miss kate underground

2011-10-06T23:13:00.000-04:00

I'm afraid I have been remiss in keeping up this blog.

I have recently had the good fortune to be appointed as the "Sydney City Poet": in this role I have been creating a new blog/website. I very much if you have stumbled on me at Miss Kate Underground that you will follow me there:

sydneycitypoet.tumblr.com

2009-03-06T19:57:00.003-05:00

Now I realise that I've left this blog lying fallow for a little while, so I have no idea if it will do any good to post this info, but my book is apparently in shops in Australia now. Selected shops. The independent ones that usually have poetry books. I imagine. I don't really know anything.

I've been told it's pretty, so that's nice. I know at least 2 copies have sold. That's also nice. That said, I looked at a handful of the poems the other night and wanted to edit them. It's hard to let go...

So. There. I'm proud of it, even as I'm aware of my little book's shortcomings. Fire Season is out in the world.

2009-01-06T05:13:00.001-05:00

A year ago the idea of leaving Australia again was really difficult—this year it’s not as hard. Which is not to say that this hasn’t been a wonderful trip home, or that it hasn’t reinforced once again for me just how Australian I am. I guess I feel like I have made something like a family for myself in DC, and I plan to enjoy this last six or so months there, since I probably won’t live there again. The fact that I will go from calling it home to being just a visitor—it’s a strange feeling. I haven’t quite got my head around it all yet.

So—Friday I fly out again. I’ve talked my friend B into picking me up (very little talking-into involved… he’s very kind) and then the weekend—and then—class on Monday. Is that all?

Being home is such a shock. It’s lovely to be with my family—but I’m a little bit shell-shocked with the idea of catching up with people.

I feel like this is going to be a good year. Something in the sky.

I went through old files the other day—throwing some things out (I’m going to try to throw out when I get back to DC too…) and was amazed to find a lot of old essays and drafts I had been working on. Filed carefully. That I was determined to apprentice myself that way, so seriously.

*

On a frivolous—not to mention shamefaced—note, I’ve become addicted to a bad television show. I used to occasionally watch it when I left the television on after watching something that was… marginally better. And its contrivances drove me crazy. And now, I find the contrivances, the blandnesses, the banter that’s not funny oddly endearing. Oh, the show is NCIS. There, I’ve outed myself.

I think it might be a little bit less of a blog-fueled year. I’ve been discovering the pleasures of pen(cil) and paper again. But I’m going to try to stop in when I can.

2008-12-11T10:59:00.001-05:00

So, flying today. Have apparently misplaced my paper ticket. Yes, that’s right. There are still people who ISSUE paper tickets. Rang United, who it was all booked with. Their response? “We have no record of you.” They said—you’ve lost your ticket? Well you’ll have to buy a new one and fill out an application. Then if there are no problems we’ll reimburse you. Seriously? So I rang Lufthansa, and they were great. Confirmed that, yes, as far as airlines are concerned I exist. Also, that with a handy six digit reference code I could go to a ticket counter and they would sort me out. And no mention of “oh, and buy your ticket all over again.” I hope I never have reason to call United again.

*

Rant over, I can’t believe I lost the ticket. It was all together, and I have the folder it was in. I remember the ticket, and am sure that when I pulled it out to give my ticket number to my travel agent to confirm my final flights that I would have put it back in the folder. Apparently not. Demonstrating once more that I apparently will be the sort of person who ends up keeping her tax information in the fruit bowl. Though I suppose if it’s all in the same fruit bowl that won’t be too much of a problem.

*

I anticipate a week of reading—being in places where I don’t know the language always leads to deep reading—and, hopefully, a little writing. Though I find writing hard during the period I am actually on the hoof. Notebook writing.

*

Reading Sontag’s diaries. Reading other bits. Books in the bag for over the break? Desnos. Darwish. Carson (of course). Perhaps I should add John Clare. A few novels. Am going to read Kafka’s diaries when I get home—they’re calling to me.

2008-12-10T19:39:00.001-05:00

End of semester—exhaustion. Finished my final paper, and it wasn’t what it should be. But then, I always think those final papers at the point I hand them in are really a starting point, and not an end point. So, perhaps I have the start of something.

*

I’ve been sad since my mother sent me the news that Dorothy Porter is gone—too soon. I have a number of friends who knew her much better than I, but she is someone that I admired, and wanted more of.

*

Leave tomorrow for Frankfurt, then Bulgaria. I guess there’ll be a lot of sleep on the place.

*

Anticipating lying on Australian ground, trying to figure out what Anne Carson is doing with error, and exactly makes it different from how other poets might choose error.

*

Packing, now. Triage: must take, can take, don’t need to take.

2008-12-08T22:17:00.000-05:00

The past weeks and the next few days are incredibly busy—such that I haven’t really had a chance to write. (Or update the Independence Day Project… a lapse I am ashamed of, though the project will be finished, when I am able to finish it.)

My prospectus is done, and now it’s just a matter of finishing the final paper. Oh wait—is it really just a matter of that? Okay, perhaps a little more complicated.

I leave the US on Thursday—flying first to Frankfurt overnight, where I’ll have about half a day before I fly onward to Bulgaria. I’m visiting the lovely Carolyn Emigh! (I’m hoping, too, that there will be time for a side trip to Macedonia, to visit the poet Nikola Madzirov. It’s not certain that that’s going to happen.) Then I’ll be dashing home, via a night in Singapore, with an overnight in Frankfurt… and then… home.

So I have a few days to finish this paper—which is due the day I leave anyway. And it will be done. Having written and made notes for the full length of the paper, I now have a thesis. One which I can make work. So. That’s nice.

I am also applying to MFA programs… which I am hoping (determined…) to have finished before I leave as well. Madness.

Then there’s that whole packing/making sure I know where my stuff is/paying bills list of things to do.

Oh, and I spent the weekend getting stuff in order my advisor’s study (since I’m also the research assistant.) Making a list of where everything is. How to contact me in an emergency. Etc.

So. That’s the status report.

2008-11-13T22:31:00.001-05:00

The past weeks have, again, accelerated. I know that I should have written all about election day, and the day after—but I didn’t. It’s been a busy time.

Belatedly, though, I will note that on election day I:

- first tutored at Duke Ellington (no students, but I got the crossword done…)
- had coffee at Baked and Wired, chatting with the Baked Girls. (Nathan falls into this category too… I don’t think I’ve told him that yet.)
- then C picked me up to go drive around North Virginia for a while. The idea? To find some polling places for him to photograph, and me to make whatever notes I felt like making. The method? Cross a bridge from DC to Rosslyn and get lost. The theory? After getting lost, something interesting will happen. The outcome? Didn’t find the polling places, but instead found an “Oriental Supermarket” that, among other things, sold Milo. So I’ve had a week of excellent chocolate milk… and now the Milo is all gone.
- Back to C’s place before heading toward Meg’s for the special election edition meeting of the Baked and Wired Knitting Society… except then Meg had to cancel at the last minute.
- Impromptu invitation (after assurances that I would not be intruding) to the house of one of C’s friends. Me, glued to CNN and MSNBC electoral maps for 4 hours.
- Obama! Obama!
- Joining the spontaneous crowd gathered outside the White House between midnight and 2.30am. Wow.

I slept in the next morning. You’re shocked.

Since then, there’s been more stuff to get done. I presented papers at two conferences last weekend. I feel like I am living in the aftermath of Friday, when I flew to New Hampshire and back on the same day, in order to present a paper at the Milton conference at the lovely St Anselm’s College. The day itself was a little hellish—I got up at 3am to get the shuttle to BWI airport and didn’t get back home until midnight. Still, I met some lovely people, including a Benedictine monk who was knitting a brightly coloured hat.

Oh, and knitting has been treating me very nicely. Such fun! Such madness! Let’s have a caucus race!

This week has been a bit of a marathon. I’m still going to work for another hour or so tonight… of that’s the plan. If sleep takes over, I won’t object…

2008-11-13T22:20:00.001-05:00

As a form of training…it is important that the poet develop a strong bond with life, to be able to observe and able to choose his subject matter. …Afterwards, he can abstract things by abstracting coincidences, and symbolize them. This time of observation (for a poet) is an elementary process akin to learning reading and writing.

—Saadi Youssef

2008-10-31T12:36:00.005-04:00

My wordle above comes care of wordle...

I’ve been doing a lot of alphabetisation, organising Carolyn’s university and home offices. And talking about definitions of “poetics,” which, as she points out, is being used in rather a vague manner. I was inspired after discussing this over lunch (there are some wonderful perks in helping organise the library…) to go home and check the OED on poetics and poesis…

The OED lists the noun uses of “poetic” (no entry for “poetics,” even though that is almost exclusively how I hear it used here…) as follows:

B. n.
1. In sing. and pl.
a. The aspect of literary criticism that deals with poetry; the branch of knowledge that deals with the techniques of poetry. Also: a treatise on poetic art, spec. that written by Aristotle.
1656 T. STANLEY Hist. Philos. II. VI. 31 Philologick... Poeticks. 1702 Perfidious P 134, I believe you are the only Man that ever read Aristotle, that had the shadow of a Reason against any thing he has said in his Poeticks. 1776 C. BURNEY Gen. Hist. Music I. Pref. p. viii, It is imagined that Plutarch took it either from his [sc. Aristotle's] Treatise on Music, or the second book of his Poetics. 1807 BYRON Let. 30 June (1973) I. 123 Even the hero of my Cornelian (who is now sitting vis-a-vis, reading a volume of my poetics) passed me in Trinity walks. 1834 Penny Cycl. II. 335/2Aristotle's genuine extant works may be divided into three classes: 1. Those relating to the philosophy of the mind... To this head may be referred..his Rhetoric and Poetic: the last of which works is imperfect. 1879 M. PATTISON Milton xiii. 200 The principle of the Aristotelean Poetic. 1917 T. S. ELIOT Prufrock 38 With your air indifferent and imperious At a stroke our mad poetics to confute. 1990 Bull. Hispanic Stud. 67 331 In the past few years, the application of narratological and semiotic approaches has proved to be crucial for the development of a poetics of the romancero.
b. The creative principles informing any literary, social or cultural construction, or the theoretical study of these; a theory of form.
1927 Contemp. Rev. July 59 M. Valéry's poetics have been accused of hermetism and of preciousness. 1973 Word 1970 26 66 Jakobson avoids the term stylistics, preferring instead poetics. 1976 Times Lit. Suppl. 2 Jan. 11/2 To subscribe to this poetic was to doubt the validity of art and the veracity of dreams. 1977 A. SHERIDAN tr. J. Lacan Écritsiii. 102 This notion must be approached through its resonances in what I shall call the poetics of the Freudian corpus.1990 Lit. & Ling. Computing 5 197/1 Now more than ever poetics aspires to integrate itself within the evolving larger field of the human sciences.
2. A writer of poetry, a poet. Obs. rare.
1687 J. PARRY To Cleveland in J. Cleveland Wks. 286 Where all Poeticks else may truckle under. 1687 J. PARRY Elegy on Cleveland in J. Cleveland Wks. 285 'Tis your Crime T'upbraid the State-Poeticks of this time.
3. In pl. Poetic composition; the writing of poems. Obs. rare.
1851 T. CARLYLE Life J. Sterling II. x. 285 Our valiant friend..was not to be repulsed from his Poetics either by the world's coldness or by mine.

Most people seem to have abandoned the original, Aristotelian use of the word. So 1b is the winner when it comes to the way the word is bandied around.

But then! Ah yes, but the… there is also poesis. It’s entry is as follows:

1. A poem; poems collectively, poetry, verse; poesy. Now rare.
1565 J. HALL Courte of Vertu (title) A poesis in forme of a uisyon. 1567 T. DRANT tr. Horace Arte of Poetrie sig. Aiiiv,Not lore enough in Poesis, let them be sweetlye fynde, And let them leade to where them liste the hearers plyante mynde. 1617 J. DAVIES Wits Bedlam sig. H3v, Poesie be..A speaking Picture..Then must a Picture needs be made, by this, A silent Poesis, subiect to the Eye. 1742 W. CLARKE & W. BOWYER tr. J. Trapp Lect. Poetry 22 We generally use the Words Poesis and Poetica, Poesy and Poetry, indiscriminately. 1894 Amer. Jrnl. Philol. 15 16 Before Lucilius's time a single play (poema) had been called satura, he gave this designation to his thirty books (poesis). 1899 J. E. SPINGARN Hist. Lit. Crit. 27 Poetica is the art of composing poetry, poesis, the poetry composed according to this art.1993 Faquery 1: who writes R.A.P.? in rec.arts.poems (Usenet newsgroup) 16 Apr., Discussions about the art of poetry and the science of poesis, including issues about use of language, poetical forms, and the work of various poets.

2. The process of making; production, creation; creativity, culture (cf. POIESIS n.).
1903 L. F. WARD Pure Sociol. II. v. 88 Poesis is a form of creative synthesis. 1939 S. CHUGERMAN Lester S. Ward 271Poesis is the creative, synthetic process of the intellect applied to all the sciences and practical arts. 1963 F. C. CREWSPooh Perplex (1979) 91 It is clear that the object of study here..falls essentially into the category of art, or broadly speaking, poesis. 1989 Requiem 9 I. 35 The first poem, the Original original one..was God's literal poesis of the world.2003 Chicago Rev. (Nexis) 49 31 Reading as poesisa materially based making of the text into something of use, positioning it phrase by phrase..in complex..relation to one's projects.

This second meaning seems to me to have been lumped into “poetics” these days. Yes? No? And I’m interesting that all the uses of poesis in this second sense fall after the start of the 20th century.

2008-10-25T15:31:00.002-04:00

Weeks have rushed by of late. I don’t think I can honestly say I’ve been feeling very lazy in the last fortnight—in reality I’ve basically been run off my feet. It’s been good though. I feel a little electric: every time I sit down to the thing that needs my attention right now I feel like the attention is right there.

What’s been keeping me so busy? Writing Center and running my workshops, which have started to gain attendance. It’s funny—some days I feel really exhausted by the very idea of tutoring, but the moment my students arrive I’m right there in the work. I wish I could remember this ahead of time. I feel like I’m a grump. I guess it’s partly being so protective of my own time, which is divided between so many things. I’m tutoring at Duke Ellington, a performing arts high school a few blocks from Georgetown, two days a week—though there have been weeks when I’ve only made it to one of my days. (This week for instance: I really needed the whole of Tuesday to get things done…) But students are starting to come in, and I love talking to these students about writing—it’s really getting into fundamentals, and instilling ideas about writing as a process at the outset. It also gives me a chance to talk to them about the contexts for writing, so they know that there are different conventions for different types of writing, and they can use those conventions, and play with them, as long as they’re aware of them. I’ve also been working intensively with one particular student, and spent an hour going through a single paper he had already handed in, looking at where the writing was really strong, and where he could take it further. Every time I look at these pieces of writing at this level I feel like I’m learning about my own writing. When I grade papers, I limit myself to the amount of time I spend on individual papers, and don’t comment on every possible aspect, but instead what I think are the next steps the particular writer can master to improve, so writing improves incrementally. Perhaps that’s ingrained from my flute-playing days: I’ve read bits and pieces of gaining expertise in writing, with comparisons to the type of training a musician undergoes, and I know that it’s counterproductive to try and work on everything at once.

Of course, I don’t get around to implementing every suggestion I make to students in my own (critical) writing. But slowly comes to matter less—each paper I write there’s something that is becoming more ingrained, and my conscious attention can shift to a different factor. It generally takes 10 years—or longer—to gain mastery. (This is, in fact, a problem for wind players and singers. To reach maturity as a musician, you really do need that ten years. String players and pianists start at a very early age, but you can’t really start serious lessons on wind instruments until later, because they are physically demanding in different ways—the breath required. Wind players will often graduate from a music degree only just beginning to reach a level of expertise—or still not quite there—while string players are at a different level. This interests me a lot.) Oh, the point? I feel like I’ve really been focusing on what it takes to write a critical paper for no longer than 5 years—and I’m not sure I’ve been focussing truly for that long. I mean, I know I started at university over ten years ago (oh—realising that is… huge) but I was at sea when I started, and the feedback I got didn’t really help me figure out how to improve. I figured some things out for myself—but at the same time I’ve been reformulating my writing since I’ve been in America.

So, tutoring has been keeping me busy. Thinking about writing has been keeping me busy. Wordsworth and Coleridge have been keeping me busy—sadly it’s started to turn cold, and, today, wet, which means soon I’ll be giving up my canal-side position. I wonder where my new reading spot will be?

I feel like my thesis has been a little on the backburner in the past fortnight. I managed to sit down on Thursday morning—there were no clients in the writing center—and get some writing done towards my thesis. I want to finish the analysis of the poem I’m looking at soon—today? I can dream… maybe it will become a reality. I also have a paper to write for Monday: I have to choose three lines of a poem and write an analysis of them, between 600 and 1000 words. And that will happen today. Writing about poems takes time, but it is also joyful. I feel like reading Helen Vendler’s book Poets Thinking has helped me think about a particular way to write on poems. I learned a few things about writing from her. Good stuff!

I’ve also started to be a research/general assistant with the other hours I’m allowed to be employed by Georgetown University. This has been great—at present I’m organising a research library. It’s actually a really good workout—running up and down a stepladder with piles of books, especially when I have to reach up to the top shelf. The day after my first shelving marathon my lats were sore… it was so nice! And a good excuse to settle into a lavender flavoured bath with a copy of Vogue.

As if all that weren’t enough, there’ve been poets in town. Ilya Kaminsky came to Carolyn’s class on Wednesday, and I got to chat with him before and after class. Marvellous! He is a joyful poet, and a joyful presence. He gave me some recommendations—I love getting recommendations!—and quizzed me on who to read from Australia. (I threw in a few New Zealanders for good measure…)

And then! And then! Thursday night Adam Zagajewski read at Georgetown. Now, some people may remember the day, several years ago, that I pulled Tremor out of the Melbourne University and started reading it. The result? Well, I accosted more than one person and made them listen to or read certain poems. I went home and wrote certain poems, including “Testimony.” Then when I found books of his essays, and Without End in bookshops I immediately bought them. The days I walked into Readings and swore to myself that I just couldn’t buy any books today… that I couldn’t afford it. But whenever I found Zagajewski’s work I was scared I wouldn’t see it in Australia again. Though I suspect it’s getting to be more and more available. So—meeting him. Hearing him speak. Listening to him read. And talking to him about music—about Shostakovich and about Messiaen. About Chopin and about Mahler. About Lutosławski and about Pärt. It made me crave music!

If you haven’t read his work, please, please do. Here are a few quotes from his talk at the Lannan reading on Thursday night:

"A dissenter is someone who knows the answer—and more and more I felt that to write poetry was to know nothing."

"I think poetry is an instrument that measures the world. An instrument is a scale—but there is no knowledge built into the instrument."

"I think we survive as poets thanks to a system of illusions. We do something, and we think we do something else. And my illusion is a search for radiance."

"The border between poetry of dissent and questioning poetry is not very thick, and I think there is probably always something dissenting about poetry.

"Poetry by definition is a dissent—because it is read by few, written by few, with high standards. It’s elitist, but elitist in the least exclusive sense, in that it doesn’t cost any money. It’s a very democratic elite."

2008-10-10T12:19:00.003-04:00

Apparently the email about the writing workshops I’m holding for Liberal Studies students at Georgetown went out yesterday—this morning I had five people register for workshops. Wonderful! So that’s great. It’s all about people taking advantage of these opportunities, and it will give me a little bit more teaching experience.

In the mean time I’ve been scribbling toward this response to “The Idiot Boy”—I feel very sluggish in my writing at the moment. Damn it! Or perhaps its just that I’ve only been blog-writing and poem-writing for so long that I’m out of practice when it comes to sharp analysis, rather than “hey, I’m thinking this” or “here-is-a-hopefully-startling/apt-metaphor” writing. Hey, I’m a grad student again!

That said, I should now turn my attention to “The Idiot Boy.” At least I’ve got my Baked & Wired coffee to get… well… wired. (Doesn’t this look enticing? Jacob Grier is responsible for this photo.)

2008-10-08T22:54:00.003-04:00

As usual I’m feeling insanely busy. I also think I’m probably not managing my time as well as I could be—should be. But I got through some tutoring, some reading, some scribbling of notes today. Got through some knitting. Thought about of Anne Carson’s work. Started to think about Wordsworth again, after two days off—and at the moment, taking two days off from Wordsworth feels almost like a crime.

But I did enlighten the ducks of the C & O Canal last weekend when I saw canal-side and read the whole of Lyrical Ballads aloud to them. (I’m glad I have a segment of the canal near me that I really don’t have to share with anyone but the occasional dog and its owner, and the ducks.)

Tutoring at the Writing Center has been really busy—today was the first shift where I’ve had a breather. Read about Hegel for a while after I saw my client. While the Writing Center was quiet, I had two students come in to see me while I was tutoring (as a volunteer) at Duke Ellington this morning—it’s nice that those students are starting to take advantage of the tutoring service.

I have to write a short paper on a poem from Lyrical Ballads in the next few days—I want to get a draft of the thing done tomorrow morning, so that I can go through my ideas of the next few days. I’m mostly likely going to write on “The Idiot Boy”—there are things that interest me in it, though also things that don’t work for me. I’m giving a presentation in class next week on “Tintern Abbey” too.

Last week I was quite social—in between doing an intense amount of reading I went to see the Shakespeare Theatre Company production of Romeo and Juliet with my friend C, and two of his friends. Thursday I went to a great launch at the Library of Congress—short and sweet speeches, a few good poems, and a couple that were wonderful. Discovered the work of Sinead Morrisey. I can't wait to read more. Friday I decided not to go dancing at the last minute, and instead stayed in. But then it was back out on Saturday night—after reading all day I ended up at a friend-of-a-friend’s party. Dancing, handstands, talking with fabulous people and general fun ensued.

And I’ve been thinking and thinking that soon I will get to writing some poems. It hasn’t happened yet, but I have high hopes. I have ideas—both reading Wordsworth and Coleridge, and all the poets for Carolyn’s class on Poetry of Witness, and any extra poetry I happen to be able to stuff into my days.

It’s been so long since I wrote a response paper that I’m feeling really nervous! I know I’ve done a lot of other writing, but my ideas seem so chaotic at the moment. also went through some days of panicking about my thesis last week—and then dreamed that Michael Ondaatje emailed me some ideas for it. Odd. I guess I really am going insane: as happens to grad students.

2008-09-29T20:00:00.001-04:00

I feel like I’m juggling blogs—I started to get into my research blog… which is fun. It’s thinking out loud (how’s that different from here, you ask?) about the boring parts of my study that only very select nerds are interested in… so select that hardly anyone in the English department has looked at it! But I made it pretty.

And after a week or so without independence days to worry about, there’s a sudden barrage of them coming up.

Tonight I’m meant to be starting a series of workshops for the Liberal Studies students. I’m looking forward to them—but I don’t know if I got the word out soon enough for tonight’s workshop, so I don’t know if I should expect anyone to come. Oh dear. It’s supposed to be on “the conventions of academic writing”—to which I should could add (in the American context), since it’s so different for the British. Talk about re-learning. Old dog. New tricks. That’s me. Except, I’m not that old. 29 is the new black.

What’s not the new black? Well, at this stage, the bail out.

2008-09-24T00:13:00.002-04:00

Oh my. As further evidence that a combination of work and world history have taken over my life, the Independence Day Project is about to overtake poor miss kate, underground or otherwise, in its number of postings.

I realise that there are a lot of countries and territories in the world, and September has been a busily Independent month… And July was just insane. I’ve just been realising how, being so busy suddenly (aftermath of illness?)

They’re trying to bring back a Galapagos tortoise from the dead. I don’t know how I feel about this—scientists thinks they can “tap into” this particular extinct Galapagos tortoise’s DNA from descendents, and recreate the original. Have these people read Jurassic Park? Okay, I do find it really interesting—and in truth I love turtles and tortoises, especially giant ones… But this makes me feel a little uneasy.

The election is starting to get to me. Sarah Palin is getting to me. (Her smugness in that interview with Charlie Gibson: Gibson, basically respectful; Palin, “oh, yes, Charlie; oh, no, Charlie; In what respect, Charlie?”—I know it’s his name, but I found this so, so forced.) And where is Biden? I’m hoping to go out to see a viewing of the first debate—and I spoke with a friend today about finding some bar full of politicos on 4 November to sit and watch the results coming in.

Wow. I’m already planning for 4 November.

