Glad To Be Back!

Hello, there! Does anyone read any blogs anymore? I don’t imagine they do. But I’ve been re-reading my old journals and blog entries lately, and I’ve realized a few things:

1) As I have discovered in other ways (particulary, by doing NaNoWriMo and MoPoWriMo), a regular casual writing goal/routine (by which I mean “not with the intent to publish formally or to work into anything that will be published, but just for the joy and habit of writing”) leads to more creativity and generativity in my formal writing. When I am writing more, I get more ideas. Writing generates writing.

2) At the risk of cutting against or contradicting the spirit of #1 above, many of the things I worked through in blog posts ended up as poems or essays later. I didn’t consciously draw from by blog posts when it was time to sit down and generate formally, but something about having thought through and written about those ideas years before made some of them stick with me so that I was able to bring them up in my mind later.

3) I continue to suspect (as did/do some of my poetry professors) that I am an essayist in a poet’s body. My essays, of which I’ve actually finished and polished very few for publication, have done much better in the world than my poetry, in terms of critical acceptance. I have published maybe 4 or 5 actual finished essays. One of them was nominated for a Pushcart. One of them was mentioned as Notable in a Best American anthology. Two of them won or placed highly in contests. Would that my poetry had those kind of percentages! So I’m curious what would happen if I dedicated some time to actual study of the genre, both in reading and writing it. I wish, even, that I could go back and get another MFA in CNF, just so I could have the experience of making it a real, formal study.

In light of these realizations, I’d like to return to blogging as a present to myself. For now, I’m going to set a goal of posting here once a week at a minimum. As I look around here, I see that I had some great interactions with the readers of my blog. What a cool community it was! I miss that. I’m not sure that I could get this back, since no one reads blogs anymore and I’m not even sure anyone would ever notice that I was blogging still. But maybe I could gather some readers if I linked through facebook and twitter and instagram. I’ll think about this after I’ve generated a few posts here.

In the meantime, here’s a report of what my life looks like these days in terms of the themes that my blog USED to focus on:

1) My Kids are Old.
During the golden days of this blog, I was in the midst of the storm of child-raising. I was, thankfully, past the hardest stage (toddlers and babies), and finally getting my head above water a little. But my life centered around my children’s adventures, triumphs and struggles in a more moment-intensive way than it does now. I wouldn’t say for a second that my children’s triumphs and struggles are any less heavy in my life. I’ve got three young adults (two returned missionaries, one current missionary) and a teenager (senior in high school), and, as you know if you’re there yet, the problems just get bigger along with the kids. But that’s not to say that I feel more burdened. In fact, this has been a phase of great enjoyment for me. I’m interested in exploring some of that here.

2) I Am Old.

So, if my kids are old, that makes me . . . older. Yes, I am very much in Middle Age. More specifically, I just turned 50. There’s no more even pretending that I am on the young side of anything.

I don’t think I’ve hidden the fact here or anywhere in my life that I have always feared dying young. My mother died at 43 and her mother died at 34, so I don’t think that my fear is all that unreasonable. And so I’m a little surprised to be here at 50. But I think that maybe most people find it surprising to discover that they are grown-ups, and then middle-aged, and then elderly. It’s just hard to imagine in general.

I have to say, though, that reaching 50 has been a completely positive thing for me. First of all, consider the alternative: not making it to 50 isn’t something to rejoice about. Second, I absolutely claim all that I have learned and enjoyed about my 50 years on earth. Third, when I was at my sickest, I made a plea to God to allow me to live long enough to raise my children. I feel that I’ve made it to that point. Peter is almost on his mission, and the others are proving that they can handle adulthood. They really don’t need me anymore. That’s not to say that I don’t look forward to much more time with them (and, hopefully, grandkids!). But I really do deeply feel like anything from here on out is cream. I’ve had my fair turn on this earth and done all I really worried about not being able to do.

And being 50 is freeing. No one is going to be fooled anymore that I am young. I’m feeling braver and braver, then, about giving up the effort to hide my age. In fact, I had always planned to let myself go gray once my last child was home from his mission, but this COVID quarantine stuff has led me to consider going gray now. Here’s the progress so far.

I’m reserving the option to dye again once I have to head back to school in the fall, but hoping I won’t. I love the idea of being free of the bondage of the bottle. More than that, I love the idea of helping show the world that women shouldn’t be afraid to look their age. I dream of world in which women are valued for much more than how they look. I should put my money where my mouth is.

