Well, hello there!

No, I didn't drop off the face of the earth.

 Thank my professor, because--get this--it is actually an assignment in my English 610 class to "write 500 words on-line anywhere." I guess that's for the people who haven't had much experience writing on-line (is there anyone like that out there anymore?) who are preparing to teach our last unit in freshman english, which involves using new media of some sort or another. Whatever the reason, the result is that YOU get a blog post from ME! (assuming there's anyone still out there . . . )

 My freshman students tell me that "no one reads blogs anymore." I can't figure out what, other than facebook and twitter and texts, people actually read. How do they get their news? I guess people figure they can see what their friends are doing on facebook more easily than going to everyone's blog. I can't blame them for that; I gave up reading blogs two years ago (yes, even yours, probably). It just took too much time. (And too many of them were about people's kids. Sorry, but unless I visit teach you, I don't really care to see a daily account of what cute thing Junior did.)

 So why did I even bother with a blog if I don't even like to read them?

 I don't really know. I guess I wanted to show I had something to say that WASN'T about my kids but which also didn't have the constraints of an actual Piece of Art. And, ironically, I did find, when I was posting regularly, that my blogging made my writing come more easily. At least when I was writing novels.

 OK, enough of the intro. Here’s an official update, because if you’re still reading this, you are one of my very dearest acquaintances on earth (hi, Dad). Thanks for still caring about me.

 I am IN LOVE WITH SCHOOL. It is just like first love, really. I’m obsessed, ecstatic, unhealthily attached to anything to do with my life at BYU. And also in great terror of the Day It All Ends. Because it will. Agggggh, what will I do then?

 Yeah, I could get an adjunct teaching position so that I can continue teaching freshman English—which I am LOVING, by the way.

 Yeah, I could continue to write.

 But I will miss the feeling of all of it piled together, and all at one particular PLACE, a place that I love. I’ll miss having professors to work hard for. I’ll miss rubbing shoulders with other people who are earnestly working on the same kinds of things I am. I’ll miss the deadlines. I’ll miss the way I feel so justified asking my family to help with the laundry/dinner, etc. because I’ve got homework JUST LIKE THEY DO, so WHY SHOULD I BE STUCK DOING IT?

 Ah, well. I can’t let the fact that it will end spoil my time now. But it’s always there, over the horizon, haunting me.

 My ideal: to be in school for the rest of my life. A close second: to be at BYU for the rest of my life. I don’t think either of these has a great likelihood of coming to pass, though I can dream about getting an adjunct position there, I suppose . . .

 So, anyway. I’m teaching Freshman Comp. I’m taking three grad classes, only one of which really counts as far as my writing goes (“Intro to Grad Study,” “Composition Pedagogy,” and a grad poetry workshop from Lance Larsen). I had a fantastic retreat with the other MFA students at Susan Howe’s cabin near Capitol Reef; it was good for me to get a chance there to just socialize more. I still feel a little strange, being the age of my professors (or even older) rather than my classmates, and I’m trying not to let it make me nervous. I don’t have time for that. I’m just very grateful to be there. Something interesting: I am the only MFA poet who was accepted this year. There were only two the year before. Hmmmm.

 So, we up to 500 words yet? (Just kidding! I’m a kidder!)

 Some things I’ve learned:

 1. I’m a good teacher. Really. Mostly because I’m articulate and I really, really love my students. But also because, as it turns out, I do know a thing or two about writing.

 2. I am not afraid of my poetry workshops, or of my faculty. (It helped that Lance told me he voted for me when I first applied. It was hard thinking I was in his class and maybe he didn’t want me there.)

 3. This is my time to TAKE RISKS in my writing, not write to impress my faculty or classmates.

 4. I don’t care all that much what my classmates think of my work, except insofar as their suggestions help me. I’m really glad to have outgrown the desire to impress.

 5. I still love love love BYU. Always have, always will.

 6. Bronco should have taken Riley out and given Lark a try on Saturday. Really
 
7. The Provo mountains are still breathtaking.

 8. I am less tired (and eat less) when I have something absorbing to do.

 9. There is nothing in the world like having work to do that you love. How can someone who has experienced that do without it in the future?

 10. I have the World’s Most Supportive Spouse. Period.

 And there, my friends, is my Update Supreme.

 p.s. It’s very weird to think that one of my students could find this blog and read it. If YOU ARE ONE OF MY STUDENTS, QUIT READING THIS AND GO FINISH YOUR PAPER THAT’S DUE ON THURSDAY. Believe me, it could use another revision. Really.

