what is found there

It is not for lack of topics or lack of movement and thought that this blog has so many gaping moments of quiet. It is from sheer exhaustion, from pulling myself along by inches, from one day to the next. Today's was no exception--starting with chauffeuring visiting writer Jim Shepard to his MPR interview and ending with handing out ziploc baggies to graduate students so they could take the leftover hors d'oeuvres home. (Hey, we haven't been paid since the beginning of June.)

I do want to show pictures I took from tonight's reading, want to share some thoughts about teaching freshmen writing, want to transcribe my notes from Trish's first two memoir classes, but tonight, before I stumble up to bed, confused at just how those stairs got to be so steep anyway, I want to share this: I have a little collective, a collection of four other women poets, and I am grateful for them. Tonight, we took a look at my haphazard chapbook draft and despite the clear indications of my eyelids that I am, indeed, very very tired, I also feel this strange sense of energy and purpose and excitement at sitting down and shuffling and clipping and tidying and generating and slicing and injecting. The work of revising terrifies me, mostly because I don't want to destroy a good thing or conflate a bad, but I'm gaining confidence, and with these four voices behind me, I feel almost brave, almost ready to polish and push this thing out into the world. A knock from the nest, so to speak.