first day, squinty eyes

I have that through-a-blender feeling of a long day well spent: I can tell my internship is going to be an actual learning experience for me, my class went smoothly despite the boring-the-snot-out-of-you aspect of syllabus day, and I had forgotten how nice it is to be in the company of my peers in thesis seminar (and out for a beer at the eclectically decorated Kitty Kat Club after).

The way our seminar, as run by poet and essayist Ray Gonzalez, works is this: third years bring in those bricks that are their manuscripts, and second years bring in collections of five poems at a time to be looked at. The result is a bit of terror on behalf of those second years, who somehow have to cobble together a draft that won't be entirely shameful in 365 days.

Ray, lover of lists, brought in some thoughts on manuscripts, professing his own view of the manuscript as a single poem made up of a collection of poems. We spoke of how the act of reading an entire book of poems can result in a satisfactory feeling, but when asked to select one or two gems to include, say, in a course packet for a poetry workshop, we might be at a loss. Carolyn Forche, who was my mentor a number of years ago, advised me to--read three books of poetry a week; every season study a new poet thoroughly; and read a book of poems in a single sitting. I haven't been faithful to this formula; perhaps this is the semester to make an attempt.

But instead of seasonal poets, I will have monthly poets--I am taking an independent study with Michael Dennis Browne where I will study the canonical American poets Emily Dickinson, Edna St Vincent Millay, and Elizabeth Bishop. We have our first meeting on Thursday where we will construct some sort of game plan that will allow my acquisition of credits for said literary exploration.

bon-fire

(Shawn, who actually knows how to use Photoshop, spliced the above version)

(photoshop diptych tutorial)

L to R: Ryan, Bart, Colleen C, Amanda, Colleen M, Garrett, Meryl, Shawn

This weekend, Ryan and I were blessed with a series of guests--Saturday evening, full of friends from various aspects in life, and Sunday was dedicated to some of my favorite MFA people: Amanda (who is recently featured in Lit and will soon be in New Orleans Review) (and her boyfriend Will would be with us, but he is Ph.D'ing at Cornell), Colleen C (our fearless dislocate leader) and her boyfriend Bart (who is working on a lit Ph.D and is also poetry MFA), Colleen M (whose work has been featured in dear camera, among other places) and her boyfriend Garrett (who is soon to be speaking in Austin on the Politics of Naming, which sounds incredibly interesting), and Meryl (whose poetry inspired by the work of Virginia Woolf has inspired my own focus on canonical writers and her blog inspired me to start this one) and her husband Shawn (who is hugely talented and I will be selfishly taking advantage of said talent).

Amanda, Colleen C, Colleen M, Meryl, and I make up a loose collective within in the program. Last spring, we did a bit of collective reading, and this autumn, we'll work on chapbook manuscripts.


(The evening before, I allowed my husband and my friend's husband to lighter-fluid a book I'd been using to futz with, found-text-wise, as these two charming men, one a bit tipsy and the other equally giddy, were seeking something compelling to toss into our bonfire--and I took a few photographs, which somehow allowed this fahrenheit 451'ing of a biography on one of my favorite poets--this Plath biography, I must add, I picked up a library book sale for a few pennies and discovered I owned a duplicate, but still. Burning books? Then: I kept thinking of the beauty of altered books.)

It's strangely beautiful.

orientation irk

This week has been so all-out flattening, I've forgotten what components of my life have been neglected. I come home, and if the rage at some particular point raised in orientation or frustration at the rush hour (part of being a college student generally means wonky schedule, which generally means the bonus of zippy traffic experiences, but orientation brings us firmly in the parameters of real-world scheduling, which is misery, particularly for someone like me)--if these burbling emotions have not dissipated, I stomp around a bit, and then Ryan settles me down with some ridiculous movie, or I read a book of poems whose clarity or language cheers me (Here, Bullet was tonight's reading, and though it is not flawless, there are points of buoyancy and it was enough to remove me from the funk--I also recently finished Old Heart by Stanley Plumly, which I adored).

Orientation for composition courses is nearly over, not without the requisite drama and doldrums.

But, I am amused at one of my fiction peers' characterizations of our sessions. I mentioned how the MFAs seemed to be the misfits in the back of the classroom, our arms firmly crossed, New Yorkers surreptitiously paged through. Being comp, the sneered-at division of language and humanities, known as a torture device for some MFAs (just to clarify: I requested comp--no lie), there is a motley mix of graduate instructors, ranging from the die-hard Writing Studies Ph.Ds, to American Studies grad students, to Lit grad students, to us (MFAs). My friend, whose swing-messing metaphor remains a vehicle for describing poor writing a year later, pointed out that the Writing Studies people loved talking in terms of rhetoric and Aristotle and ethos, the American Studies and Lit people loved applying their gender and socio-economic and post-colonial lenses, and the MFAs loved picking at the language and form.

