Sudden Shower

It's raining. In fact, there's a bit of thunder. I should be turning off the computer, unplugging and all that, but it's been so long since I posted that I just can't resist.

Final grades are done (as of 8 a.m. today), and I am ready to throw myself wholeheartedly into an exploration of the poetry of Louise Bogan. Specifically, I'm looking at her use of form. I'll also, I'm sure, be thinking about her writer's block when it came to poetry (she focused on writng literary criticism for so long that, Mary Kinzie suggests in A Poet's Prose, she became too self-critical).

It's good to be back in a somewhat scholarly mode, for a little while at least.

I'll Take Manhattan

It's that time of semester. The grades are slowly, slowly getting done. The sun has come out and the air is a little warmer. I am starting to feel as if there is an end to the madness, very very soon.

I'm posting this image purely as an incentive to get through all the piles of work. . .
Cheers!

My plate runneth over

If you are tired of all these images in every post, too bad! I don't have time to really write anything, and here's why:

• commenting on 38 poems, 19 short stories, and 19 manuscripts and finishing participation grades for my online Creative Writing class
• grading 18 6-8 pp. case study papers and presentations for my Creative Imagination class
• marking 22 research paper drafts and presentations for my Poetry class
• class prep, answering emails from students, updating my classes' Blackboard sites
• actually teaching the classes with some semblance of sanity and order (oh, yeah)
• finishing a proposal for a new course
• Assistant Chair, English & Speech Department administrative schtuff (don't ask)
• meetings, meetings, meetings (ditto)
• introducing Sally Ball at Barrow Street reading/Marymount Manhattan College, Wed. 5/10
• Poetry Club flea market Thurs. 5/11 (please come by and buy some stuff!)
• family in town for my sister-in-law Rita's commitment ceremony (next weekend)
• rehearsing to sing at said ceremony
• helping Bob finish the lyrics for the song he's writing for Rita and her partner Matt
• finding something for Bobby, Stella, and myself to wear
• [your request here--c'mon, pile it on!]

What goes by the wayside?

• quality time w/kids and Bob
• sleeping
• eating (if only)
• breathing
• exercising
• and, of course, writing
  

I wish I could quit you. . .

Dear Procrastination,

My faithful friend and paramour throughout these many years, we have known each other for so long now. Aren't you tired of torturing me yet? Why do you hang around at the worst times, when my desk is piled with ungraded papers, my notebook is gathering dust, and deadlines are whizzing past?

If I could only break free of you, of my obsession with your enticements--the random googling, the elaborate snack I just have to prepare and subsequently devour, the other email I desperately need to send, the fascinating New Yorker article that is just so important I can't wait to read it, the latest VH1 junk TV show--

I would have finished that novel, the memoir, dozens of poems, and probably a couple of book proposals. The circles under my eyes would vanish. My temperament would even out (right!) and everyone would find me much more pleasant to be around--especially my longsuffering husband.

So how about it, Procrastination? Can you give me a break? You can keep the horse. . .

Love,

your Pardner

Duhamelmania!

I've just had the distinct pleasure of spending a great deal of the past two days in the presence of that poetic force of nature, Denise Duhamel. She had a sort of mini-residency at FIT this week--a reading, a Q&A session, and four classroom visits. Whew! Good thing she has as much energy as her poems!

So much more to say, but I'll have to post later. For now, just know that she was excellent and inspiring to all!

Blog envy

As a poet and sometime blogger I felt compelled to read about the furor over the Publisher's Weekly article on poetry and blogs.

I've been reading a bunch of these blogs for awhile now and there are some I go back to over and over for their humor, perspicacity, and downright wackiness. And, of course, there's the ever attractive gossip factor. Not to mention cute baby pictures (e.g., Reb and Deb). Others, however, feel like homework, and I have enough of that already.

I do admire the poet-bloggers who are able to incorporate cogent discussions of craft, current aesthetic debates, their favorite new work, recent literary mags, and so forth. And I admit that I find it all quite intimidating. How, I wonder, do they find the time and brain space??? I guess I have to accept the fact that I'm just not that kind of blogger. . .

Breaking the silence. . .

I've been rereading Tillie Olsen's Silences and Woolf's A Room of One's Own in preparation for teaching them in my creativity honors class. The timing is perfect because I'm trying to get into a more regular writing routine while FIT is on spring break. And these women remind me how essential it is not to give up, even though the odds are very, very discouraging.

I particularly love this quotation from Margaret Walker:

People ask me how I find time to write with a family and a teaching job. I don't. . . . It is humanly impossible for a woman who is a wife and mother to work on a regular teaching job and write.

OK, so that's my problem. Here's to doing the impossible!