3) My Health.

There’s been a new, major development, which I’ll get to in a minute. Outside of that, I’ve been doing generally pretty well overall. I still struggle with fatigue and may for the rest of my life. I sometimes have harder times—I suspect I just get recurring mono, among other issues. But I have reached a point of acceptance and peace about my health burdens. I am remarkably blessed in that I can do all I need to do and most of what I want to do.

I am excited to report that I was able to lose 20 pounds last winter using Noom, and now weigh my lowest since before I had kids. So that feels good.

The big development is that I finally had surgery to repair my heart! I have been trying to get this surgery for years. You can read about the original discovery that I had a hole in my heart here. Since all that, something really exciting happened: a doctor in Europe invented a new way of repairing PFO that does not involve a device. Instead, a stitch is used to close the hole. This is much better than a device for many reasons, but the biggest reason in my mind is that I have nickel sensitivity, and the device has a little bit of nickel in it—enough that some people have had reactions and subsequently have required removal of the device via open-heart surgery. So I have spent a few years trying to get insurance companies to recognize that PFO repair is a good thing and that this new way of doing it is the best way. After lots of effort, things finally came together and I had the repair with the stitch just last week. I am still in recovery and so can’t tell if there’s a difference, but I look forward to finding out. (And, in the meantime, I have reduced my risk of stroke, so that’s a good thing.)

Here I am with the surgeon, Dr. Jim Thompson, who practices in Virginia:

4) My Writing
I see that a lot of my blog entries from the good ol’ days were about my concerns as a writer. Was I a writer? Should I invest in myself as a writer? How? And in what genre?

It was my dream to return to school for an MFA and, eventually, I did! I wrote about my first attempt here, and then about my experience in the program here and here. But here are some post-program thoughts:

a) It was absolutely the right thing for me to do. One of the biggest reasons is that it gave me an MFA so that I could teach on the college level, something I’ve been doing ever since and which I am passionate about. I love teaching even more than I love writing, and I am good at it. Another big reason is that it did help me improve—or, at least, it taught me the path by which I could improve. I learned how to push myself. I learned what and how to read. I learned about individual aesthetics and a little of the big philosphical questions behind poetic craft and aesthetics.

b) Although I am supremely grateful that the professors admitted me to the program, I see, in retrospect, the benefits of professors ONLY admitting students whose work they are interested in. For most of my time in the program, I was convinced that no professors were interested in my work—that they had admitted me sort of grudgingly. I won’t get into the reasons that I believed this here, but this belief handicapped my progress. It wasn’t until after I was done and I went to a retreat where I found people who were truly interested in my work that I began to grow. Once I felt that interest—and it was interest in the work I’d done that I felt was closest to my heart—I decided to return to the things that truly interested me, and when I did, my work blossomed. I wrote tons more LDS stuff, but not all of it was LDS, and because I was writing so much more and with more joy, even the non-LDS stuff was a lot better than it had been before. I wonder, then, what would have happened if I had felt this excitement during the first few months of my program. I think I would have grown a lot more and a lot faster. Again, though, I am so glad they accepted me ANYWAY, because that MFA is so precious to me and has truly helped me.

As a result of that blossoming, I was able to produce enough work that I could put together a manuscript, and my book, Homespun and Angel Feathers, was published by BCC Press last spring. I am so grateful to BCC for their interest in my work (in fact, Steve Evans at BCC contacted me about the manuscript when he saw my facebook announcement that I was working on it). I am pleased with the book and its reception. And this spring the book won the AML award for poetry. If you know me at all, you know what that award meant to me. You can read the award citation here.

I was thrilled to be able to read from my book at BYU’s English Reading Series earlier this year. I also got to go to the meeting of the Mormon Arts Foundation in Dallas to present about poetry and faith along with Susan Elizabeth Howe. Here we are:

I’ve got almost enough work to make a second collection already, and I’ll finish that up in the next few months, but I think I’d like to take some time on essaying in the near future as well.