Oh. 15 percent of meals eaten today in America are eaten in cars. I’m glad I don’t have a car.

2008-09-22T14:16:00.002-04:00

My second birthday in DC. I have, of course, talked to my mum. And, since it’s my birthday (as well as Independence Day for Mali and Bulgaria), I’m trying to ignore the whole economic crisis thing going on. I mean, I know in some quarters people were feeling ye olde “cautious optimism” on Friday, but I’m just waiting for the next thing to fall apart. And I’ve been worried about global warming for 22 years. Wait, it’s my birthday. That’s a day off worry, right?

I read some Coleridge this morning that I really loved. It was exciting, as I thought I was in the Wordsworth and Coleridge class all for WW’s sake. No, it turns out I can be a sucker for Coleridge, and perhaps I will be.

I’ve just started a research blog for my thesis project. This means that I have basically become the queen of blogs in the English department. I don’t think that’s a cool thing—just a fact. Anyway, since it’s messy, it’s pretty much a closed blog. But if you’re interested I can register you to read it. Send your details on a piece of batter pudding… Oh wait, this isn’t The Goon Show (damn it!). Email me.

And I read a bunch of Nelly Sachs on the weekend. Wow. Also, a bunch of Brecht’s poetry. Obviously in translation as my super high school German skills from year 8 and 9 don’t reach to reading… well, anything—beyond “Hi, my name’s [insert name here] and I’m from Australia.” I can also say that I study geography, even though I don’t. It’s sort of like how I can say in Auslan (that’s Australian sign language for those not in the know… and yes, Australian sign is different from American) “I have a duck.” Life skills.

So, I’m turning 29. What’s happening? Well, there’s been some nice news on the poetry front. My book will come out sometime next year, I’ll have a piece in Best Australian Poems and there’s another anthology that wants me to send some work. I also had an odd dream about a journal I could submit poetry to. I wonder if it exists. Maybe I could dream it into existence, just like, apparently, people in ancient Greece could go to a certain temple to dream their own cures.

I have to get into Serious Attention to School mode. With a side serve of Serious Attention to Writing. Any day now. Life keeps being unexpectedly busy.

2008-09-13T22:22:00.004-04:00

I feel like it’s been quite a week, but I’m not sure if that’s true. I’ve been doing quite a lot of stuff—but I think I’ve also had quite a bit of down time. Knitting, admiring Luke Perry, sitting on the floor… But today I did some proper reading, and started to make lists in my head about the sorts of things I need to get done. And whoa! Do I need to get things done.

Yesterday, though, I had a bit of a time out from all the university stuff. My friend Marie works for a senator, and she took me on a tour of the Capitol. Now for some reason I thought it would be a drama for me even to get in, but no—no passports, fingerprints, background check… Just the normal walk through a metal detector while we scan your bag.

The tour was pretty interesting—especially since we cut through lots of little corridors and underground passages and things. I’m more interested in the unglamorous shortcuts, I guess. I got all sorts of things—and asked some probably strange questions. I wondered how many of the statues in the building featured people in Confederate uniforms (thanks to my father and our recent civil war tours…) and when Marie pointed out a chandelier and told me that before it was at the Capitol it had been in a church and a theatre, I found myself wondering what denomination the church was—I mean, it’s in a pretty central room (if I remember rightly, next to THE central room) so I think it’s significant. Marie didn’t know, but her husband thinks it’s an ex-Methodist chandelier that has pride of place.

Also, when I saw the place where presidents lie in state, there was a list next to it of the presidents who had lain in that very place. Alongside the presidents, there were unknown soldiers: obviously one from World War I at the end of the war, similarly one from Vietnam at the end of that war. But also—1958, Unknown Soldier World War II and Korean War. This puzzled me—if it was one soldier, well—he was unknown, so how could you know he was in two conflicts? If it was two soldiers, what state was the World War II soldier in in 1958? And why would you wait until 1958 to decide to give an WWII Unknown Soldier lying in state status?

I also so the room of the first supreme court. It kind of gave me chills. And the room that is featured in Mr Smith Goes to Washington.

When I noticed the number of Barack Obama’s senate office, I walked by it. Marie told me one of her friends had gone in and talked to them—they gave her a signed photograph. Now I didn’t go into that office, but the idea was rolling around my head. We “cruised” a couple of other senate offices (and I saw what had been JFK’s office) and then I decided to be brave—or just get over how daggy it was—and get a couple of signed senator photographs. I started with Ted Kennedy, and since that went smoothly, I got John Kerry to. Then I thought, “hey! I could get a Democratic Convention set!” I stopped in at Hillary Clinton’s office, but they’d run out. They said I could go to the website, put in the details and they’d send it to me—but I guess I have a short attention span. Now I’m kind of over the idea. Still, I’m pretty pleased with my Kennedy-Kerry duo.

Oh, and can I just say that Sarah Palin makes me angry? So, so angry.

Spoke to my mum this evening—wonderful! I love speaking to my mum. I’m a mama’s girl.

I’m still on my alarming 90210 kick. So I’ll just say Donna Martin Graduates!

Squash it.

2008-09-06T21:18:00.000-04:00

My first experience of a tropical storm today… though I suppose I didn’t experience it much. It was warm and a little humid, and I popped on my yellow gumboots (or, as they call them here, galoshes) and went to Baked and Wired. I intended to do a lot of work there, but instead found myself chatting to the crew for—well, I’m ashamed of how long I chatted to the crew. Long enough to get given a small cup of mocha free after my two coffees were long gone…

But I started drawing ideas about my thesis on the big piece of brown paper I’ve stuck on my wall to map my thoughts. I did some knitting. I looked at photographs taken during the Russian invasion of Prague in 1968. I jumped in a couple of puddles.

Which is to say, I’ve had a relaxing, yet not entirely unproductive, day. And I’m still going. About to read a little poetry (Coleridge… and potentially Wordsworth if I get to both) and maybe write a letter (I’m very behind on my correspondence. I blame Luke Perry.) I’m sure there are social things that I could and should be out doing, but after the last couple of weeks it’s honestly such a pleasure to hole up at home on a Saturday night. Knitting, listening to podcasts, eating porridge or somesuch treat… there’s really no bad.

2008-09-05T15:08:00.002-04:00

For now, I’m out of doctor’s offices for a while. That’s going to be nice—another follow up in three months, but that’s pretty much it. Cyst was benign—there was really very little chance it wasn’t going to be—and I got to see some good photos of my insides. My liver looks healthy, but the photo also made it look like it has teeth. Hopefully at some point I will have these photos to put on the blog. Which I imagine might not be a big hit, but… they’re my insides, people! Sibley Hospital accidentally put two sets of photos in my file at the hospital instead of giving me the spare set like they were supposed to. I wonder if this is how the civil war general who constantly visited his own leg bone in Washington felt?

So, fingers crossed that I’m going to have a lot less drama in the coming months.

I’ve been rereading The Beauty of the Husband and starting to make notes and bibliographies for myself. I’ve got some other reading to get done for Monday—in fact, Monday is going to be a very busy day this semester. Thinking of trying to get out to some of DCs free stuff this coming week, and I’ll be going to see the Silver Jews play next week. I’m also hoping to see Juliana Hatfield on Tuesday—I’ve loved her, in probably far too dorky and devoted a way, for nearly a decade now… Without counting my love for her My So-Called Life so-called angel appearance.

Oh, and I’ve watched a truly shameful amount of old-school 90210 lately. You know what? I choose me. (Jeremy Jordan—alright!)

2008-09-04T20:57:00.001-04:00

So I’ve been underground for a while. It’s been a fairly overwhelming month—finishing up teaching, going straight into ER visits, painkillers, surgery. My wonderful parents being in town, and then all of us going out of town the moment I was well enough, and then the day after getting back, straight back into the university life, with the welcome party for the next academic year, and meeting with Carolyn (Forché) who will be my thesis advisor over the next year, as well as attending her undergraduate class on the poetry of witness.

I guess I got a little down when I was sick—I felt drained at the end of teaching (full of self-doubt as to whether my students felt that they had learned, and whether I am, in fact, a capable teacher) and had wanted the couple of weeks before semester to relax, do some reading, prepare myself emotionally for the final year of this particular degree… (I feel like I’m going to be endlessly juggling degrees, though I hope sometime my place will become more obvious.)

What’s actually been nice in the past few days to take my mind off that slight depression has been helping out a friend. Having someone to check up on regularly. Also, knitting helps. Television does not.

So I’ve been starting to think out my Anne Carson project. An initial discussion with Carolyn yesterday has had me thinking through some ways to focus, which has made me happy. I will get there in the end. I have some Wordsworth and Coleridge to read too… No shortage of things to do!

I feel like I’m going to get some writing done sometime—sometime. I’m going to try to have at least a day off each week, and to try to get some writing bits and pieces done as well. Try. Who knows if that will ever happen…

Tomorrow I’ll sign up for my writing center hours—and hopefully it won’t take too much longer to find out which Liberal Studies class I’m working with so I’ll have a real idea of what my schedule is going to be. And then I guess I’ll have to block out my study properly. I was so good about that in Melbourne last year. I feel like I haven’t been quite as good here, but I’m going to start working on it.

So I’ve been reading mostly poetry, and trying to get Independence Day Project bits and pieces written.

It’s sad that my parents are gone! It’s only three days since they left, but it has been feeling like an age.

2008-08-23T01:20:00.000-04:00

Another quick update—I’m on odd hours, and yet more painkillers. Hopefully these will wear off in a few days and everything will return to normal as August draws to an end.

The surgery went well—sent home yesterday, and have spent most of the past 36 hours sleeping. When I wasn’t sleeping, I read Siri Hustvedt’s The Sorrows of an American—finally. For some reason I hadn’t got to it earlier. Had started it, and then found it wasn’t the right time. In this slightly otherworldishness of post-surgery it seems to have been the right time. I felt very calm as I read it.

I have three punctures in my belly. When I get up I have to hold my belly with my hands. I can feel my navel, which upsets me, and when I got to sit up, I sometimes feel like my insides will tumble out. Obviously this is all the result of my strange head, but—. So I hold onto my stomach.

It feels a little unreal. My parents are here—wonderful! Unfortunately the holiday as it was planned has ruptured a little. Still, we should be out of DC for a day or two at least.

I’ve been lying low. There are people I want to talk to, people I want to see. Some of them I’ve spoken to, and some I haven’t quite called… I will get to it. But there are people I realise I haven’t seen for weeks, and getting in touch again after a gap—and it’s a strange gap, when there’s suddenly been this medical stuff—feels difficult. And, too, I get into that haze where I want to talk to the new people in my life. And, well, I’m somewhere in that tumble.

Class goes back very soon. I will probably be missing my first class still, but with any luck after that it should all be fine. Everything will suddenly be busy and word-filled.

2008-08-19T17:49:00.003-04:00

Just a quick update: another ER visit last night, ending in my being discharged by accident. Yes, that’s right. Accidentally discharged, and since I was gone they said I should just keep the appointment I had with the clinic doctor today. Never mind that at Georgetown this morning before the nurse got rid of me the doctors were waiting for a team of surgeons, while at the clinic I was scheduled only for another sonogram… Anyway, another night of morphine and drama, followed by a kind of lecture from the doctor today. (Didn’t I tell you to ring the clinic if your condition got worse? he asked. Well, yes, he did tell me that. And when I felt a little worse on Friday and rang, the person on the emergency number told me there wasn’t a lot they could do, but that if it got significantly worse before my appointment to go back to the ER. And, yes, once I started vomiting last night, my only thought was to get to hospital, and not to call the afterhours number at the clinic, leave a message, and wait for a call back.)

Now I have the surgery scheduled for Thursday morning. Not at Georgetown, but at Sibley Hospital. Which is, I have to say, a pretty fancy place. Not that I’ll care when the general anaesthetic hits.

Somewhere amid all the shufflings last week on Monday night (I love how they send the hospital administrators to get your ID before they give you the morphine), I think I lost my drivers license. Brilliant. Another bureaucratic thing to fix up… Oh, and my (printable) healthcare card is—somewhere. If I can’t find it, I have to find my details in order to print another card. Printable healthcare cards? Seriously?

Truth be told, I’m a little bit down about it all. Last week it was just a hassle. After a second ER visit in as many weeks, three sonograms (hey! did you know the image on a sonogram changes when you laugh? I found out today. Yes. I laughed), a few IV drips, and the news that if anything the cyst is larger, I’m pretty miserable. So, in less than 48 hours it will be gone.

I still can’t believe a hospital can discharge someone by accident. That is just awful.

In the mean time, I turn to books for solace. Finished the new Paul Auster. I liked it a lot. A few friends came up with the theory that only every second book he writes is good. This is a good one. Just finished Lisa Olstein’s Radio Crackling, Radio Gone, and have also been reading Julia Hartwig’s book of selected poems, In Praise of the Unfinished. This last book is beautiful. I’ll write more about it when all the other stuff is over and done with.

My parents arrived an hour ago. I haven’t seen them yet—they were getting out of the airport, getting their rental car, getting themselves to their hotel… then thinking about getting to Georgetown. The plan initially had been my finding my way to Dupont… but I don’t think I’m finding my way anywhere. Except maybe into dreams.

2008-08-17T22:21:00.005-04:00

I’ve been a bit slow updating on the health stakes. And on generally getting stuff done. I ended up taking the vicoden a few days ago, and it’s left me a bit loopy since. (I’m realising that “loopy” is probably a word that no-one but my mum and I have used for 50 years… but I like it that way.)

The followup: Thursday. I like the doctor—I think he’s from a Germanic (possibly Jewish) background. Not being there for a Sunday brunch, I didn’t get to ask. He confirmed all the stuff I’d been reading—most functional cysts go away on their own, etc. Then he had a look at the thing and had a bit of an “oh dear,” moment. Well, he wasn’t worried, but said it is big, and obviously hasn’t just formed in a month or two, nor is it likely to just resolve itself. So, more tests on Tuesday. But he thinks that it is likely I will need surgery at some point—but non-invasive. I shouldn’t be out of action for too long. Good stuff.

But, as I said, I did upgrade to vicoden. The ibuprofen had been working fine. Then Robyn came, to give me her bicycle for while she’s in Hungary. (Thanks Robyn!) Now, I was sleepy, and a little drugged up already, so I probably should have known that this was prime time for me to do something stupid. Like, for instance, fall over while trying to get the bike to my apartment, and, lying something like a cockroach on its back, have the bike fall on top of me.

I laughed. Really loudly. You know, that cavernous Kate-laugh you all miss so much. Got up, figured out that I’d been standing on the wrong side of the bike—not able to use my hip to prop open the door—and got the thing up to my apartment. Lay down again. Then—ouch! It turns out when you have a painful thing in your abdomen, it’s not a good idea to fall over and have a bike fall on top of you. So, having rung the clinic again and made sure that it was fine it was hurting more (but to look out for nausea, dizziness and—especially—fever) I took the vicoden.

Whoosh. That’s crazy stuff. I’ve been sleeping very well—and for long periods of time—but also at weird hours. My professional opinion? (As a professional sleeper, that is.) There is no way House could have functioned that well while he was all painkiller-happy in season one. (Gosh. That’s casting my mind back a few years…)

So, Tuesday is a busy day. I have to first of all talk to incoming International Students about the writing center. I’m looking forward to that. Then I have to get out to my appointment. (I think the lovely Lisa is going to take me again…) Then my parents arrive later that afternoon at Dulles. Bliss!

Hopefully dodging all tricky pain/surgery related things, Paul Auster is going to be at Politics and Prose on Thursday night. I think, as one of DC’s best independent bookstores, I should be able to get my parents there, even though neither have read—or are likely to read, Auster. I am a quarter of the way through his new book, which I started two hours ago, taking a break for dinner (Sicilian Caponata) and most of an episode of Dynasty. (Oh my! The first major Krystle/Alexis catfight. I laughed out loud. Nice to know I didn’t invent high drama.)

I’m enjoying Man in the Dark so far. I have a pile of things I want to attempt to read before classes start again. Today I finished The Working Poor: Invisible in America, which I found amazing. The author, David K. Shipler, lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland—a lot of the people and programs he followed are local to DC. It made me want to go and find out more about them. I also finished reading my first book of C. D. Wright’s poetry (thanks for the tip, Brandon) One Big Self. I loved it. When I’ve been having my 2am nights (care of vicoden) I’ve been scribbling notes in my notebooks (I found one I thought I had lost… thank god. I’ve lost notebooks before, and it’s an awful feeling)—well, scribbling in my notebook when I wasn’t chatting to a friend (Chris) who had drunk coffee, and was apparently wide awake (not normally a coffee drinker… ah, the amateurs don’t know how to do these things…) or typing slightly mad emails to people.

Apparently my dopey conversations at Baked and Wired have been hilarious. Leaning on the counter, half asleep, vicoden-laced Kate.

It’s been a really busy month for independence days—and September will be busy too. After that, it will settle down. I’m glad. I’m used to doing that writing every day, but I’m hoping that I can put the time towards something—profitable? University-oriented? Who knows? Crazier things have happened.

2008-08-13T23:25:00.006-04:00

This week has had drama. It all started out nicely—another Fulbrighter farewell last Friday night (Szia Robyn!) with a little whisky, a little chatting with friends. Some hours clocked at Baked and Wired. A dinner out. A little bit of time cleaning my room. Weekend stuff.

Then I woke up on Monday morning.

So, I didn’t feel right when I woke up—perhaps like there was a little cramp or something. Still, I was determined to stick to routine, and went and got my coffee, did some reading (finished Philip Roth’s The Dying Animal over a bagel) and then went back to the apartment, planning to get some more reading done, followed by some writing. But my stomach felt worse. So, I lay down with a heatpack on my stomach and fell asleep for awhile, woke up, and found it was worse again. I wasn’t exactly sure what I should do, and thought for a moment maybe it was something appendix related (I almost don’t believe in appendicitis—isn’t that like those phone numbers starting with “555”: invented for television?) and found that the appendix is on the other side of the body from where I was feeling pain. Still, it got worse. It was after 5, and so the student health clinic was closed. My friend Lisa suggested the ER. My reaction was—What if it’s nothing? Even with insurance, isn’t an ER in the US expensive? (This reminds me of the time I fainted off my bicycle on a major road during peak hour—when I came to someone was phoning an ambulance. Groggy as I was, I was still able to say “Don’t! I don’t have ambulance cover!” Oh dear.) So I rang my mother in Australia (as with the best mothers, she is all-knowing) and she thought that since it had been getting worse over 6 hours or so I should go see someone.

Fastforward to: a trip to the ER. I’d been lying still for quite a while, and apparently my body didn’t like walking anymore. I got out of the building, and then started throwing up outside. Nice. Lisa brought the car round. No more nausea. Phew.

Took me a few minutes to even find the ER—the Georgetown Hospital isn’t terribly well-signed. They should do something about that. Did the triage thing a few times, with waiting in between. On the scale of one to ten I initially estimated the pain at 7. Within an hour I would have been screaming ten. I was fine and then suddenly it was all just unbearable. High drama!

So the doctors thought that, yes, it might be appendicitis. Especially when I started pain-induced nausea as it got worse. Apparently the pain can manifest itself more on the left even though the appendix is on the right. So, first an IV, and anti-nausea medication, plus morphine. Morphine? Yes. It told you there was high-drama.

I had to drink about a litre of this slightly fizzy stuff as I awaited a CT scan—apparently you have to have it an hour before the scan. Some other lovely injections when I got to the CT scan room—and, to make the experience extra special, more vomiting. The results? I do not have appendicitis. Sigh of relief, right? Except, why do I still hurt?

New theory: let’s send her for an ultrasound. (No, this story doesn’t end with it turning out I’m pregnant with alien children.) But some more morphine first, as I was starting to get all feverish and crazy. Ultrasound finds an 11cm ruptured cyst. I realise, my dear readers, that some of you might not want to read about this. But apparently its one of the things a body can do to itself—most women have “functional” cysts at some point, but mine clearly wasn’t functioning very well, what with the pain and the vomiting and the rupture. On the bright side, I did get to see ultrasound images of my insides. Oh, and the attached picture is not of my insides. My cyst is bigger than this one.

The result? After 6 or so hours in the ER I was released with a few pieces of paper, prescriptions for painkillers (including Vicoden… but I’m managing on the industrial strength Ibuprofen) and the instruction to see a doctor within three days for further tests.

So, at the moment I have a lot of Ibuprofen in my system, and am due at the doctor’s office tomorrow. Most likely? Blood tests, more ultrasound, and at some point an opinion as to whether I’ll need a surgery or not. Surgery? Well, I’m okay with that—thank god I have health insurance—but if it’s required it involves entry via the stomach, and I’m really not okay with that. (I expect most of you know how much I hate to have my belly button touched. The idea of a caesarian makes me want to faint—hell, seeing a navel piercing makes me want to faint.) Anyway, from what I've read I don't think the surgery should be needed, and I think they wait a while to see if goes away on its own anyway.

It’s all a bit of a “hold on tight” thing. I was all upset, and now I’m just kind of puzzled. It all seems so strange. And how did I get the timing? Just after I finished teaching, a few weeks before my own classes start. I even have my parents coming in next week. What a whirl.

At least last night I ate icecream by the canal. That was nice.

2008-08-05T11:51:00.006-04:00

The weekend saw the first of two goodbyes I’m finding quite wrenching: my friend Carolyn leaves today for a year in Bulgaria. Bulgaria? She’s a Fulbrighter, and she’ll be based in Sofia for the next year. She’s been renamed Karolinka —as she puts it, Carolyn translated, just as her whole life is about to be translated to Bulgaria. I’m going to miss her: it’s funny, I’ve known Carolyn less than a year, and I’ve probably only seen her about ten times this year (we’ve both been busy and never shared a class) but now that she’s leaving I know just how much I’m going to miss her. The one this I’m looking forward to is some corresponding. I’ve gotten a little behind on my letter-writing of late, but I’m hoping to sit down and catch up on letters in the next few days.

We celebrated Carolyn with a stooping party: sitting on the stoop to her fabulous group house in the U Street area, drinking wine and—as this was the deluxe party—grilling burgers on the stoop, transforming the whole experience in to a “Stoop-a-Q.” It was the perfect Saturday night, really. I’ve been enjoying spending time with some different people in the summer, from the Baked and Wired pool party, to stooping with Carolyn’s crowd, to the poetry group last week.

Oh, and hanging at Fort Reno last night. I’ve only just found out that summer sees a bunch of free concerts at Fort Reno park up in the Tenley Town area of DC. While I found out at the tail end, at least I did find out. And there are still concerts this week and next week. I had such a good time at the concert last night, and I ran into Taylor and Chris (from the poetry group—Taylor’s my link, through Baked and Wired, to the poetry thing). There was dancing, there was chatting, there was lying on the grass on a beautiful evening. In other words, the perfect Monday evening in DC. I’m looking forward to the next concert: Thursday.

I’ve been looking at lists of gigs coming up, too—there are some good musicians coming through in September, including Juliana Hatfield. I know, I know, I’m probably showing my age or something. (At 28, I don’t care: it’s a great age to show.) I love Juliana Hatfield, unapologetically, and I’m excited that she’ll be playing in the area in a month. When I had to select about 20 CDs to bring with me when I moved over last year, I had to bring one of hers. Sometimes her music is the equivalent of Linus’s blanket.

Speaking of September, for some reason I’ve started to think about my birthday party. In part because it’s now settled that I’m staying in my current apartment. Also, I suspect, because I’ve been having a real return to my music-is-everything mode, and dancing around my apartment I keep thinking about when I’ll have my next party. Answer? Ushering in 29.

Oh, and yes there are a few days left of class. I wonder if I’m guilty of leaving things too implicit sometimes? I had designed this week as something quite loose—time for revising, but also “looking forward/looking back.” Looking back? To the zeitgeist moment of 1990, with the launch of Beverly Hills, 90210. We watched the pilot, and, thinking through why 1990 was suddenly the time to launch what I still think of as the defining teen drama (yes, My So-Called Life is infinitely superior, but it was a cult show, while 90210 somehow was everywhere at the time) I found myself linking it to No Logo, and the sudden moment when youth was not only commodified, but also became such an important consumer-based. Especially thinking through the fact that 90210 was full of actors in their 20s playing 16. I think only two of them were teenagers when it started. Even just thinking through the fact that it was pretty much all adults showing “youth.” But when I make these kinds of connections, I find I can’t necessarily express them.

