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I found a thesis advisor (!), and she's someone with whom I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to work! I'll just have to get the honors committee to approve my application--but with this professor's endorsement I don't see how I can go wrong.
21˚ on Saturday, 61˚ today. Too bad what little sun we have will set at 4:15. I'm reminded of this:
"Of the different persons who compose our personality, it is not the most obvious that are the most essential. In myself, when ill health has succeeded in uprooting them one after another, there will still remain two or three endowed with a hardier constitution than the rest, notably a certain philosopher who is happy only when he has discovered betweeen two works of art, between two sensations, a common element. But I have sometimes wondered whether the last of all might not be this little mannikin...I know how selfish this little mannikin is; I may be suffering from an attack of breathlessness which only the coming of rain would assuage, but he pays no heed, and at the first drops so impatiently awaited, all his gaity forgotten, he sullenly pulls down his hood. Conversely, I dare say that in my last agony, when all my other "selves" are dead, if a ray of sunshine steals into the room which I am drawing my last breath, the little barometric mannikin will feel a great relief, and will throw back his hood and sing: 'Ah, fine weather at last!'" — Proust, À la recherche du temps perdu (trans. Kilmartin, V, 5-6)
"That was my problem, so to speak, and my gageure—to play the small handful of values really for all they were worth—and to work my system, my particular propriety of appeal, particular degree of pressure on the spring of interest, for all that this specific ingenuity itself might be. To have a scheme and a view of its dignity is of course to congruously work it out, and the "amusement" of the chronicle in question—by which, once more, I always mean the gathered cluster of all the kinds of interest—was exactly to see what a consummate application of such sincerities would give." Henry James, Preface to The Golden Bowl
What kind of poetry might emerge, I wonder, from the consummate application of sincerity to a gathered cluster of all the kinds of interest—head, heart, spirit, genitalia, the public, the private, the social, the psychological, the objective, the experiential, and so forth?
Steve Mueske, "The Shrike in the Garden of Machinery"
Elizabeth Percer, "Sex Workers in Asia"
Peter Jay Shippy, "The Tragic Conversion of Keith Richards"
More TNHR news to follow soon...
Was I complaining about the 34˚ weather the other day? This morning it's down to 21˚. We had a white Thanksgiving, but fortunately our guests arrived safely, and everyone enjoyed the meal. Yesterday was a bliss of free time and leftovers. I revised three poems, such that I feel they're ready to be sent out into the world, and I plan to work on two more today. Having had two poems accepted within six weeks of my first publishing attempt, I'm encouraged give this submission thing another shot. Seth's been wonderful about not letting me revise the life out of my own poems, and incredibly patient as I insist on testing the waters of publication my own way. By tomorrow I'll need to get my nose back to the undergraduate grindstone, as there are only two weeks of classes left before finals. The BC library has nearly every book recommended in the NS comments below, so I already know how I'll be spending much of my winter break. For now, more poetry, and if we're feeling energetic perhaps we'll go find ourselves a Chrismukkah tree.
Seth and I are hosting our first Thanksgiving tomorrow. It's going to be a small gathering--just his parents, sister, and brother-in-law. Dinner at chez Heatter-Abramson will include turkey, stuffing, roasted garlic mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans with pesto, broccoli with onion-jack sauce, lime carrots, cranberry sauce, dinner rolls, and wine. For dessert, apple and pumpkin pies with choice of ice or whipped cream, hot cider with cinnamon, Bailey's hot chocolate, and coffee. Domestic god and goddess we're not, so of course we still need to shop for most of the meal this evening (except the turkey--we were smart enough to pick that up last night). And Seth just came back from the bakery with pies. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
I received an acceptance today--my first(!)--from the American Literary Review!!! They've decided to take two poems, "Autopsy" and "Aubade"! I'm stunned. Just stunned.
Addendum: I'm not necessarily looking for books written by NS poets, though I welcome those suggestions too. Primarily, I'm concerned with texts that might influence a new sincere poetics. For example, in Octopus Matt Hart recommends Gregory Corso as a kind of model for NS.