5) Crazy Sauce

OK, so that’s the report on my life. The other big things I might mention you’ve been experiencing, too: Trump. A pandemic. Protests about racial injustice. I don’t really want to get political here—at least not today, and not at the end of a long post. But let me just say that in addition to all the stresses of this time, my time with my children at home as we’ve been socially distancing has been very sweet. I love home church. I haven’t been missing the auxiliary church activities and all of the other things that usually take my boys and husband away from home. I realize, though, that this is not healthy for long-term. We need a church community—we need to see, and serve, each other regulalry. My boys need a chance to date and mix socially so that they can move on to the next stage of their lives. And, of course, many people have been devastated by this, physically or economically or both. So of course I have been praying that this burden can be lifted from the earth. But I am grateful for the sweet memories I will have of this time.

MoPoWriMo

So, I invented this thing.

I have to give partial credit to James Goldberg, who gave me the idea years ago in some AML (Association for Mormon Letters) session or other, or maybe it was at a New Play Project talkback. The thing he said, which I remembered while pondering the relationship between talent and consecration and the "building up of the kingdom," was something about the concept of "tithing" talent. What this might look like for a writer, he suggested (or I remember him suggesting, or I thought to myself at the time), would be to try to make 1/10 of one's writing projects spiritual in topic or theme. Writing a gospel-centered poem, for example, every ten poems. Or (and again—I'm not sure if this was my own thinking in response to his suggestion or his suggestion), another option is Sabbath-oriented. For example, a writer would commit to writing something spiritual every Sunday, while writing other stuff on other days.

Whatever it was he meant, the concept behind it—that of setting aside time to use my talent to explore spiritual things as opposed to trying to write a killer poem that I could publish in the world (in order to get national exposure, perhaps, or to build my CV to make me more employable)—has sat on a stool in the back of my mind, clearing its throat every once-in-a-while, just to let me know it was still there.

So I got an idea. I have, at times, participated in NaNoWriMo (you can read about that here on my blog) and variations thereof. One of the variations that has proven very successful for me is having a goal to produce a poem a day for 30 days. So I decided to take a month and dedicate it to spiritual writing. The goal was to produce a poem each day which arose from my spiritual beliefs and culture. This was going to be good! I always produce better when I have an assignment. I also produce better when I have someone to be accountable to, so I asked James and a few others if they'd like to take up the challenge with me. And they asked a few friends. And they told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on, and so on.

I started a facebook group and invited everyone interested to join. As far as reporting to the group was concerned, the goal was simply to post each day. If you want, I said, you can post the poem you wrote. Or you can just report on what you did. But check in each day, if possible.

That was all the instructions I gave; everyone was welcome to set his or her own assignment and report as he or she wished.

What happened was monumental, at least for me. First of all, I produced a lot of work. In fact, after I was done with the month and began revising, I saw that, with my new work added to stuff from my thesis and before, I finally had enough work to make a collection, and went on to spend the next six months assembling what has become my first book. During the month, I didn't produce a finished draft each day, but I did so on many days, and on other days I got some good prewriting done that later led to poems. Of the 30 efforts I made during that month, I've gotten at least 15 solid, finished poems, and a bunch of other work that still might end up being used in some way. That's a fantastic percentage, I think.

Another thing that happened was that I felt more creative, more skilled, and more productive at the end of the month than at the beginning. Something happens when I am working hard and regularly. The more I write, the more ideas I get, the more "poetic" I feel, and the more "poetic" my first drafts feel. (By "poetic," I mean, in part, "surprising." As in, "No surprise for the writer; no surprise for the reader" [Robert Frost].  And surprise is a difficult thing to "work on" as an artist.) I found myself more interested in my work, and my work more interesting.

My favorite thing that happened was the sense of community that arose among the participants. There was a synergy. I believe that we were all writing better because we had each other to write for. It was not a critique group; it was simply a group of people who were an appreciative audience for each other. For me, anyway, there was a great sense of excitement, as I worked on my daily poem, in knowing that I would be sharing the draft that very day with others who would comment on it (but not critique it).

An audience is powerful. I think back to the time in my life when I felt ready to try writing seriously, and what a big impact the AML List played in that decision. (I've written about that here before.) I will be forever grateful for my AML friends who became the people I wanted to write for as well as about. They have always been the ones I have in mind as I write. Anyway, this group of people that came together for what I named "MoPoWriMo" (Mormon Poetry Writing Month) gave me a reason to write, to keep generating every day, to push myself to greater freshness. I loved the results.