Today—workshopping towards the final portfolio. I seem to only have two students left standing. (One has vanished.) If the weather stays nice I think I’ll shift us outside. I do like the outside world…

2008-07-31T17:47:00.004-04:00

I’ve been a bit slow letting you know my underground activities this week—things have been busy, though actually a little less busy than last week, when I was finishing off the Discovery Class.

I’m in a really wonderful mood this afternoon—even though my class wasn’t ready to discuss Henry James, we had a really productive session looking through their four page papers on Dead Poets Society. We didn’t get through all of them, but looking at two really in-depth was good. Once again things are being re-arranged—we’ll look at some short papers tomorrow, as well as hopefully the last two Dead Poets responses, and then look through Daisy Miller on Monday. I’m hoping to free up Tuesday and Wednesday for class peer-reviewing, and I’ve given the students extra options with their portfolio: if, having written their four original papers, all around 4 pages, they really hate one, they can discard it and turn another paper into an eight page piece of writing. I told my class, too, about some of the pedagogical articles on the teaching of writing, because I found them useful to thinking about my own writing. They’re really interested in reading them—and the reason I think that this is something very helpful for students is that they make even more explicit the degree to which writing is a process. To teach something, you have to be able to break it down in those process-steps.

Earlier this week I read a draft of my friend Carolyn’s thesis. She’s writing on pedagogies of writing, and one of the things that interested me most what her writing about how experts in other fields approach their work/become experts, and how that may be applied to the writing process. One of her central analogies was to the musician: obviously, with my training, this would appeal. The thing that rang true is the fact that the amateur musician plays a piece from start to finish. Even if they stop to go over where the mistakes might lie and practice those tricky passages a few times, they still “start at the top.” The expert musician will tend to go straight to the problematic parts, and work at the technique. I remember, oh so many times, starting with long tone exercises for maybe half an hour, then an hour or so on the technical parts of playing the flute before maybe allowing a quarter of a two-hour practice session on playing pieces of music… and still rarely from start to finish. I’m less disciplined when I do pick up my flute now, but I have that training, and I know what it means to play at a high level, and I still play through to find where the problems lie and then attack those sections. It’s so interesting. So I talked to my students about this idea, how getting these fundamentals in place allows you to do all the other things: if I can’t get the technique of the flute, putting “interpretation” and “style” on top won’t cover the failure in fundamentals. The basic form of an argumentative essay is, to some degree, a fundamental—getting that in place gives you the opportunity to then have fun with the piece of writing.

I feel like things have been going well, even in the very small class. It doesn’t feel like as much hard work—I’ve gotten better at asking questions, and when we workshopped the longer papers today, I could see the two students whose work we were looking at begin to voice the feedback I would give before I was giving it. I’m really loving this class.

Earlier this week we’ve look at two short stories and the opening portion of a novel. The first story we looked at was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Bernice Bobs Her Hair.” One student came in and asked why everything was so repetitious, but said too that The Great Gatsby was his favourite book. I told him to go home and read “Bernice Bobs Her Hair,” and think about if this was Daisy’s set, 6 years before the action of Gatsby. He came in the next day and said he loved the story. We looked then at two really recent pieces of writing—Nell Freudenberger’s “The Tutor” from Lucky Girls, and the opening chapter of Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep, to think through what kind of things are set up in the beginning of a story, and how contrasts and oppositions (here, class, race) are set up at the outset of most works. I feel like each student responded to different work, though with such a small number of people it was hard to keep the conversation going all the time. Still, I loved it when a student came in to discuss “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” and said, “It’s just like Mean Girls.” Now I haven’t seen Mean Girls yet, but the trailer told me a lot, and judging by the trailer I agree…

In other news, one of the Baked and Wired boys, Taylor, invited me to this poetry group last night. So I wandered up to Columbia Heights and found myself having such a great time: reading poems, writing poems. (I feel like my poem is a good basis for a poem, but it is, at the moment, a little too “neat.” Sometimes I think my endings resolve too quickly—like it used to be with my music. I’ve gotten much better with the poems, but it takes work, and twenty minutes last night wasn’t enough. Also, I feel like a bit of research will add something to the mix.) It was such a relief to talk about poetry. I feel like I’ve been so ensconced in teaching, that some of my fundamental activities—reading, writing—haven’t had as much attention as they otherwise would, or as they should. So, I’m going to try to get some more bits of writing happening in the next week, even before class finishes. Then I’ll have another ten days or so to think and laze about and maybe get out of town for a day or two before my parents arrive.

Did I mention that my mother and father are coming out? I haven’t seen them since early January, and Skype conversations don’t quite make up for it. In three weeks I’ll be in the Australian fold. I’m a happy, happy Miss Kate.

2008-07-23T21:02:00.004-04:00

Gosh! Is it Wednesday night already?

I’ve always known that teachers read student work, and grade student work—but as a student I don’t think I ever understood how much thought and work that process of commenting on student writing takes. To be sure, you get a really varying degree of response—from no response, to red marks over every mistake, to a full page of comments on the writing. I try to give response both in a timely fashion (I fail at this sometimes… I mean, when I say “sometimes it takes me a week to get work back,” it doesn’t seem bad—but we’re meeting every day. To me this seems too long, and I certainly don’t want to get buried under student work…) and in a way that is constructive. I suppose I will see how this is working when I start to see new work from students after they received their initial feedback, as well as revisions. I think it worked in the Discovery Class—at the outset I told students I was happy to regrade any work they wanted to rewrite, based on feedback, outside of class time, and the few that have rewritten have improved a lot. I don’t know if they’re putting a lot of time into the revisions, whereas our class time is restricted, or if it’s about as much time again, just with a little guidance. I suppose as I teach more I’ll be able to see what kind of progress is being made.

And speaking of my Discovery Class—tomorrow is my last day with them. I’m pretty sad. I’ve had some really good days with them, as well as some when I’ve felt that they haven’t responded. I think since I did start getting their work back to them very punctually that has also helped break the ice a little too. It’s over so quickly! I’ve taught 13 classes with them, and tomorrow is the 14th and final. I asked them what they wanted to do—they asked to watch Clueless. I tried to find a copy on short notice, but didn’t. I’ll take a few things in so they have the option on what we watch/do. And I’m bringing strawberries. But before that, there is still about half an hour of writing left to do.

And speaking of watching movies, we ended up taking a day in between watching the first two thirds of Dead Poets Society and the last section in class—between my returning it after class in the late afternoon and returning the next morning not long after the library was open, someone else came and borrowed it! I ended up buying a copy last night, since I’m using it in both classes. The most interesting thing, though, was that we talked for about forty minutes in class on yesterday about where the narrative had taken us so far, and talked about narrative conventions—almost none of the students had seen the film before, and I asked them to make guesses based on what they had watched on what would happen to the characters. There were a lot of the “types” we had already seen in our trailers exercise—rebel, shy kid, new kid, lovelorn, nerd—and based on those types and the narratives we’re all familiar with, they were able to make some pretty good guesses. They then wrote responses to one of two different quotes from Mr Keating in the classroom—and it was the best batch of writing I had received from them.

Today we finished watching the film in my morning (Discovery) class, and we started watching it in my afternoon class. I cried in the morning class—I’m afraid it’s going to happen again tomorrow! None of the students wanted to talk about the film immediately after we finished it this morning. I understand that. It’s hard to take in, and then voice an immediate response (beyond: wah! Neil!) really.

I still thinking through commenting on student work. I think my comments have been getting longer—I don’t mind writing very detailed comments, but I also don’t want to overwhelm students. When Joe Harris ran a workshop at Georgetown last year on responding to student writing, he said he tended to err on the side of brevity. At the same time, I feel that the students in my Expository Writing class want all the feedback I can give them—they are really keen to improve their writing, and think about academic forms. I feel like some were a little disappointed with their first grades—but they are all provisional. Every piece can be revised, and I’m happy to talk to read another draft before they submit their final portfolio. I know they’re all capable of doing really well—and their papers all show that they’re heading there. It’s actually exciting to see, for the first time, the full process of students going through these stages, and at the same time, reformulating their ideas about what it is to write an academic paper.

Fingers crossed I don’t cry too much in class tomorrow. I might have to warn them in advance I’m a big sook over sad movies.

2008-07-21T16:37:00.006-04:00

I’ve entered my last week of two classes a day, and from next week I’ll have more time in the mornings. I’ll be able to get to the gym and do all my grading day to day. I’m looking forward to it.

I was disappointed to find out today that one of my students has left the university—my small class is even smaller. Another student has been having some health problems, and so I’ve had a couple of classes with only three students. When it gets down to that number it can be hard to keep the conversation going—hard to keep the interest moving along.

I came in today with my movie trailer exercise for the expository writing class. I was interested that the students picked up on exactly how much was being replayed in the trailers very quickly. I had a long list of trailers—and I’d emailed the list to students before class so they would have them to refer back to—and we didn’t get through them all. I feel like the exercise fell a little flat this time around—I’m wondering if it’s that they felt the repetitions were so overt? It strange—watching them not as texts, as a form on their own, has been really interesting for me. Perhaps the students have already got the point about representation and types. Are they one step ahead of me? It’s possible.

I think it’s the smaller classroom. In the discovery class, students who hadn’t previously spoken in class made links between different films. None really started to get into the more mechanical side—the fact that the introduction of the music that sees out the trailer (and makes the viewer excited, supposedly, that it’s “coming soon”) basically adheres to the golden section. I tried to point out the post-MTV changes to the trailers—each seems more like a video clip than they did before MTV. We talked about some of the basic stories. How certain things “signify.” Maybe I’ll bring in a piece from Barthes’s Mythologies to see how his writing helps us think through the trailer. Teaching trailers I certainly find that I’m more interested in them as a form. I don’t know if this translates to my students suddenly being more interested. I do wonder if I’ve chosen too much that might be considered minutiae? I’m interested in everything—but I know that doesn’t necessarily translate. Hmm.

This morning class was watching Dead Poets Society. At the 85 minute mark the real drama is yet to come. I asked students who hadn’t seen the film before to think about the films they’ve seen before, the stories they’ve read before, and what they expect to happen next. To experience the narrative in an accumulative fashion, and think through the conventions. What I think of, after last semester, as a “Ragussian” method.

Grading. Let’s talk about grading for a second.

How do I grade a class where I can’t give the students homework? I’ve been grading on the high side for the discovery class, because in a classroom setting you can’t assume everyone (anyone?) is going to be able to write a high quality essay. I mean, the environment doesn’t work for some people. No-one has access to a computer, and some people do work that way. People work at very difference paces, and don’t have access to all the resources (I’m think of EFL students) they might need to do their best work. I try to make the OED online available, but students rarely want to come to the front of the class to check things. I ask them to peer review, but not all students are able to give the kind of feedback that helps. I put a list of questions on the board for last week’s peer reviewing, and when students wrote reflections about how they might rewrite their paper, they would comment that their peer thought they’d done really well, and they just had to fix some grammar mistakes. It’s difficult to gauge how to approach it.

Mostly I have been emphasising participation, responding the peer reviews in the format required, and making sure students quote and analyse sources in their papers. And I’m really pleased that somehow all the assignments are working on an analytical level.

2008-07-16T16:43:00.006-04:00

So, the last couple of days have seen me ready to fall asleep as soon as I get home, but having to stay up to get some things done. It’s been slow.

This week seems to be less exciting for the students in both classes. In the morning (discovery) class the week started out with advertising, and then moved to poetry. (Obviously the two belong together… ?) While students seemed to be entirely confused about why I might want them to look at the ads I was giving them—and, let’s face it, the more magazines you flip through, the better you are at tuning out those pesky pages—they all did a good job at them. First I broke them into groups and asked them to brainstorm together, and present to the class what was happening in their ad.

I set the assignment as first a straight description, followed by an analysis/interpretation, based on the central question: “why might the advertiser have chosen to include/portray that element.” After speaking in front of the class, and having the rest of the class make occasional extra observations, I asked the students to write a one page analysis—no introductory paragraph that tells me advertisements are used to sell clothes, just getting straight to the point. Description, detail, interpretations and analysis. I do find it interesting that the students seemed to think it was a silly exercise, and then, comparatively, they were really very good at it. I was talking to Samantha Pinto, a member of the faculty at Georgetown, about this, and she said that students she teaches in her general writing classes also really respond to the visual. Is it to do with our attention span?

And then on to poems. We looked at three poems, one by Gwendolyn Brooks (‘We Real Cool’—it definitely fits the class theme…) and two by Seamus Heaney—‘Digging’ and ‘Clearances #4.’ Pretty much anyone who has ever met me has heard me rave about the latter. It ended up being a line by line activity—yesterday I think I probably did too much of the reading myself. In part I was demonstrating, I guess, the types of questions/difficulties you encounter when reading a poem, but in part I was just giving into the urge to fill the silence. Not absolute silence, but that waiting for someone to speak up.

Today we spent nearly an hour on ‘Clearances’—fourteen lines, and we went into it in real detail. I got a bit more sleep last night (and woke up with so much to do—was off in a rush again…) and decided I was happy to stare them out. So—it was on the quiet side, but somehow it didn’t feel bad. I had students answering that hadn’t answered before. I asked a couple of times who normally don’t contribute to the discussion to answer or read parts of the poem, and answer very simple questions. I asked people to paraphrase sentences, to tell me what words were repeated. I got answers to most of my questions, even if it felt like the answers came on delay. The last half hour was handed over to writing: I asked the students to choose one of the three poems and write an analysis of it. I told them I expect a page, or more—not all students are writing the amount I’m asking for. So—I’ll have to figure out how to approach that. Besides via grading. I mean, yes, I can’t expect everyone to be equally engaged, but when I see a student staring off into space instead of writing, see them having written a third of a page and telling me they’re finished—then I’ve been going and asking questions. Oh wise ones out there, is that pedagogically sound?

Then there are my afternoon students. Perhaps I’m back to confusing them. This week is meant to be print media—so a lot of it is dry compared with what we were looking at last week. I got a greater sense of engagement from the students when we were looking at narratives than this week when we’ve been looking both at narrative essays and more theoretical/historical writing.

Monday they managed to distract me altogether—by distract me, I mean to say that I taught a class I had been going to leave for the final week. We looked at some websites, including my Facebook page. I wanted to look at social networking as a means of representation—two of my students showed the class their myspace pages and we talked about the ways people use these to create an online identity for themselves. It was interesting.

Yesterday, though, we got back to the plan and looked at some reading on sociology, as well as David Brooks’s article “The Organization Kid.” Most weren’t particularly interested in the sociology—one student found it really interesting, but others were resistant to it. It was very much on the “introducing concepts” side. Plus, I guess in part since I’m not trained in sociology I found it difficult to know how to approach it, given their lack of enthusiasm. Then we talked through the David Brooks article—I was initially expecting the students to be really resistant to this piece from the Atlantic that depicted them as incredibly goal-oriented, to the extent that the writer portrays a concern with character and moral integrity lacking. That the writer is basing a large series of generalisations—in which he isolates some features of the students attending Princeton, and then writes these features can be read across the “younger generation” in some measure—on the conversations he had with a few dozen students. Especially since these are students he found from having their professors send their details to him, rather than making contact himself.

I had my own reaction to this as a piece of writing, and the surprise came when the students probably recognised more of the piece of writing than I did. Assume nothing, Kate. Outside the Writing Center, I haven’t spoken to a lot of current undergraduate students in America—it was an interesting discussion. I wonder if it was more interesting for me than for them? I was mostly surprised that no-one really seemed to want to argue against the assertions that Brooks made. They thought some were exaggerated, but didn’t have a lot to say.

Then today I asked them to read a section of No Logo that talks about the rise of youth as a demographic to target, marketing-wise, but also to commodify. Unfortunately, not everyone had read it in full. Still, I had some other things ready, and they know I expect them to have the chapter read for tomorrow. While going through some of the things Klein points out, I was able to sprinkle in more of the visual, as well as an article from last week’s New York Times—from the style section. I started the discussion with the product placement segment of Wayne’s World, and asked them to think about what was going on there. Yes: they’re making fun of product placement, they’re making a point that to allow it they’d be selling out—but they’re still including it. Yes, it’s funny. But more than that, it’s a great ad. Some slogans are repeated even as they’re made fun of. The products are still being worn or held by the “celebrities.” How do you read that?

The New York Times article was about the sudden market for designer sunglasses. (Honestly, I thought that had been big business since Tom Cruise put on his Raybans in the 1980s.) There were really varied responses. A couple of students admitted to going out and spending some pretty serious money on sunglasses, and to having the brands named in the article. Another student said the whole thing was a waste of paper. There’s a fine line there between a report on a fashion trend, and the creation of hype for certain brands and certain shops—the article starts with a high-end sunglasses emporium. Name the shop. Name the brands and styles of the moment. Name the price, just in case anyone knows their friend has a pair, but never found out how much they cost. The debate that started up (and led, somehow, from sunglasses to crocs) was quite vigorous—but was also still on the surface level. How to dig in?

We ended by looking at some advertising images online that I found, and talking through the types of strategies that the advertisers were using. Tomorrow we’ll do some work with the print advertisements I distributed.

Oh, and because it made me happy, I also showed them the Sesame Street 1234 video that’s coming up on the new revamped Sesame Street—this was sent to me yesterday, after I’d just read in the newspaper that Sesame Street is revamping its website, to make it more attractive to its demographic—yes, the under 5 set have a lot of power. And those of us who watched Sesame Street well into our teens and twenties…

I’ve got to forge the link back to representation, and the “so what?” critical questions that were lacking in looking at the images and videos today. Fingers crossed. Next week it’s back to fun stuff, but there’s still some work to get through this week.

2008-07-13T21:10:00.002-04:00

Weekend report:

I finally made it to West Virginia—K and I went to Harper’s Ferry today. We took her family’s truck, and she has a GPS that her mum called Molly. As we were starting to head back I realised I was living the dream: I was finally truckin’ with Molly in America. Now, if only I could do that for a few months without feeling constantly guilty about the environmental impact, then I could write the books I’ve always wanted to write…

So, Harper’s Ferry. It started pouring with rain about 20 miles out, so it wasn’t the best day for a trip, but it was still pretty. We both took a good number of photographs—mine were with my old school Pentax, so it’ll be some time till I see them. I don’t expect great things as the light wasn’t very good, but… it was nice to have the camera out. We wandered across the bridge by the railway and climbed over a few things to get to an abandoned building. Always fun. Oh, and we were most impressed by the number of churches for such a small population.

K also gave me a cultural experience on the way there: my first stop at a Waffle House. It was very classy. We stopped in Urbana, and I took a few photos first (the roadside diner thing fascinates me) and when we were in the staff immediately asked me where I was from. They don’t see many Australians in Urbana, so they fussed over us, and, for some reason, gave us paper Waffle House hats, which of course K and I wore through our meal. K also scored a Waffle House mug to take back to her dad.

Beyond that, I got a feel for how much I’ll treasure weekends for the next few weeks, while my fulltime teaching continues. I’ve still got some student work to comment on today, and hopefully I’ll get through some tomorrow afternoon as well.

2008-07-11T22:32:00.006-04:00

After class today I was talking excitedly with my friend Lauren about the class I taught today. Lauren has just graduated from the English Masters program and is teaching in a reading program at the moment. She took Randy Bass’s class “Approaches to Teaching Writing” the year before me, and so we ended up discussing teaching (it really is all that’s on my mind at the moment…) and learning.

During the course of talking Lauren said, “It’s usually the classes you don’t do as well in that you learn the most from.” (Or something like it.) I’m not saying that’s true for everyone—and when something really engages someone, it’s often the case that they do better. But I’m a bit slow really. So—the classes where I’ve gotten an A minus instead of an A tend to be the ones where there’s been enough complexity in the material or approach that I am not finished with it by the time I hand in my final paper. I’m fine with this—I realised quite a long time ago now that I can’t synthesize all this material quickly. I work intuitively, and sniff out connections—and that happens slowly. The reason I mention this at all (in, yes, a convoluted fashion that might also function as a confession—I figure things out in my own time… unfortunately that doesn’t always match semester deadlines) is that I feel like now, both in and out of the classroom, I’m making all the connections I began to learn about in “Approaches to Teaching Writing.” For the first month or two of that class, though, I was mystified—I was adjusting to America, I’d never really heard anyone discuss pedagogy, and I hadn’t even figured out yet that there are different conventions for writing an academic paper in America as opposed to Australia. Now I feel like it’s all starting to become clear. After a few days of seeing things changing in front of my eyes I’m excited to go into the classroom. I feel like teaching is something I could be good at, could really enjoy.

Anyway, another class today: minus a couple of students (one was sick… the other I’m not sure about, though he emailed me a paper.) And, a new student. So, when everyone shows up I’ll have six. That seems like a really nice number—that we can do a lot of really productive work as a whole class.

Today three students brought in work to the whole class. (I had hoped this would be all five.) I asked them to email me a one page response to The West Wing, and I brought copies to the class. We started with a general conversation about the episode, and went into the papers. Each student read their paper aloud and we discussed them—located the central questions, the thesis statements. Discussed transitions, where ideas didn’t seem one hundred percent unified… The students were so supportive at the same time as being critical. And they each got a round of applause after we discussed their paper. Each of them had already done in this second response what I had hoped the students would be able to do at the end of five weeks: they had gone past the “character” stage of reading, and begun to investigate what was represented. Each of them had located a potential point of difficulty, and asked a question that had no definitive answer. Some had started to work toward an answer—I’d let them know this wasn’t a primary goal for me until they wrote a longer paper. The critical question was enough—but still, some were on their way to the next stage. Honestly, I was so impressed. I feel like they’ve travelled as writers in only a couple of days—I feel like talking about writing for audience and writing conventions are one of the most helpful things. When I’ve talked with students in Liberal Studies, this has helped them too. In a sense, now the subject matter can take an equal footing with the writing, and we can look at both aspects really critically because I don’t feel like I have to nitpick through the nuts and bolts. They’ve all demonstrated they can think and they can respond to each other’s writing. After discussion all the students were able to discuss what they would work on to move this particular piece to the next level as a piece of writing—so, another goal (understanding writing as a process) enters the frame. The fun begins.

Incidentally—I think I mentioned that I wasn’t sure what teaching The West Wing would be like. I think they really took to it—and that the fact of having young adult characters in an adult drama, contributing ideas, was something that really appealed to them. A few asked more questions about the series as a whole, and were interesting in watching more.

Oh, and I thought I would post the links to the movie trailers I used in that exercise. (I also let my afternoon students know that that was coming up in a week or so…) I found it really productive—seeing patterns, looking at the “form” of the movie trailer over 50 years, especially trailers for the audience of teenagers, getting a context to view current trailers critically.

So, here’s a lovely list. I didn’t get time to use them all, but whether it’s for your own sake or because you think there’s some chance you might ever teach movie trailers, I personally think they’re interesting. But then, I think most things are interesting. Common themes? Cars. Romance. Sports. Rock'n'roll. Generational conflict. Rebellion. Gosh! How surprising!

Some teen trailers:

Rebel without a Cause (1955)
Gidget (1959)
American Graffiti (1973)
Grease (1978)
Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)
Sixteen Candles (1984)
The Karate Kid (1984)
Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985)
The Breakfast Club (1985)
Teenwolf (1985)
Pretty in Pink (1986)
The Chocolate War (1988)
Say Anything (1989)
Dead Poets' Society (1989)
Heathers (1989)
Flirting (1991)
Clueless (1995)
Romeo and Juliet (1996)
Varsity Blues (1999)
10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
Save the Last Dance (2001)
Josie and the Pussycats (2001)
Crazy/Beautiful (2001)
Igby Goes Down (2002)
Mean Girls (2004)
Step Up (2006)
Charlie Bartlett (2007)

2008-07-11T11:43:00.004-04:00

I’m juggling all the things I do: for instance, during the week poetry is on the backburner. I’ve managed, for the most part, to write my intended Independence Day entries (and, after announcing a few independence days to my discovery class, to prompt one student to ask how I know that… I was surprised that the fact that I write a blog is actually considered cool. When did the bloggers become the cool kids?) Poems have been on hold. Reading large slabs of my “whatever I want” pile has been on hold… hopefully I’ll get some of that on the weekend. This isn’t necessarily a complaint: I’m adjusting.

When a class has seemed to be a little flatter than usual—not as responsive, not sure what the hell I was talking about—I have been really affected, mood-wise. I asked a friend—who’s done a lot more teaching than I have—if that’s “usual.” I don’t know about everyone else out there, but apparently it’s at least not unusual for the first-time teacher. It gets easier. At the same time, I don’t think I’ve had any disasters so far, and when I’ve described what I’m doing in the class each day to other friends who are also starting out their teaching, they sound interested.