I was giving some thought this morning to the shape I'd like my creative thesis to take, and all of the sudden it hit me: NEW SINCERITY! Because if I have to gather all my poetic interests under a single heading, I really think this is the one. With that in mind, I'll need to compile a reading list, to include both poetic and critical texts. So who's game? Which texts are must-reads for a poet hoping to write a collection of poems that's both fundamentally SINCERE and fundamentally NEW? I'll start the list off with the one collection that most profoundly changed me this year (Jorie Graham's, Overlord), and then update it to include your suggestions.
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From a 1968 essay by Patricia Meyer Spacks entitled, "In Search of Sincerity" (College English, vol. 29, no. 8, pp. 591-602)
"The power of convincing you, of making you believe in the reality of the poet's state, is what we try to locate in the term sincerity. Its link with freshness, the consciousness of something new and personal or old but newly utilized, is mysterious but omnipresent...But artifice is the best means to the end."
I got a 78 on my last bio exam--and I thought I'd aced it! Just goes to show you what a right-brainer I am.
Correction (maybe): If you can believe it, I've never taken a course that was graded on a curve, at least not as far as I'm aware--so Seth had to explain the concept to me. I don't honestly know whether my bio professor curves or not, but Seth thinks he must. If that's true, and if it's also true that the highest grade posted was a 94, then I may actually end up with a C+.
2nd correcion: Make that a straight B by Seth's math. I am truly stupid as these things go.
And now I need to stop obsessing about this. Right now.
It's currently 34 degrees in my part of New England, and if it were at all possible to stay home today I would. I've reached that point in the semester where the end is in sight and I'm impatient to move on. Unfortunately, Father T. (my philosophy instructor) is extremely uptight about attendance.
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This morning's aubade experiment was somewhat less productive than yesterday's. I ran out of time just as I was warming up. On the other hand, I do see a point of entrance for my next writing session, which makes the endeavor eminently worth it.
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I promised Seth I'd see Harry Potter with him tonight. I'm not sure how I got roped into this. After the debacle that was Lord of the Rings, I swore I was never going to another big movie on its opening night. To be honest, I don't like the movies all that much, and I hate crowds. When I do go, I prefer to mosey in during the previews and find a good seat at least two seats removed from anyone else. Somehow I don't see things going down that way tonight.
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I'm really not as cranky as I sound this morning.
Just received word that I've been admitted to the Advanced Poetry Workshop. Did I doubt? Of course I did. Who doesn't get a little nervous when they have to submit a writing sample for approval? Hopefully this bodes well for my thesis application, as I'll be submitting the same poems to the honors committee.
I've set up a new space for personal, poetic experimentation. It's part discipline, part free-for-all. My aim is to write at least ten lines of poetry first thing every morning. Who knows what'll come out before the caffeine's kicked in. The plain fact is that I need to start writing more if I hope to make the improvements I'm after--and this is one way to invite the muse. If you'd like, you can voyeur over and have a look. Experiment: Aubades.
This morning's experiment: fresh out of bed, put fingers to keyboard and see what happens. The result (cut short as I have to leave for classes soon): {SNIP}
An opportunity has come up for me to radically alter the course of my studies over the next year. Ok, so maybe it's not so radical, but it does feel that way. You see, due to various scheduling issues, I thought it I'd missed the boat on writing a senior honors thesis. But last night I realized there just might be a chance, and so I emailed the honors program director. He wrote me back this afternoon to say that a) it sounds like I'd be an excellent candidate, and b) it's not too late to apply! In fact, I have until Dec. 12th to do so.