So we did it again this year. Between the two events, President Nelson asked us to use different words to indicate members of the church, but I've kept the name the same because I want to communicate that we are talking about the culture in general, not anything official regarding membership or doctrine. We've switched from May to February, because May was a crazy-busy month for many, and February is just always in need of a reason for existing, right? (Being shorter helps, too. We don't mind being done a day or two early.)

This year, I put less pressure on myself to make the topics directly relevant to the church, its doctrines and culture, though I usually consider those topics first. The fact is that most of my life is infused with my worldview and beliefs, so most poems end up being spiritual in some way. But poetry is better with energy behind it, so I've learned to seize whatever impulse is strong and run with it. This year, especially, I've become more aware of the importance of taking care of my reading while I am participating in this project. Just as a runner training for a marathon needs to pay attention to nutrition, when I'm doing MoPoWriMo, I perform a lot better if I increase the quantity and quality of my poetry reading each day. I found, this month, that reading poetry that is quite different from my own style was especially helpful. It pushed me new directions, infusing energy when I was lagging in the last week or so.

One of my favorite things that happens during MoPoWriMo is what I call "sparking." It's when a line or image or subject from one person's poem sticks in the head of another writer and then makes an appearance somehow in the second writer's poem. One example I can think of actually happened as the month ended. Eric Jepson, eager for the hard work of the month to be over, posted one day about being glad that, come March, "trees will just be trees," not symbols for anything. I loved the phrase and the idea, and wrote a poem the next week about it. Someone else took a line from one of my poems complaining about February and wrote an entire poem about February. I love this synergistic phenomenon.

I recommend that all artists find ways to create challenges and assignments for themselves, but doing it within a community for a set period of time has brought me joy and greater productivity. Also, it has brought me new friends. What's not to love?

Book Report (revised! more about what I meant about Mormon fiction)

The past few months I've gotten better at abandoning books that aren't rewarding to me. This involves the skill of evaluating what "rewarding" means to me, the skill of recognizing relatively early on that the book doesn't measure up, and the skill of trusting that when I let go of something that isn't rewarding, room will open up in my life for something better, and that space will be filled soon.

What is rewarding to me isn't simple to define. It's not just what entertains. Well, not completely. Because it's true that I am less and less entertained by "empty calorie" reading than I was earlier in my life. Oh, boy, I'm running into definition issues right and left. I was going to talk about how I used to be satisfied with something that was simply a "good story," but am no longer. But that's not exactly right. It's that my definition of a good story has become more exacting, and fewer things feel like good stories to me.

Let's try this: it's not enough, any more, to have a story depend entirely on plot for its delight. Example: Game of Thrones. Gave up after about eight chapters. The Wheel of Time series—gave up after the first book. I felt like these books were just a series of Things Happening. And yet, I'm thinking of exceptions. I don't think I'd give up on Pelican Brief or Jason Bourne books if I were reading them for the very first time today. What's the difference? Is it that I didn't feel any progression or interest in actual characters (Wheel of Time)? Or that there were too many characters and plots to keep straight in my very memory-weak mind until the time that their interweavings became interesting (Game of Thrones)? I don't know. But even with these exceptions, I can't read them very often or more than one in a row.

I guess it's like growing up and moving to good, chewy bread instead of the childish preference for Wonder bread, or my love of dark chocolate when I only liked Hershey's as a child. In my reading, now, I want FIBER.

I also have no tolerance for when a narrator (author) betrays my trust, either through sloppy, cheesy writing or through the sloppy over-use of details and description.

Recently I abandoned an LDS-themed (Mormon characters) book, A Song for Issy Bradley (by Carys Bray). It reminded me very much of another LDS-themed book that was also written by a writer from the UK, The Friday Gospels by Jenn Ashworth. While I did finish The Friday Gospels, I felt very bogged down, in both books, by the time taken in world-building (that is, creating the sense of Mormon culture). I'd really like to hear others' opinions on this, particularly people unfamiliar with the LDS culture, but to me all the mentions of the inspirational wall-hangings, Sunday-school platitudes, kitsch, etc. felt inauthentic. Not because I didn't recognize these things, but that I felt it was a violation of the characters' points of view to NOTICE them. This is a tricky thing I try to explain to my students: when you are in a certain character's point of view (even if it's a somewhat distant third-person), mentioning details is tricky, because it feels to your reader in a subtle way as if the character is noticing those details. And so the mention of all these details, which are very common in my culture, made me lose trust in the narration because I think a character who has grown up with these things, seen them every day, wouldn't notice them in particular on this day just because his/her story has now begun.