I was a little concerned that the fact I’ve kept the syllabus a little loose would be a problem. I asked Maggie Debelius, who both runs the Writing Center at Georgetown and also teaches a section of the “011” first year writing course. She said that it’s not a problem—that students don’t get terribly traumatised by it, for instance. That it has advantages and drawbacks: the drawbacks? Spending more time each day thinking through what the class will be doing the next day. The advantages? Flexibility to spend time on what seems to interest the students more—or even, in my case, to include two articles from yesterday’s New York Times that I happened to come across, and the cover and editorial from the issue of Vanity Fair that arrived in the mail last night.

I was worried that the subject matter might seem a little too—diffuse. There’s a common thread there—representations of teenagers. But I guess it jumps all over the place—cultural studies, sociology, politics, cinema studies, literary studies. At the same time, again, this is seen as something on an advantage: not every kid coming into university is going to end up being an English major. (Like, oh my god, they’re not?) So, again, there’s no rights and wrongs—no one way to do it.

Last night I went out with friends for a drink and a late-night burger. (My first in well over a month… what kind of pop culture fiend can I be? I don’t have a television, and I never eat fast food.) Pretty much all grad students, and a lot of them doing their first teaching as well. Nicole, who’d just finished her course, reminded me of another major thing we discussed in “Approaches to Teaching Writing.” Again, thanks to Randy Bass…

When you teach a course, it’s important to have some core goals. What are the things you really want every student to walk away with? For me the core goals are two-fold: I want, first, my students to understand the conventions of writing for an academic context. (And yes, I mean conventions… the mechanics of it, but also that the same subject matter and argument can be presented in different ways for different audiences.) And secondly, I want my students to be able to go beyond the “character” stage of reading, and get to the “representation” stage.

So, yesterday’s class. Once again I broke the 90 minute class roughly in half. For the first half of the class, thinking about the notion of “making writing visible in the classroom” I brought in the introductory paragraphs from two of my own response papers, as well as some other writing. I had copies of these examples of writing for everyone, as well as putting some of it up on screen. I read each of my own paragraphs (making the point that in my other life, when I’m not way too into pop culture, I know an awful lot about Victorian literature…) and we discussed them. One didn’t provide a thesis, but asked the types of questions that went straight into representation: in Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend. (Anyone who’s interested, I am fascinated by the fact that Lizzie and Eugene pretty much disappear from the narrative, and definitely disappear as a couple, for a quarter of the text. They’re a cross-class-lines match—a radical possibility for Dickens. Is he shying away from what he’s set up?) and the students picked up straight away that there was no thesis. But they were interested in the types of questions I was asking. The second, also on Dickens (thanks to Leona Fisher) was about Bleak House, and it did state a thesis. The students criticised where they thought I had used to much context/overview. They discussed the way I framed my questions. They saw that I’m not a perfect writer, but that I’m writing to conventions. I showed how I picked up on the language of the text (weaving “bleak” through the paragraph, for instance) to make Dickens’s language work for my argument. They got it. Happy teacher.

Then I turned to non-academic writing. I used two examples of blog writing, that make an argument. The first was from Matthew Yglesias—who I’ve just discovered. He’s not always putting forward an argument (more comment with occasional analysis… there’s so much on his blog that it is often one of the “take a look at this” style… but he’s great.) I asked the students to read each paragraph—going around the class, everyone had a “turn.” We discussed his strategy—he in fact moved between casual language and what was highly academic terminology. We pulled up the OED online and looked up a word they hadn’t come across. (Not too many people come across eschatology on a regular basis… I know it care of Bernard Muir.) One of my students picked up on the fact that he called it a “philosophical rant” and moved between the more casual language associated with the rant, and enlisting Aristotle, Kant, etc, in supporting his argument. I was so happy!

Then I read a post by from Angryblackbitch: not at all framed as an academic paper, and not the type of writing they're used to encountering in the classroom, but pretty fantastic as a piece of persuasive blogging. I asked them to try to reframe her argument in terms of a more “conventional” thesis statement… and they did. Honestly, I’m so happy with these students.

And then we watched the episode of the West Wing that they’re responding to for today’s class. I wasn’t sure how this would come across: I was upfront about this, saying that I hadn’t taught it before (the My So-Called Life I used on Wednesday I’d already used with the Discovery class, as well as having the reassurance that Robyn had used it in a community college class to good effect). Today they’re sending me all their pieces of writing, and as there are five students, we’re going to workshop each response as a class. Wish me luck.

2008-07-09T16:12:00.003-04:00

Well, I’m getting used to having places to be during the day. I need more sleep, though—I must get to bed earlier tonight! Two classes tomorrow, then only the one on Friday. Also, today marks the beginning of my second full week standing in front of a classroom.

I got through the rest of the movie trailers this morning, and then the students began writing—most of them looked like they were concentrating. Marvellous! Still, there were a few who weren’t writing at all, and just staring off into space. I don’t know if this is lack of interest of not understanding—I’m going to have to follow it up. I emphasised at the beginning that participation is really important to me, and so when I write up my feedback on the piece of writing they’ve just given me I might have to write a few comments on the participation aspect of the class—both making an effort to contribute to discussion, but also writing when there is a writing exercise in class.

I’ve been collecting articles and blog pieces and other bits and pieces in the last few days. Next week wanting to look at print media—mostly opinion pieces and essays about youth, but also advertising that targets youth and essays analysing the commodification of youth. As it’s all high school students I don’t want to get into heavy theory, but find more accessible articles that still isolate some important terms.

My first session of peer reviewing. At first the comments they gave each other were “yeah, it’s really good. Oh—your spelling is wrong on this word.” So talking to each pair I asked each student to state their partner’s argument, and point to where it occurred in the paper. Then I asked them to describe the structure and if they had any comments or ideas for that aspect of the writing, and finally I asked them to look at the evidence that was provided supporting the central argument and other examples or interpretations that could be given. Following this discussion I asked each student to write a reflection of what they would do next to develop this piece of writing further, based on our class discussion and on the peer reviewing. They’ve each handed in the piece of writing they did out of class time and the reflection I asked them to write in the last twenty minutes or so.

And my pen exploded. I ended up with ink all over my hands and, unwittingly, on my face. Well, not unwittingly. I just decided I could live with it.

Oh, and, apparently, “All you need is love.” Good to know.

2008-07-08T20:56:00.004-04:00

When I was doing the subject “Approaches to Teaching Writing” (with the guru of pedagogical theory, Randy Bass) last year, the section that made the deepest impression on me was when we were discussing the differences between “novice” and “expert” writers. In these studies one of the keys to progressing in writing expertise was to acknowledge at the outset your status as a novice. (I’ve felt like a novice more than a few times since I’ve been a grad student—I hope that realising this in myself has helped me gain some expertise… especially since I’m teaching now.) Then, to move forward, another common factor among students who developed as writers was that they found something to write on that they felt a personal investment in. As seems perfectly obvious when you say it out loud (or write it on a blog…) students do much better when they care about what they’re writing. And now we have the studies to prove it.

Last year I designed a syllabus specifically around representations of Australia: it didn’t have to do with a particular age-group, but moved through a number of different media to draw a picture of historical and contemporary ideas of “Australia” and “Australians.” Now that I’m teaching this class I’ve chosen representations of teenagers: there’s “insider” knowledge, and the provocation to respond, but there’s also “outsider” perspectives my students will be responding to. I haven’t given much theory/criticism to read—I will. But I want to do a fairly direct reading of pop culture in the first instance.

I occasionally feel like the students are looking at me as though I’m teaching this so they’ll think I’m hip. (We, here, all know I’m not.) All I’m trying to get across that teenagers are represented everywhere—but the representations are limited. I think this is starting to come across.

My morning class went well this morning. (They both went well, but I was nervous about the morning.) I came up with the idea of looking at a series of movie trailers the other day. Thanks to the wonder of technology, I put together a series of links to “teen” films from Rebel Without a Cause through to Mean Girls. Today we looked at a series of eight trailers. (We’re going to do a few tomorrow.) For the first couple I asked them to describe what they were seeing—cars, generational conflicts, stereotypes, rock’n’roll… Yesterday students were nearly silent—today most people said something, and made connections between trailers, made guesses as to what kind of expectations the trailer set up, what types of “tags” were used to hook you in… We finished on Dead Poet’s Society, and suddenly one of the students who had written well but hadn’t participated in the discussion piped up in excitement—and immediately linked it back to the episode of My So-Called Life.

Tomorrow there’ll be more, and then a writing exercise that will most likely carry over to Friday. I do feel like it’s been a good exercise to get the students thinking critically. I suppose I’ll see how well it’s gone when we get to the writing… Fingers crossed.

2008-07-07T17:27:00.006-04:00

So, I’m a teacher of writing. How much do I focus on the nuts and bolts of an argumentative essay, and how much do I focus on the type of class discussion that could generate a piece of writing with a central thesis? I mean, you’re writing about something—discussion allows a student to try out ideas, ask questions, hear the possible arguments that attempt to refute their own thesis. All good, right?

I taught two classes today—after despairing when it looked like the enrolment in my expository writing class had fallen to one, my spirits were definitely lifted when, arriving this afternoon, I had seven students in the classroom. After some general introductions (and answering some questions about Australia) we got started, and the discussion was lively. I used part of the following quote from Mark Davis’s essay “Turf War” to start our discussion of youth representation:

“Ten years after the first edition of Gangland was published, young people continue to be economically and culturally marginalised in Australia, pilloried in the media, valorised only insofar as their youthfulness can be commodified, but too rarely sought out for their ideas and opinions.”

Shifting it to an American perspectives, I asked a lot of questions—and I’m really glad that I didn’t just get answers that the students thought I wanted to hear. From talking about the political system, to the education system, to media saturation, we got a discussion going on how young people are treated and represented, and after an hour of talking the students wrote for half an hour, responding to the Davis quote, and to the discussion we had just completed. I’ve still got them to read—but I came out of the classroom feeling really energized. I had a real sense that the students wanted to be there, and were keen to voice their opinions.

After my morning class, though, I was feeling a little bit drained—a lot of silences when I asked a question, then a student would answer. A few friends teaching from the same program said they had real trouble getting kids to work today—said they wanted to chat, and they ended up feeling a bit defeated. I didn’t get that far, but it wasn’t exactly discussion. Tonight I’m going to look at finding a short piece of writing that we can analyse as a piece of writing, and that I can ask them to respond to. I have to figure out which pieces of the longer syllabus I have I can really adapt. I get the sense that the students have only ever responded to a set question, and that in most cases they write to an expected answer. Suddenly there’s this confusion of watching television—familiar—and being asked to think critically about it, and its potential “meaning” or impact—an unfamiliar action. I’ve been tinkering with my syllabus day by day, and I think this is going to continue.

In other news, first I experienced (very lazily) my first 4th of July—including a 4th of July party, and a somewhat obscured view of fireworks as I was making my way to the party. I didn’t realize that the fireworks would be at 9pm—I associated fireworks with new years, I guess, which makes me think midnight—or at least late at night. But of course families watch 4th of July fireworks. Anyway, I didn’t make it to the party to watch them from my friend’s balcony, but I kind of liked running into this crowd on a bridge in Arlington watching what they could see above the treeline. Something about being there, but not quite being there seemed right to me. The party was nice too.

And then Saturday I got to see a friend from home—Peter E., who I’ve known half my life now, was in DC to give a paper today at George Washington University. Saturday night he invited me to a dinner party at the apartment a friend of his (he and the friends we ate dinner with are all based in San Francisco at the moment—I think its coincidence that they were all here at the same time.) So, a lovely meal, a bottle of wine, some serious punning, and someone else with the Australian accent. So good.

Two nights out led to a quiet Sunday—writing Independence Day entries, reading, watching some of the shows I’m thinking of using clips from in class (an “intellectual” excuse to watch teen drama! Fab!). The usual.

I have a lot of responses to student writing to write tonight and tomorrow—the Renaissance class I’ve been working with meets on Wednesday, and I’ll have a set of blog entries and a set of essays to comment on. Gosh! So busy!

2008-07-03T19:10:00.005-04:00

I think the next five weeks will settle into a pattern as I figure out this whole teaching thing. The good: I got the technology working. I got to show the students the episode of My So-Called Life that I wanted them to see. I broke them up into groups and they started talking about it. And nothing was bad—but I think I’m confusing the students a little. Part of it is that I have to figure out common ground—not only between myself and them, but between the students themselves. They vary from 15 years to 18 years, and they come, as mentioned yesterday, from six different countries. I already know that in different cultures essay-writing is approached and structured differently, and so I’ve been talking about an argumentative essay and addressing it for the US context—but I think I need to start being more explicit.

I’m also trying to find texts/shows that open up a lot of questions—I think, for instance, there were questions in the episode of My So-Called Life (“The Substitute”) that were quite clear—and a couple of students mentioned how much they agreed with it. I don’t know if they’re reluctant to ask their own questions, or if they simply aren’t used to the kind of questioning I’m trying to elicit. So, on my part, I need to be more explicit.

After watching the episode, I was interested in the fact that the students went for the obvious “issue”: censorship. (The episode, for those in the dark, has a substitute teacher come in, use unorthodox methods to “wake up” the students, and the result is a class lit magazine with writing that’s submitted anonymously and reflects what’s really on students minds, rather than what they think they should write for a “literary” magazine. Inevitably there’s a piece that meets with objections from the principal and the lit is pulled: the protagonist, Angela, decides to go against school rules and reproduce and distribute it on her own. In the mean time we learn that the teacher who is a hero to a lot of the students is morally ambiguous—he himself has abandoned his family and failed to pay child support. There’s a lot of other stuff going on—and it’s the details that make it work instead of seeming a typical “issue-oriented” show—but that’s the basics.) I don’t think I was very clear with the writing I asked them to do after we finished watching it: but we didn’t have a lot of time after the 45 minutes or so of the episode. I broke the students up into groups of three and four, and first asked them to discuss the show in light of their reactions to the “theme,” but also (more) to the relationships portrayed—cross-generational and among the students. I then asked them to write a short response about one of these relationships. I was hoping we’d be able to move from the overview to some level (even a smidgen) of analysis. I’ve only looked very briefly, and I think they students did start to approach that analysis—I am pretty pleased with that.

There is a group of about three or four that don’t seem as engaged in the class. Out of eighteen (I realised this morning that the roster listed one student twice, so eighteen is the total) I suppose that’s not bad. And they’re not being disruptive, they’re doing the writing and handing things in. I am not sure if they just don’t want to be there, or if there’s a language barrier, or what is happening. I’m hoping to be able to draw them into the conversation. Still, I feel like a lot of the other students are responding.

We didn’t get enough time with the episode, and I want to return to it—I’m not sure if we should come straight back to it on Monday, or if we should take a few days to look at a lot of different representations of teens and then come back to a more sustained narrative. I’m leaning towards the latter—in part for technology reasons. I haven’t been able to get internet in the building I’ve been in this week, and I’ll be back for the final two weeks of the class. Next week, though, I know the building I’ll be teaching in has internet, and I want to go through some online material. I especially want to look at a series of movie trailers, from Rebel without a Cause through to this year's teen movies and look at both how they’re trying to attract/sell to a teen audience, but also how recognisable “types” crop up again and again.

I was talking to my lovely friend Maureen yesterday, and she talked about wanting to teach a class like mine that has enough time for you to mess up, figure out what went wrong, fix it a little while probably messing up something else and—finding what works, what doesn’t. I hope between this and the class that starts Monday I can start to get a feel for how much can be covered, what works with different age groups, what—doesn’t work.

I've also got to spend the next few days getting ahead on the Independence Day Project. Gosh! I will be keeping busy...

2008-07-02T14:31:00.004-04:00

Teaching: day one.

I didn’t end up getting the information for my class at all yesterday. I didn’t know how many students, and wasn’t absolutely sure they would be in high school (as opposed to junior high). I had been given the details of my classroom—but they were wrong. (Not even the same building… It’s a good thing I was early for class.) I also didn’t have a contact phone number to get the information I needed—but Lisa, who’s staying at my place at the moment, and also teaching, did have a contact. So, it got sorted. I got to my classroom, I had 17 high school age students (there will be 19 in total I believe) and, though the topic is essay writing, we talked less about writing essays than the theme for the class. Now, I think I will have to adjust it a little: only two of my students are American—others are from Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Turkey, Spain and Taiwan. So, instead of representations of American youth, I’m hoping I’ll be able to bring in more general youth.

So: I asked a lot of questions today. People were initially shy with responses, but they warmed up, and I think a third of the class was pretty active in their participation. We talked about people that are seen to represent “America” (their suggestions varied from Obama/McCain to Harrison Ford, Donald Trump and Hugh Hefner.) I then asked them to think about young Americans (teenagers, or under 25) and compare the types of media that different figures attract. I asked them to think about the types of stories they read that involve young people—the Lindsay Lohen burnouts, the warnings about how the internet poses a threat to young people, the assumptions that youth culture is all sex, drugs, alcohol, hiphop (in lieu of rock’n’roll).

I got them to do only a little bit of writing—a brainstorms, then a personal response to the questions the class had raised. Tomorrow I hope I’ll have access to some technology—I want to show an episode of My So-Called Life and get them to start working on an analysis. There’s a chance the technology won’t come through, and if that happens I’ll have to find some articles about youth and some ads—I’ll play it by ear, I think.

Still, it was rewarding. And hard work! I hope that I’ll be able to draw more people into the conversation, get them thinking through the implications of the media they consume, think about reading everything. (I’m hoping to show them my Facebook profile at some point and ask them to “read” that—the groups I’ve joined, the fact that I’ve added Scrabble and iRead, my Penguin of the Day photos, that I’ve added two travel maps.)

I think they may have been a little confused by just how much I wanted to get them talking about youth culture today—this is an essay writing class. Aren’t I just meant to give them a question an watch them write? Apparently that’s what the person who substituted yesterday (while they were hiring me) did—gave them an essay to read that took them an hour to get through, then told them to write. But recognising the questions and doing the analysis—and talking it out—is definitely part of it, and something I want them to see is part of the process. Fingers crossed.

2008-07-01T11:11:00.003-04:00

Whether or not my other class goes ahead next week, I’m definitely taking on a class starting tomorrow for the Summer Discovery program at Georgetown—it will be very similar to the course that I still hope will start next week, as it’s focus is also essay writing. I’m going to adapt the syllabus I already have—it feels kind of crazy. They were meant to start yesterday, and still hadn’t found someone to take it on, and I got the email this morning—responded within moments to say: yes! I’ll do it. It will be high school students, which I think is a good opportunity, since I haven’t ruled out teaching that age group when I get back to Australia… Australia. I miss home some days!

If the other course does go ahead, I’m going to end up incredibly busy for the next month. But it will also give me the money to go somewhere in August if I want to. (My impulse is road trip… since I haven’t driven a car, except a few times at Christmas, for a year, am I allowed a few weeks of high gas comsumption? Seeing America while I’m here is a good cause, right?)

Now I have to get into gear and finish my syllabus. Obviously this will be a three week version, but I think I know where I’ll be able to cut down…

It’s quite exciting! Expect reports…

2008-06-30T20:17:00.003-04:00

Last night I went to see War, Inc, and I have to say I really enjoyed it. Getting home, I decided to look up some reviews (it came out while I was in Central America) and found that most critics considered it largely a failure—“more often than not the satire misses the mark” seems to sum up the prevailing opinion. The inevitable comparison was to Dr Strangelove, with everyone noting: it doesn’t measure up. Has any political satire measured to Strangelove?

Looking through the reviews, though, I’m fascinated that each critic seemed to consider different parts, and different actors, successful. For one it might have been John Cusack’s hitman (Hauser) troubled by his conscience—for the next, Cusack is the weak presence in the film. One finds Hillary Duff terrible; another finds her one of the best features of the film. (I'm not sure if I'm the only one, but I find her reminiscent of Tia Carrera in Wayne's World - though less rock'n'roll.) One finds the obvious reference to current events too explicit; another thinks it doesn’t go far enough—that it needs to go closer to the bone.

It was, I suppose, a hotchpotch: the new version of a screwball comedy. It probably owes as much to Mel Brooks as to Kubrick, the way it parodies various film genres (the leanings toward Westerns were something I particularly enjoyed)—but it’s a step up from what I’ve seen of the Scream/Scary Movie franchises. There were moments of—“They went there!”—but I never found it to be cringeworthy. Yes, the characters are stock characters: and they are aware of it. (Hillary Duff as an Central-Asian Britney Spears could not possibly be unaware of the parody she represents.) One reviewer complained that the movie sells out, so you end up rooting for Cusack’s hitman—in a movie where nearly everything is a target of satire, I found this to be satirical too—everyone by the journalist is so compromised, and the “good journalist” is so good that she’s a parody, that the only person really left to identify with is Hauser. I don’t think it will age that well—set pieces in it might, but probably not overall—but, well, I don’t want my money back.

2008-06-29T18:20:00.001-04:00

from “Stray Paragraphs in April, Year of the Rat”

If we were to walk for a hundred years, we could never take
One step toward heaven—
                                               you have to wait to be gathered.

Two cardinals, two blood clots,
Cast loose in the cold, invisible arteries of the air.
If they ever stop, the sky will stop.

Affliction’s a gift, Simone Weil thought—
The world becomes more abundant in severest light.

April, old courtesan, high-styler of months, dampen our mouths.

The dense moist and cold and dark come together here.

The soul is air, and it maintains us.

—Charles Wright

2008-06-29T14:29:00.004-04:00

I keep thinking that I’m going to come up short with the Independence Day Project—there have been a few countries recently that have left me scrambling until the last minute to find a poem that I can use. I’ve been writing entries ahead of time recently, as the next month or so has a few days with three or more countries celebrating on the same day. I’m trying to write two a day this week, at least, so I can get ahead. I look back on the quiet month of April… Which is not to say that I miss those days. Now is the perfect time for me to spending so much time on the project. I’m getting so used to searching and writing, that when it gets to the end of January next year I won’t exactly know what to do with myself. (A second round? A new project?) There are days, though, when I feel independenced-out. Usually when I’ve been reading about genocides and especially cruel colonial practises.

In the mean time, yesterday I went to hear some music at the Kennedy Center—taking advantage of the free performances at the Millenium Stage again. Two violinists from the NSO (Natasha and Zino Bogachek) and a pianist (Darya Gabay), a program of chamber music. Looking up the violinists, I find they've recorded a CD of Telemann's sonatas for two violins. I wish they had played Telemann... I hadn’t heard of any of the composers before hand, and so I was hoping there would be some contemporary music—unfortunately not. I’ve looked up the composers since, but I didn’t need to really—it was clear that Ysaÿe, Moszkowsky and Sarasate were all late Romantics, caught up in the trend for nationalism. Fine. There are some good pieces of the genre—I find it hard not to get into the spirit of Sibelius, for example. But these were lesser composers (hence, I suppose, them being unfamiliar.) For the most part I found myself playing the game I haven’t in so, so long: unfolding the piece ahead of what was being played. Once I’d figured the sound-world they were in, it was alarmingly easy to see where the works were going most of the time. I sometimes think that my entire music degree has somehow slipped out of my memory, but then I go to something like this and realize that, no, it is simply dormant.

Still there were some really nice moments. In Ysaÿe’s (he's the chap in the picture)Amitié I loved a moment when one violin played a scalic passage and then held a note, and the second violin came in on the same note—not immediately heading into a scale, but holding the same note, as there was a subtle shift from one violin to the next. I think this is typical of my reactions, though—I find myself responding to the stiller moments, find the climax so often in the quietness of a single note. And I know that to get that impact, you need that creation of a thick texture in order to pull back. I think it was that in these pieces the thick texture was so typical, and the moments of freshness only came through in stillness.

It also made me realize that I always find the slow movements too short. That a typical four-movement work will have only one slow movement, and then it will be over quickly: apparently it’s only meant to be a palate cleanser so you can dive into more displays of virtuosity. I measure a lot of works by their slow movements—I think that is why I always return to Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time: every movement is wonderful and complex, but the fifth and eighth movements are transcendental: they seem to lose track of an absolute sense of metre and move into this other place. I am still waiting for a repetition of that first real profound musical experience I had as a student at the conservatorium hearing the fifth movement of Messiaen for the first time in concert class, played from memory by the best cellist we had. I’ve had two complete musical experiences since then, but I guess it’s like a first kiss. It can’t be recaptured exactly.