Family Portrait

This is the most recent photo of all four of us--taken on Christmas Day at my parents' in Ohio. Notice Stella's winning smile and little black dress, and Bobby's pensive look. (Come to think of it, Dad looks a little glum, too.) Probably just tired after all the family festivities!
You can click on the image to see a larger version. Notice one of the photographers--my brother-in-law Steve--in the mirror.

Are we there yet?

As those of you who know me (and many who don't) are all too well aware, I have been working for over a year on organizing a conference for SUNY faculty on the topic of "teaching creativity."

Well, after all the preparations, which have become increasingly frantic over the past few weeks, the day is nearly upon us. Friday, March 31st, from 9-6 in the John E. Reeves Great Hall at the Fashion Institute of Technology, to be exact.

I've been spending tons of time updating the conference website, dealing with technical set-up, catering arrangements, working with the budget, coordinating panels, etc. etc. etc. Last night I was up until 1 a.m. putting together a document with presenter bios, to be included in the program. I had to edit many of them, copy and paste them from dozens of separate emails and attached documents, format everything--they were even in alphabetical order.

This morning, when I went to open the document, I discovered that somehow it had not been saved to my C drive. Apparently, it had been in some "temporary" drive, and the computer had totally deleted it. Imagine my chagrin.

I have to say that I have an incredible team helping with this herculean effort: graphic designers, display and exhibit people, facilities coordinators, media services staff, print shop and graphics lab folks, and most of all, my long-suffering collaborator, Desiree Koslin, and Celia Baez, for whom the term "assistant" is a misnomer, an understatement, and so forth. They have kept me (somewhat) sane, as has my "wife" Bob. And I also must thank Beth and Steve, my Smarthistory friends, who have two conferences under their belts, and who have provided invaluable advice throughout the process. (Check out their blog--they have really cool sound files of their tandem responses to famous paintings--I tease them that they're the morning drive radio of art history.)

Anyway, I must try and get a little sleep. Teaching Prufrock tomorrow, and Spencer Reece, and Kim's "Sonnenizio on a Line of Drayton" (with the Drayton original). And Marvell's "Coy Mistress" and Annie Finch's great response. It's all about history, folks! Oh, and of course, CREATIVITY.

Austin-tatious!

AWP conference stories from poet-bloggers have come and gone, and I'm way behind. Consider this image representative of my experience two weeks ago. I had the pleasure of dining with my poe-pal Kim and her friends Susan, Jessica, and Elizabeth 3 out of 4 nights, often accompanied by the gallant David, who we joked was our "hander" and who introduced me to his Bennington bud Reb. On this particular evening, Susan's friend Danielle joined us at a swanky restaurant in the Warehouse District called Starlite--exquisite food in small portions.

Other social highlights: I was one of an apparent cast of thousands who dined with the fab Denise and Nick at Stubbs over the course of their stay (though I am nowhere to be found on Carbonator--I think I broke the camera). Ran into Carly, who was staying on the same floor, and old friends from Cincinnati: April Lindner, Stephen Frech, Lee Newton, Don Bogen (my dissertation director!). Watched bats fly out from under the bridge. Saw Piotr, Peter, Sarah, Martha, Kevin in the book fair, missed Gaylord, Deborah, and many others. Hung out with Randy for about 2 minutes. Met Aimee in the elevator, and Mary in my discussion group in the Pedagogy Forum multi-genre session--and at the Rhino table. Ran into Scottie and Jose, Mark, C. Dale, Sandra, et al. New Yorkers Anna and Stephan were staying in my hotel. If I have forgotten anyone, please let me know!

Oh, and of course there was the actual conference. The Pedagogy Forum rocked, thanks to Brian, Leilani, Liz, and Ander; I was glad to be a part of it. Greatly enjoyed panels on teaching creative writing to non-English majors, a pow-wow of Creative Nonfiction bigwigs, and prosody for 21st century poets featuring Tom Cable, Tim Steele, Annie Finch and the incomparable Marilyn L. Taylor. Readings by a number of fine poets. The Book Fair with its usual hyperventilation-inducing plenitude. And, of course the hotel lobby bar and after-hours parties, where the names on your syllabus come to (often inebriated) life. You gotta love AWP!

Props to Beth Frost and Charles Flowers for getting me through the flight there, to Rachel Wetzsteon for the New Yorker mags, and to John Talbird for distracting conversation on the flight back (including a lovely sojourn in Hartford due to fog at JFK). Read a cool article on absinthe while bumping over the stormy midwest in the little Embraer jet. Finally made it home in a gypsy cab at 1:30 a.m., only 4 hours late. Whew.

What Are You Afraid of?