I'm thinking now of Orson Scott Card's example of a bad description of a character leaving a futuristic room: "The door dilated and he went out." The point is that, in the future, no one would comment on the fact that the doors dilate; if all doors dilate and it's part of normal life, we just think/say, "He went out." It would be like us saying today, "The door swung on its hinges and she went out." Duh.  I feel that the use of all these details in books with Mormon settings is similar. I also see this problem in a lot of well-researched historical fiction (The Work and the Glory comes to mind, and quite a lot of setting-heavy young adult historical fiction). We don't really need to know about the style of the fire grate or the pleating on the sleeves of the dress, unless it's somehow pertinent to the story in a way that it makes sense that the character suddenly noticed something that is usually just part of the background.

So when there is so much (unnecessary) detail in a Mormon book, I assume it's there for one of two reasons: either the authir is not, or only minimally, LDS, and wants to show off her research, or she feels that this cultural stuff is somehow pertinent to the story. I like neither of these situations. I'm so tired of the "poor thing; look at the crazy stuff she had to grow up with" story, in which there is always the chastity anecdote of the fondled flower or the chewed gum. I want a Mormon fiction that is as complicated and beautiful (as well as sometimes tragic) as our culture is, and I think too many books go for the low-hanging fruit. And it shows. And I'm tired of it.

The good news is that so much GOOD writing is being done, and I'll never run out of things to read, even despite the books I’m abandoning.

And so here I'd like to tell you about a book I HAVE been enjoying lately. But not because it is great literature or even especially well-written. Rather, because its ideas have been changing me. It is called He Did Deliver Me From Bondage, by Colleen Harrison. This was written as a workbook, or handbook, to accompany Alcoholic Anonymous's 12-step program when used by Mormons. It is basically one women's scripture journal: the results of her search through the Book of Mormon for ways that it applies to the 12-step program (or, inversely, ways that the 12-step program applies to the gospel). I listened to this book on audio, and although I found the voices of the reader (not sure whether she is the author or not) and her co-reader (for the actual quoted scriptures) rather irritating at first (heavy Utah accents, for one thing), after a while I came to love their voices, because I came to love what I was hearing. I picked it up because I had seen the book referred to in another book I was reading, and the referral mentioned that Harrison struggled with an addiction to food. I had been wondering whether I had an addiction to food myself (because I spend so much time thinking about the next time I'm going to eat, and what it will be, etc.).

Through listening to the book, I came to realize that, yes, I do have an addiction—but not to food. I am addicted to feeling in control of my life (perfectionism, I guess, or a variation of it). And the things I learned through this book have given me a glimpse of another way to live. I feel like I have a lot of work ahead of me, that I'll need to listen to this again and again and probably actually work the program, but I am so grateful for the glimpse I got. I am learning, very slowly, how to apply it to my moments of unease (with myself and others). I think I'll talk more about this later, but I just wanted to put this out there in case there are others who might be helped by it. You can get the audiobook from the library.

One year down.

Last night I turned in my last paper and portfolio of the year. A few days ago, I attended a defense of a fellow MFA poet and learned what to expect in my own. As a result, I spent a few hours yesterday beginning an outline of the critical readings I encountered this year, which I will make into notecards. This has actually been enjoyable work for me because it has enabled me to begin to make connections between things, to create a sort of conversation in my mind—conversations between the theorists, and conversations between them and myself. It's been a good opportunity to review what I've learned this year, both in terms of my own aesthetic and in terms of craft.

So: what have I learned? How am I different, as a poet and as a person, because of this year's adventure in school?

