Rough week. Didn’t much feel like writing in the blog; didn’t much feel like writing at all. That’s the pleasant and torturous thing about a Poem-a-Day grind– it doesn’t respect what you feel like. Once you’ve made the commitment, you’ll do just about anything to keep it, even if it makes you feel rotten about your own abilities. Still, when you think you have nothing left in the tank, you surprise yourself. After phoning it in for a couple days, I have two drafts that I’m genuinely excited about. I’m working on my letter to Heather today, and for a moment, was tempted to include both… until I realized that both are unpolished and do all of the things she’s warning me against. And I don’t think I’ll have much energy for revising these until the end of the month. Only 11 days left.

If my brother-in-law gets extremely lucky and scores Rockies tickets, I fully plan to send my next packet from Denver.

Oct 1 - House With Chimaeras
Oct 2 - Expert Advice for Your Flight from Dallas/Fort Worth to Chicago-Midway
Oct 3 - Expert Advice for Your Televangelism Ministry
Oct 4 - While Jobless, I Eat Snack Foods With Famous People
Oct 5 - Bayside
Oct 6 - Shit-Town
Oct 7 - Actaeon
Oct 8 - Box and Whisker Plot
Oct 9 - Falsely Accused of Being a Terrorist
Oct 10 - The Dog in Me
Oct 11 - Dumpstering
Oct 12 - Long Knife Night
Oct 13 - Claudius
Oct 14 - Ghazal Without Repeated Word
Oct 15 - Sick Herd
Oct 16 - Houses On the Street Where It’s Sunny
Oct 17 - Things I Tried to Forget You
Oct 18 - Owner of a Lonely Heart
Oct 19 - Expert Advice for Your Day at the Track

Obsession watch

Poems in which people turn into animals: 7. And in “Ghazal Without Repeated Word,” the speaker turns into fruit. I have got to stop.

Prepositioning: Getting worse. It’s leaking into the titles recently, though I’m using the excuse that two of the four are lines from songs. I have got to stop.

Robots: None! Hooray for self-restraint!

(I don’t really have that many robot poems. Swear.)

The stereo has been on constantly, but there has been a pronounced lack of music in my life of late. Maybe this will change when Ladybug gets back from Italy tonight.

I did a poetry reading today, my first public reading since I was an undergraduate. It was part of the West End Poetry Weekend, which was arranged by the Carrboro Parks and Recreation Division. I’m grateful to the folks who set it up, particularly Kim Andrews, who did a great deal to make it happen.

Ellen read just before I did, and in case there was any question, Ellen rocks completely. If you have not bought her book yet, you should buy it from Bull City or from Amazon.

After the reading, I sat in football traffic for a little over an hour trying to see the Four-String show. I’ll be working with them tomorrow night, coaching improv for the first time since I walked away from DSI in early 2006. I don’t know what to expect. I’m nervous. I really thought I had shut the door on improv for good. There’s not another team I can think of that could have even coaxed me this far. Part of me hopes that I go and just don’t feel it at all, and we call it quits there. Part of jme hopes it’s a perfect fit. Either way, I’m a little more excited about it than I thought I would be.

Response #4 from Heather arrived in today’s mail. Could I love Warren Wilson any more? I don’t think so.

With four grad school packets in this semester and very little worry about how I will accomplish the fifth (my writing schedule this month has been such that I will have no problem whatsoever coming up with 25 hours per week), I’m getting back into some other projects. I’m exploring the possibility, along with Bill and Jeremy, of purchasing CLMP’s electronic submissions manager for Inch, which would allow us to go paperless and I think it would help our response time (which has been pretty good, I think… we’ve never held anything for more than a quarter and get most back within a month; it’s the ones we like that take us longer, so we generally respond personally to any rejection that we’ve held for more than two months).

I’ve also asked the CLMP listserv for some strategies for soliciting work, and I’m preparing to send some gushing fan letters to poets I don’t know this weekend, asking them to send us short poems. I like that when I solicit, I’m not just saying, “Hey, send me some good poems.” Anyone can do that. I get to ask for the short work, the peculiar tidbits that some poets don’t know where to send, otherwise. I’m excited. With one exception (an author I adore but never heard back from), I have never solicited work from someone I hadn’t met at some point, even if it was just in passing.

zomg new Radiohead this morning. The link to download was in my inbox this morning.

Warren Wilson’s winter 2008 faculty has been posted.

Poetry: Betty Adcock, Debra Allbery, Marianne Boruch, Jennifer Grotz, Brooks Haxton, A. Van Jordan, Maurice Manning, Heather McHugh, Steve Orlen, Barbara Ras, Ellen Bryant Voigt (Visiting), Eleanor Wilner

Fiction: Wilton Barnhardt, Maud Casey, Charles D’Ambrosio, Anthony Doerr, C.J. Hribal, Victor LaValle, Michael Martone, Debra Spark, Megan Staffel, Dominic Smith, Peter Turchi (Director)

I was thoroughly planning to write down names on my preference form for the first time this semester. But, a couple of the names I fully expected to see aren’t there, and more than a couple names I really didn’t expect are there, too. Now I don’t know how I would narrow it down! In the past, I’ve usually gone to residencies without having read work by most of the faculty; this semester, there are only two poets I haven’t read yet. I bet I can fix that before January.

The final results are in: I’m growing a beard, and by a margin of one vote to none, Ladybug will be growing a soul patch. She revealed last night that she began years ago. I can hardly see it, but I’ll trust her.

She heads to Italy today for work. Yuck. At least there are kitties in the house.

I’m engaged in another poem-a-day month, the first one I have done where I haven’t posted the poems somewhere public. I have three co-conspirators this time, including the lovely Ruba Ahmed, who did this with me in June. So far, everyone’s phoned it in at least once, but everybody has also nailed it right on the head at least once.

I’ve used the month as an excuse to give myself some formal challenges– rhyming, imitation, blank verse. I’ll probably attempt others, though likely on the weekends when I have time to write. Working a full day makes it hard to concentrate on one of these as long as I would like.

Deborah Ager did something in April that I thought was cool– she didn’t post the poems, but did post the titles. So, here are mine thus far:

Oct 1 - House With Chimaeras
Oct 2 - Expert Advice for Your Flight from Dallas/Fort Worth to Chicago-Midway
Oct 3 - Expert Advice for Your Televangelism Ministry
Oct 4 - While Jobless, I Eat Snack Foods With Famous People
Oct 5 - Bayside
Oct 6 - Shit-Town
Oct 7 - Actaeon
Oct 8 - Box and Whisker Plot

Also, I haven’t been shaving since I left for vacation… I’m considering doing the beard thing again for a while. It’s generally pretty weak, but it beats shaving.

What do you think? Your vote would be welcome in the comments, though Ladybug’s vote will be worth like 150 of yours.

Also taking votes as to whether Ladybug should grow a beard.

I’m in Phenix City, AL today, trying to do some work in a hotel. I drove in last night to see my pal Emma, but since it’s a football weekend, I’m staying the next city over. We had a nice dinner (certain to start rumors with the restaurant staff, who are used to seeing her there with Will) and then Big Whit came to join us for drinks. There was a hilariously bad lounge singer, a woman who had to be at least 65, with a voice that was a cross between Chloris Leachman and Louis Armstrong.

I had planned to do some work today, but I think first I’ll watch the Carolina/Miami football game. I don’t care one iota about football, but I’m on vacation. I figure I’ll catch up with Emma around dinner time, but since I’m currently in eastern time and she’s in central, I have a little extra time. I get a kick out of that. We’re in the same county, but different time zones.