In my thesis seminar, all of the second year students are to turn in five poems every handful of weeks, while the third years present us with a full manuscript on the first day. I was much more dry this summer than I anticipated, not leaving me with an arsenal of quality work to begin with, and here, at the end of the semester, I find myself veering into new territory: from that of the elderly body flattened by Alzheimer's and into the infertile woman's body. The poems are a bit more vulnerable, more teetering and uncertain.

I wonder if I am the kind of writer who writes in cycles--I have my chapbook-sized collection in one series and now, I embark one what could be a book-length intrusion. With this, I have no full-plan, no handrails. And there were some disappointing moments about critique, but I've got so much buzzing in my mind that I won't let anything not-so-helpful trip me up--not too much, anyway.

Right now, I'm working at a series of figures, coming mostly from the reproduction gallery at Bodies: The Exhibition at the Mall of America {shudder}, a place I've visited twice now. This recent visit was with fellow-MFAer Meryl, who also paused and wrote alongside me on the scattered benches and wore our pens weary. It's a good day when my pen-callouses throb.

Also fun in the world of poetics: I've started a collaborative blog called i love dead bird poems, a response with a back-story, but for now, you can enjoy a little Bishop and Zagajewski (and if you want to join in the fun, please let me know and I'll send along an invite!).

I returned from Thanksgiving break to learn that one of my friends in the program lost a student yesterday--suicide. This friend teaches freshmen comp too.

My heart aches a bit for her, a fellow second year, a talented writer with a bright sense of humor. How does one begin to process this kind of blank spot?

I think to my own group of students and how incredibly blessed I've been. I have a group of charming, eager, willing students, students who, today, asked me what I was teaching next semester because friends and room mates were looking for a "good" first year writing studies teacher; apparently, I've already got at least two room mates enrolled for next semester's time slot. This makes my heart swell; I've tried to be fair and tough and laid-back and honest and caring, and though I know I've had plenty of weak points in teaching, I know it's the best job I've done since teaching at the university level. I don't know if I'm finally picking up a rhythm or if it's because I really adore teaching writing (of any sort), but at the close of this semester, I don't feel that cloud of guilt surrounding me, only, perhaps, a little wisp of fog, that says I could have done better. I actually feel complete and full: sad to see them go, but also glad, because I know they've worked hard, and they're ready to move on and move up. It's amazing how that feels.

It's Thanksgiving weekend, and I'm in the home of my grandparents, the couple who have played a central role in my written work over the past several years. I find myself turning back to that chapbook-sized collection of poems, puttering, false-starting on the last few poems. I wonder why it is taking me so long: Is it because I burn myself out on Literature for short period of time (I am now fully and finally emerged from a month-long hiatus, which I know you must have noted when this blog fell silent for so long)? Or is it because I'm afraid I'll never be able to write about them again, once I've begun sending the book out as a whole? Or do I have that ridiculous psychological connection--that if I am done with "the grandfather poems," then I am finally letting him go, beginning some strange process in the mourning timeline?

I wonder about the subjects that draw writers. Ray Gonzalez, professor and poet who runs our poetry thesis seminar this semester, talks about how he believes poets have only a few subjects we continue to return to again and again.

For me, it seems, these days, it's the body. With the grandfather poems, it was about the mental disintegration and physical effects of Alzheimer's, and with this new series, I am writing about myself, but I am doing so in the third person, as if I can create a mirror-self, a self that isn't-quite-me, but close enough that I can write with authority and confidence and test out, tease out the meanings behind the failings.

And with this, as with the grandfather poems, I feel most energized when I am writing exactly in that moment: writing of an exact moment of observation that occurred within twenty-four hours. Some feel they need that space of time to process, but I feel most alert right then and there. My own mind has some deep leakage, some release of memory, and though the ethereal process of remembering is a curious one, a great subject, I know I cannot preserve the drama, the cusp, of the moment without being entirely present.

I am still here, still plugging along, still overwhelmed with school. The thing that exhausts me the most is thinking about reading and writing, so it's difficult to come home and face a space that allows still more rumination about storytelling and pagination and all of that.

Last night, in memoir class, we ended with a sort of game. Trish Hampl, our instructor, is on the board of the usage committee for the American Heritage Dictionary, and she had a kind of survey asking if we felt certain word uses were completely / somewhat acceptable or completely / somewhat unacceptable, such as the use of "alright" versus "all right" and using the word "dialogue" as a verb. It was an entertaining way to end our session, with much passion around the table, a kind of nerdy debate. It was nice to be in that sort of company, where we can squabble over whether or not it's OK to pronounce "jewelry" with three syllables or two or how we might say "aberrant." It felt frivolous, but I agree with Trish--it's important to recognize the power and importance of being that sort of gatekeeper.

emily dickinson + anne carson

It only makes sense, while I immerse myself in Emily Dickinson, that so much of my other reading is influenced by that dashing writer. In fact, linking Anne Carson, a figure who seems to prefer a poetic life outside of the direct gaze, one a bit shy during Q&A, is not so difficult a task--on the surface, there are the functions of punctuation (bracket, dash), the notion of breath, the intense scrutiny and diversion of form. There are differences too: Emily Dickinson seemed to work in seclusion, save reading and letters, whereas Carson's work, especially most recently, really emphasizes the collaborative experience.

When asked about her Sappho fragments, Anne Carson quoted the last stanza of Emily Dickinson's 1209th poem:

The Fruit perverse to plucking,
But leaning to the Sight
With the ecstatic limit
Of unobtained Delight --

Carson said this speaks to what she was doing with the Sappho fragments.