 

State of the Nation (a non-political update about me)

Well, I'm 42, the age that is, as you know, the answer to life, the universe, and everything. (Modest pause here for you to insert comments about how I don't look 42 at all . . . aw, shucks, thanks, that's kind of you.)

Middle-aged.

And is that "aged" like a good cheese, or is it more like the rattle-trap van we are driving, always with our fingers crossed that the tailpipe won't drop off in the road? (Can't say that my tailpipe is all that much better, so I guess that says something . . . )

Anyway, I guess it's time for a State of the Nation for you, my three-or-so loyal blog readers who almost had a heart attack this morning when you saw on your reader that I had actually updated. Thanks for giving in to your curiosity and reading on to find out why I would visit this old haunting ground after all these months of ignoring you. And so without further ado, let's get on with

Darlene At 42!!!!!!!

PHYSICALLY:  Well, after that nice comment of yours on how I don't really look 42, I hardly need to go into detail here. But I'll be honest: I'm not looking twenty anymore. I did spend an awful lot of time (well into my thirties, really) wishing I looked older, or at least my age. Finally I struggle with that no longer! I somehow passed over that line—I'm not sure when—but there is no doubt that when I go down to campus in a few weeks, no one will mistake me for an undergrad. I look, I must admit with a big sigh, like Somebody's Mom. Part of that is my fault, because I refuse to go to the drastic lengths that seem to be the common behavior here in my neck of the woods (South Jordan: Plastic Surgery Capitol of the World) to look twenty years younger than I am. I dress, I am sorry to say, too much like a mom, and do my hair too much like a mom, etc. When it became clear to me that I was not going to ever go to heroic measures, I began trying to accept my "mom-ness." It's hard.

I've mentioned it before, but our culture is seriously lacking in acceptable ways for "older" women to dress with dignity and taste. I want to switch to saris or those beautiful African robes and wraps that older African women wear. In our culture, it's either dress like you're trying to be twenty (and look silly doing it, or else put a lot of time and money into sculpting yourself down into that shape) or spend an awful lot of money at places like Anne Taylor. Neither of those is going to happen.

I am, however, so far avoiding the Wal-Mart sweat pants look. Most of the time.

Anyway, so I look like a mom, especially around the hips. And around the eyes. I've got crow's feet, which don't bother me too much, and two permanent parallel vertical frown lines between my eyes, which do. My chin, what there is of it, has always been bad, so there's not much to say here. My gut sort of spreads out on the floor in front of me when I lie on my side (I know, right? ew.) or hangs weirdly when I do down-dog. My feet have gotten bigger along with my behind. My aunts (on both sides) all became more pear-shaped as they aged, so I know there's not much I can do about it, though I do try. (Latest reassuring mantra: "Women need to be soft in the middle; it's preparation for grandparenthood. Who wants to snuggle on a hard tummy?")

Speaking of exercise, I notice my age there, too, though it's harder to tell since I've never been in very good shape, even when I was young. Summary: I'm slow and heavy in whatever I do. But I haven't given up trying. Currently, I'm struggling with golfer's elbow, which is crazy, since I've never been golfing in my life. But I ran five miles yesterday, which is something. (I also spent the rest of the day completely exhausted and feeling like death-warmed-over. Will my body ever get used to the exercise and quit feeling that way after I run?

As for my health in general, I have to say that I am MUCH BETTER than I was a few years ago. I am still heavy and tired, and I'm beginning to suspect that I may be for the rest of my life (very depressing, but still lots better than I had feared at one time). I almost never get those weird "attacks" anymore, and when I do they are very mild. Though I still feel like I COULD, I don't HAVE to go to bed right after dinner these days. I am not struggling with brain fog anywhere near as much as I was.

Maybe (knock on wood) I have a few years of clarity before the menopause fairy comes to take it all away again . . .? (Knock on wood again.)

So, there it is. I'm saggy and a little draggy but able to do all I need to and pretty much all I want to, too. I will never, NEVER take that for granted.

