Waiting...

There's no mystery. I'm waiting to see if any of the post-MFA fellowships will come through for me. My kind of waiting means that I search the internet daily to see if anyone has posted any new info. I do not recommend this method of waiting. It's not healthy.

Right now, Fall 2011 going forward is a question mark for me; an exciting question mark, because no matter what, something will happen. It's just a matter of what.

I got my first "no" for my first teaching job application. I can't believe I was even qualified to apply and be taken seriously. lol

Summer fell into place nicely. This summer I'll be the Creative Writing Instructor for Duke's Talent Identification Program at Texas A&M. I'll be teaching poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction to academically gifted 8-10th graders. Basically, they'll be taught at an undergraduate level. This should be tons of fun. Intense, for all of us, but tons of fun.

On the submissions front, the deadline for the first first book contest I want to enter is April 30th. My thesis is my manuscript. A good (no, great) friend just volunteered to give it her golden review prior to the contest, which means I've got to have it ready for her by March 1. So when I'm not tweeting or posting or reading student poems or reading essays on poetic form, I'll be working on getting my thesis into 1st book form. That's another whole level of submitting to the life of a poet. But I'm ready for it!

Positive vibes to your pieces in the piles!

This is my hard time.

I should say something here. That's the thought I've had for a few weeks. Well, I'm having significant personal struggles outside of my program. My son is having major issues adjusting. I breathe a deep sigh of relief every time I make it to class because just getting there is hard a lot of days. I'm so thankful, please don't get me wrong. But like Roethke says, "This is my hard time."

It's funny because even when things are outrageously difficult and I start to feel like maybe this thing is the thing that will be more than I can bear, I still stop and think (often lol), "I know there's a poem in this." It may come years from now, but it's definitely coming. And that is a sustaining hope.

So I still haven't reached the point of anything being more than I can bear, though I can't believe I'm still smiling, talking really loudly to people I love on the phone, milking my own corny jokes, and laughing from deep in my gut with my head thrown back and my mouth open wide. Either I'm magic or God is real (issues which are always up for contention in my world lol).

I really appreciate the love, support, understanding, and comraderie from all of you on the internet. You know how people say be nice because you could be entertaining angels or something like that. That's not what I'm saying lol. What I'm saying is that many of you don't realize you've been angels for me. Thank you.

Writing Goals

I just did a post on my MFA Goals on The MFA Chronicles. Three happy little goals. :)
*insert lightning strikes, sinister laughter, and doom in general here*

I'm keeping a list in my google docs of major, life-changing, career-creating goals and when I need to apply to them. These are for poetry and tv/screenwriting. View my neuroticism here:

Write the best poems- always
Publish a full length poetry collection- however long it takes
Earn MFA- Spring 2011
Secure fellowship/job for- Summer/Fall 2011

Creative Writing
Apply for Axton Fellowship (University of Louisville) - Fall 2010 for Fall 2011
Apply for Stegner- September 2010 to start August 2011
Apply for Exeter Fellowship- December 2010 for September 2011
Apply for Southern Review Resident Scholar- December 2010 for August 2011
Apply for Gaius Charles Bolin Fellowship- December 2010 for Fall 2011
Apply for Emory Creative Writing Fellowship- by Feb. 2011 to start Fall 2011
Apply for Hodder Fellowship (Princeton)- November 2011 to start February 2012

TV/Screenwriting
Apply for Nickelodeon Fellowship- Jan/Feb 2011 to start Oct 2011
complete TV spec script by Jan/Feb 2011
Apply for Nicholls Fellowship- by May 2011 to start Jan 2012
Apply for Disney Fellowship- July 2011 to start Jan 2012
complete TV spec script by July 2011

I submit indeed.

Welcome to my mind. In real life, I am notoriously unorganized. But for things I am passionate about, I start planning 2 years in advance. A few of those fellowships will probably fall off of the list. I don't think I'd want to move for only 1 year. I took off the pre-medical school plans I was considering. I realized that it was only fear motivating me to do something other than write, so there's no med school in my future.

I wish I was passionate about at least one thing that did not have a less than 1% chance of actually happening.

Bone

I can't figure out if the use of the word "bone" in poetry is becoming cliche or if "bone" just jumps off the page every time I see it. It gives me pause (I love that phrase) every time I see the word. And it's never "bones" (plural), almost always bone. Not "bones locked with bones" but "bone locked with bone" or something like that. It's also not usually preceded by an article, never "touch a bone," but "touch bone". It's almost musical that way I think, how it just drops like a low note. The word is so clean and full of connotations too. I wish I could remember the most recent sighting of bone in a poem so I could provide an example. The fact that I see bone used that way so much makes part of me feel like I need to get bone in a poem lol. But then it makes me want to avoid it because what if bone is a well-known poetry cliche or something. I don't know. I guess if bone becomes the perfect word for one of my pieces, then bone it will be.