A bit earlier, in discussing the fifteen pronoun sonnets, she spoke of influences: Gertrude Stein and "On Poetry and Grammar" as well as Keats letter "On Shakespeare." Additionally, she referenced Dickinson's 1696:

These are the days that Reindeer love
And pranks the Northern star --
This is the Sun's objective,
And Finland of the Year.

I'm still lingering in a biographical study of Emily Dickinson, but I plan to move out of that and into the exploration of poets and work Dickinson influenced--looking at Susan Howe's My Emily Dickinson, the Adrienne Rich essay "Vesuvius at Home" and Lucie Brock-Broido's collection of poems called The Master Letters, among others.

congrats, u of mn!

My school has been ranked #14 by Poets and Writers in the MFA Rankings.

when anne carson comes to town

Anne Carson visited our campus via the Joseph Warren Beach Lecture series. The website blurb explains it best:

50 Year Anniversary of the Joseph Warren Beach Lectures in Literature
Sunday October 18, 2009 4:00 pm
Coffman Union Theater

Parking: See map. Plan your trip.
Admission: Free and open to the University of Minnesota community and the general public. No advanced tickets necessary.

Nothing seems more appropriate to celebrate the rich 50 year history of the Joseph Warren Beach Lectures in Literature than bringing Anne Carson to the the University of Minnesota campus. Since 1959, when the series was created to honor former English professor and chair Joseph Warren Beach, the endowment has allowed Twin Cities audiences to hear from some of the brightest luminaries in literature, from critics such as Lionel Trilling, Edward Said, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, to writers such as Mary McCarthy, Robert Pinsky, and Tony Kushner. True to both sides of this tradition, Carson is a poet and scholar, translator and essayist, Classicist and experimental artist, often within the same frame.

Recently, Carson has exhilarated East Coast audiences with live mash-ups of poetry, dance, and performance art, drawing fans such as Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson. This fall Carson, along with two of Merce Cunningham’s dancers, ventures west to bring a couple of her best-known such collaborations to the Twin Cities. With dancers Rashaun Mitchell (who choreographed) and Marcie Munnerlyn accompanying, Carson will read portions of her translated Sappho text further fragmented through the use of three other readers. Of this piece, titled “Bracko,” the New York Times wrote: “Sappho’s lush, often cruel observations on love were mirrored but not mimed in Mr. Mitchell’s choreography,” leaving the critic wanting more “such complicated marriages of movement and text.”

Originally created for a Harvard conference, “Possessive Used as Drink (Me): A Lecture in the Form of 15 Sonnets” incorporates Carson reading, a projection of dancers with an audio track, and Mitchell and Munnerlyn. For Carson, noted Alex Dimitrov of Poets & Writers, “Poetry does not occur only on the page, nor the stage—it occurs as words flit through the mind and the body, as they engage with other bodies, dancing bodies, and the objects around them.”

Carson’s many publications include her latest translation An Oresteia: Agamemnon by Aiskhylos; Elektra by Sophokles; Orestes by Euripides (Faber & Faber, 2009). Her written works, too, are complicated marriages of poetry and criticism, translation and fiction. She has won the Lannan Literary Award, the Pushcart Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a MacArthur Fellowship. A Canadian, Carson is currently Distinguished Poet-in-Residence at New York University.

The Joseph Warren Beach Endowment is honored to welcome Anne Carson to the University of Minnesota for the 50th anniversary of the Joseph Warren Beach Lectures in Literature.

For more information, visit the Joseph Warren Beach Lectures in Literature section of this site or call 612-625-3363.

Choreographer and dancer Mitchell said during the Q&A that he was compelled by the bracket, considering things like the ties that bind us, using the silver ropes to take it away from something violent, and creating brackets with rope to interact with.

Anne Carson explained that "each time it finds its rhythm" when speaking of this complicated collaboration--not only were the Sappho poems translated (relationship between ancient and contemporary poet) but those poems were then restructured with partner Bob Currie (who spoke of the multiple voices by saying, "We do a lot by chance," and as the form becomes more complex, you have to simplify the message--focusing on the combination existing on the stage), then there is relationship of poet with dance, and finally, Carson also brings in members of the university community (in this case, the former department chair of the English Literature program, Paula Rabinowitz and a first year MFA candidate, Sarah Fox).

Maria Damon (pictured in the second to last photo with Paula Rabinowitz and the woman we can thank for all these events running so beautifully, Terri Sutton) asked a question regarding the most interesting question asked at a Q&A, which allowed Carson to speak of the moment, which is so important to pieces such as these, and how "questions come out of the ligature of the room." Bob Currie cited an instance in the 1980s after seeing a ghost-themed piece of John Cage's, where, given blank stares from the audience, he offered to do another piece, at which point the hands went up, and Currie spoke of how a ten-year-old asked the question, "Mr. Cage, do ghosts ever get lonely?" to which Cage replied, "Your question is too beautiful to answer, and we'll end there."

This wasn't, of course, the end of their Q&A--a few more questions revealed that the first piece, "Possessive Used as Drink (Me): A Lecture in the Form of 15 Sonnets" came from a request for a lecture on pronouns for Harvard, the Sappho star map worked by including yellow blobs which turned out to be from cloud formations over NYC, the stars helped choose how to plan the language, and generally, there was inclusion of a DVD that ended with 183 brackets bursting onto the screen in place of stars.

We also learned Carson sometimes includes musicians--and she was asked if there was an intentionality of pitches in voices when missing that music--to which Carson spoke of including a sound sculptor and having an attunement with the emotion of a particular sonnet which also was reflected in pace and cadence--they could stretch language to match better with the dance if need be.

Meryl also has a post regarding tonight's reading; please do go check it out.