INTELLECTUALLY: Well, this one is (wince) "on my mind" these days. Because I'm going back to school, and I am seriously suspicious that I have lost much of my brainpower to raising kids. It's hard to concentrate on longer, deeper reading projects. Heck, it's hard to stay awake at night. I've forgotten almost everything I learned in college, especially things like how to do research and the names of major movements in world thought. Will it all come back as I need it? Will I be as smart as the freshmen I'll be teaching? Not sure, not sure. This one is going to take some faith and some really hard work.

Also, there's nothing like an election to make myself doubt myself. The thing is, I have the hardest time committing to a "side" or an ideology. I'm pretty good at seeing the flaws in people's arguments, and (especially) at recognizing manipulation (of facts or emotions). In the end, too often I end up voting AGAINST someone than for someone, and too often I am unduly influenced by rudeness (as in, I tend to turn against a party when I hate how its followers act towards other people). I wish I were smarter. For now, I just try to surround myself with smart people who share my standards and basic beliefs (love your fellowman; value agency . . . but--well, you see the problem). A big problem is, though, that some of the most amazingly smart and kind people I know are Republicans. And some of the most amazingly smart and kind people I know are Democrats. Sigh.

SOCIALLY:  This last year or so has been the worst of times and the best of times for me. My closest friends moved out of my life (physically or emotionally). But then—wonder of wonders—a new set of really cool women moved into my ward. These are not just cool women, but they are married to cool men—whom my husband actually likes and gets along with! This has rarely happened before. These new friends in my ward are so cool that we can even go camping together as families. I am so happy about this; it has been such a blessing. I have had good friends in my life whom I could talk to but they haven't always been local. Now I have some nearby, in real life, and it's great. The only problem is that they all have younger families than I do, so they're still in that "home with kids all day" phase while I am a free woman during the day but seriously booked in the after-school hours. Oh well; that will change. (But it reminds me so much of my Pocatello days, when I was the one with young kids and my friends were older, with their kids all in school. I wanted so much to go out together in the evenings, because I needed to get out for a break, and they wanted to be home in the evenings with their kids, whom they hadn't seen all day. That was a really hard difference to straddle, and I was lonely.)

SPIRITUALLY/EMOTIONALLY:  Doin' pretty darn well, all told. I'll start school in about a week. I'm scared. The things that frighten me:  1.) I'm still weak physically, and the stress/strain of doing so much more mental and physical work than I'm used to will make me sick again; 2.)  my parenting/children will suffer. My beautiful cousin Kathryn, who also returned to college for an advanced degree not long ago, gave me good advice, "Just take it one day at a time." I realize that much of my fear has to do with big ol' consequences that are quite a bit in the future and may never come to pass. If I try to live each day well and not panic so much about setting up systems so that life will be easy the whole time, I'll do better. Faith. When it became clear that I would not be able to do this degree one class at a time, as we had originally planned, we prayed hard and still felt we had a "go-ahead." Maybe, I sometimes think, my kids NEED me to be a little more gone, and a little more emotionally invested in something other than them. (Certainly I know my teenagers wouldn't mind having my fingers a little less in their lives.) So I'm open to the possibility that this all could be a GOOD thing even for them.

My testimony, my relationships with others, my feelings about parenthood all go through changes as I get older, waxing and waning and then waxing again. I guess the thing about being older is recognizing that the waxing and waning are nothing to panic about, and that the key is to stick things out, to be patient with myself and others, and things get better, in general, over time.

I am optimistic in general, these days, about myself and about the world. I don't share the feelings of doom that it seems so many people do about the State of the World. There are ugly things, I admit, but there are good things, too. God hasn't given up on us; good people haven't given up on the world; there is still great goodness and kindness and justice going on. The most distressing thing is that families are breaking down, but I still believe in the Good  News of the gospel: no one is doomed, whether because of a broken family or Evil in the Media or whatever. There is always hope, there is always potential for change, there is always the atonement waiting to be used. I guess that's my greatest testimony: always there is potential for progress.

So, that's me at 42, and I think it's a pretty nice place to be.

Just . . . weird.

So about five years ago I wrote a picture book, which I called Lulu’s Piano Fingers. I took the manuscript to the WIFYR conference, and my teacher, Rick Walton, encouraged me to continue working on it. Eventually, I shortened it and added a humorous subplot and came out, I think, with a very fine story that I am trying to get published now.

After some medium interest from agents that never panned out into any tangible results, I decided a few months ago to begin querying publishers directly. Last week I got an encouraging rejection from one of the editors, with an invitation to resubmit. But here’s the very weird part: there’s another book out there, published in 2011, called Lulu’s Piano Lesson.

