My attempts to re-energize this blog hit a minor snafu mid-way through the Warren Wilson residency when my computer died. From then on, precious computer-minutes in the Jensen lab were spent on the day job and Bull City Press. This blog began to atrophy again. Even when I begin thinking that a public dialog is a good idea, I am undone!

Well, no worries. I’m back now, working the day job (which is a little bit stressful in January, as a new semester is starting), the night job, and the side job. I will meet my new class of undergraduates for the first time this afternoon, though many have already wandered into our Blackboard course. I already know three of the sixteen students reasonably well, which will be great for me (but unfortunate for them, since I’ll be holding them to a higher standard in accordance with their extreme talent and high potential).

Do you know fiction writers? Please tell them to send short fictions into Inch! We’re in need of a few more fiction submissions.

Of course, we like poets, too.

I’ve had an epiphany about a writing project that would be fun to work on, and have engaged a co-conspirator. It’s more of an editing project about writing, to be honest, but it could lead to a neat book that would be fun to do with Bull City Press.

Pet peeve: Workshop experiences where people are offering suggestions for changes even before observing what the poem is doing successfully. There’s just no better way to announce to the world that you believe your own work is superior than doing this. And even if your work is superior, why do you feel the need to announce it so clearly? Criticism is useful, but so is praise; it’s okay to make some broad suggestions for re-writing but if you feel a localized section of the poem needs some work, air your concern and let the poet figure out how to solve it.

I dreamt last night of a box of my grandfather’s possessions, buried in a remote corner of the basement. We’d found them while re-tiling the floor; there was a power cord that we couldn’t find the plug for, and we followed it into the ground, digging up first a power strip then a box of old newspaper clippings and photographs. My grandfather knew things, terrible things. Burying things is a curious act; it only foreshadows our own ends, leaving in question what, and when, will be unearthed.

After some weeks of silence, I finally feel sufficiently chastised to get something on this page. I’m back in Swannanoa at the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers residency, where I am surrounded for ten days by excellent writers and good people. Coming back here feels like slipping on a comfortable pair of pants. (Insert your own crotch joke here if you like, but that’s not what I was aiming for.) There are lots of opportunities to hang out, and the temptation is there to do nothing but– at the expense of quite, meditative time. I’m feeling quieter than I did this summer, or last winter. Maybe even a little moribund.

My main objective for the ten days: don’t get sick. I have vitamins and Airborne and all that god stuff. Must stay healthy. Must live healthy.

I realized on the way up here that I’d managed to go through the motions all December without working on a poem. Simply the promise a good WWC drubbing was enough: as I was driving up the mountain, I started working on one in my head.

It feels strange to write in this blog. I have enjoyed the time away from it. Perhaps my next life will be a much more private one.