Ah, predictability and your sweet little boxes you fit us into.

the night before the first day back

(photo taken on Ryan's camera phone)

Tomorrow begins orientation for those teaching comp. I've got two semesters' worth ahead of me, and I think I prefer teaching any sort of writing to teaching literature, but I could certainly be wrong. Improving writing feels more tangible to me than improving literature comprehension, but I might just be saying that because it's what I face. It's a bit like the current season often being my favorite--we're facing autumn, so I'm in love with autumn; as winter approaches, I look forward to the snow; we live in Minnesota, so I yearn for spring long before we see evidence of it; summer coming means camping and hiking and Hay Creek.

Things this semester:
- Teaching comp. to first year students
- Taking thesis seminar with Ray Gonzalez, a memoir class with Trish Hampl, and an independent study that will focus on Emily Dickinson + Edna St Vincent Millay + Elizabeth Bishop with Michael Dennis Browne, who is retiring after this semester
- poetry editor for dislocate
- and a few mysterious projects I'm hoping to share in the near future.

Tonight is my last night of summer, always that strange portal of time, and after dinner, while listening to "Heart and Bones" by this local band, my husband and I held hands and watched the fingers of pink and blue mingle with the Mississippi River.

bread loaf in pictures

Day 1: Depart Twin Cities to long delay in Newark airport. From Burlington, we take a shuttle onto "the mountain," as it is called, in cell-phone-less country. Dinner, settle into rooms, opening remarks with Michael Collier followed by a reading by Trish Hampl and Michael Collier.

Day 2: First workshops, readings by special guests Lorrie Moore (fell in love with Lorrie Moore when reading Anagrams and Self Help--these were my just-before-sleep books while at BL) and CK Williams, evening readings with Lynn Freed and Alan Shapiro.


Day 3: Second workshop day. Spent most of today exploring and even more: reading. And reading.


Day 4: Trish Hampl's lecture on memoir (which can be found in this collection), sat in on Copper Canyon press talk, first craft class on diction.


Day 5: Third poetry workshop, Charlies' talk on "Lush Life" as well as a panel on the editing process with Baxter, Thomas Mallon and their editor Dan Frank. Craft class on verb tenses, and more readings. I wandered across the field and into the woods that face Bread Loaf.


Day 6: Today was a "day off" (no workshops--fiction and poetry/non-fiction alternate days) with a "Writer's Cramp" race to begin the day. Lunch was a picnic at the Robert Frost farm where Middlebury professor John Elder gave a talk about Frost's experiences in Vermont and how that was reflected in his writing. The evening readers were Robert Cohen and Natasha Tretheway.


Day 7: Tom Sleigh gave a lecture called "Thom Gunn's New Jerusalem, or How to Voice Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n Roll" (which EBV piped up during). I went on an afternoon Robert Frost trail walk with John Elder, went to a craft class given by James Allen Hall on adding the element of surprise, went to the book signing on Treman Lawn, then the reading given by Sigrid Nunez and Ellen Bryant Voigt.


Day 8: Fourth day of workshop for the poets. Today was the sit-down lunch served by faculty and fellows, which proved to be highly entertaining, as I suspect it is every year. Had a craft class on found poetry, went to a reading with Matthew Dickman, Cecilia Rodriguez Milanes, and Ann Hood, and in the evening, the readers were Vikram Chandra and Arthur Sze.


Day 9: Alan Shapiro gave a lecture on "Translation and 'Linguistic Hospitality'" in which there was a guest performance by Matthew Dickman. I sat in on a talk with Gary Clark from the Vermont Studio Center (and lusted after the idea of a month to write and nothing but), attended an excellent class on lineation, attended a panel with editors from New England Review, Ploughshares, and Atlantic Monthly.


Day 10: Last day of workshops. Sat in on Louise Gluck's talk on the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Craft class on revision with Tom Sleigh. Evening readers were Charlie Baxter and Ed Hirsch.

Day 11: I explored the woods at the back of the campus. Evening readers were Lisa Fugard, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, and David Shields.


There were several events that I was either not present at or did not bring my camera. For a full list of Bread Loaf's 2009 public offerings, you can open this pdf file.

Check out my full Bread Loaf Flickr photo set, which has so very many more pictures. \

Also: If you want to use my photographs, please email me (acertainslantoflight at hotmail dotcom) for permission. I've never declined permission, of course, but it makes me feel a lot better to know. Please also make sure you attribute those photos to me (Molly Sutton Kiefer) and if you link, you can use my homepage, which is mollysuttonkiefer.com. THANKS!