I wrote this years ago, and I even wrote the query letter a while back. When I was writing the query letter, I did research about what books are out there about piano lessons, and, since this (similarly name, imposter) book only just came out, I never found it. So now I’m feeling a little sheepish that the paragraph in my query which sums up why there is nothing out there like my book actually misses the one that is named almost exactly like my book. Embarrassing.

But the fact that it is so dang similar is very eerie. I almost thought that someone from that original Rick Walton class had stolen my idea. Of course, no one did. The lady who wrote the other one has been writing (and publishing) for years. But, dang it, I liked my name, and now I have to change it. Not fair at all. (But my book is sufficiently different from hers, I think, for it not to be a problem once I change the name.) Now if I could just convince some editors that mine is worth publishing . . .

Happy World Poetry Day!

I hope you enjoyed that bit of poetry yesterday. If you haven't yet, go down to yesterday's post, below, and watch that video.

And in celebration of World Poetry Day, I did not write you a new poem, nor did I search out an obscure, international poet to share with you. Instead, I've prepared for you 10 Reasons Why I Love Poetry (in No Particular Order):

1. Because every time I think I can't make it through to the end of the day/illness cycle/temper tantrum/traffic jam, I hear Carol Lynn Pearson's words, "I dim, I dim, I do not doubt/ if someone blew, I would go out" . . . and then the other half of poem, too. (Hint: she does not go out.)

2. Billy Collins's "The Lanyard." 'Nuff said.

3. Images that haunt me:  "shine like shook foil," "a pair of ragged claws" and "asserted by a simple pin," plums in an icebox, fog on cat feet, mackerel on ice. And images from my own poetry, too: the post-partum woman in the shower, the mother with diamonds in her hair, the mother whose tentacles stretch into other rooms, the chronically ill person staring at the inside of her eyelids . . .

4. The calling out to whoever is in the next room to say, "Listen to this!" (even the people in my life who don't think they like poetry)

5. That feeling: "Yes, that is it. You have named it."

6. That feeling:  "Yes, that is it. I have named it."

7. The dappled things. Hopkins says, "Glory be to God for dappled things," and I think that line describes the benefit of poetry better than anything else could: poetry celebrates the dappled things. It is a way of cherishing the details of our experience, in all their dappled, freckled, glorious imperfections. It is a way of falling in love with the world.

8. Because reading—and writing—poetry is a way to prove to myself that I am awake within my life.

9. Because the existence of poetry (along with music and art) is proof to me that God exists and that we are His children. I have no problem with evolution, but I refuse to believe that poetry is just a natural variation of animal evolution. It is godliness.

10. Because all is spiritual unto God, and when a poet gets it right, God is there.

***
And let me just add that if you think you don't like poetry, it's because you haven't read the right stuff. Really. It takes time to find the stuff that speaks to you--but it's out there. I think it's worth the search.

A little charm for your Tuesday

(Thanks to Kristi, a connoisseur of good stuff)

That Age

I have always looked young for my age. And up until the last five years or so, I have always hated that fact. As a kid, I was so eager to BE older, and the fact that I didn't look even as old as I was was an endless irritation. As a teenager, I made the typical teenage mistake of believing that looking OLDER was the same as looking COOLER, or at least more sophisticated. And sophistication is one thing that I have never been able to even approach, either in appearance or personality. I gave up on that one soon enough, though it took a lot longer to quit being wistful about it. Even as an adult, I wanted to look my age because I felt I was finally beginning to earn my maturity. Somehow I thought I would earn more respect if I could at least lay claim to the years I had lived—visually, anyway.

But the last five years put an end to that, of course, because I was at the age, short as it is, when a woman can be both fully adult and not on her way out in terms of the way people interact with her. Face it; there is an age when women become wallpaper: people's eyes begin to pass over her. So for a few years, there, I was happy to look younger than I am.

But this year it's over. There is no doubt now that I am Middle Aged.