It’s so nice, though, to find that this thing that was such a huge part of my life for so long is still there, and it still takes up the same amount of space inside me, however much it isn’t the current focus. And listening to these pieces last night, jotting down descriptions of moments that interested me, for what seemed right, or what seemed wrong (wrong words, but hopefully you get the sense of what I mean…) I felt again that I would like to try writing music again. I’ve long wanted to write a piece for flute, with “an occasional second flute,” and I realized last night that I wanted another instrument in a lower register for a counterpoint. Perhaps I will use piano, perhaps cello or viola. It’s something to think about. Though it’s so strange to find myself thinking about—I don’t have any manuscript paper, and I’m going to go looking for some in the next few days. I’ll see what happens.

As for today—who knows? I have some student writings I need to comment on this afternoon, and then I may dash off to a free film, or another performance at the Kennedy Center, or I may even go see a film that I have to—horrors!—pay for. 2001 is showing at one of the Smithsonians tonight, but I have already seen it on the “big screen.” So—maybe I’ll wander down to DC’s good cinema and see one of the new films I’ve read about.

2008-06-26T14:35:00.003-04:00

Things keep running away from me—well, time does. Things keep getting done, and then I find suddenly it’s several days down the track, and I’ve read a few books, written a few scraps, thought some things that later it may have been useful to have thought… I’ve been making notes and underlining things and making little connections in my mind. It’s been a nice week.

Though I didn’t make it to Philadelphia—devestation! There was some talk last night of driving to West Virginia today, too, but that was talk over whiskey and crème brulee. So. It could just be that my potential-intrepid-co-traveller hasn’t awaken as yet. Or she could just be disappointer that the town of Intercourse that she proposed we visit (because of its Amish population) is in Pennsylvania and not West Virginia. Either way, I’m guessing that there’s no getting out of DC today—but I hold out hope. Maybe tomorrow?

I asked a friend to recommend me some readings in poetics and poetic criticism—just to have a bit of roving reading through the summer before I settle into a more directed reading list. So last week I read James Longenbach’s The Resistance to Poetry, which I loved. I haven’t managed to sit down and write much this week—no poem or article, just Independence Day Project entries—the Independence Days come thick and fast at this time of the year—but I’ve got some ideas.

My housemate was fasting a week and a half ago—though she was drinking a concoction of water, maple syrup and lemon juice, so it wasn’t a complete fast. Anyway, I believe she went for five days. This reminded me that I’ve had a fascination with fasting ever since I read a book by Sharman Apt Russell entitled Hunger: An Unnatural History. It makes me want try it for a week, just to see what it’s like. (And then, of course, have the opportunity to write about it.) I do find the history of fasting and the religious and political uses of it fascinating. And now there are apparently secular fasting clinics in California… go for three weeks and eat nothing under supervision. There’s something beguiling about the idea, though I’m not entirely sure why. (And I don’t expect everyone to be beguiled as I am.)

Last week I was interviewed on 3RRR in Melbourne. I forgot to tell my friends, and yet they seem to have caught it by chance anyway—even a guy from my primary school who emailed me a “did you happen to be on the radio...?” note a few days later. Apparently I spoke in complete sentences, which is nice to know.

I do feel like my life is turning into commenting on student writing and reading books at the moment. Which is not at all a complaint—there’s a glorious slowness to it all. I occasionally think—maybe I’ll go look at some art. Or—maybe I’ll go watch a film. But by and large the days are mine.

I still don’t have enough enrolments for the class I’m meant to be teaching—I’ve got to admit I’m sad about this. I both wanted the teaching experience, and the money that accompanied the experience. I don’t expect to find myself entirely destitute, but—. The work I’m doing with Professor Bradford’s liberal studies class on the Renaissance is really rewarding, though, and I may get a chance to lead a segment on Renaissance music. I’ll have to cast my mind back to those motets…

And of course there’s online Scrabble. A very important part of my life. Trying to find seven letter words does keep me up nights…

2008-06-20T16:38:00.004-04:00

“Should I bounce on a rock off his head?”
“Respect your father dear. —What kind of rock?”

—from The Bank Dick

Yes, there have been a few more films—All That Heaven Allows and The Bank Dick. Having now seen the former I can see just how much Todd Haynes’s wonderful Far From Heaven owes to this film. Also, I can see why Rock Hudson was such a sex symbol—in the Doris Day films it always seemed obvious to me that he was gay, but as the Walden-esque self-sufficient nature man, with his house in the woods, his hunting, trees and—terribly important—his flannel shirts I can definitely see why anyone would fall for him.

The Bank Dick is W. C. Fields’s best-known films—at least these days. (I don’t know how it stacked up at the time it came out…) I’m so glad I’ve finally seen one of his films—though Louise Brooks wrote that his films don’t capture the genius of his stage performances. The film certainly did well enough—his stage performances must have been something!

On top of this I’ve been catching up with friends, working in the Writing Center, begun working with a Liberal Studies summer class, planning the syllabus for the class I’m (hopefully) teaching in a few weeks (enrolments are still low—fingers crossed the numbers arrive), writing and attending performances, reading things and thinking about the thesis I’ll be writing this coming academic year. As my mother always says, “No rest for the wicked.”

I went to another free performance at the Kennedy Center last night—a dance performance by the NORD/NOBA Center for Dance, which is a community partnership between the New Orleans Recreation Department and the New Orleans Ballet Association. For a number of the pieces the dancers were accompanied by Rising Appalachia, a musical duo of sisters Leah and Chloe Smith—they were pretty fabulous. I’m hoping to track down their CDs soon. The dancers were great—again making me wish I had the knowledge and experience to write about dance (particularly contemporary dance) effectively.

The writing center and writing consultant work has started up pretty much as if I never left off. It still feels strange to me that I’m reasonably good at giving advice on all the writing that comes through the door. I’m used to knowing my way around a poem, but I feel like it’s taken me so long to get the hang of academic writing—and I’m still getting the hang of American academic writing—that I can’t quite trust my own advice a lot of the time! On the other hand, I think the struggles I’ve had, and really learning to think about it in terms of academic conventions has probably helped me relate to writers and helped them understand the very things that troubled me. It does make me wish there had been an explicit pedagogical strategy in my undergraduate degree to assist with writing—my writing fluency has always been considered a strength, but I really feel like I had to begin to find my own way through the labyrinth. In a way I think it has made me a better writer—because I’ve got idiosyncrasies that I wouldn’t otherwise have—but sometimes the weird individuality that creeps into my academic work does raise eyebrows. Of course, finding my own solution is, I think, the best way to have come out of the thing (even if it did take me an inordinately long time to do so!) but at the same time, the lack of focus on the pedagogy meant I was incredibly shy of asking for guidance to improve my writing for a long time. Slowly these things come together…

And now I’m trying to get the nuts and bolts of this syllabus together as I contemplate not just tutoring but actually teaching writing. I was reluctant to even apply for the teaching position as I didn’t feel qualified. As it’s like to be high school students or “rising seniors” I wanted to choose something familiar that they could begin to think critically about, and so the theme for the course is representations of America, specifically American youth, looking at television, print-media, film and short stories. I’m planning to use an episode of The West Wing (probably the last of season one; Charlie is reluctant to join the conversation because he feels his inexperience; Zoe, the priviledged presidential daughter, feels no qualms and doesn’t fully understand his reluctance; the president cites the report Charlie eventually gives him on youth attitudes to politics; the shooters are themselves young white-extremists… there’s a narrative about privilege versus lack of privilege, and about education versus ignorance in youth underlying what seems to be a whole adult focussed drama I’d like them to see) and an episode of My So-Called Life—probably the substitute teacher episode, which raises a lot of questions about youth investment in a cause and youth apathy, when censorship becomes an issue. I was thinking about using the film Pleasantville—which I haven’t seen in years—to try to think about adult nostalgia and youth culture… and perhaps—because, let’s face it, I’m a dork—the king of teen representation John Hughes’s Pretty in Pink. (I suppose Clueless would also work—I like Pretty in Pink because of the class representations and classic teen “types” staples of teen films that are clear but also not so explicit as The Breakfast Club… though The Breakfast Club works better in some other ways, acknowledging the near-impossibility of crossing into other social spaces…)

And of course I want to look at election coverage and the commentary on the youth vote.

I feel like it’s evolving day to day.

I may be heading to Philadelphia tomorrow—if I do it will be my first time in Pennsylvania (another state!)—with Kacee, a girl I met in Costa Rica who’s in DC all summer before moving to Philadelphia for law school. She’s looking at places and areas to live, and hopefully I’ll be along for the ride. If there can be a stop by some major sight and a Philly cheesesteak then I will consider it a good first foray into the city. And I’ll be back. We were also talking last night about going on a crazy five day road trip up to Boston—and maybe going further on right up to Canada and New Brunswick—in the next week or two. I’ve got my fingers crossed. She has access to a car, so I hope it happens. She seems ready to get out of DC, having, like me, been back for under two weeks! Girl after my own heart… Nothing like someone who understands nomadism.

Tonight I’m having a cultural experience of a different kind: I’m going to my first baseball match. Not just any baseball match, though—it’s the “Stitch’n’Pitch,” which means that the game at the DC stadium will have a contingent (I do not know how large) of knitters in the stands, knitting and purling away as the innings pass by… Yes, I’m taking some knitting with me. Yes, I think it is strange—but how could I pass up such an invitation?

2008-06-16T21:02:00.007-04:00

The words “you’re so cultured” were directed at me this evening when I told my friend Robyn that yesterday I watched the Clara Bow silent film It and today I watched the 1940s screwball comedy The Palm Beach Story in the basement of the Lauinger Library. It’s a happy day when I can earn culture stripes from screwball comedy, I gotta say. I mean, gosh! I wasn’t even waxing lyrical about Godard or Antonioni or some other auteur.

It’s been so long since I watched films, so I’m determined to sit down and watch a good few this summer—not just screwball comedies, but a lot of classics I still haven’t caught up with. I’ve started investigating Georgetown’s collection, and on the whole I’m pretty pleased with it! I’m hoping I’ll have some time tomorrow, though I start working in the Writing Center again tomorrow, so that means my day is a little more full than the last few have been. I’m thinking Sullivan’s Travels tomorrow… I was so sad that the Preston Sturges films were always so hard to find in Australia. Here, they’re easier—though I think they’ve all started finding their way down south by now as well.

I made it to my first free event at the Kennedy Center yesterday, as part of their Millenium Stage program—four local dance groups performed: Silk Road Dance Company (contemporary and traditional women’s dances of the Middle East, Central Asia and the Caucasus); BosmaDance (contemporary); Jazzdanz/dc (not surprisingly, jazz dance); and Coyaba Dance Theater (West African Dance). I enjoyed the whole, though it was BosmaDance and Coyaba Dance Theater that really excited me. The Silk Road Dance company was lovely, and I was fascinated by the hand movements of the dances—it reminded me of when I was taking Flamenco lessons, and learning to manipulate my wrists and hands in ways I’d never thought about. Jazzdanz/dc didn’t do a lot for me—I was surprised, because I’ve enjoyed jazz dance when I’ve seen it in the past—but I realise that I’ve usually seen it in short bursts, rather than a number of pieces all in a row. There was a female soloist who was terrific though—she seemed to have the kind of fluidity of movement that the other dancers lacked.

Fluidity of movement is one of the things I love about contemporary dance—and I suppose I’ve become really interested in contemporary dance because often there are things that remind me of circus. (I’ve been missing circus again lately…) I took some contemporary dance class when I was in Melbourne, and I felt like the classes tapped into a lot of the work I’d been doing when learning trapeze. I found BosmaDance really rewarding—there was so much in the movement I loved, and yet—I feel like I have no vocabulary to talk about dance. It’s something that—unlike, say, screwball comedies—I am not very familiar with yet.

The final group—Coyaba Dance Theater—were a complete joy to watch. I loved that there was no uniform shape and size to the dancers. What was uniform was the sheer energy. The drumming accompanying the dancers was amazing, and the dancers showed such joy on their faces while they jumped and shimmied around that it was impossible not to feel joyful too. I’m hoping I’ll get to see them perform again.

In the mean time—more writing, bits and pieces. Got one abstract done, and will work on another tomorrow. Staying up-to-date on the Independence Day Project. Catching up with friends.

2008-06-15T13:09:00.003-04:00

A recent preoccupation has been Clara Bow—though I still haven’t seen any of her films, including It—the film that gives us the phrase “It-girl.” Sienna Miller has nothing on Clara. I’m thinking of wandering to campus this afternoon and burying myself in the library for an hour and a half to watch this film.

On the plane to Panama City, I read a biography of her (Clara Bow: Runnin’ Wild, by David Stern) and took notes—another actress poem. Number six. I scribbled bits and pieces towards the poem while in Panama, and then this morning took myself to Baked and Wired to have a stab at putting it together. I think the resulting poetic “essay” works, though I’m never certain.

So many actresses.

I still haven’t managed to write my Louise Brooks piece, though I will. In the mean time (and, interestingly, care of an essay Louise Brooks wrote) I’ve become interested in Lillian Gish—I’ve seen only one of her films. The D W Griffith Broken Blossoms. She’s quite wonderful.

It’s so nice to be writing. Some prose ideas coming too—both articles, but maybe some fiction. Sometime.

I also have to try to get myself into gear to write a few abstracts today, for some conferences I’ve found that interest me. I’m behind—hugely behind—in my ambition to visit ten or more states this year. I’ve been to Virginia and New York. And I’d been to both of those before. I will get there.

Oh! To write is blissful. To follow one book to the next that book suggests.

I am finally reading The English Patient. I’ve devoured Ondaatje’s poems, but somehow never read all his novels. Now I’m jumping in.

And the weather is beautiful—I feel light and happy. Plan to go to the Kennedy Center tonight for a free performance (a dance showcase) and maybe I’ll take some photographs on the way back…

During the week I’ll start seriously thinking about getting some academic work done too…

2008-06-14T14:31:00.006-04:00

So thirteen hours after I got back from Central America, I found myself at 8am on campus, talking to a class about the Writing Center. (I start back in my tutoring role there next Tuesday—things fall back into their rhythm quickly.) Upon finishing my class talk, I went to the library and borrowed five books (the first person to borrow for the day… summer hours) and then went to Baked and Wired for coffee. And so, DC life resumed, with a trip to stock up on groceries, an afternoon of reading and, Thursday night, a trip to an exhibition and performance art event.

Art-o-matic. The idea is for it to create a place for DC artists to converge. What this means, at the all-inclusive exhibition taking up 10 floors of a building that just strays into the NE quarter of town, is that genuinely interesting work sits beside the really awful. And, occasional gems like the classic “don’t touch the button” drawing by an artist whose display provides the information: “Connor is eleven years old,” and whose card advises he is represented by his mother.

I’ve been reading Hoogrrl for a while, as it lets me know about exhibition openings and art events that I wouldn’t otherwise hear about, and so mid-way through last semester I got into the habit of trying to get to one of these events most weeks, and so have seen (and written about) quite a few exhibitions in smaller DC galleries in the past few months, as well as visiting the major collections on the mall, and at the Corcoran and Phillips museums.

With ten floors, there was no way I could take it all in. (Ten floors?) Perhaps if you came each day for ten days, and looked at a floor. I was there for the performance art, music and beautiful people, so I went to the sixth floor, but from what I saw on the ground floor it seemed like the same proportion of good art, derivative art and just plain bad art.

The two performances I stayed for didn’t do a lot for me. The first, by Ding Ren, featured a drummer—not bad, though a little heavy on his use of the cymbals—and a girl picking up two or these pieces of coloured paper at a time, folding them, cutting holes in the middle and then scattering the circular(ish) pieces on the ground as she wore the borders around her wrist (well, apart from the ones that got away.) After a while, she collect some of the circular pieces off the ground then went and taped them to people. Returning to more cutting, she then once again walking into the audience and forced paper-border bracelets on people (one girl refused, shaking her head vigorously, but nonetheless received a bracelet.) Eventually she gathered more of her circular pieces in twos and threes, taped them together, then taped them to the edge of the stage. The denouement? Well, she picked up a pile of what was still on the ground, walked into the audience and then flung them in the air. Now that I've looked her up a bit, I suspect the piece of paper were meant to be "positive clouds." As someone who once uttered the words "I don't like fun" (meaning, really, that I make my own fun, and don't necessarily find other people's idea of "fun" to be my own) the idea of these positive clouds seems platitudinous and flimsy.

I had trouble taking this all seriously. I found myself wondering if the poor girl’s hand was getting sore from the cutting. Also, her pile of coloured paper was enormous, and I wondered if was going to—dreaded that she might—“perform” for as long as it took her to get through the whole pile. (She didn’t. About a quarter of it.) And finally, I found myself fretting about the waste of paper for an exercise so completely un-transcendental. Looking at her website, though - the source of the positive clouds above - I suspect she has better things happening.

The second scheduled artist, we were told, was sick, so a replacement in the form of Anthony Willis was provided. This was better—in that there was a point (or there seemed to be at the time. I’m a little hazy on it now). Anthony danced and sang and blew a whistle and told himself to STOP. But the dancing was not great—and while it was meant to be parodic, it was mediocre enough to not work as parody—the singing was okay, but a little (in the words of the American Idol judges) “pitchy”, and the acting was a little overwrought. It made me wonder if he’d called it performance art because none of the elements quite came together enough to be anything else. I also thought that if he did it in drag, and camped it up a notch, it would have made a decent drag act.

I don’t want to come off as a grump. Especially since Art-o-matic seems to be a place for people to try things out, in the early stages of taking wing. And that is a wonderful thing. But I didn’t stick around after these two acts to watch for the next performer in half an hour. Instead, I went home, crawled into bed and read a book.

2008-06-13T13:08:00.007-04:00

Back in the land of… well, a friend tells me the United States is the land where it is possible to claim the moral high ground, no matter what. I think it only works if you’re American. I beat him at Scrabble (sadly not as common occurrence as I would like) and while I celebrated victory, he assured me he got to celebrate the moral high ground. I asked him the nature of this moral high ground, but he was really quite vague.

So, I’ve just spent three weeks in Panama and Costa Rica, discovering, among other things, that I’m not a beach person (give me an occasional surf beach in Australia, and as many boat trips as you like), I am a volcano person, and I’m in love with the Panama Canal.

The day before leaving, though there were a lot of things I didn’t do (I feel like I move very slowly when I travel—I’m not someone who likes to dash around as much as possible, but instead I like to stay a place for a week or so and feel it out… so I was moving around a lot for me!) I feel like I did the things I most wanted to: I saw the Panama canal at both ends, I saw lava flow from an active volcano, I visited a 3000 year old archeological site, I saw contemporary art and pre-Columbian artefacts, I swam in the Caribbean, I met some truly excellent people, I visited a church with a magical relic, and I wrote some things.

I also took a lot of notes: my journal is in fact almost entirely in note form. So, to make up for the relative lack of communication on my part, notes it must be… Not all of them (that would take you days to read…) but a substantial amount.

The walls of hostels all resemble one another, only with newer or older paint. Bathroom so depressing, compelled to buy flip-flops for the shower.

All shoe stores in Panama City are air-conditioned.

The only man arriving in Panama City already wearing a Panama Hat: camel-coloured pants, white blazer, thick rimmed glasses—resembling the millionaire you assume is a patsy until it turns out Marilyn’s character really does love him.

Watching Indiana Jones in Panama City.

Man passing in a van, saying in a deep growl, “I love you.”

Indecision about where to go. My pleasure at just sitting on a bus, watching things pass.

Not sure if I have set my watch to the right time—could be walking at a different hour.

Hydrography—the cartography of water.

Watching the “Japan Sea,” the “Venice Bridge” and the “Torm Mary” pass through the Gatun locks of the Panama Canal.

Colón—yes a slum. Dangerous? Possibly. More surprised than anything to see me walking around.

Panama Viejo—ruins open among the poor suburb.

A stone from the remains of the oldest American Pacific settlement.

Reading Herodotus outside the Artisans’ Market.

Taxi to Albrook terminal: car falling apart, Mike holding his surfboard on the roof the whole way, no suspension.

Bocas del Toro. Sandal nation.

Rained out and playing cards in Boquete. “Claire’s game.”

Hurricane Alma and endless rain. The water off in David when I arrived.

The Interamericana closed between Panamanian border and San José. Diverted to the coast, a traffic jam just past Quepos. One way bridges taking the bulk of Costa Rica’s traffic. 14 hours instead of 7.

I love San José. A weird mix of familiarity and grit, plastic and fading glory, occasional splendour.

Reading Pico Iyer’s Global Souls as wandering around the everywhere-city that, under the surface (how far under the surface?) is really individual.

Meeting a negative Englishman who spent a long time in Australia—returned recently and “frankly” found it “boring.” Doesn’t like San José. He liked Panama City better, but never saw the canal.

While sugar packets are different everywhere, “Equal” and “Splenda” packets are always the same.

Reading about the Mallee Scrub in the tropics—the dirt road to San José all stirred up.

Enamel cups stringed from the rafters as decorations. Made in China.

Jade museum, sign telling me that: the pre-Columbian society used to make “winged hungers” in jade, “representing that way a cult to the brat.”

Kelly and Chritina—two girls from Canada, travelling Belize and Costa Rica. The expensive ends.

A gushing girl from America talking about travel “opening up opportunities” and “being on her journey.” Invited to go fire dance in Africa but instead going to become a yoga teacher. The interesting mixed with platitudes. Refused to believe that people drinking too much bottled water having a detrimental effect on dental health.

The odd blankness of the archaeological site.Heavy rain walking 3 kilometres down a pot-holed road. Three hours till next bus. Being taken in by a very kind lady—Maria?—to wait. She showed me her parrot, puppy and chickens. Spoke no English, but showed me her husband’s certificate in English. Communicating in little bits.

Meeting Crispian and Christy, Canadians. Crispian a game warden in South Africa for seventeen years, now taking a job in Vietnam, setting up marine national parks. Driving down from Canada since Christmas.

Man from Suriname, wife from the Netherlands, both of Indian ancestry, touring Costa Rica.

Lava lighting up as darkness fell.

Planning days back in DC—saving money, going to galleries, borrowing books from the library.

Jenny from Sweden—afraid of San José, shocked by prostitutes (I saw maybe four in a week), planning to go home and waitress. Wants to open an organic soup restaurant one day. Just soup.

Seeing the city from the hill where the old jail, now the Children’s Museum and National Gallery (and now done up to look like a jumping castle)—back turned. Hardly any signs or brand names evident.

Sign: Hotel English Spoken.

Bar: Nashville South. Saloon doors.

Farmacia Catedral. Cathedral nowhere in sight.

Lottery ticket sellers everywhere.

Mis-writing: coffee shop for culture shock. I wonder what’s on my mind?

*

I’m glad to be “home”. I feel really re-energised—I needed a break, and, indeed, a bit of “culture shock.” Ready to start working for the summer—finish some poems, read some poetics, read books of my own choosing, think some more about Henry James, tutor and teach… As well, of course, as the galleries and shows and movies I want to see, and getting to nearby places like Philadelphia and Baltimore and Harper’s Ferry.

2008-06-03T10:10:00.002-04:00

San Jose in Costa Rica is really interesting. Apparently most travelers hate it, but I'm a fan. A weird mix of everywhere and occasional uniqueness - apparently a third of Costa Ricans live here. This is, again, to promise the full update after 12 June when I have my own computer.

2008-05-31T23:51:00.004-04:00

Okay, so I am still on the run in Central America... I will do a proper update when I am home, and not negotiating strange keyboards on a time limit. Suffice to say, I have not been captured by rebels in the Darien, nor was I in a helicopter crash. I did, however, get stuck on a very long bus ride when the Interamericana was shut today, and we were routed along dirt roads with one way bridges carrying the bulk of Costa Rican traffic today... More to follow, most likely when I am home, to fill in some gaps.

The Panama Canal is amazing.

2008-05-20T22:15:00.002-04:00

This time tomorrow I will be in Panama. I don't have much left to do, but am still a little bit crazy! For some reason my flight is via Newark, where I have a 5 hour wait. Special!

This is all to say that this is where things will get sparse for a few weeks.

Miss Kate Underground: Gone Adventuring.

2008-05-18T23:23:00.002-04:00

The poet has come back to being a poet
after decades of being virtuous instead.

Can’t you be both?
No. Not in public.