Well, to answer that thoroughly, I would have to post my two term papers here, which came in at 12 and 20 pages, respectively (they were supposed to come in at 8 and 12; I just can't NOT research thoroughly and put it all in there!). Which brings me to point #1:

1. I work a lot harder than most people on papers.

            I don't know whether this is because I'm older (and scared?), because I’m more organized (getting things done earlier than everyone else), because I'm more thorough, or because I am there at school out of sheer desire and I wanted this more than anyone else. At times, it is irritating to me. (I will be in the grad carrels and hear other students talking, a day or even just a few hours before the deadline, about how they "haven't even started yet.") Then I will see them whip off something that looks pretty darn much like a paper. (Sometimes they don't even make it look like a paper but instead write something "experimental.") I don't, of course, see the grades these last-minute efforts get. But the prodigal-son's-brother in me wants them to SUFFER. Thankfully, that's only a tiny part of me, and the rest of me doesn't care that much because I find the work rewarding, and because these papers, especially, will turn into the critical intro. to my thesis. So what if I work harder when the work is so enjoyable?

2. Putting more recklessness, chance, subconscious leaps into my poetry makes it more intriguing and gives it depth.

            Last semester I encountered Dean Young's Art of Recklessness. That, more than anything else, has influenced my work this year. I still am not where I want to be in terms of playfulness, but I'm improving, and I think my poetry shows it. I’m not sure whether people who have enjoyed my poetry in the past (many of whom don't read other poetry) will still like it, but that shouldn't matter. I've also been influenced by Bill Stafford's philosophy of "Lower your standards"—this has helped me produce some interesting things I never would have tried before, when I was trying to write a great poem every time.

3. But too much recklessness is obnoxious and unkind.

            Here I differ from the aesthetic of some of my classmates, who feel that it's ridiculous to consider audience at all when writing. It's hard not to allow that attitude to mess with my self-esteem (some poets tend to have such a condescending attitude towards those whose aesthetics differ, as if they are constantly patting me on the head—"bless her heart, the poor, earnest thing"). But an interesting session at AWP in Boston with Tony Hoagland helped me see that not everyone who hasn't given up a desire for meaning in their work has lost respect in the world. I'll stick to my guns, even when it makes me look provincial and unsophisticated. I'll write what brings me joy—and that involves, for me, some measure of bringing others joy as well. Which brings me to:

4. There are lots of aesthetics out there.

            There's no one way of defining what makes a poem good. Even among poets reading other poets, tastes vary widely and most of us hate what others of us love, and vice-versa. But the good news is that this means that poets are succeeding at all sorts of things.

5. And I am succeeding. (See my previous post.) At least at something, for someone, I am doing OK.

6.  Specific things:

            Well, one specific way that my work is different (besides the inclusion of more recklessness) is that I've been trying some new forms such as sections and prose poems. I've also been trying more language-generated leaps (as opposed to having a goal for the poem before I begin it). I'm also writing some flash-nonfiction, or turning what used to be poetic impulses into flash-nf impulses, and what used to be too-narrative, autobiographical poems into flash-nf pieces. With success.

7.  The canon.

            I entered the program at a disadvantage since I wasn't an English major (I was humanities with English emphasis) and missed some of the English classes others took, and since it has been so long since I've been in school, and since I have read, comparatively, much less poetry than I should have for a program like this. So I've been getting acquainted with things that other students already know (who are the "Objectivists"? What is L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry? Why was Charles Simic's Pulitzer such a big deal? etc.). It's nice to finally know what's been going on. I'm still weak in this area, though, and plan on doing more reading over the summer. It'll be fun!

So that's that. It's been a fantastic, soul-wrenching, joyous year at school. I'm so grateful for it. I'm glad to have a break for the summer, to play with my kids and clean out the office. I'll work during the summer on some reading and write a few poems, but it'll be a nice breather. By August I'll be hungry again. I'm so glad I get to go back. I'm so sad that this will end someday. What in the world will I do then?

BYU Contests

I finally feel free to tell you about the BYU contests, because last night was the awards dinner, so I guess it's public news. I've been reluctant to tell anyone because there was no official announcement. I didn't know whether, for example, those who hadn't won had found that out yet. And it would be dang awkward if they were to find out from ME.

And that's sad. It makes it hard for me to have my moment, if you know what I mean. The thing is, the only people who can know what a big deal it is to place in a writing contest are the other writers—and they are the ones who a winner has most likely beat out. So success is a lonely thing, when it comes to writing. Especially poetry, since no one reads the stuff anyway.

So, the news is that I won the following:

            Second place in the Vera Hinckley Mayhew poetry contest.

            Second place in the Hart-Larson poetry contest.

            First place in the Academy of American Poets (BYU chapter) contest.

            First place in the Elsie Carroll essay contest.