Actually, I may just have my own fascination with bones though. Well, I DO have a fascination with bones. I took a fiction workshop about 2 years ago and I wrote a short story that had a character that used to sell her jewelry in the marketplace. The tourists thought it was so exotic and the woman delighted in telling them, "I made them from bones." No, I'm no fiction writer lol. Of course she wasn't the main character and the class liked her more than the main character. Ah, fiction. So after writing that story I read Edwidge Danticat's The Farming of Bones. WHOA! Loved that book. Loved her writing. Again, I'm given pause. lol I love when prose is poetry. So that gave me the idea to give my bone lady her own story. I think bones stand out to me due to my concern for my own bone character.

I don't know that having my own reasons for noticing the word bone takes away from the idea that poets might use bone a lot. Really, it just explains why I notice it so much. Eh, this post doesn't have a point, just something that came out when I was journaling yesterday.

Palm Tree

OMG...I feel like writing! I have been thinking about this all day though and I have to get it out before I can do anything else.

Origins

Before I decided to go back to school and complete my bachelor's degree (well before I could pay off Emory and get my transcripts to transfer) I lived with my ex-boyfriend in a run down apartment complex in Miami. I was forced to get over my fear of roaches by living there because otherwise I would have spent those years cowering in the corner and crying constantly. But that's not the point.

So I'd moved to Miami to be with my boyfriend and he was the only person I knew there. So when we broke up and he moved out I was totally alone in the city. I was a telecommuter so I worked from home and didn't even have co-workers I could call friends for at least part of the day. Still, I didn't spend much time crying and cowering in the corner, I sat on the back porch instead and stared at a palm tree.

I would get so frustrated because I couldn't think of a poetic way to describe this tree. I would stare at it in silence and beat myself up inside because I thought REAL poets wrote about trees lol. This was only 3-4 years ago! So I'm staring at this tree everyday, thinking I'd have to write a poem about this particular tree if I was ever going to be a poet while the 600 (exaggeration) kids that lived in the apartment above mine were hungry, dirty, and obviously neglected. Their mother was never home and when she was she was either drunk/high and yelling, getting in fist fights with her various boyfriends, and screaming obscenities at her kids. I heard it all from my chair on the patio in front of that damn tree.

They weren't allowed to go outside when their mother wasn't home (so they were hardly ever outside) so they had their fun by throwing trash down off of the balcony and fighting with any neighbors (including me) who dared to reprimand them. In my first workshop after returning to school, I wrote a bad poem about those kids. I scrapped the palm tree poems when my professor destroyed all my misconceptions about poetry. Crazy how disillusioned I was and still might be.

One of the poems in my MFA writing sample featured the roaches though. They "break dance in the blink and the buzz of dying fluorescent lights"...those bastards.

So lately I've been scared, suffering a litte from imposter syndrome, worried that maybe I'd given all I have to give in my writing sample and that I have nothing else to say.

Fear is my palm tree now.

(and scene!)
--
Yeah, so, I have a fresh notebook and a sack of new pens so I'm going to see what comes out. Maybe I'll write a good ole palm tree poem just to get the juices flowing again lol. "Fresh Notebook and a Sack of New Pens" sounds like a rap song to me. Well, the hook to a rap song. For nerds. The hook to a rap song for nerds.

But oh! I can't get Jericho Brown's poems from Please out of my head. When I visited IU one of the students let me borrow the book so I could know what was going on in class the next day. I read it in like an hour and didn't breathe until the end of it I think. So I need to buy my own copy because my memory is not doing those poems justice.

Interview Scheduled: Virginia Tech

So I got a call on Friday morning to set up an interview for Virginia Tech's MFA program for poetry. I have no idea what to expect. Of course I'm googling to find out how these types of interviews might go. I like their program, love their faculty, think the location is pretty cool too. Who knows how this will go...I'm ready to find out!

So I've been reading like crazy. Last week I read Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and I just finished A Mercy. This woman can write! Oh my goodness...I literally end up breathless on the last page. I read the last page of A Mercy over and over just letting it all sink in. I don't know how she does it. I think I can appreciate her work even more since taking a 19th Century African American Lit class last semester, specifically about slave narratives. A Mercy read just like a slave narrative. Reading Morrison, even though I'm a poet, inspires me and makes Indiana's offer so appealing since I'll get to do the MA in African American Studies (focused on black lit, it seems) along with the MFA. I think if I get the Grad. Scholars fellowship at Indiana, I'm going. That's one year without teaching and up to $25,000 funding for that year. I should find out if that worked out very soon. I think that will clinch it for me. The only school offering that much funding would have been Michener and I didn't get in there. Without the fellowship...I don't know and I'll be doing a lot of traveling trying to figure it out, I think.