—Margaret Atwood

2008-05-15T00:25:00.004-04:00

I’m feeling oddly crippled at this end of semester. I’ve finished most of the little bits and pieces I had to do—fellowship applications, etc—but there are still tiny administrative things to do in the next week, the kind of things that drive me crazy. And I want just to write, and yet—and yet. Things are coming slowly.

I’ve been starting to think about the shape of a second manuscript. Now—this is not something I envisage coming together for a long time. But—it’s seeding. Three suites. Different types of “monsters.” I wonder if it will work. In, you know, the next five to ten years.

We started up the poetry workshop again today—four of us, add Gewanter, stir. I had this poem that is really the beginning of something—a mere scrap—that is about Hero and Leander, but with an Antarctic fish thrown in because I just discovered “icefish” a week or so again. (My friend Robyn last year described the process of travelling through wikipedia, sticking to the topic you are doing background research and then, all of a sudden, falling sideways into something else. For her, it was biography of the actress who played Rayanne Graf in My So-Called Life. For me, icefish.) I’m frustrated because I didn’t know whether I should workshop that, when I know where it’s going in the next few rewrites. I never know whether to bring something I feel has gone as far as I can take it, to bring something in process, to bring something that has hit a wall…

I want to write. I think it will be scrappy for a while. But I’ve always liked patchwork.

2008-05-13T23:58:00.001-04:00

I'm so sad that Robert Rauschenberg has died. I've written about his work a few times before - he's an artist I've really loved for a number of years now. Oh!

2008-05-13T16:31:00.005-04:00

I am adjusting to life post-epigraphs. I had hoped to just put them out of my mind immediately, but it seems it will take a day or two to recover from the process of waking, thinking about how this epigraph relates to that epigraph, how they both relate to the Jewish plot, and - so forth. Plus, being "epigraph-free" makes me sound like I had a rash.

You should see print out of all the epigraphs and quotations in Daniel Deronda. Lines going everywhere. John Nash has nothing on me.

I'm celebrating. I had a hamburger earlier today. I think I'm going to go wild and see if my body can handle a milkshake.

(Oh, and I'm pleased that Häagen Dazs has released a new flavour of icecream that raises awareness about the world's dying honeybee populations. I've been worried about the honeybees for quite a while now. But I seem to have been the only one. Admittedly, most people probably didn't take multiple excursions to "The Honey Pot" near Coffs Harbour in their childhoods, to learn about bees AND taste many, many types of honey, but still... We don't know why they're dying. And it's not just a problem because of the honey... Now icecream lovers everywhere can share the concern.)

2008-05-12T16:11:00.003-04:00

My body has chosen a very inopportune moment to get sick. I have less than twenty-four hours to finish writing about the epigraphs (and yes, that means I’ll stop raving about the epigraphs too…) and all I want to do is sleep and eat protein. In fact, I think my body is rebelling and demanding all the protein it missed out on all the times I couldn’t be bothered eating a well-balanced meal. I can’t bear the idea of sugar or coffee (especially coffee. Oh god! It’s come to this!) and the only things I want to eat are eggs, vegetables, rice and meat… it’s a little disturbing. I eat, I sleep. I force myself awake to write about George Eliot before my body demands yet more sleep.

But as the paper was pretty well advanced before I got sick, it’s not the end of the world. So perhaps it’s better to be sick today and not next week when I’m off to Panama. I remember travelling from Corte to Bastia, Bastia to Livorno, Livorno to Florence all in the one day after I’d spent a day on Corsica unable to keep anything down. Another day with godawful flu catching a train across Poland, getting into a town I didn’t know with no accommodation booked—apparently completely unaware that it would be impossible to find accommodation. (I still bless that taxi driver who took me to a nearby town and went into each hotel for me until he found a room I could afford. He was very kind, and obviously took my extreme budget into account when he charged me!) The point? Long days of travelling while ill are miserable.

I plan for my mystery illness to be gone by Wednesday. (I’m determined.) Then I plan to eat Mexican food.

2008-05-09T13:54:00.003-04:00

Okay, so I went to the Library of Congress last night—it was Charles Simic’s final event as poet laureate, and he gave a lecture. The lecture was on translation and poetry—a favourite subject of mine—and yet I felt grouchy with it. He shuffled papers and told occasional anecdotes, in between repeating the same things I’ve read over and over about the act of translation. He read one poem by Vasko Popa. One? Only one? I was hoping he’d talk about a specific translating—what was involved in translating Popa’s “little box” poems—but he didn’t. I feel a little like I’ve spent the last several months breaking up with Simic. In part it’s that I enjoy reading his poems the first time, and then rereading them, they’re a disappointment.

I wonder if it’s the tyranny of distance wearing off. In Australia I’m so excited when anyone international becomes accessible. Here it feels like so much is accessible, and so the novelty is gone. Instead of feeling like a thirsty girl at an oasis, I feel like I can just evaluate each thing I go to on what it added to my thinking. This, unfortunately, added very little. (He did read the first poem he ever translated—a twelfth century Serbian “poem” that was pretty fantastic. I want to track it down. So—there was a glimmer of joy. Plus, hearing just one Vasko Popa poem read aloud was also pretty great. Not a complete loss.)

Still toiling on George Eliot and thinking through authority and framing texts and the way she defines audience through use of foreign language texts and literary allusion and proto-Zionist rants by Mordecai and the two incredibly anti-Semitic sequels and… you get the general idea. I was telling Professor Ragussis about my big chart and pile of notes on the epigraphs, and the odd anomalies I found, and he was really interesting. Mediating Jewish space and Deronda as Moses, baby.

Bought Cage’s lectures and essays on silence yesterday. Opened it and instantly remembered reading these texts a few times back when I was studying music intently. I’ve been reading a few different music texts recently, and as well as thinking through the implications in poetic terms, I found myself wanting to compose something. Something small. Oh! It’s been so long… Oh! John Cage!

Gewanter yesterday. Wearing a Krispy Kreme Doughnuts t-shirt. Hmm. The class met at his place for pizza and general conversation. A couple of people said they’d be reading more poetry over the summer—success! Surely that should be the measure of a good contemporary poetry class? He amusingly revealed the “key” to getting papers accepted for conferences.

I have to get a couple of conference papers together, actually. Timely advice, oh sage one.

For the second time this week I’m going out to Actually Be Social. Gathering at Robyn’s house for a cheap happy hour. How cheap? I’m tossing up between taking “two buck chucks” wine from Trader Joes, or splurging and taking a bottle of whisky. (I am still amused I’ve become a whisky drinker. Even if it’s only a bit of whisky, and only now and then. Still, my celebratory evening a few months back of mussels, whisky and chocolate mousse will live on in my memory forever. Best celebration ever.)

Robyn! Most likely going to Hungary! On a Fulbright! I’m so, so proud of her. And a little devastated that she’ll be gone… Actually, my friend Carolyn too—to Bulgaria. While I just want to get somewhere to write. To get this paper done, and think about poems and poetics and other writings for myself. The countdown is on.

2008-05-07T23:28:00.003-04:00

Robert Craft: You do not mention in your autobiography whether you attended Rimsky-Korsakov’s funeral?

Igor Stravinsky: I did not mentioned it because it was one of the unhappiest days of my life. But I was there and I will remember Rimsky in his coffin as long as memory is.

From Conversations with Igor Stravinsky

2008-05-06T15:54:00.002-04:00

I recently read Darkling, a long poem by Anna Rabinowitz, from Tupelo Press. I was disappointed by the book, but was interested in the fact that the who book was an acrostic work, incorporating Thomas Hardy’s “The Darkling Thrush.”

It’s had me wondering about why acrostics are used so rarely. Why there seems to be something so “uncool” about them—I have to say, I’ve really enjoyed using them when I’ve thought of it, though I think of it so rarely. Maybe it’s a sense that there’s some riddle there, but the answer is too “easy”—and yet who ever looks at a poem vertically to see if there is an acrostic embedded into it? Considering the fact that I so often set myself arbitrary restrictions, I think I’m going to revisit acrostics.

When I first bought the Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry I was fascinated by the fact that it had some poetry by John Cage in it. With my music background, Cage has been someone I associated with music from the age of fourteen, when a teacher played me a record—a record!—of the 4’33”. Later I’ve been delighted when I’ve encountered his work elsewhere. His writings on silence were probably the most profound pieces of musical philosophy I have read. Then, when I took one of my early trips to Brisbane to work on the opera I was then writing, The Crimson, I took myself to the National Gallery, where they have a painting by Cage in the collection. A few years ago, in San Francisco, I was similarly delighted when I came across a “collaboration” between Robert Rauschenberg and Cage—an extremely long piece of paper that went around the room, with a tire track from a painted tyre across the whole of it. These little instances of his aleatoric work spilling out from the music. And—his poems.

The poem I remember was an acrostic—a centred acrostic, with “MARK TOBEY” appearing as a column down the middle of the poem, the work surrounding it.

I want to reread John Cage. I want to reread X: Writings on Silence.

Lewis Carroll wrote a lot of acrostic poetry too. (Incidentally, I’ve recently been very upset to find out how many people I know have not read Alice in Wonderland, which I feel like has been with me my whole life—though really only since about the age of five.)

So—again I’m asking: why do acrostics seem uncool?

And, while epigraphs are in my head, they do actually strike me as having a similar function—or the possibility of that function, if people see the acrostic—in being a place where you can provide a framing text. Though I suppose it is also a framing text that could go unnoticed.

I wrote a poem on Sunday. It made me almost dazzlingly happy, though it is not finished. I think I’m going to try for a pile (or rather notebookful) of poems in their early stages over the next few weeks, and when I get back from Panama I’ll try to whip them into shape. Along with a lot of other poems I want to revisit. Poems! I’m so close—so tantalisingly close—to being able to think of poems. My day will come.

2008-05-01T13:34:00.002-04:00

Procrastination has been crowned a ruling passion in my life at present. I assume my Deronda paper is kicking around in the back of my mind, while I research more independence days and dream of travel and learning new languages. Petra, for instance. Who doesn't want to go to Petra?

And, knitting. My America blanket will probably be quite large. I’m learning new patterns, too.

I’m in the middle of the April issue of Poetry—it’s a translation special. I’ve found a few journals that are dedicated to work in translation recently, and then there’s this issue of Poetry. I plan to write something about it when I’m finished, but I’m loving it at the moment. There is so much happening in it. The translations aren’t all modern poets—unless Ovid is still hanging out somewhere between Rome and Tomis. But that doesn’t matter. It’s been a while since I read any journal cover to cover, but it looks like that’s what I’ll be doing with this issue of Poetry. How exciting!

2008-04-30T22:19:00.005-04:00

So, I’ve spent most of today thinking about the epigraphs in Daniel Deronda. (I know, I know—it’s what you think about every day too.) I think my copy of the book is going to be in a pretty dire state by the time this paper is written. Supposedly within two weeks—how am I going to get all this thinking done in two weeks?

I sat down with them this morning (at Baked and Wired, as usual). I typed them all out over the last week or two, and with my printouts I started to scribble all over them.

Somehow, it seems like there are so many in other languages—but it’s only 12 out of the 73. Five in French, five in German, two in Italian. The German and Italian ones are the most interesting for me. Out of the 61 leftovers that are in English, 30 were written by George Eliot herself (next most-used author is, appropriately, Shakespeare at five, followed by Wordsworth at four) and five are actually translated from other languages—including one each from French and Italian. It’s an odd body of material. An odd lot of numbers I’ve got—it reminds me of the end of last semester, when I was suddenly driven to counting pages and illustrations in Bleak House, figuring out that Esther Summerson actually spends twice as much time outside of Bleak House as she does in it. Here I’ve made lists not just of the epigraphs, but also which characters are in each chapter, so I can try to sort out if there are patterns in her use of epigraphs between the English plot and the Jewish plot. It all makes for an odd game of literary detective-itis. Was that more than you ever wanted to know about the epigraphs of Daniel Deronda?

It’s times like these that I wonder what intensive study of literature has driven me to? But I think I’m the only page-counter/epigraph-mapper in the department… Nonetheless, I do really enjoy it. And figuring out the patterns is strangely satisfying. I’m sure, however, it’s changed the way I read. I remember the first time I read Middlemarch I skipped about half the epigraphs. Ah, the foolhardiness of youth…

Looking for images of George Eliot, I’m not sure whether I’m pleased or alarmed to find Eliot-quoting magnets for sale.

A few days ago I was exhausted and so glad that classes would be over. Monday night, though, I had my last class with the Liberal Studies group I’ve been a TA for, and I’m really sad that I won’t be working with them again. Though I’m hoping I’ll see them in the writing center, or in other classes if I’m TAing again next year.

I don’t think I’m going to be good for much over the next two weeks. Well, except coffee drinking. The Baked and Wired crew will be sure to get sick of me!

2008-04-27T10:29:00.002-04:00

I finished Daniel Deronda last night, sobbing. George Eliot is amazing.

I have to write an erudite paper on it today. Now I have to find that erudite strain in myself...

2008-04-26T13:39:00.009-04:00

It’s been quite a few days—I’m exhausted, and in recuperation.

I haven’t been sleeping consistently—odd hours, not enough and then making up for it later. It’s got me a little bit out of whack. On Thursday, following my final Contemporary Poetry class, I was pretty shattered. But, I had to push on and go to the Library of Congress for the reading.

Unfortunately, I was cranky. Things that I would normally have found charming grated on me a bit—this was both being tired and hungry (my food intake on Thursday was appalling. Damn finals season) and also sitting near the infamous Library of Congress Poetry Readings Laugher. A loud laugh at the slightest thing that could be construed to have an iota of humour in it. It wasn’t pretty.

Charles Simic gave an intro that indicated he, Mark Strand and Charles Wright had all known each other for over forty years. Ah! The camaraderie of old men! See, I’m recovering my normally sunny disposition, because once again I find this lovely, adorable. At the time, it made me cranky. But it seems the reading blooms after the fact, and my mind is revising the whole experience. It’s nice that readings, like books, are allowed these afterlives…

At the time, though, crankiness. While that is slowly being revised, it seems to have left at least one lasting mark. Mark Strand read this poem, and the information he gave beforehand blew me away. He quoted Apollinaire and his question—“Who will be the first person to forget a continent?” His poem was about the forgetters. It kind of followed the trajectory of Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art.” This does strike me as a brave move—and I don’t think any poem can really bear the comparison. I completely understand the impulse to take the Apollinaire quote and imagine it into being—and yet, the poem can’t live up to the suggestion of the quote. In everything it leaves unsaid, the Apollinaire allows for some kind of hugeness that unfortunately the Strand didn’t quite have—Strand’s poem in comparison was “a mere bagatelle.” Cranky? I love Mark Strand. I will continue to love Mark Strand. I apologise for being cranky.

Charles Wright was great. I loved his southern accent. I didn’t take in a lot at the time—so tired, so hungry—but, after the fact, it seems it did sink in, and is now starting to resurface. Thank god! I may have been cranky, but it didn’t mar the transmission.

Yesterday, recuperation in earnest. Unfortunately, my body just wouldn’t get up after only 6 hours of sleep, so I missed the dawn service. Only the second in several years. I feel bad about it—I think it would have been wonderful to attend it in DC. I suppose there’s always next year… But I did tell all the lovely folks at Baked and Wired that it was Anzac Day, and I like to think that Meg made my caffe latte with extra love. I read Daniel Deronda for a while, and then, on a whim went to see a film.

Two films, actually. I snuck into the second. I also got invited to a free preview screening of a new Spike Lee film on Tuesday night. Score!

I saw In Bruges first. In a way, it seemed like two—or maybe even three—films to me—first this drifting film that was beautifully shot, and explored the morality of two very different hitmen. Contrary to Anthony Lane of the New Yorker (! I like to take on the New Yorker when I can…) I found both Colin Farrell—at least in the first hour or so—really did match Brendan Gleeson, and that lingering over their faces, the minutiae of their reactions was beautiful - almost mesmerising. Then turned into a slightly surreal midget comedy, and tightly choreographed cat-and-mouse carnage. That first section, where the two characters are wandering around Bruges, having their very different reactions to the city, as the viewer is trying to come to terms with the morality of the two, sold me. The rest—well, really quite engaging to watch once, but I feel no need to watch it again. Still, some of it will linger.

Then—Smart People. I was disappointed—well, except for when Ellen Page was on screen. (I find it very difficult to be disappointed by Page.) The developments were okay, but there wasn’t enough justification for any of it. The relationship between the two main characters—I don’t understand the why of it. Besides the weird thrall of a former professor. Thomas Hayden Church was worth watching, besides Page. But—huh? Even the professor’s son, a very underdeveloped character—out of the blue he sells a poem to the New Yorker? Um. Okay. It was extreme-lite The Squid and the Whale. I loved The Squid and the Whale. This, not so much. Plus, they didn't seem so smart.

The rest of this weekend really revolves around Daniel Deronda. I just finished the penultimate book of the novel. I am taking some time before jumping into the rest of it—it’s hit me with such an extreme force. I both dread writing my final paper, and can’t wait to jump into it. How to touch this monument?

2008-04-23T14:20:00.005-04:00

At the end of tomorrow, my life will seem much simpler, even though I’ll still have a major paper left to write on Daniel Deronda. Tonight I hand in one final paper, tomorrow another. Plus I get to go to a poetry reading tomorrow night at the Library of Congress. (Mark Strand and Charles Wright. When I went to the Adelaide Writers’ Festival in 2002, Mark Strand had had to cancel: now I get to see him.) There’s also a reading this weekend at the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian. So, while I’ll still be working on the final touches of the semester, I’m really pleased that I’ll be able to transition into thinking more exclusively about poetry. I just spent the morning writing about Pound’s first canto—of, duh!, The Cantos, and it was an oddly pleasurable experience. Perhaps because it gave me a chance to revisit all his absolute statements in The ABC of Reading, which—as well as finding admonishing and inspiring as well—I always find quite amusing. Homer is not to be translated. Go out and learn Ancient Greek, philistine, or you will never truly understand his greatness!

I’m hoping at the end of classes my late nights will come to an end, and I will get onto something like normal hours. It’s strange to me to suddenly be a night owl.

ANZAC day in two days time. I wonder if I should convince someone to have a dawn observance of the fact with me? At least the weather here is lovely. Dawn might not seem quite so cruel if the weather is still nice… I haven’t heard anything from the Centre of Australian and New Zealand Studies here (it’s our centre, so I’m spelling it our way, in spite of Georgetown… this spelling malarky gets complicated sometimes). Normally they have a ANZAC lecture that is the centrepiece of their yearly events—last year, for instance, Thomas Keneally gave it. There is meant to be a talk by a New Zealander this year—but no word. I checked their website, and nothing there either. Still, the Australian and New Zealand Embassies have organised a Dawn Service at the Korean War Veterans Memorial. I’ll just have to drag myself out of bed!

2008-04-22T13:19:00.000-04:00

I just talked to someone for a few minutes and they didn’t pick up my accent. This has got me a little worried (especially since I go to sleep to either Australian Radio National or the clipped tones of the BBC world service…)

I am telling myself that one of the following must be true:

• he heard an accent but had no idea where it was from, and so internally denied it
• he is so used to hearing foreign accents that it doesn’t even register anymore
• he is so self-absorbed that he doesn’t actually hear what anyone else says, ever
• we were talking while waiting for coffee, so perhaps, like me, his brain doesn’t kick in until post-caffeination.

I talk with Australians here. I listen to Australians. And whatever Pete says about a slight change in my R’s (although not, apparently, my piratical Arrs) I do still sound Australian. So there.

2008-04-20T17:43:00.002-04:00

I've got one paper (Milton) fully drafted, but really need to get to work on the other. (I feel like I'm cheering myself on.) I don't think I'll touch my second paper until tomorrow, though, as I also have a lot of Daniel Deronda left to read before 4pm tomorrow. I think I got excited about the prospect of reading whatever I wanted in the summer a little early... My brain is not allowed to switch off for a few more weeks. There are still things to juggle before I get to lie still.

A friend I correspond with is in Chile at the moment. Though he doesn't have time to go to the Atacama desert (the desert I most want to visit) I'm still very jealous. He's near the Atacama. It's got me dreaming of nomadism. Another friend is about to go to Europe for seven weeks. While her trip sounds a little too whirlwind for me (I like to travel slow, talk with people, do a little bit of wandering, a little bit of gazing at artistic things, a little bit of relaxing...) I am hungry to get out of town for a bit. But just writing "Atacama" makes my mind rove... Panama draws closer by the day.

I want to read the New Yorker, do crosswords and drink coffee. Not much longer!

2008-04-19T13:18:00.003-04:00

It’s time to get into gear—the next week is going to involve a lot of writing. I can’t say this is exactly bad: writing papers on things that interest me and that I’m passionate about is, after all, really pretty great as a “job” (albeit an extremely poorly paid one…) it’s just the stress of wanting to articulate things clearly, and unknotting all the tangled thoughts that surround the writing process. Especially when it’s these critical papers. Once I’m there doing it, it’s really very pleasurable—but there are so many things I find to do before sitting down. That period of settling to write is the most stressful part! Plus I have a creative piece I want to try to put down on paper this weekend. And a birthday party to attend as well. So this weekend should see about 5000 words and a few glasses of wine if all goes according to plan.

The weather is suddenly glorious. Flowers are everywhere. I wander around and see tulips, daffodils, pansies, bluebells… It’s hard to imagine being unhappy when the days are like this. I think everyone is, like me, trying to find strategies to study where we can either be outside or close enough to outside that it’s just about the same. The daffodils, especially, have had me thinking about Wordsworth. A small bout of hayfever had me on the same track—I used to want to write an essay about the Romantics (especially W.W. and Dorothy) and their walks around the natural world, and to make the point that clearly they didn’t suffer from hayfever. The problem is that there’s not a lot else to say than just that! I’m settling down. I think it was just the sudden decisive swing to perfect weather that threw my body off. Now I feel happy.

So: the day must go on. Imagine! In a few short weeks I’ll be able to travel, read anything I like, write poems and other bits and pieces. I’ll be at leisure! How delightfully irresponsible. I wonder how many projects I’ll make up for myself?

2008-04-18T12:49:00.005-04:00

In preparation for having three weeks away, I'm getting ahead on my writings for the Independence Day Project. This works well because April is such a slow month for independence. (That is an odd statement to make!) So everything is writing at the moment - final papers, Independence Day entries, occasional scribblings... There's no shortage of things to, as my mother would say, "keep me out of mischief."

13 May is marked - if not on my calendar, then definitely in my mind - as the day on which I will be finished with this semester. The idea of summer is vast - the months roll out ahead. Some of that time will be in DC - well, most likely two months, though I'm hoping for some day/weekend trips out of town... But it will be book-ended by travel, and I'm anticipating a glorious few months of writing poems and making things. Scribbling again.

Today is Zimbabwe's independence day, and it seems strange to think of independence under dictatorship - though this is the case with many African nations. Reading the news on the BBC website this morning I was struck by the fact that dock workers in South Africa are refusing to upload a shipment of arms from China that are destined for Zimbabwe.

Will spend some time this afternoon writing on Milton, as well as reading Daniel Deronda. At either end of this planned study time I have administrative things - a writing center meeting and lunch (which, looking at my watch, I should start heading towards) and then one of our graduate program's "town hall meetings." I may actually go out tonight instead of acting the recluse as has been usual of late...

One of my 20 x 200 purchases arrived two days ago - Don Hamerman's "Mossball." It is beautiful. One day I'll be able to get it framed and look at it constantly. Happy days. Hamerman began collecting lost baseballs that he found while walking his dog, and eventually photographed them. I liked this one when I saw it, but it took some time for it to really grow on me. Now I adore it - there was another baseball that went with it. The more I look at the two images, the more I like them, but it's "Mossball" that I keep wanting to look at.

2008-04-15T23:40:00.003-04:00

It’s going to be a very busy few days—besides the end of semester insanity (we’re all living in a state of denial, because if we think about how much there is to do we want to cry…) the Lannan symposium, which started this evening, goes until Thursday. This year’s symposium is takes the theme “Let Freedom Ring: Art and Democracy in the King Years,” and a number of people involved in the civil rights/black freedom movement in the 1960s are assembled at Georgetown. There is something amazing about having so many people in the one place.