I won't make the slightest attempt to disguise the fact that this was a big deal to me.

I think I've said here how hard it is to go to workshop and get trashed, time after time. This semester has been difficult for me in terms of my self-esteem as a writer—and as a teacher. I have been at the point of despair. And, as I mentioned, I had to read at the English Symposium a few weeks ago and was terrified, because the other poets in my session are SO GOOD. Getting the news about the Mayhew the night before the reading enabled me to read with confidence the next day; I see this as tender mercy from God, truly.

I know that it's not that big a deal to anyone else, but I felt that the validation from this enabled me to hold up my head a little in front of my classmates (well, those who know, I guess, since there's been no public announcement) and my professors. Also, it's nice to have something to point to when I fear that people wonder what it is I’m doing at school. But most importantly, it's nice to remind myself that sometimes my work shows a little glimmer of value.

I guess I won't give up after all.

Another thing: the essay contest win was a big deal to me. Because it launched some questioning about genre (I won it with a short essay that had begun it's life as two poems that weren't working well) that led to my idea for my big Paper that's due in two weeks—the paper that is supposed to be the beginning of the critical introduction to my thesis. I see this as another tender mercy, because I had really been at sea about what to write on for my critical intro. I have been blessed.

I know that if you've read this far, you are one of my true supporters. Let me just say here that I am extremely grateful for your support. This writing thing is a lonely endeavor with meager rewards. It's nice to know I have people who care and who are rooting for me. It can make all the difference.

Some poetry for you today:

First, William Carlos Williams, interpreted VERY NICELY by Matthew McFadyen:

And now, "Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams," by Kenneth Koch, which you can get at this link  http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~richie/poetry/html/poem191.htm (so I don't feel guilty for pasting it here).

Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams
Kenneth Koch

1
I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.
I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do
and its wooden beams were so inviting.

2
We laughed at the hollyhocks together
and then I sprayed them with lye.
Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.

3
I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the next ten years.
The man who asked for it was shabby
and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.

4
Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.
Forgive me. I was clumsy and
I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!

First year MFA student

Dear Blog,

I'm still alive. I'll skip over all the usual apologies/excuses, because I know you're just darn glad to see me and all is forgiven.

What a crazy week it has been. In the last ten days or so, momentous things have happened in my writing life. No, I didn't get that long-lost-in-the-email letter from the agent who (STILL, after 18 months) has my novel manuscript—the novel I could hardly even remember well enough to paraphrase when someone asked me about it last week. Or anything like that. But still, some big stuff.

First off, I went to AWP. This is the annual conference of the Association of Writing Programs, which was held in Boston this year. BYU kindly provided funding for this trip, thanks to some vigorous advocacy on the part of the Creative Writing faculty, who claimed that since the college funds MA students to go present papers, it should fund MFA students to go feel the vibes at AWP. And they were SO RIGHT. Because at AWP I began to finally feel like I am one of the community. I am a poet. I participate in the conversation (and I'm finally learning what the conversation actually is). What is going on in the world of poetry affects me, and I can affect it, or respond to it.

As I may have expressed here, I have not always (ever?) been solid in my belief that I really am a poet. Having limited success in poetry (and how was I even defining that? I am, after all, a beginner, and yet I've been published quite a bit) and what seemed like more potential for success in other genres, I dithered. But during my time at AWP (and probably because I was so sleep-deprived from staying up late with my perky roommates), long-forgotten memories of my childhood and adolescence came bubbling forth to remind me that yes, poetry was my first love. (I had totally forgotten, for example, that I had laboriously copied several poems into an old journal in high school because I loved them so much. And the snatches of poetry I had memorized from my junior high English teacher's walls—"Come live with me and be my love," etc. And the Carol Lynn Pearson poems I read over and over and over again. In my more "muture" [read "snobby"] years I had looked back on this last fact with embarrassment—of course, I had chosen the less sophisticated Pearson poetry to memorize—but now I am both less embarrassed [there's some good stuff in there!] and also more forgiving because I realized suddenly that the Pearson books where the only books of poetry we had on our shelves so of course they are the ones I memorized. Anyway, the point of this long parenthetical meandering is that I actually ALWAYS LOVED POETRY.) And though I will never confine myself to JUST poetry, I am willing to fully embrace the fact that yes, I am a poet, first and foremost, even when I don't know what the heck I’m doing, even though it will never get me fame or (heaven forbid!) money. I do it. I love it. I want to invest in it.

