A place for language, poetry, domesticity, and the Ice
I am in love with my morning drive to work. Because I work much farther away than I did, and my kids’ daycare is close to where I used to live, I go straight to work real early (leave at 6:15) so I can pick the kids up at night. Marc and I now split [...]
Yesterday, we found out that our dog Nilas does not have cancer. After two weeks of “she has cancer, we just don’t know how bad,” we found out she doesn’t have cancer. Sure, she’s just a dog, some would say. One of my brothers has had a series of dogs named “Buster” because they’re just [...]
I’m working on putting together a few versions of chapbooks for some contests–even though I didn’t write these poems to become a chapbook (for those of you who don’t know what a chapbook is, see this), it’s possible to form some of them into a cohesive short collection. Most are 16-24 pages. I’m trying to [...]
So I’ve been working on this series of poems. I’m not one to really focus on how I write, despite the number of times I had to try to explain it during my MFA. But I have to focus on so much to make this series work, that I’m really paying attention here. I’ve found [...]
When I was in graduate school for poetry, and my brother was going through some rough times himself, he started studying mindfulness, and passed some of it along to me when I was having a hard time getting a hold of my emotions. I was writing a book of poetry about my parents, who died [...]
Lucille Clifton was one of the most influential poets of my early years. My first year in MFA-land, I read Good Woman, and I didn’t know what to do with this voice I loved and connected with, but couldn’t figure out how amazingly tight and perfect it seemed. Her poetry was one of the strongest [...]
Today I had a craving for “Howl.” I have since hearing about the movie version of Ginsberg’s life, which I’d love to see. I needed to combine my poetry world with my work world–where I needed to have a sense of rebellion, of barbaric yawp–today. Instead, I left work early (I had already put in [...]
1. My father-in-law has brain cancer. My husband shaved his head in solidarity with his dad. One of the many reasons I love him.
2. My dog Nilas has cancer. Some sort of soft tissue sarcoma on her leg. The dog oncologist thinks he can remove just the tumor and she’ll be fine. I did not [...]
Not group-think, but different.
I’ve been thinking about the poems in this new manuscript, and how they fit into “sets,” not quite like a set list that I would prepare for a reading, but more like a playlist from my ipod. Poems that echo about each other even after you’ve gone past them, and some that [...]
No, not the show. Although I do feel a bit like my cousin Issac, in that I feel like I’m watching it, not because it’s entertaining anymore, but because I’ve made an investment in it, and have to see it through to the end. Sort of like forcing myself to finish a meal that I [...]
You are currently browsing the Little Oblivion blog archives for February, 2010.