This evening, after the keynote by Vincent Harding, there was a reading featuring
Haki Madhubuti, Eugene Redmond and Amiri Baraka. It was certainly an occasion where no-one would have suggested that politics and poetry should be kept separate! Politics was not just part of the poems themselves, but the readers talked about Barack Obama, and follow-up questions also focussed on Obama. While the fierce support of Obama was no surprise, I was a bit disappointed at the language used to disparage the other candidates. Mainly because I hate that aspect of politics. I was particularly happy to hear Baraka read—all three, though, were very engaging, with a very biting sense of humour.

The days are seeming longer and longer—there’s so much to do! I’m trying to make sure I write at least two pages a day towards all my final papers. If I can keep that up, then I can keep my head above water.

2008-04-13T19:24:00.004-04:00

George Eliot's epigraph for the opening chapter. No, it's not the longest.

Men can do nothing without the make-believe of a beginning. Even Science, the strict measure, is obliged to start with a make-believe unit, and must fix on a point in the stars’ unceasing journey when his sidereal clock shall pretend that time is at Nought. His less accurate grandmother Poetry has always been understood to start in the middle, but on reflection it appears that her proceeding is not very different from his; since Science, too, reckons backwards as well as forwards, divide his unit billions, and with his clock-finger at Nought really sets off in medias res. No retrospect will take us to the true beginning; and whether our prologue be in heaven or on earth, it is but a fraction of that all-presupposing fact with which out story sets out.

—George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

2008-04-13T13:33:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, an exhibition opening at Addison/Ripley Fine Art in Georgetown—some work by the Colombian artist Ana Mercedes Hoyos.

I’m still a neophyte when it comes to contemporary art practice around the world, so it was a pleasure to see this work—Hoyos is considered the foremost contemporary Colombian artist, and though this was a small exhibition, it showed a range of her work with photographs, paintings, sculpture (an amazing—huge—steel banana that looked like a canoe. No, it wasn’t yellow) and drawing.

Other than the beautiful sculpture, it was the photographs that I loved—really large photographs of faces. This picture particularly mesmerised me—I spent a lot of time standing in front of it, wandering elsewhere, returning, standing in front of it. Seeing all the different lines in its composition, wondering at the amazing colour of it and the details of this woman’s face.

2008-04-12T18:59:00.002-04:00

If you don't start buying art when you can't afford it you'll never start.

—Helen Hughes

2008-04-12T15:31:00.005-04:00

A recent anthology from the Dalkey Archive—Contemporary Russian Poetry: An Anthology. At nearly 500 pages, this bilingual anthology introduces a new generation of Russian poets to English language readers. In celebration of its release, the Dalkey Archive has organised a number of readings in different cities, including a recent reading on 6 April in DC at Bridge Street Books. Though Bridge Street Books provides only a small space for readings, when the event is poetry-related one hardly expects a packed house—so it was a pleasant problem to find that downstairs it was “standing room only” and a group of listeners crowded upstairs to look down on proceedings too.

It would be nice if all readings of work in translation could be presented the way this reading was organised: each poem was read twice, by two different readers—once in Russian (by one of the anthologised poets) and once in English. Give that the audience was a mixture of Russian and English speakers this method was important, but it also allowed us to hear the rhythms of the poems as they were read in the Russian—this element was quite muted in comparison in the English translations. While I suspect this was partly a result of the reading styles (and, perhaps, the amount of singsong English language listeners tolerate) it was also clear that many of the rhythmic elements and patterns of the Russian originals had not been fully captured in the translations. The gap between the two provided a simple lesson on what is “lost in translation.” The poets present in DC for the reading were Evgeny Bunimovich (the editor of the anthology), Elena Fanailova, Yuli Gugolev and Alexei Tsvetkov. Each poet read from their own work, and Bunimovich, Fanailova and Gugolev each presented work by other poets represented in the anthology as well—a gesture that promoted the work of other poets and in some measure gave the audience an idea of the diversity of work captured in the book.

In introducing the anthology, Evgeny Bunimovich gave some background to the project, indicating that the idea for the anthology first arose when he was talking with poets in DC some years ago. The general rules for the anthology were as follows: poets would be born after 1950; poets would be still alive; poets would be living in Russia. The rules weren’t hard and fast—Bunimovich advised that there were a lot of poets who deviated. Nonetheless, this was a useful set of parameters in creating the anthology—that the majority of included poets still live in Russia means that nearly all of the work captured in the book are new to English-speaking audiences.

Bunimovich opened the reading with an untitled poem of his own, the opening lines of which ran:

It’s no longer awful knowing why they go on about God.
The time is coming when our ranks will thin.
The product of my country, my family, my time,
I stand wrapped in cellophane with a price stamped on my side.

Given that this touches on many of the themes poets in the anthology return to (religion, nation, era, ancestry) this was an appropriate starting place. (The Russians in the audience nodded appreciatively.) He read four of his own poems, including a haiku that had been written as part of a haiku-dialogue with Yuli Gugolev—a touch which added to the notion of a poetic community not simply within the pages of this collection, but among Russian poets in general. The fact that this haiku (“just three lines in all/ of which two are already spent/ so life will pass by”) also functions as a commentary on the form of a haiku broadened the scope of the reading—after Akhmatova, Mandelstam and Tsvetaeva or the novels of Solzhenitsynit’s easy to imagine readers who don’t make it a general practice to keep up with world literature to have a ghetto-ised, Stalinised view of the trends and subject matter of Russian literature. Bunimovich also read two poems by the poet Ivan Zhdandov, “Before the Word” and “Transfiguration.”

Elena Fanailova read two of her own poems—“Freud and Korczak” (“The worst thing about murder/ Is not that a friend or lover/ Suddenly becomes a useless victim…) and “As if a caged little beast is running”—as well as one poem each by three women represented in the anthology. (I suppose the rationalisation here is that through Fanailova’s reading we could hear these poems in the female voice.) She read Elena Shvarts’s “Tract on the Indivisibility of Love and Fear,” Olga Sedakova’s “The Earth” and Maria Stepanova’s “The Morning Sun Arises in the Morning.” The highlight of these poems was my introduction to Elena Shvarts’s work, whose poem “Tract on the Indivisibility of Love and Fear” opens:

Deaf man: If a bomb goes off,
you think, “I can’t hear.”
(Don’t enter the dark room,
don’t light a candle,
God might be near.)

Looking into the anthology after the reading, I’ve been enjoying the way she uses voices—in this poem in particular (The next stanza is the speech of a blind man).

Yuli Gugolev read two of his own poems—including the piece “From The Book of Four Precepts,” the poem in which the rhythms in the Russian came out most strongly, seeming near impossible to reproduce in the English—though the translator did a good job, and the English reader was able to replicate the rhythms at some points in his delivery of the poem. Gugolev also read a poem by Aleksander Eremenko, “The Empty Diagram of Complicated Woods”—a poem that, thankfully, became more concrete beyond the complicated emptiness of the opening.

The reading was rounded off by a single poem from Alexei Tsvetkov, who read a poem that is not included in the anthology. He only read the English, and he paused at the beginning to find the poem (“Love Letter”) on his mobile phone. It was a slightly disappointing way to end—I had grown used to hearing the Russian ahead of the English, and I liked to know that at I would have a chance to revisit the poems in the book. Tsvetkov’s poem—read from a small bluish screen—was an ephemeral moment preceding the rush of people chatting, greeting, finishing the wine that was left and departing the scene

2008-04-11T12:54:00.005-04:00

I am going to Panama. I just booked a ticket, so no turning back. Next up: finding a place to get Yellow Fever shots. Turning my Italian into Spanish, as if by magic. I thought I'd learn some Spanish from my bilingual edition of Lorca. Panama? I hear they have a canal. Oh, and entire town nestled into the crater of an ancient (of course extinct) volcano. And, both turtles and golden frogs.

2008-04-08T17:07:00.005-04:00

I haven’t figured out the dates, but I am definitely going somewhere when I hand in my final paper. I also haven’t figured out the place. In fact, nothing is figured, but that I have itchy feet, and want to throw myself into someplace different before I come back to Georgetown for the teaching I’ll be doing in July. I won’t have all the time up til July free, because I’ll need to be in DC to develop the syllabus and I should be working in the writing center in the summer too (assuming it does open again this summer… it all feels a little un-pinned down.) Also, my friend Helen needs to leave the US to come back in on a tourist visa now when her studies at Georgetown finish, in order do a Melbourne University art history class in New York, which may mean a joint trip. Though I think, after a particular place in Mexico’s San Luis Potosi that she wants to go to, she’s more interested in desert islands than deserts.

Candidates? Well:

-Fly into Costa Rica and then go down to Panama.

-Fly in Mexico or Guatemala (a cheaper flight) and then go in search of a surrealist park that Helen wants to see.

-Fly into El Paso and then enter Mexico via Ciudad Juarez, and maybe head down to the Copper Canyon region.

-Live the dream I dreamt for Spring Break—a bit of Texas (desert-y Texas), New Mexico, Utah, and maybe some Arizona and Colorado too.

Going up to areas of Canada I don’t already know is also a cheap-ish possibility.

They’re my primary interests right now. I’ll probably have about three weeks I can afford to be away. How strange! Tomorrow I should stop by the health service and find out what shots cost, in case Panama wins the day. (Yellow Fever shot… also precautionary anti-Malarial medication.)

In the mean time: studies. It all continues.

I’ll find time later to write a few words about a poetry reading I attended Sunday night, but at the moment my mind is firmly ensconced in: Anne Carson, Carolyn Forché, George Eliot and Milton. I read Book X of Paradise Lost earlier today and I’m thinking my way through the short paper I’ll write on it for tomorrow, about the sounds associated with the punishment both of the denizens of hell (I just like the word denizens) and of Adam and Eve.

I spoke to Professor Ragussis yesterday, and he’s very happy for me to work on the epigraphs in George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda—I’m so glad. I remember being fascinated by the epigraphs in Middlemarch—and the opening epigraph of Daniel Deronda is a doozy—and Eliot-authored. (It reminds me in its quite sweeping address of the opening paragraph of Middlemarch, and due to its length it almost seems like more of a first paragraph and an epigraph.) So, I have to read Bakhtin and some other bits and pieces, find embedded quotations within chapters, and see how the dialogue between these and the epigraphs works. As Cher in Clueless would say with a squeak, “Ooh! Project!” Yes, I realise that I really do know how to bring the tone down again. It’s not all lofty heights in my mind…

I’m excited by a new anthology from Graywolf Press, New European Poets. (Also, incidentally, the press publishing Monica Youn, who I saw read at the Library of Congress a while ago.) The book has an amazing array of poets, and covers (I think) all the countries of Europe except those tiny enclaves San Marino, Andorra and Monaco. (I don’t entirely know what’s going to happen when I get to these places in the Independence Day Project. I don’t want to admit defeat!) The only thing that I do find a little depressing is its design. The cover looks like a green “European Poetry for Dummies” or a computer manual. I’m going to solve this for my own copy by covering it in plain brown paper and then decorating. (I wonder if I have tape in this apartment?)

I’m in love, recently, with the art project 20 x 200. Limited edition prints (beautiful quality) of arts of work for $20. Well, $28.50 once you add in the postage etc. Which, though it increases the price by almost 50 percent, doesn’t make it less of a bargain.

Early this afternoon, along with Paradise Lost, I read a book about deserts—another desolate landscape, so I suppose I could connect the two by more than their happening to dovetail in my reading. Terry Tempest Williams. I’ve long wanted to read more of her work. Perhaps in the summer. Though I was thinking, when I go away, I may just take something ancient with me. I’m thinking of following Kapuściński’s example and going with Herodotus. How very English Patient of me.

Oh, and some good news from home. I’ll have a couple of poems coming out in ALR soon. Lovely.

2008-04-06T13:52:00.005-04:00

In welcome/no vacancy, Five Islands—in what I believe is the final series of New Poets—introduces the work of Ella Holcombe in book form. Born in 1982, she is ahead of the curve for getting a first book out in Australia, where there is no shortage of poets vying for the attention of publishers willing to touch poetry. This book, and a short stack of newer poems, attractively arranged in a makeshift chapbook, recently arrived in my letterbox.

Holcombe is a poet of the ordinary—but it is the ordinary transformed. In the newer work she sent me—all prose poems—the perspective of the poems is foremost: two poems entitled “From above the earth”, as well as, among others, “From the porch” and “In the pines.” These titles angle the poems such that the details she chooses from the milieu she portrays take on an almost disembodied quality.

“In a small cabin in the woods a man is nearly finished fucking a woman who may or may not be his wife when he hears a knock at the door.”

Setting the scene from her omniscient position “above the earth,” the objects of the cabin impinge on the narrative, which becomes almost secondary, as the attention shifts to the cabin—

“Between the man and the turning doorknob there is a bundle of newspapers tied with string, one skating shoe, a tine of paint a roll of canvas. As the doorknob turns one final time the man will build a raft from these things.”

The poem—as is the case with many of these poems—has a stop-time effect. The turn of a doorknob, normally a quick action: yet here the narrator and the man survey the scene. It slips into the surrealistic with the mention of the raft. The debris of the everyday is transformed. These newer poems are full of such debris, alongside the patchwork of memory. Between portraits, there are poems that seem a continuation from the work in welcome/no vacancy that introduce a more direct perspective: “I,” “we” are interlaced with the outside view.

In welcome/no vacancy the reader sees the seeds of the concern with the ordinary that, on occasion, blossoms into the surreal. Here most of the poems are lineated, though a few prose poems are slipped in too. Given the more recent abundance of prose poems, I’m interested that this direction is not the primary form of her first book, but is a looming presence in it.

The book has a beautiful design—from the cover image by Bill Emory, which accords perfectly with the title, to the bio which in itself is a willed perspective:

“Ella Holcombe was born in 1982 and spent the first three years of her life in a caravan in the wilds of Kinglake. It snowed and her grandmother worried that Ella would perish.

“She didn’t.

“Ella now lives in Brunswick (VIC) with a bunch of stray boys and a large orange snail.”

This whimsy, on the front inside flap, carries into the poems. (I’ve said it before, but I’m so glad this these books have perfect binding and better design principles than earlier New Poets Series.) Emotion is mediated by the domestic scene, as in “Flying at the wind”:

and I couldn’t believe
you were leaving

back at the house we fed the chooks
collected the eggs, drank black coffee
toast thick with jam

In other poems, Holcombe experiments with form—the narrative poem “Dictionary” includes word collisions (“onehundredandone”) and her own punctuation to indicate dialogue with:

/not gonna be in those books anyway but / she says / they’re not dirty books/

she grins a half grin
/dirty retarded bitch/ she says

Some poems aren’t successful in their entirety, though all offer points of interest, and the promise of future work—the newer poems do start to fulfil that promise. One poem that does strike me is “Seven reasons for leaving you.” This title could indicate an emotional-laden piece—yet Holcombe swerves from that, only allowing a sense of suffocation to slip into her second reason (“My heart stopped beating/ I remembered how to breathe”). In the rest (and why is it that seven is such an attractive number to me? Perhaps its Empson and Kundera that have won me over…) the “you” of the title seems almost incidental, the reasons wilfully light—for instance “A grey-hatted man was talking loudly/ about telecommunications.” The form of couplets seems to suit Holcombes sensibility, and the list form adds to the whimsy of her reasons.

The New Poets series is, besides, something of a testing ground—at a limit of 32 pages, these books hover between chapbooks and full-length collections. A good number of New Poets poets have become integral parts of the Australian poetry scene—MTC Cronin and Peter Minter in particular exemplify the successes of New Poets. Nonetheless, there have been a large number of misses with the series too. It has been a laudable endeavour, though many poets have bypassed the New Poets route with their first collections— Kate Fagan, Luke Beesley, Aidan Coleman, Jaya Savige to name a few. I wonder if, in reality, New Poets has often brought out collections from poets who are, in reality, not quite ready for a complete collection?

That aside, I’m glad they’ve given Ella Holcombe a start, and with her precocity, I’m looking forward to reading more of her work soon. Perhaps that’s the best indication of the success of the collection? I’m intrigued to see what comes next in her development.

2008-04-05T23:26:00.006-04:00

I’ve just spent quite a bit of time—and quite a lot of words—writing about lines 68-69 of Ezra Pound’s Canto I: after sticking to Book 11 of the Odyssey thus far Pound interrupts the poem to write:

"Lie quiet Divus. I mean, that is Andreas Divus.
In officina Wecheli, 1538, out of Homer."

Turns out that—shame on him (yes, I’ve read your ABC of Reading, Ezzie)—Pound has been using Divus’s sixteenth century translation of Homer into Latin instead of the original ancient Greek. How could he live with himself?

It also turns out I was able to write a whole page on just those two lines, and what they do to the poem. I know Ezra was a bad man, and then recanted via psychobabble his fascism in a quite pathetic manner, but, well, I like his poetry. Though these days I like his pronouncements in books like How to Read more. I keep meaning to go to St Elizabeth’s and see where he lived for all those years.

I’m one hundred pages into Daniel Deronda—one eighth of the way through—and Deronda himself appeared only in the first chapter and has since gone away. (There was a hint he may have participated in the action of Chapter 2, but he wasn’t, so to speak, on stage.) In the mean time, Eliot gives us Gwendolen Harleth. She fascinates me—largely because, in spite of her arrogance and almost banal wish to be different, she has the most interesting reaction when she receives an avowal of love:

“Gwendolen herself could not have foreseen that she should feel this way. It was all a sudden, new experience to her. The day before she had been quite aware that her cousin was in love with her—she did not mind how much, so that he said nothing about it; and if any one had asked her why she objected to love-making speeches, she would have said laughingly, ‘Oh, I am tired of them all in the books.’ But now the life of passion had begun negatively in her. She felt passionately averse to this volunteered love.”

Later she is reduced to uncontrollable sobbing—which, yes, is oh so nineteenth century, but also seems right. She cannot bear to be loved. And I suppose a heroine who cannot bear to be loved is not so interesting in the twenty-first century landscape, but in the nineteenth century, I do find it rather striking. Especially as its not (overall) satirical (Eliot does have a wicked tongue—pen—at times) like, for instance Vanity Fair. She certainly has a dose of Becky Sharp in her—but what else is there? See? Eliot’s got me hooked. Jolly old Mary Ann Evans.

(Which reminds me, too, of a letter Mrs Elizabeth Gaskell sent her—praising one of her novels, but rounding off with the sentiment: “But I wish—oh! how I wish—that you were Mrs Lewes.)

(Which, in turn, reminds me that George Henry Lewes wrote a rather scathing bit about the character of Esther in Bleak House.)

(And you don’t want to know where musings on Dickens, Esther and Bleak House could take me.)

2008-04-04T17:13:00.005-04:00

Getting into the final weeks of the semester, and deciding once and for all exactly what I’m writing all those final papers on. Oh papers, they do keep me busy. I slept in dreadfully today, when I had been planning to mostly work on homework all day. Well—better late than… So, I will most likely duck out soon for some sushi (a craving) but am planning to spend the evening largely at my desk. Maybe some knitting in between thinking through the work I’m doing. (Yes, it’s only the fourth day of return to knitting and already it’s part of the day I look forward to.)

So—I think I’ll flit between poetry and George Eliot for a while. Though it’s likely that I’ll still write my final paper for National Identity and the Nineteenth Century novel, I’m thinking of switching to George Eliot—an act of love, shall we say. I’m still only 50 or so pages in, but I think I’ll spend a few hours on it tonight. Professor Ragussis is interested in the way the novels we’ve been studying use texts—letters, newspapers etc. I was thinking if I do work on George Eliot I can look both at these texts, but also at the epigraphs she uses for each chapter—her epigraphs have always fascinated me. I will probably talk to him about it next week. So some thinking about it over the next few days.

A handful of poems rejected this morning, though with a note “we hope you’ll submit more.” Oh well. I don’t really understand all the ins and outs of poets and their grouping here. It’s okay. I’m learning. Still, I do finally have something coming out here (I had a contract arrive a few days ago, and have to remember to mail that back over the weekend) and a journal at home has asked me to write something too. So—a few little things to do while the end of semester closes in. At least I’ll be writing about poetry for two of the subjects, which I think will be a grounding force.

I looked up the weather yesterday morning specifically to find out whether I should take an umbrella—seeing that, yes, it would be raining, I of course forgot to put the umbrella in my bag. The result was that arrived home completely soaked. This was okay—I wasn’t particularly cold, and I don’t mind being wet. But arriving in this bedraggled state, it made me feel particularly happy to find a couple of treats in the mail: first, a print of a photograph I ordered a week ago from 20 x 200 which is beautiful—currently sitting on my bookshelf still in its envelope, while I decide whether I’ll get it framed at the moment, or maybe later. Second, and much more of a treat, as it was somewhat unexpected (despite my sending a letter a week ago…) was a letter from Brandon Lussier. As well as taking gorgeous photographs of his gorgeous dog, Brandon writes poetry, and also translates verse from Estonian. Such a joy! So—another little thing for the list, in between writing papers, knitting and eating sushi.

Cupcakes are a great source of joy. I branched out at Baked and Wired today, and instead of my habitual caffé latte (I’m braving a few days without coffee…) I had a cup of “Eden” tea. (Appropriate after all this Milton, I think.) Certainly Edenic. The small joys.

I’m jealous of Ivy Alvarez—she’s off writing in Spain, which she’ll follow up with a little travelling/touring. I have itchy feet, even as the contract for the course I’ll be teaching at Georgetown in the summer shows up in my mail, announcing: “Yes! You will be tied in DC for at least a month and a half of the summer…” The cheap flights to Panama and Costa Rica are looking increasingly attractive… I may have been reading too much Bruce Chatwin. Is there any such thing as too much Bruce Chatwin? I long for big empty spaces.

Instead: my desk.

A gap of over a week in the Independence Day Project. I scarcely know what to do with myself. I should probably get a head start on the next few nations. Senegal today. I remember meeting Senegalese people in Firenze, selling umbrellas on the street. I thought it was somehow lovely that whenever it started to rain, the prices of umbrellas went down instead of up. I also remember how puzzled the umbrella sellers were that I wanted to walk around in the rain—I’d had too long a stretch of summer. The variation was wonderful.

2008-04-01T18:41:00.006-04:00

So, I’ve started knitting again. Some of friends have seen the blanket I made, sewing together patches I had knitted while travelling around North America and Europe in 2003. I have two friends here, Marie and Rebecca, who do a lot of knitting, and watching them has given me an urge to start again myself. So, I found the nearest yarn store and bought needles and a small selection of yarns. The 2003 blanket was colourful—in each country I bought wool that was a colour that for me represented the country: the pale blue of a still-snowy Montreal spring; the lush green of Cambridge’s fields, as on a walk to Grandchester, the shiraz-pink sunset of Corsica, the tomato-red and dazzling yellow of Italy… Well, this is an American blanket, and so there will be reds, whites and blues—but not the normal reds whites and blues of the flag. I want to play with it a little. This is, too, inspired by Lisa Blas’s exhibition “Meet me at the Mason Dixon,” which was also a patchwork derived from nomadism. I’m hoping that I will be able to travel more, and as I go to buy wool (and, a rule, only real—not synthetic—yarns this time) as I go. I think I’ll have to play with the often-jingoistic aspect of American patriotism. And I think it will be calming, for the moments I’m not buried in reading.

One day I’d like to knit a large desert blanket, with all the desert colours. Another year.

The Li-Young Lee quotes, if you are wondering, come from the fact that I’ve been reading the book of interviews while sitting at Barnes and Noble, not buying it. And an awareness that one of the things this hotchpotch of a blog is for me is a notebook. My notebooks are full of quotes. So—apparently a blog of all things. Or simply a blog of the chaos (the secret city?) of my mind.

A brief respite from Independence Days—after Iran today, it’s Senegal this Friday, and then a whole week off. The first half of the year is comparatively light when it comes to National Days. September—with 29—will keep me on my toes.

I’m trying to make some plans for getting out of DC in the summer—I had a slightly crazy notion of going to Costa Rica or Panama as soon as my final paper is in, before I come back to Georgetown to teach in the summer, but I don’t think I’ll have quite enough time to organise it—though Central America will happen before I go home. I feel it. Instead, I’m really thinking about the Four Corners area. Dreaming, really. As usual, I’ve got deserts on my mind.

I think I will start Daniel Deronda tonight. Though I will treat myself to some Lorca first, most likely. Have been reading more Bruce Chatwin too. It seems strange to me that it’s taken so long for me to really fall in love with travel writing—though I think I was always seeking out a very specific kind of travel writing, that is almost anthropological in its scope. Or just plain magical, like the Travels of Sir John Mandeville.