UGH...Toni Morrison writes so smart. I want to write smart too. I'm going to start reading Sula as soon as I come down off of the high of her last book. I was totally not expecting to have such a reaction to her. I would love to take a class that was only about her and her works. She's got enough stuff written and enough complexity to warrant an entire course on her. She is hands down my favorite fiction writer right now.

On the poetry front...my poetry professor/mentor's new book is out and it is on the way in the mail to me right now!!!!!!!! SO excited. I love her, I love her, I love her! I'm thinking of flying back to where I did school to catch one of her readings.

A poet got called from Indiana!

UGH...I saw someone post that they'd been called this morning and I immediately went and got my cell phone (which will again be glued to my side). So I had a voice mail on there and it was from a number I didn't recognize. The stupid voicemail was like someone called me on accident lol. It was a bunch of background noise, like in a mall or something. So I looked up the area code and it was from New Jersey. I didn't apply to any school in Jersey so there's no need for alarm. Only disgust, there is room for disgust with that voice mail.

I'm alright though. What will be will be regardless. Indiana is very high on my list though. Like #2. It's above even Iowa. It is my Iowa. Cornell is Cornell and Indiana is my Iowa. lol Now I sound crazy.

I Imagine

You know what I love to read? The Welcome message in literary journals. I love when they list who they previously published. My hope is that one day a journal that took my poems will be proud to be able to say, "Hey, we published (me) back in the day" and then announce it in the list of other respected poets. God, that will be hard to accomplish. Fame or even respect lol isn't my ultimate reason for writing, I just have a need to express myself or I find myself extremely unhappy. But I don't just want to express myself, I want to express myself in the best way possible so as to be understood. That's why I've chosen to study creative writing, I guess.

It feels good to be submitting again.

Submission: RATTLE

They are having a special African-American edition in June 2009. So we'll see.

It's funny. I haven't had any acceptances to anything soliciting African-Americans. That's not the funny part lol. That's fine...there is stiff competition. But the 2 pieces that I have had accepted dealt with race (among other things) but the publications weren't focused on that subject. So that's nice (and possibly the funny part I was mentioning). I used to be afraid to talk about race, thinking that I would be declared a stereotypical black poet. My poetry professor (who is not black) must have sensed that and she started just lending me books out of the blue. The one that woke me up the most was Hip Logic by Terrance Hayes. The skill with which he dealt with race and all his politically oriented subjects amazed me. I knew I was only hurting myself by not allowing my poetry to represent me in my truest form. I'll be forever grateful to that professor because my poetry changed for the better and those pieces, my truest pieces, are the ones that are being accepted.

So yeah, I said all of that to say, odds are I won't get accepted for this one lol.

Doot-doot-do <---That's Waiting's Soundtrack

I am totally and completely in limbo now. But you know what the omnipotent "they" says about "the best-laid plans of mice and men" and all that. So I was hoping to be doing my waiting for MFA notifications while overseas on an internship. The security clearance process is taking a long time so who knows when I'll be leaving. So instead of alleviating waiting stress, this internship added itself to the list of things I'm waiting to find out about!

All things considered, I'm extremely blessed. I didn't consider that some people weren't able to apply to as many MFA programs as they would have liked for financial reasons. I'm not rich or even middle-class anymore after going back to school full-time, but I was able to pull it off. Let me try to add up what I spent:

GRE: $140
Sending GRE Scores: $160
Transcripts: $320
Application Fees: $660
Total: $1280

They say(there's the omnipotent they again) that you get what you put out back ten-fold or something like that. So hopefully I'll get a fellowship or stipend worth at least $12,800 lol. I'll report back here with how that turns out, of course. Wait for it.

Smooch!

I could just KISS Vanderbilt for having a free application!!!!!!!

I love you, Vanderbilt...please, love me too.