So, yeah. AWP hit me over the head and set me straight. Also, it was really good. I loved hearing Tony Hoagland argue that there is still a place for "soul" in poetry, and that those who put others down for asserting the opposite should be ashamed. I loved developing my own opinions about the work of the poets I heard and realizing (with the help of Lance, my professor) that my opinions were well-founded and not naïve—or, at least, not too naïve to be worth discussing. I loved being exposed to "new" (to me) poets (hello, Terrance Hays!). One of my favorite sessions was on the work of William Stafford, a poet and writing teacher who advocated a kind of instruction in which teachers never praise or criticize a student's writing. Not sure how I feel about all of his teaching ideas, but I loved his claim that the best thing a writer can do is "Lower your standards." That's my new mantra.

It's funny, because that idea (not exactly the lowering of standards but the importance of proceeding fearlessly or at least courageously in the face of fear) has become a theme for me this year in school. Because I arrived on campus to discover exactly how far I have to go as a poet. A good thing—I never want to feel like I've arrived—but discouraging. You get into a program (hurray! I must be doing OK!) only to encounter Workshopping (yes, a capital W), in which you spend twenty minutes being told in great detail why your work stinks in ways you never even imagined before. So I was discouraged. Then I had a tiny little jolt when I took one of my failed "too-narrative" poems, made it into a paragraph, and showed it to a visiting writer who is the editor for a flash nonfiction magazine—and he praised it highly. Wait! Maybe I’m not a poet after all! Maybe I've been writing flash nonfiction all this time and calling it poetry! So I began to doubt my calling.  That's when I read excerpts from Dean Young's The Art of Recklessness and realized that if I could find a way to trust the process and take more risks, leaps, jumps in my work, that was my path to my next step as a poet. This idea of practicing recklessness, combined with "lower your standards," has unstuck me, and I am excited, rejuvenated. And—for this moment at least—I have pushed fear back into its corner.

So, AWP was good.

It was a crazy week after that, trying to catch up on my work as a teacher (papers to be graded) and as a student (Annotated Bibliography due for my term paper) and my mothering (missed these little guys, and then two of them left again for a week with Grandma in St. George) and my church work. I had a great catch-up lunch with Margaret and Cheri, dear friends from Berkeley days.

But all of this was overshadowed by something terrifying: I was scheduled to read my poetry in the English Symposium on Friday. I've read at readings before, but somehow this was different. Even though it was really just an undergraduate conference, it was a big deal to me because it was my first reading since being in school, and thus my first reading since committing to be a Poet. (Before this, I could always claim that I just dabble.) Also, I was scheduled to read with my two "older sisters"—the two other poets in the MFA program, Emily Ho and Katie Wade Davis, who are in their second year and who are both AMAZING poets, way better than I am (or may ever be). I hadn't volunteered to read but had been asked because they needed a third to round out the panel. I knew it would just be like, "and here's Darlene. Let's tolerate her." (Not that THEY made me feel this way. They are only gracious.) So I was nervous. Very.

But something happened, which I'll tell more about in my next post, the day before the reading. I got an email with some good news about my poetry. And it made ALL the difference. Suddenly, I was confident. Suddenly I felt that maybe someone, somewhere would enjoy what I had brought to share.

So I relaxed and enjoyed the reading, and it went REALLY WELL. People responded, asked me questions. It felt good. My poems are not perfect. They are not as good as Emily's and Katie's. But there is something there. I will keep working.

In other, less happy, news, a friend is moving away. I am sad to see her go. I'm also angry with myself, because she has been in the ward a few years and is a friend, but not as close as I had planned to make her. I have let time get away from me. I am faced again with my own awkwardness about taking friendship to a deeper level. How do people do it? Why am I so bad at it? I don't think she—or a few other women in the ward—knows how much I love her, how I had thought of her as a future very close friend, how I had planned to grow closer over the years. And she is leaving.

Sadder than that was a terrible tragedy in our ward: an 18-month-old baby died this month as a result of aspirating food while laughing. A horrible thing. A bittersweet, tender time. I love being part of a ward, even when it hurts. So many thoughts and prayers for the Carroll family.

And that, plus a lot of interesting stuff regarding life with teenagers, has been my life this past month.