All I have to do between now and then is write a prospectus, draft a reading list, compile a writing sample, and find a faculty advisor to supervise the project. Piece of cake! :-)
If the honors committee approves my application, I'll begin working on a thirty poem chapbook in January, which I'll have about ten months to write and revise. [Crossing all my fingers *and* toes!] This would allow me to devote much more time to my writing than I am right now. It would also give me the opportunity to meet with a faculty advisor once a week to talk about me and my poetry. Those of you who workshop know what I'm talking about. It can be difficult to invest so much of one's time in other people's work, particularly when one's time is limited and/or funky group dynamics arise. Being able to focus more on writing than reciprocating for a year would be really, really cool.
My new spring schedule would include the advanced poetry workshop, the honors thesis, queer theory, theology, and french. Not a huge change, though to me I think it would feel like getting an early start on an MFA--which, after all, is what I've decided I want to do after BC.
I have twenty pages of prose due this week, and as usual it's the poetry that wants to be written. What follows is not a poem yet--but there's something about blogging lines that forces me to see them differently than I can or do in my word processor--a question for neuroscience I guess...
{SNIP} FYI, for those of you with search engine concerns who like to post drafts --if you edit your post rather than delete it, Google will cache a new copy in place of the old one. The change takes a day or two, but after that it's gone for good.
"Discovery of the pigment emerald (Schweinfurt green) in 1800 further worsened the repute of green as the color of poison. Emerald was prepared from verdigris and copper arsenite to result in one of the deadliest poisons ever used in painting. Green was the favourite color of Napoleon and the green wallpaper in his exile home in St. Helena became his undoing. His premature death was not the work of a poisoner but was caused by the noxious fumes emanating from the bright green wallpaper." from Pigments through the Ages.
You are a Tortured Conceptual Artist. Your fellow postmodernists call you an anachronism, but you've never cared much about the opinions of others. After all, most of them are far too simple-minded to appreciate the nuances of your work. They talk, while you are part of a lived tradition.
What kind of postmodernist are you!?
brought to you by Quizilla
UPDATE: "WASHINGTON (AP) -- House Republican leaders
scuttled a vote Thursday on a $51 billion budget-cut package in the
face of a revolt by lawmakers over scaling back Medicaid, food stamp
and student loan programs..." CNN.com
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Please, please call your congressperson today to urge them to vote "NO" on the FY 2006 budget reconciliation bill. This bill includes the largest cut in history--$15 billion--to student loan funding. I absolutely rely on student loans to finance my education, and I'm sure many of you have been (or are!) in the same boat.
MoveOn.org is calling this "the Republicans' "reverse Robin Hood" federal budget. Their plan would rob $50 billion from services like Medicaid, food stamps, and student loans—only to fund $70 billion in tax cuts for the rich."
Right now, the vote is too close to call, as many Republicans are threatening to break ranks. Your call, therefore, is extremely important. Call the Capitol Switchboard (202-225-3121) now and ask to be connected to your representative's office.
Don't worry if you've not done this sort of thing before--the representative's staffers have. All you have to do is tell them you'd like the congressman/woman to vote "NO" on the budget reconciliation bill. They'll take down your name, and address (in order to verify that you're a constituent) and log your call. That's all there is to it. The vote takes place this evening, and the more NO's logged the better!
Already it's time to register for the spring semester. I plan to take:
Just have to run it past my advisor this afternoon.
[Addendum to the lines below: I must have been sponging when I wrote them, because I opened my Collected Yeats this morning to re-read "The Tower" for class, and found:
What shall I do with this absurdity--
O heart, O troubled heart--this caricature,
Decrepit age that has been tied to me
As to a dog's tail?
In fact, it wasn't Yeats, but Augustine I'd been thinking of when I was writing. Somehow these lines must have stamped themselves on my subconscious though.]
Having not much else to blog about today, I'll share the opening lines of a poem I've been working on sporadically...
You as dirty old man, me as prop
& an aperture coaxed wide where
the ribs articulate—/pure licentiousness decked out in
the radiance of confession/O heart! O slick beating! O muscle! O...
Not sure where this is heading, but I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually.