Impossible

Short post at 2:26am to express the impossibility of getting MFA apps out during finals week while working 40 hours a week. My life hurts a little bit because of this. So now instead of getting them all done I'm doing it in tiers. I've got the ones out that were due by Dec 15-18 so I'm 4 for 16. I have to make a cross-country drive starting Saturday. So on or around Dec. 20th I'll finish the rest of my apps. I'm just disappointed because I want this over already. I hate school right now and my biggest issue is trying to get into schools...for more school. Thank goodness I won't start until the fall if they take me. I have my last final tomorrow and an essay due by Friday...then I have to load my car and drive 2300 miles before I can do my apps. Do you see? Do you see why I feel crazy!? Please just let me get them all done in time. That's all I ask.

All will be well when this is over.

On another note...I graduate on Monday. HUGE accomplishment that I promise to celebrate thoroughly once all of my apps are out.

My name is Me and I have a problem...

So I've been wasting time doing two things:

1) Reading the "Damn, I didn't get in!" thread on the Poets & Writers message board. I started reading it to keep myself grounded and preparing myself for inevitable rejections. I've read all 47 pages a few times. I don't know what's up with that but I vow to stop. I get it. Everyone doesn't get in everywhere. I need to cut this out.

2) Reading the "I'm In!" thread on Poets & Writers. I read this to get all excited about this process that is quickly becoming mentally draining to me. So I'm on my second time through this lengthy thread and vowing to quit this addiction too.

Here you have my admission that I have a problem. I guess I'm feeling like it's possible to actually prepare to go through a life-changing process such as the MFA application process so I'm doing ridiculous things in the name of it. I'm stopping.

So yeah, I would think that just reading this, my own blog, would be enough to remind me of the possibility of rejection and acceptance. That's what this blog has been all about! I'm an idiot.

Yeah so, my apps will be all done this week as soon as I get my check and can pay the fees. I've got final exams, papers, and short stories to write over the next 2 weeks and then I've got a glorious cross-country drive to make...alone.

Onward.

(I had the strongest desire to end this post with "onward bitches!" I have no idea where that came from lol)

Opinions expressed at 3:14 am are those of a sleepless MFA applicant and do not necessarily reflect the position of this blog's author.

So I just googled myself on a whim and came across this comment on the blog of the journal that published one of my pieces:

"I just wanted to say how much I liked both Rapture, by (ME!!!)…….(for its length and complexity and effective way of dealing about race and childhood …..and..."

Thanks wonderful person who just made my sleepless night. Cyber kisses and best wishes to you.

*All rhymes are unintentional at this hour and should not reflect upon my poetic talent*

Pardon the legal disclaimers. Prior to finding this comment I was researching law schools...just in case I suck. lol

Gushing!

So I don't know why but the experience of being published online was more exciting than being published in print. Actually, I think I am gushing because the online journal wrote up a little blurb about their interpretation of the poem in the foreword. That excited me to the point of breathlessness! I don't know why. Could be vanity? Or just pure joy from the confirmation that I was understood!!! Exhale...Inhale...

For forever reference:

http://www.conteonline.net/issue0401/splash.html

Life is excessively good...

Speaking of Submission

So...I don't think it's healthy to fully submit to love. Like to totally give yourself over to the goal of being with someone. That's where I've gone wrong in the past and it hasn't gotten me anywhere in the companionship department.

I'm still healing from the end of a 2 year relationship and every time I've tried to start dating someone else, I can't go through with it and it's been almost a year. I guess I'm just not ready. I want to be ready for when I'm ready though. So here's a list of my ideal partner's traits:

1. He's honest
2. He treats me how he wants to be treated
3. He's in pursuit of his passions. Goes after what he wants, including me
4. He is independent
5. Oh he's GOT to have a GREAT sense of humor.
6. He has to laugh at my jokes lol.
7. Self-aware
8. Trys to better himself.
9. Not afraid to show me how he feels.


Blah.

We shall see.

Obsessions

I am obsessed with acceptance. I am on the lookout for anywhere that will say "YES!" to even one of my poems. I have some pieces that have been submitted for over a month and I'm ready for some word!

I am obsessed with mfa acceptances/rejections. I'm not even eligible to apply to MFAs until the end of this year! LOL I like going to message boards and blogs and reading about how the applicants are feeling. There are some posters who are more vocal whom I can't wait to see if they get into the programs they want.

I am obsessed with poet's blogs. Seriously I spend hours on the internet just reading the blogs of poets who are trying to do the same things that I am doing.

I'm obsessed with this line from Major Jackson's "Urban Renewal iii": "You are almost invisible in all this plain decay." Last night I memorized the entire poem because of that one line. I decided that when anxiety tries to get the best of me, I am going to focus my attention on memorizing a poem. It worked last night. Next I plan on memorizing Claudia Emerson's "Artifact".

I've decided to make this my actual blog instead of just a submission thing. I'll still track my submissions but I'll let loose about other things here too.