have any social interaction?"

I said, "The social interaction occurs in connection with learning. I have them do group work . . ."

Now I'm actually taking a pedagogy class with that professor, and he will be observing my class! I remembered this dream in the middle of the first class meeting, but somehow managed not to raise my hand and tell the story then and there.

Huskies

2008-09-28T16:22:00.000-07:00

So yesterday I went to a football game. It was a good game, but we lost, which is apparently disastrous for the team's fortunes, and which apparently means that my student-athletes are going to be very glum this coming week. There was also this huge display of high school marching bands, which was my favorite thing, even though it turned out to be kind of anti-climactic since they just stood in the middle of the field in a big uniformed blob and played softly. I think I am starting to kind of understand football a little. Other than glum students, the other major negative upshot is that the temporary tattoos turn out not to be so temporary.

Raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens

2008-09-24T19:03:00.000-07:00

Today was the first day of school, and it was the usual circus of people comparing classes, of first-time teachers huddled around the copy machine, and of huge hordes of students surging everywhere. As I navigated through it, and said hi and how was your summer and how are your students to various people all day long, I got happier and happier not to be new. I was remembering how alien all this was when I first got here (but alien in a twilight-zone-ish, familiar way), remembering all my jaunty blog posts and the disorientation I was trying to stave off. I would have to say that on the list of a few of my favorite things, "not being new" would rank high.

Red Bike, Blue State

2008-09-22T21:30:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking I need to get an Obama sticker for my car (and tried to get one today, but the campus democrats were all out--c'mon, kids!). As I was biking home today, I started wondering whether I need one for my bike, too, but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed that no one with a hot bike like mine could possibly be supporting John McCain. (Other kinds of hot bikes are a different story, but my awesome Cannondale seems solidly Democratic, despite the color and its Reagan-era origins.)

My Weakness

2008-09-22T11:20:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to Half Price Books to see if I could get some books that I need to read for my exams.

So far so good, right? So I get the books home, and I discover . . . this.

Honestly, I have no idea what happened, but I think it symbolizes the whole process pretty nicely.

I was for it before I was against it

2008-09-16T17:23:00.000-07:00

Josh sent me this funny article: National Endowment For The Arts Funds Construction Of $1.3 Billion Poem. My favorite line: "In addition, the tenuous line that was being drawn between the narrator's mortality and winter unexpectedly collapsed on itself Monday. Two poets were killed in the incident."

In related news, I love the way that "Bridge to Nowhere" has started working its way into the common lexicon as a metaphor. Recently I've heard it used to describe a relationship, grad school, etc. We need to take our wry chuckles where we can get them is my theory. I also just confessed to my fellow teachers that I want to use election-related materials in my class, but I am carefully scheduling things so that all that is over by election day, just in case.

Also, having considered the lobster, I feel sad about David Foster Wallace.

Relief

2008-09-10T09:56:00.000-07:00

It turns out hospitals these days have wireless internet, so I am posting from my mom's room, while she is napping in anticipation of a delicious lunch of broth and jello. The surgery is over and went well, and I'm very relieved.

(Goatie was a hospital goat originally)

Milestone

2008-09-07T01:40:00.000-07:00

Tonight, for the first time ever, I got paid for playing my cello. I got $12, my share of "the door." It was the band's CD release party and a fun show. The ensemble tonight was me, the baritone ukelele player/singer, the guy who bangs on a suitcase (and sometimes plays a Little Tykes xylophone, which everyone calls a glockenspiel), and the beatboxer. The CD is pretty good too.

In other news, I'm leaving for NYC on Monday.

Go Ahead and Puke

2008-09-03T20:05:00.000-07:00

Funny headline juxtaposition from CNN.

It's odd having a famous vice-presidential candidate with my name. Really surprisingly odd.

Bleep from My Bleep

2008-08-20T16:09:00.000-07:00

Pondering the small selection of books at the Dallas airport, I decided to buy "Dreams from My Father." What really sold me was that Obama uses the word "shit" casually, gratuitously, right on the second page. Bold, huh? I thought this was a family program!

Mexico!

2008-08-18T18:07:00.000-07:00

So, by the way, I went to Mexico last week. With my sister. It was really, really great. We went to the Oaxaca coast and then drove to Oaxaca (the drive involved getting lost on foggy one-lane mountain roads, driving the rental car through a creek three times, and getting rescued by a banana man--but more on that when I get the pictures).

On our last day in Oaxaca, we went to Monte Alban, site of incredible ruins, where a Mexican child delighted in hitting us with her Sponge Bob Square Pants. In typical adventurous spirit, we decided to walk there, even though it's well out of town and we couldn't find a good map anywhere. (We made it about 3/4 of the way and then there was no shoulder on the road, so we took a rattly bus and then a cab.) Right before we got on the bus, we stopped at a chicken stand, where I had a long conversation in Spanish (long for me, as a non-Spanish speaker) with a man with a cleaver who thought we were French.

Here I am with the pollo man:

Here is Jane at the site contemplating the ages, as we were advised to by our guidebook writer (whose information was so spotty and inaccurate that we started calling him Jayson Blair):

We stayed at a really nice hotel in Oaxaca, and every afternoon we
had a work/chat/cerveza session on the roofdeck right outside our room. Here is Jane on the deck, with an impending thunderstorm in the background:

The hotel had a resident rabbit, and after the impending rainstorm struck he hopped out toward us totally waterlogged:

A few minutes later, two hotel employees, separately, came out with a towel and tried to dry him off. They looked like boxing coaches toweling down their fighters, so we started calling the rabbit "Champ."

Daemon

2008-08-04T22:06:00.000-07:00

One of my friends has recently become interested in the concept of daemons from The Golden Compass, etc. Daemons are sort of animal familiars, who are both separate from you and somehow part of you too, like the childhood dream of having a twin who would be your best friend. So I was asked what my daemon would be, and I knew immediately that it would be a small silver-gray animal, a cross between Kitcat and Lambie, with some miniature mammoth (a la Madeline L'Engle) and a dash of the Spaceship (my old small silver-gray car) thrown in. I've just always felt that this was the right look and feel for things.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

I wonder what this says about me.