First it was the gray. (That, really, began in college, but it got really bad the last five years or so.) Thank goodness there is dye for that, though, or I would have been hitting this wall quite a while ago. I toy with the idea of going natural sometimes—I've seen a few handsome women pull it off, particularly in Berkeley, where the women wear their hair in neat, mod bobs, seeming to relish the distinguished silver. But it requires a very trim figure, fantastic designer clothes, and a deep commitment to make-up in order to pull it off. And there are an awful lot of women who go gray who, well, don't pull it off. And I admit to being influenced greatly by peer pressure. In Pocatello, things might be different, but here in South Jordan there are exactly two women in my ward who are naturally gray. That's a hard audience to play to.

Then, in the past year, the Middle-Aged Spread hit. The thighs. The saddle bags. The grandma-belly. And no recent pregnancy to blame it on. I began exercising for an hour a day instead of the 30 minutes I was doing before, and nothing came off. I can get a little of it to go away if I diet unreasonably and continuously . . . but, seriously, NOT WORTH IT. What is the point of living as long as I have if I can't have a peanut-butter egg once in a while?

OK, so, steer away from the skinny jeans (not dignified enough anyway, right?), begin to wear more skirts and skirted tops, smile a lot. Do yoga in the privacy of my own home. I can deal with the spread.

Then there are the little physical things that come to make their homes in my body and seem to think it's a permanent move. The stiff hip joint. The tail-bone pain. The shoulder that just doesn't quite rotate like it used to, the digestion that has begun to assert its preferences tyrannically. All of these have been relatively easy to accept because of the bigger Illness that I've struggled with the past few years that Seems To Be Waning Significantly. I will never stop rejoicing about that, so a few little creaks and whines are liveable.

And now we are approaching the area that I am finding it difficult to make peace with: The Sag.

Now, I don't mind the sag in my body, in general, all that much. (See "Middle-Aged Spread," above.) We'll skip over that in the very way that people's eyes skip over saggy middle-aged people in general. It's the facial sag that I'm having a problem with. Bad is the area around my eyes, because I find my face aching at the end of the day from trying to keep my skin from sliding off my skull by sheer eye-brow strength. I'm now discovering why so many old people have those horizontal wrinkles on their foreheads. It's because they, like me, are trying to peer out from under their saggy upper eyelids by arching their eyebrows all day. I can stand in front of the mirror and lift my entire face up my skull by sliding my forehead up with my fingers. "Face lift" begins to take on meaning, begins to be tempting . . . surely it's not just vanity if I am aiding my field of vision, right?

Dr. hubby assures me that, if it gets bad enough, the insurance will even pay for a little eyelid surgery because it "interferes with vision." I'm thinking I might could justify that one . . .

But the thing I hate most, my nemesis, is the WATTLE.

Now, I've always had a little wattle. (I prefer the more kind term, "weak chin.") And I've always hated it. And a tiny little bit of chipmunk in the lower cheeks. But there is no denying it these days: I have a full-blown, hideous wattle and JOWLS. These are not things I can hide with makeup. These are not things for which there is a helpful haircut. (Let's see. Now that my hair is long, I can pull it together under my chin. Could I put a scrunchy there? A tiny, Jack Sparrow-like braid? No?) Not even heavy-duty turtle-necks will help. It is there, like a tumor, like an extra limb, like a parasite, sucking away any dignity or claim to looking young that I had left. It Will Not Be Denied.

And it eats at my mind, telling me that plastic surgery can't be all that evil . . .

The solution to all this is, of course, to learn what old age is designed to teach us all: that our bodies don't matter, that God wants us to look out at others and love them for their spirits and not worry what they are thinking about us, that love brings more joy and more power than glamour, that nothing matters except that we are right with God and our fellow man.

Yeah, yeah. But I could be more right without my wattle. I'm just saying.

BYU's MFA Program

Last week I got a phonecall on my cell phone (wuh?) from a very nice professor at BYU to tell me that I have been accepted into BYU's MFA program for fall semester. Once I had thanked him and hung up the phone, here is what I did not do:

1. Shriek with joy.

2. Call my friends.

3. Update my facebook status.

4. Go online and check out what I'm supposed to be doing now.

5. Go out for cake at The Chocolate to celebrate.

6. Feel excited.

Why, oh, why? Why after all this was I cheated did I cheat myself out of a well-deserved celebration moment?

Well, I have some ideas about that, after a few days of pondering and self-psychoanalysis. Here's a list of random possibilities:

1. I'm still licking my wounds from the original rejection.

2. I was licking my wounds that day from another rejection (this one from the children's writers side of my life).

3. I didn't feel it as a solid success since I knew they didn't want me before.

4. I had been hoping I had improved myself enough to be accepted to the U as well, and wanted to wait until I heard from them before I let myself be sure I was even going to the Y.