"Kerry recalled the story of American scientist
Thomas Midgley Jr., who invented leaded gas and discovered
chlorofluorocarbons - both later deemed bad for the environment.
Midgley later was stricken by polio, and he developed a harness to get
in and out of his bed. He died after strangling in the device.
"Today
a group of ideologues are treating science as if it was one great big
Midgley experiment," Kerry said. "And the result is a shortsighted
period in the American experience where support for science is withheld
and facts are ignored and obscured and distorted."
He added:
"When so many Americans worry that we have become a nation of moral
relativists, there are too few Americans who are worrying that we are
becoming a nation of factual relativists."
FULL STORY
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My advice to John Kerry: Forget your presidential ambitions. Like it or not, the stigma of the loser is upon you, and Democrats don't need you taking the piss out of our nominee in the next primary--let's be honest, when there's a campaign in the air you just can't help yourself, can you, Mr. Kerry? Stay in the Senate, Senator. Dig in and start thinking about your legacy there. The good people of Massachusetts like you liberal, so quit feigning moderation, and do what they elected you to do. Lead, Senator Kerry. Now that most Americans know who you are, it's time to start playing hardball in the Congress. Make yourself a fierce advocate for Democratic ideals. Or run for president again, and go down in history as the wishy-washy little senator that couldn't.
If it's bad luck to walk under a ladder, it's worse to encounter one on a busy highway. That's right, some irresponsible #$%@! let a metal ladder fall off his vehicle in the left lane of Rt. 3 South today, and I ran right over it on my way to school--not with my crappy old car, mind you, but with Seth's relatively new one. No one got hurt, and the damage doesn't look too bad, but I think the front bumper may need to be replaced. Of course, Mr. Havoc-Wreaker wasn't standing on the side of the road with his insurance information at the ready. There's only one way to deal with certain kinds of assholes--which is why, I suppose, Dante wrote the Inferno. I best get started on my own epic, as I suspect this will cost us--say 20 pages of verse in a market that pays really well. HA! And to think I was driving the newer car to save gas money.
As those of you who read the blog regularly know, I've made little effort to publish my own poetry. For years my inner editor has been throwing cold water on my writerly ambitions. To give you a sense just how reluctant I've been, three years ago I won a scholarship to attend a writer's conference, and the poet teaching my workshop told me I was "ready." Nonetheless, I couldn't bring myself to start submitting. It wasn't simply that I was afraid my poems might be rejected. I worried that if my work were accepted, I'd be embarrassed by its publication. Looking back on the poems I was writing in '02, I still think it was the right call.
Fast forward to last month. After a visit from Scop & Lyco during which we all read our work aloud, I let Seth talk me into finally sending out some poems. And today I got my very first rejection!--a form letter vaguely encouraging resubmission, with a hand-written note from the editor. I can't think of a nicer way to be let down! It wasn't ink from the regal pen of Christian Wiman, but the journal does get a four in Jeff's ranking system. Between you, me, and the fifty other people reading this blog, I'm giddy as a schoolgirl! I don't plan to celebrate every scrap of paper that comes waltzing through my mailbox, but I couldn't resist making a note of this small milestone.
I will let you know as soon as someone pops my SASE though...
Listening to WGBH radio on the way home from classes today, I heard part of Steve Reich's "Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices, and Organ." Very cool stuff, though it reminds me how horribly out of the loop I am music-wise. I used to have a large network of musician friends who kept me supplied with new recommendations, but those connections have largely fallen off since I moved to New England. With my interest in rock/pop/alternative music rapidly waning, I feel particularly lost. Creatively and psychologically speaking I need to remedy this soon--but how to begin?
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In other news: MoveOn.org is making another pitch for signatures on their petition to stop Alito's Supreme Court nomination. They reached their goal of 250,000 in less than twenty-four hours, and now they're shooting for half a million by tomorrow (the total is 442,459 as of 7:45pm). If they reach the half-million mark in time, they're going make sure the Senate knows about it by running an ad in Roll Call.