Finally back to blogging after a work-induced hiatus. The heading of this post comes from an excellent new book of short stories by my good friend Michael Hyde. It occurred to me last night after reading a chapter on "Putting Fear to Work" from Ralph Keyes's The Courage to Write: How Writers Transcend Fear that this would make a great writing prompt. As Keyes points out, fear is a source of tension, energy, urgency that can bring you close to the heart of your writing.

So I tried it. There are so many things I am afraid of, many of them specifically related to writing. As I embark on this memoir project, putting my toes in the water, I am filled with fear. I am afraid I won't measure up in prose, having concentrated so much on poetry. I'm afraid I won't be able to do justice to my experience in the writing. I'm afraid I won't have enough time and energy to really make it work. I'm afraid of what people will think if I write how I really feel about Stella's disability, and all the issues it brings up. And I suppose I'm afraid it won't matter to enough readers, or matter enough to readers, or whatever.

Well, I suppose the only way to deal with all of this is to "Write it!" (like disaster, says Elizabeth Bishop).

What are you afraid of?

Influenza

I am writing under the influence of a virulent virus (how's that for redundancy?). Bobby got it Friday, then Stella and I picked it up over the weekend. What fun! Fever, headaches, body aches, coughing, coughing, and more coughing.

There's nothing like a good bout of the flu to remind us of our helplessness in the face of microorganisms.

In other news, classes have started at FIT and I'm looking forward to working with a new batch of students, and some return customers (victims?). Creative Writing online, Poetry (an intro lit course), and a brand new honors course: "Creative Imagination: Theory and Process" all promise to be exciting and challenging. I've ordered a bunch of books and videos on creativity for the FIT Library, who are so good to me. They're even doing a special display about these resources, tying it in with the conference I'm organizing:
Getting to Aha! Teaching Creativity at SUNY. Oh, and there's the FIT Poetry Club (website forthcoming). I'm the advisor and we have to submit our budget requests ASAP and plan events for the semester. And, of course, the usual planning, advising, and general putting out fires of my administrative work for the department. Fun, fun, fun!

OK, time to rest now. Just thinking about this makes me tired!

Writer's Blo(g)ck and chocolatinis

Well, folks, it looks like blogging is going to be as much of a challenge as every other form of writing. Since my last posting I've found myself writing blog entries in my head on a regular basis, but somehow haven't managed to actually post anything.

Anyway, I thought I'd get back into the flow with a quick review of this restaurant. We took the kids here tonight after the triumphant first day of Bob's Creative Music Workshop (the new education program he's started with some of our excellent jazz musician-educator friends).

The hot chocolate was AMAZING but too strong for the kids, so Bob and I finished it. Sigh. It was tough, but parents do have to sacrifice. I also had the aforementioned chocolatini. Wowee. Bobby and Stella eschewed the yummy-sounding kids’ menu and stuck with bread and frites. Mom had a burger, Dad some amazing pasta with greens.

Excellent service. Highly recommended for a splurge. Amazingly kid-friendly and chic at the same time.

So. Block broken. Now, that wasn't so bad, was it?

You've got a blog, now start acting like it. . .

Yeah, well, I started this thing, so it's about time I began posting my opinions, confessions, obessions, concessions, past life regressions, and other self-indulgent crap like a good little blogger. So here we go.

Most of you reading this probably know me, so I don't need to tell you that I am a writer (mostly poetry, some nonfiction and fiction), I teach at the Fashion Institute of Technology, I'm married to jazz impresario Bob Bowen, and I have two fabulous kids (whom you can see below). Bobby is six and Stella is four. (The pics are from our summer vacation on the Outer Banks with the extended Lemmon family.) Oh, and (in case you haven't noticed) I love parentheses.

I'll try to post every couple of days--once a week, at least--and keep things interesting. To the right you'll see a list of some of my favorite women poets with links to their work. I've also started a list of my fave blogs--if there's one I should check out, please hip me to it (as Bob would say).

And now we come to one of the really cool things about blogs: I only show and tell what I want to, so I'm somewhat in charge. And you can read this without my even knowing. I can't see you, either, so if you're just getting to know me you don't have to worry about the look on your face when I tell you that Stella was diagnosed at birth with Down Syndrome, or when you read a couple of my poems. Dudes, we're all off the hook!

Above all, Saint Nobody (the blog, the poem, the as-yet-unpublished book) is about shrugging the mantle of sainthood (it keeps slipping off, anyway). Stay tuned and see what Nobody is up to.

Girls on the dunes: Jockey's Ridge, NC. 

Meet the fam.

A fan of chocolate (and Pennsylvania)

Saint Nobody: The Debut

Well, it's finally happened: I have started a blog. We'll see if I'm able to make it look kinda nice, and if anybody reads it.