5. Suddenly the reality of it (the work! the money!) sunk in. I realized I had gotten awfully good at being lazy, at having my days stretch out ahead of me with not much of great obligation to do.

6. If I'm going to go to school in the fall, I should probably actually get around to doing all those projects I had thought I'd do "someday, when nothing else is going on" but had been ignoring, like updating the scrapbooks (uggggh) and painting the bathroom.

7. Insecurity: what if I'm not good enough? What if I get there and can't hack it?

8. What happens after I go to school? Always in my life I've held this in my heart: "Someday I'll go back for a master's." What will happen to me when I don't have that to look forward to anymore? The future stretches out ahead of me, bleak, with nothing to look forward to . . .

Well, anyway. I see now how I denied myself something good. And today (after a good long talk with a friend who understands, despite the fact that she ISN'T HERE TO TAKE ME OUT FOR CAKE) I am trying to revise my outlook. Here's my response to each of those things:

1.  Dang it, it was their loss that they rejected me before. And maybe it was all about timing—remember what happened that year (a big illness and then TREK) that would have created such a mess if I had been in school.

2.  Rejection is part of this career. Get used to it.

3. They probably did want me before. They were probably kicking themselves over and over again for letting me get away. (Yeah. Just tell yourself that.) But anyway, they at least wanted me enough to put me on the waiting list, knowing chances were good that I'd come . . .

4. I know that the aesthetic at the U is not the same as mine. I had been hoping that I could get in there and learn from it anyway, but the fact is that I really don't like much of what I read in Quarterly West. I might have been miserable there. (Yes, I was rejected by them a few days after I heard from the Y.) Besides all that, BYU's program is probably just as good as the U's and just as rigorous—it's just younger. And, don't worry, I'm going to be pushed plenty by the writers there. There's enough diversity there to challenge me, for sure. (Still, I know that it works against me, career-wise, to have my MFA from the same school as my BA. Oh well. Nothing I can do about that, if I can't afford to attend a low-residency school. Let it go.)

5. I have to admit that when I've been in intense poetry workshops, I have LOVED the work, and my busy life. There's always that physical hesitation when I know I have to sit down and produce something for class, but once I get moving I relish the work. I am happiest when I am working hard at something I love.

6. I still have five months to do those dumb projects. And maybe now that there's a reward and a reason for hurrying, they'll be more enjoyable, too.

7. They accepted me because my test scores, grades, and portfolio show that I am fully capable both of doing the work and of benefitting from what they have to teach me. I am a fantastic addition to this incoming class.

8. I'll be a different person then. I'll have learned and grown in ways I can't know now. New things will appear on the horizon—new goals and challenges. In the meantime, I will have had A BLAST.

So there you go. I've talked myself into being excited. And, dang it, I AM going to have a blast. I love BYU and can't wait to be on campus again. I love poetry, and I love pushing myself. I'm always happiest when I'm in school. This is going to be FANTASTIC for me.

Now, if I could just get me some cake . . .

Sylvia Plath

Last week I finished The Journals of Sylvia Plath (the edited version). Three things struck me:

 1) How familiar are her struggles about how to see herself—"Am I a writer or not? Am I a poet or can I be a novelist, too?" I've struggled with the same thing, trying to move from poetry to prose. Do all poets long to be novelists? Also familiar was the way she struggled with unstructured time. Once she was out of school and had days ahead of her in which to write, she had a hard time figuring how to make herself work, deciding on goals, trying to feel that she was really working while also needing to fill her tank with reading, etc. And how tempting it is to just dribble the day away with "stuff." It's this struggle that makes me want to get back into school. I need the deadlines, the structure.

2) How much more desperately she wanted to be great than I do. She was so much more determined and work so much harder than I do. She made herself (and I like to think it was more enjoyable for her than it is for me) do writing exercises, describing scenery, real people, etc. All the things a great writer should do, the warmup and flexibility exercises. I hate them. She did them, hard and often and well. She was hungrier than I.

3) Once again, why is it that so many great poets were/are mentally imbalanced? What does the self-interest, the self-examination that goes along with being a poet have in common with mental illness? Does one lead to the other? Can I use my mental health and overall contentment with my life as an excuse for not being all that great as a poet? Can I? Because I am. Content with my life. Pretty well-balanced. Able to abandon my work at the drop of a pin and wander off to enjoy something else, possibly indefinitely.

(It's a nice reframing of my basic laziness.)

Some favorite quotes:

I wonder about all the roads not taken and am moved to quote Frost . . . but won't. It is sad to be able only to mouth other poets. I want someone to mouth me. (33)

Why am I obsessed with the idea I can justify myself by getting manuscripts published? . . . Do I like to write? Why? About what? Will I give up and say, "Living and feeding a man's insatiable guts and begetting children occupies my whole life. Don't have time to write"? Or will I stick to the damn stuff and practice? (33)

So I am led to one or two choices! Can I write? Will I write if I practice enough? How much should I sacrifice to writing anyway, before I find out if I’m any good? Above all, CAN A SELFISH EGOCENTRIC JEALOUS AND UNIMATINATIVE FEMALE WRITE A DAMN THING WORTHWHILE? (35)

Perhaps my desire to write could be simplified to a basic fear of nonadmiration and nonesteem. (37)

If all my writing (once, I think, an outlet for an unfulfilled sensitivity—a reaction against unpopularity) is this ephemeral, what a frightening thing it is! (37)

The artist's life nourishes itself on the particular, the concrete: that came to me last night as I despaired about writing poems on the concept of the seven deadly sins and told myself to get rid of the killing idea: this must be a great work of philosophy. Start with the mat-green fungus in the pine woods yesterday: words about it, describing it, and a poem will come. Daily, simply, and then it won't lower in the distance, an untouchable object. Write about the cow, Mrs. Spaulding's heavy eyelids, the smell fo vanilla flavoring in a brown bottle. That's where the magic mountains begin. (170)

I began realizing poetry was an excuse and escape from writing prose . . . Where was life? It dissipated, vanished into thin air, and my life stood weighed and found wanting because it had no ready-made novel plot, because I couldn't simply sit down at the typewriter and by sheer genius and willpower begin a novel dense and fascinating today and finish next month. Where, how, with what and for what to begin? No incident in my life seemed ready to stand up for even a 20-page story. I sat paralyzed, feeling no person in the world to speak to. Cut off totally from humanity in a self-i9nduced vacuum. I felt sicker and sicker. I couldn't happily be anything but a writer and I couldn't be a writer.  (249)

I feel I could crack open mines of life—in my daily writing sketches, in my reading and planning: if only I could get rid of my absolutist panic. I have, continually, the sense that this time is invaluable, and the opposite sense that I am paralyzed to use it: or will use it wastefully and blindly.

My worst habit is my fear and my destructive rationalizing. Suddenly my life, which had always clearly defined immediate and long-range objectives—a Smith scholarship, a Smith degree, a won poetry or story contest, a Fulbright, a Europe trip, a lover, a husband—has or appears to have none. I dimly would like to write (or is it to have written?) a novel, short stories, a book of poems. (251)

I felt if I didn't write nobody would accept me as a human being. Writing, then, was a substitute for myself: if you don't love me, love my writing and love me for my writing. It is also much more: a way of ordering and reordering the chaos of experience.

Well, I imagine you can tell a lot about my own struggles by reading the quotes which stood out to me . . .

My Work in Progress

I'm having a hard time deciding how to move forward on my novel, so I've gotten quite good at ignoring it.

In November, I challenged a friend to do NaNoWriMo because she is fantastically imaginative and had been spinning her wheels. When she took me up on the challenge, I felt obligated to join her. (I wrote a little about it here .) I finished the month with a horribly messy draft of a story I could really, really love. I haven't picked it up since then, until this month, because there are some really important questions I have to think through before I can make progress on it. These questions have to do with the fact that I am Mormon. You see, my book is about some orthodox Christian girls from a commune who are allowed to attend public high school in the city, and the cultural clashes they (and their fellow classmates) experience as a result. Since I didn't want to write about any particular sect or organization, I just made one up. But the problem is that I am worried—handicapped, even—about what people will try to read into my words about my feelings about religion. If I make the men in this little commune have more authority than women, will it look as if I'm commenting on the Priesthood in my own religious culture? If I make men and women share authority, will it look like I am criticizing how things are done in the LDS church?

I'm having a really hard time with this. The thing is, I don't want to comment on the LDS church at all—but I do want to help people experience what it's like to be inside a culture that looks oppressive on the outside but that can feel very beautiful on the inside. I want both the people in the community AND the people outside it, who are puzzled about it, to be sympathetic characters. I want to show how both insiders and outsiders have good points, and a place where they can come together in mutual respect. I think I can do all of this, but I am afraid of people who might look for greater ulterior motives.

I've got to make a decision and move forward. Because this is a story I could care about, I can't leave it half-baked like this. But it's like dragging my feet through mud:  I . . . just . . . can't . . . seem . . . to . . . make . . . myself . . . commit . . .

And there are so many good books to read! And fun things to do! And naps to take!

I need a writing retreat.

Liberating Form

This month I finished Liberating Form by Marden Clark. I had been sampling it a little at a time—it was that good, and that challenging. My friend Harlow Clark gave me a copy of this book, which was written by his father. The fact that Marden Clark is the father of Harlow and Dennis Clark, two of the most interesting and intelligent literary people I know, explains a lot.

I wanted to retain the gist of each essay, but it's hard to hold them all in my head at once, especially since I began the book six months ago. The subtitle is "Mormon Essays on Religion and Literature," and that is accurate, although it doesn't do justice to what these essays make, all together. They are a blueprint for intellectual inquiry, rigor and honesty. I especially enjoyed the references to Mormon culture (particularly BYU culture); they were spot-on, and very brave. (For example, he speaks of being in shock that a BYU student would take out a no-interest student loan and invest it for profit with no regard for the government he was defrauding, and that a BYU professor would advise the student to do so.)

The title refers to the way that a defined form (such as a formal poetic form like a sonnet) can liberate the ideas contained within it. Through the essays (and, especially, the title essay) he also extends the metaphor to the church itself, a form which liberates, and even our earth-life experience.

On liberating form:

All this may be the only sermon I preach. Perhaps it is the only sermon any of us preaches, though in many variations. But it may be enough of a sermon: that we live by and bear the burden of Christ, that His Church is the form that liberates us and the energy we generate, that it provides us with the vision of form within which we find instructions to explore and express our love, that it provides the form to lead us toward our vision of heaven and our rejection of hell.

            -from the title essay. This quote reminds me of England's "Why the Church is as True of the Gospel."

On engaging with difficult ideas instead of sheltering ourselves from what might be challenging:

But surely a testimony, like education and freedom and creativity, is self-creative, is inwardly dynamic and alive, is something to be invested like talents. No hot-house plant, it needs exposure to wind and rain and cold to give it toughness, resilience, endurance. It too responds to opposition in all things.

            -from "On the Mormon Commitment to Education"

On why we should expose ourselves to great art (in particular, for me, fiction):

We may submit ourselves to the Inferno, to the heart of darkness, for the sake of experience itself or for the sake of the artistry that creates it. but we also submit for the purpose of deepening our capacity for experience and awareness and compassion and love. We submit because our experience in the depths maybe the best way—perhaps even the only way—to know and experience the ultimate heights.  If we really believe that there must needs be opposition in all things, we submit ourselves to the ultimate literary validation of the meaning of opposition. In more strictly Mormon terms, we submit ourselves to the trials of earth life—which can be enough of an Inferno—for the sake of a higher existence, for the ability to live a celestial life. As with literature, we have no assurance that we will survive the ordeal. Hell yawns, in Dante's version, for those who do not. But if we do, we should be much the stronger spirituality and in most other ways for having made the journey. we add the literary equivalent of a physical body which makes possible the literary equivalent of celestial experiences.

            -from "Science, Religion and the Humanities"

On the importance of art in building Zion:

What we need along with [Jesus] is whatever will nourish our spiritual lives. . . . But some kinds of knowledge will surely minister better to our spirits than others. And here is where I see a high destiny for the arts in our Zion.

            from "Zion and the Arts: What Will Really Matter?"

On the importance of honesty, and complexity, in Mormon art (and life):

Implicit in what I have been saying has been the sense that one of our most significant failures as a people has been the failure to really face such possible and actual tragedy inherent in our beliefs and practices.

            from "Paradox and Tragedy in Mormonism"

Well, you can see why I loved this book. I think we could have each chapter presented as a paper at an AML conference and have beautiful, stimulating discussions in every session. I wish every aspiring LDS artist and scholar could read it.