2008-04-01T18:17:00.002-04:00

"For me so much of poetry and the making of poetry have to do with a willingness to wait for something to yield itself. It’s a powerlessness that one allows to occur. In my own life I feel as if I do a lot of waiting, and it seems to me a proper posture of the heart, or the mind, waiting for the poem to arrive. Or waiting for a final shapeliness to occur in my own life. Or waiting for a god to show himself. Waiting for the dead to come back."

—Li-Young Lee, from the interview “Waiting for a Final Shapeliness to Occur” in Breaking the Alabaster Jar: Conversations with Li-Young Lee.

2008-03-31T19:28:00.003-04:00

An art exhibition Saturday at the Meat Market Gallery in Dupont—Lisa Blas’s “Meet Me at the Mason Dixon.” It was small, but reasonably varied as Blas works in different media—it consisted of four paintings, about eight prints and an “installation” wall: a collage, a kind of large workbook that leads her through what she’s thinking about. While I really enjoyed hearing the artist talk about the exhibition, I was struck by a sense that without this wall of material, the exhibition would feel adrift. And though Blas now feels that the wall collage is “finished” it’s the one piece not for sale. I sometimes wonder about these types of installation pieces, because to move them involves a disassembly—without even going into the conservation nightmare (practical impossibility?) involved with the handful of newspaper clippings. But then, even as a “finished” piece, it’s transitory nature is what makes it so charming, and fascinating. She had a few pieces of text—on in particular, braiding biographical details of three historical figures whose lives had led them to areas around the Mason-Dixon line. This braiding as a form struck me as useful—both for thinking about the structure of the exhibition, but also potentially as something to explore for myself. (Good poets borrow, great poets…) I’m sure my father would be pleased that I chose an exhibition with Civil War associations rather than just any old exhibition!

I vanquished Sir Walter Scott last night, which leads me—delightedly—to George Eliot and Daniel Deronda. This last book of the semester for National Identity and the Nineteenth Century Novel. It is one I haven’t read before, though I am crazy for George Eliot. Somehow, I just didn’t get there. So—it’s a treat, although it will also be fairly intense reading loading with that alongside study for the final papers for Milton and Contemporary Poetry (or, as I more often think of latter, “Gewanter”). Reading poetry in my spare time—Lorca. Beautiful.

2008-03-28T23:46:00.004-04:00

"A mosaic is a conversation with what is broken"

–Terry Tempest Williams

2008-03-28T15:10:00.002-04:00

Looking at this morning's leonine post, I'd like to publish an online illustrated Milton. Especially with the animals. Also, reread creation. We have dominion over fish, and mammals that creep on the land. Whales and other sea mammals must be exempt.

2008-03-28T15:06:00.004-04:00

How satisfying! I’ve begun what I guess will have to be my last series of ripping apart my manuscript. (Someone just has to take it away from me soon… That’s hopefully in the pipeline.) Looking at it now, ruthlessly, it’s so fun to wield the scalpel. Take this out, extract that stanza… I’m really glad, now, that I didn’t publish it before now. I feel like I’ve learned all these new ways of looking at poems recently, and that’s been so good for me.

When I caught up with Elena Knox—gosh! over a week ago—I was delighted to hear that her book looks like it’s also in the pipeline. She’s been on a train overnight from Chicago, and (from what I remember) had been working on edits during that trip, as well as, more generally, while she’s been in the States. Apparently an Australian editor had looked at her book, told her he liked it, thought it was great—couldn’t publish it. “It’ll sell 20 copies in Australia.” So, she’s been talking to an American publisher. Elena and I met several years ago at Varuna, the Writers’ House in the Blue Mountains (and, really, a little oasis) when we were there for a mentorship program during an absolutely delicious week of poetry. Our fellow-poets Ivy Alvarez and Kathryn Lomer have published their books already—Kathryn, precocious lady!, has published two volumes of poetry and a novel—so it’s nice that their stable buddies are slowly making good on the process too.

Is it cheating if, unable to find a poem from the Marshall Islands, I choose to use a myth instead? I’ve found a lovely one. But I’ve got over a month before my Independence Day hunt for poems from this particular nation of Oceania becomes pressing. In the mean time, I’m backing up the effort with the myth. I’m holding it in reserve.

Spoke to a friend who is fluent in Portuguese—I’d like to work in partnership with someone to do some translating. I don’t feel that any of my languages are fully up to the task—I can muddle my way through reading most Romance languages these days, but wouldn’t trust myself on a translation, except for some simpler Italian pieces. So it was time to find a helping hand. Or tongue, so to speak. Now I have to find something untranslated that I think it would be good to work on. The next step. I don’t know exactly when this will happen, but speaking to a translator last weekend, he said all I can really do is dive in—you’re never really “ready” as such. When are we ready for anything?

2008-03-28T08:37:00.002-04:00

The grassy clods now calved, now half appeared
The tawny lion, pawing to get free
His hinder parts, then springs as broke from bonds,
And rampant shakes his brinded mane...

—Milton, Paradise Lost (VII, 463-466)

2008-03-27T15:16:00.002-04:00

Rereading Anne Carson. I feel like I carried her so much with me for so long that I had to put her aside briefly—but returning to her. Returning to Decreation, which I only read the whole way through once. It’s such a pleasure.

Trying today to find the elusive David Gewanter. We said something about 1.30, but 1.30 and no Gewanter. Tried again an hour later—still no Gewanter. Maybe we’ll sit down to look at some of my poems tomorrow instead.

Have found a few art openings on over the weekend. Hopefully I will pop in to one or two of them.

Started thinking about Louise Brooks again this morning. Have been reading her essays, Lulu in Hollywood. I want to know if she wrote anything else. (I do plan to get a biography of her too.) It's such a shame that she destroyed the book she worked on for so long, Naked on my Goat - based on these pieces, it would have been well worth reading. I want to find the films of hers I haven't seen...

2008-03-26T22:27:00.006-04:00

A nice surprise last night: within a few minutes of each other, emails from poets Adam Aitken and Chris Wallace-Crabbe arrived in my inbox. Adam is currently based in Cambodia—he’ll be back in Sydney later this year. So it was one poet-in-exile addressing another. And I was delighted to hear that he’ll have another book coming out soon with Giramondo. I came across his work when I was drawn to the cover of Romeo and Juliet in Subtitles, and, after taking it home, there was one poem that drew me into the book. Something to look out for—I guess I’ll be sending another wishlist home later this year, for books I can’t get here.

Then, Chris. Chris was one of my earliest mentors as a poet, and again I’m pleased to here that another book is forthcoming. A recent notification from ABR informed me that another selection from his diary was published in a recent issue—it made me wish that I could afford to be an international subscriber. If my book does end up working out, it will be in no small part because of his encouragement and assistance over the years. He must be one of the most generous poets in Australia, always willing to look over work and tell me when it’s “flat as a pancake.” (True—among the first ten or so poems I ever showed him, he liked a number of them; but one came back with this comment. I’ve valued his opinion ever since. I was especially proud when he told me I’d recent a quite-good terza rima.)

To top that off, Ella Holcombe sent me her first book, which appeared in last year’s New Poets series from Five Islands Press. I’m currently interviewing Ella, and am looking forward to reading the book, some other poems she sent with it, and writing about it here. It’s always lovely when a parcel arrives! On a purely superficial note, I’m so glad to see that Five Islands have shifted the series into a format that includes perfect binding and much better design. So often in the past, exciting new voices were buried in badly designed, stapled booklets.

Which has made it an even more poetry-filled week. Refreshing and exhausting—I wouldn’t have it any other way.

2008-03-26T21:39:00.004-04:00

"The literature I love most is the literature of exile of ruins and the experience of exodus. I don’t know why but, for example, the Book of Exodus is very important to me—the wandering of the children of Israel has profound resonance for me. I don’t feel as if those stories are about a primitive tribe in some distant desert. That struggle for belief and faith in the face of humiliation, annihilation, apostasy—all that seems to me really what I go through and what we all go through, finally."

—Li-Young Lee, from the interview “A Well of Dark Waters” in Breaking the Alabaster Jar: Conversations with Li-Young Lee.

2008-03-26T13:28:00.006-04:00

An odd experience last night: in what was perhaps a first for me, I couldn’t make any real evaluation of the work of Noah Eli Gordon and Joshua Marie Wilkinson because I was laughing too much. Which is not to say they’re poetry was comical—I don’t think it was (again, I’m hazy…)—but their reading was a somewhat delirious double act that was—hilarious. At 7.15 I was still wondering if I was really going to leave the house (the couch was awfully comfortable, and I haven’t had a night in, cooking, for ever so many nights…) but I’m glad I got myself out the door. If I’m still a little knocked sideways by the whirlwind that the reading seemed to be. That they’d driven all day from Boston seemed fitting. There was an underlying manic energy that I was quite enamored with.

Spoke to them both afterwards—Noah more than Joshua. Found myself babbling about Milton—(he’s taking over my life, or at least my consciousness, at the moment). I tried to buy one of his books—A Fiddle Pulled from the Throat of a Sparrow—because David Shapiro had written very nice things that appeared on the back cover, and David Shapiro (an underrated, under-known poet) has interested me ever since, way back in 1998, I messed around with setting a poem of his to music. Anyway, I would have bought a book, but then I suddenly found that I had lost my ATM card. Brilliant move. So, I went home and rang the bank, sympathising with the customer service man who had to ask every single customer if they were “satisfied.” Oh! Those were the days.

I realised, while searching for all my account details, that at any given time I’m less likely to known where my chequebook is than the draft of a new poem. Anyone else have that problem?

Having written all about Milton this morning, I’ve moved on to thinking about Anne Carson. I’m planning, now, to write on her for my final paper for Gewanter. A project that will, I know, make me happy.

I had a friend who, for a while, was thinking about writing (at least a section of) her thesis on oranges and happiness in 20th century poetry. I’m so sad that this project didn’t end up being her focus. I was hunting through my books, finding oranges. I’ll never read a poem about or including oranges the same way again.

No poetry reading tonight. Unless you count Milton. The class does always involve us reading sections of his work aloud.

Returned a stash of books to the library today, am replacing them with the few Anne Carson’s I didn’t bring with me when I moved here last year, and Lorca’s Selected Poems. Lorca. More happiness. Coffee, the scent of oranges and good poems. That, apparently, is all I need.

2008-03-25T16:39:00.005-04:00

One last thing for today (I hope... Milton's been calling me for a while now...) is that, should anyone read this before tonight, the line-up at Bridge Street Books (on M Street, next to the Four Seasons Hotel) should be interesting. Noah Eli Gordon and Joshua Marie Wilkinson. No, I don't know how he ended up with Marie as his middle name either. 7.30. Free. (After 5 days in a row of paying for readings the lack of a price tag is appealing to me - and my budget.) Both are new to me, but their lists of accomplishments sound impressive. And, again - free.

2008-03-25T16:11:00.005-04:00

"I took a friend to an art exhibit; it was an installation art piece. I believe it was Joseph Beuys. We took the subway to a very seedy part of Chicago. We got off the subway—it was about five o’clock, the streets were empty, it was snowing—and we knocked on a big freight door. A man in a security uniform slides the door open and says, “What do you want?” and I said, “We’re here to see the Joseph Beuys exhibit.” He said, “Come with me,” and we walk into this huge, empty warehouse. Then he goes to the other side where he opens this tiny, little wooden door, and we walk through this narrow, little hallway, and he opens another door and there’s another huge warehouse. Then he goes to the other side, and we’re walking all the time, and my friend is baffled. He goes to another tiny, little door that we have to stoop to go through, and he says, “Here it is.” And there’s a brick wall, gold-leafed, and there’s a hat rack with a coat and hat there. The guard says, “Well, that’s it. Take a look.” So we took a look. He says, “Had enough?” and we said “Yeah.” So we turn around and walk out. My friend and I were talking about it, and he says, “I didn’t understand it.” And I made the comment he would understand it if I told him we’re no longer awake, what we’re going to experience now is a dream. There’s a logic to dreaming. We don’t ask the same logic of dreams that we ask of life. So I don’t think we should ask the same kind of logic and understanding of poems that we do of life. I think I’m moving in a different element when I’m reading or writing poems. I don’t ask the same things of them."

—Li-Young Lee, from the interview “Seeing the Power of Poetry” in Breaking the Alabaster Jar: Conversations with Li-Young Lee.

2008-03-25T13:38:00.001-04:00

Apropos: nothing, really. I think my near-life-long allegiance to my favourite colour (red) is wavering again. Maybe it's the daffodils, but every time I see yellow at the moment, it makes me happy. I want a writing studio with pale yellow walls, dull glass jars on the window sill and scattered postcards on the wall. But perhaps with a red teapot, just to show I'm not a complete turncoat. One day...

2008-03-25T12:51:00.007-04:00

I guess anyone who’s (ever) met me knows I am a bit of an upstart. Sometimes I can’t quite believe the things I do…

The daily poetry readings aren’t over yet. Last night there was a Lannan reading at the Folger Shakespeare Library, with Mark Doty and Galway Kinnell. Even though I saw both poets read over the weekend at Split This Rock, I wanted to hear them again. Besides, feather-brained as I can be, I completely forgot to take the Mark Doty book I have in the US with me on Saturday night, and I did want him to sign it. Unfortunately the book isn’t the most recent, his Fire to Fire: New and Selected (I covet it, but I’m trying to not accumulate too many books) but the 2005 book School of the Arts.

He read a new poem—I didn’t write down the title, and so it’s flitted out of my memory, but it was set on Fire Island. It was incredibly moving—one of the few times I have actually been reduced to tears at a poetry reading. (I usually save the tears for my solo reading sessions.) Even though it was such a transfiguring experience for me, there was something that bothered me during the reading—it was so, so close that when a tiny moment crept in that jarred for me, I wanted to iron it out. So what did I do? Well, I’m an upstart (as has already been established) so—I told him.

Okay, I can’t quite believe my own audacity. But at the moment the words popped out of my mouth it wasn’t audacity, but an automatic response. (Perhaps in having had such an immediate emotional response to it, I felt an odd sense of partial-ownership? Does this happen?) It happened so fast, that it’s hard to know exactly what I was thinking—but the result was that Doty was interested to know exactly where it was that I had my jarring moment, and handed me his copy of the poem to read through again, so I could pinpoint it. I did, and I told him—a line that seemed oddly self-conscious in such a poem that really drags you in. For a moment it pulled the reader too far outside the poem. And the rhythm didn’t fit—there were too many beats in the line. For me. My friend Elizabeth was with me, and I pointed it out to her. She seemed to agree with me, but she might have just been taken aback at my having actually uttered the words! So, I told him. He didn’t seem offended. I can only hope that was really the case. Read him. Please.

But I don’t want to neglect Galway Kinnell. Who could neglect him? I was glad I saw him read again, as this reading was a little more varied than the Split This Rock reading, which of course had a distinct theme. What more is there to say?

Elizabeth and I were very lucky at our moment of arrival—there was actually only one ticket left, but they let us both buy tickets, knowing that there was going to be at least one person who didn’t show up. (I believe this is always the case, because all the Lannan fellows—undergraduate students at surrounding universities—get free tickets, and they never all show up.)

And—following one last reading tonight—my near-week of all poetry, all the time, is at an end. Back to the real world of study, writing papers, reading for classes… At least it’s made clear to me that I really should be writing about poetry. That I should follow my passion, even in that odd world that is academia.

Oh, and a small item—I had my first poem accepted for a US journal. SPECS. It’s taken me some time to get myself into gear, submitting work—figuring out where to submit work, etc. I don’t know much about the journal but at least something is happening on the poetry front after not sending out work in so long. And I wrote a little poem on Friday… More to follow? I can only hope.

2008-03-23T16:01:00.009-04:00

An exhausting weekend, and very un-Easter-like. I was quite surprised by how little Easter I saw around me—in Australia there’s chocolate everywhere for months in advance. In Cambridge a few years ago, Good Friday was quiet as quiet can be, and the colleges were holding services all around the place. Then catching a ferry from Livorno to Corsica on Easter Sunday, I arrived in a shut-down Bastia. (Where I had a very strange adventure—that could have turned dangerous, but didn’t—which is a story for another time.) And here—everything is open. I saw one shop shut today for Easter Sunday, though it was open for Good Friday. I’m used to Good Friday being the much more solemn day. I was getting something to eat, and was surprised when my waitress asked if I would like to add beef to my order. For me it’s only a cultural idea, but I’m so used to eating only fish on Good Friday. After midnight last night I celebrated with a few bites of dark chocolate… but my Easter has not been Easterly. And it will be over far too soon—still so many things I’d like to read, not to mention things to do. Time flies…

Split this Rock is over now—though there’s lots of a talk about how the movement can continue. Yesterday I managed to get myself to a few events, and then I attended a reading this morning.

In the afternoon I attended a talk about archives and vaults, with three people involved in radio and digital archives discussing their work, and things that have been sitting on tape for decades that are now being digitised. While I’m increasingly interested in listening to things, I have to admit my greatest interest is still the written word: interviews, notebooks, correspondence, ephemera... and these are works that I find more interesting in getting to know a little about the author than being especially illuminating. Perhaps I’m just a flibbertigibbet. I’ll listen, and then my attention drifts—even with my newfound nightly podcast lineup that puts me to sleep—mostly radio national, sprinkled with New Yorker programs. Nonetheless, I’m fascinated by what sounds like a huge number of programs that will be available early next week through the Pacifica Program Archives—they’re making available programs from 1968, which will cover a fascinating historical moment. I’ll need to find even more listening time in the day.

As well as this panel, the last twenty-four hours have seen me at 3 different poetry readings.

First up was the 5pm reading with Coleman Barks, Pamela Uschuk and Belle Waring. Lucille Clifton had been scheduled to read as well, but due to illness was unable to make it—each of the poets read a poem of hers, so in a way she was still present.

I wasn’t entirely taken with this reading. Coleman Barks is largely known for his translations of Rumi—which are wonderful. But he was reading his own work, which didn’t really stack up to his translation work, to my mind. In fact, the most charming moment in his reading came when he read a poem written by his (quite young) grandson. In a way, I would have liked to hear more of his grandson’s work, or more Rumi. Still, it must be tough to be a well-known translator who is also a poet (rather than the other way)—you’re best known for someone else’s voice.

Pamela Uschuk’s reading didn’t really penetrate the surface for me—this is at least partly because I find it very difficult to listen to what seems to be a prevalent style of reading poetry aloud, especially by female poets, that is really quite mannered. I can’t at this stage comment on what her work is like on the page, because universally well-read as I’d like to be, I’m still just a grad student, and I have Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley to finish, as well as more highlighting of Paradise Lost left to do in the next few days…

Belle Waring, though, was wonderful: Waring has worked as a nurse, and this experience is apparent both in her knowledge and presentations of the body in her work, and also the steady gaze she brings to her subjects. She read the poems simply, and came across as very modest—but the work spoke for itself. I want to read more. (Time, as ever, the key factor here…)

This was followed by an all-star lineup last night (well, all-star to me) of Kenneth Carroll, Alicia Ostriker, Mark Doty, Dennis Brutus and Carolyn Forché. It was, I guess, really the last three that I came to hear—and I wasn’t disappointed. Kenneth Caroll’s work was by turns fun and serious (and often both at once). A piece in rhyming couplets about “Schnooky” and his relationship to the army and the war in Iraq was a real crowd-pleaser. Alicia Ostriker, unfortunately, didn’t penetrate—again, this could be her presentation as a reader of her work. Because I was really experiencing her work cold, it relied on her, and—well—it didn’t “do it” for me.

Mark Doty—what is there to say? The man is beautiful, the poetry is beautiful, and, apparently, his taste in art is beautiful too, because he read a poem about my favourite painter Joan Mitchell. In opening his reading he quoted from Taha Muhammed Ali:

And so
it has taken me
all of sixty years
to understand
that water is the finest drink,
and bread the most delicious food,
and that art is worthless
unless it plants
a measure of splendor in people's hearts.

The measure of splendour is front and centre in his poetry. I am enamored. He reads beautifully too—his poem on Joan Mitchell, though new to me, was drinkable. I drank.

Dennis Brutus didn’t really read—well, there was a short poem at the end of his time on stage. Instead, he stood and talked for about half an hour. Reflecting on the festival title, he recalled his time in prison on Robbin Island (the same prison in which Nelson Mandela was held) when he was kept in the maximum security area of the maximum security prison. He was give stones and a hammer, and each day he had to split these rocks—at the end of this effort to reduce them to gravel each day, they were scattered around the cell: illustrating the futility of the hard work he had to do. Nonetheless, this wasn’t the hardest job. Because he had once been shot in the back (a through-wound, the bullet came out his chest) he was spared the harder job that Mandela moved on to: splitting not just regular stone, but limestone. Just hearing him talk (and, really, after his life he is entitled to speak in absolutes) was a privilege.

And—Carolyn Forché. I’m under her spell. It looks like I’ll get to spend a lot more time talking to her soon. She read what is probably my favourite poem of hers—“Prayer,” which I read in New York in 2003, sitting in a Barnes and Noble (I couldn’t afford to buy the book, so I copied the poem into the notebook I was carrying with me). She also read a beautiful list poem, “The Museum of Stones”—I should tell her that I too have a miniature stone museum: a small black stone from the first time I swam in the Mediterranean, a pair of stones from Skågan in Denmark, from the day I walked off the northern end of Jutland, another pair my parents brought back from Gallipoli for me, a stone from the ground at Hanging Rock to hold in my palm when I need to feel Australia.

Then today Naomi Ayala and Galway Kinnell. A wonderful reading. This was being followed by a silent march to the White House—but for some reason I didn’t feel like joining the march. Perhaps it was the cento poem they were creating, with everyone contributing a line of no more than 12 words. I’m already exhausted from listening to all these voices—I don’t think I could take the buzz of many, many more today. After so many words, I need silence too.

2008-03-22T11:06:00.008-04:00

I’ve been a bit exhausted lately—what I imagine Ezra Pound’s “emotional anaemia” must feel like. Attending a reading that was part of Split This Rock last night helped—I heard Brian Gilmore, Susan Tichy, Semezdin Mehmedinović, Jimmy Santiago Baca and Patricia Smith. I like these readings that have a lot of featured poets—they seem to keep my attention with relatively the swift changeover to a new voice. (I guess I’m more of a reader than a listener, generally.)

I skipped most of the first night of the festival—I went to the opening with Sonia Sanchez, which was something of a disappointment to me. Sanchez spent more time talking in a fairly rambling fashion (and, to my mind, extolling her own work and opinions) than reading her poems. I’ve only read a little of he work, but I feel that what I have read was stronger than the two pieces she performed. The opening was at Bus Boys and Poets (my first visit there) and it was really too small for the turnout (a pleasant problem at a poetry reading to be sure) and so I felt a little oppressed by the crowd. I just didn’t have it in me to head up to another reading at the Bell Multicultural High School, so I went home and did crosswords. It’s a pity I missed the reading—it would have been nice to see E Ethelbert Miller read again (and to see if my blogging warranted another hug) and to hear the work of a new crop of poets, but I was feeling a little “fragile,” so home I went.

Similarly, I skipped the panels yesterday and wandered around, then sat down with my copy of Milton, rereading the first few books of Paradise Lost—I felt like I couldn’t quite take all the talk… I’ve often felt frustrated with talk about social action—I just want to get out and do things. It’s different when it’s the more personal, educating narratives. Hearing Carolyn Forché speak, for instance, is at once horrifying, amazing, energizing, inspiring. She is reading tonight, in what is a stellar lineup—I have high hopes.

I was so pleased to finally meet Semezdin Mehmedinović, whose work I’ve admired for a while now. I was reading his two books available in English (Sarajevo Blues and Nine Alexandrias) a while ago and fell in love. It made me feel possibilities for a looseness and ease that interests me, in the voice itself (as translated by Ammiel Alcalay). And then the poems - devastating. When I spoke to him after the reading, I mentioned that I’d like to interview him, and he gave me his details. Again, I have to find that elusive time.

I was interested to hear Jimmy Santiago Baca, because he’s a big name, with a fascinating background: sentenced to five years in a maximum security prison for drug possession when he was twenty-one, he learned to read and write, and it was there that his interest in poetry really began. I was actually most interested in his talk in between the pieces he read. He mentioned that recently he’d been on a trip around the world, meeting poets everywhere, and getting recorded interviews in many, many different countries and languages. He talked about a sense that so many countries—and therefore their poets—seemed to be suffering from pervasive post-traumatic stress, and the poets responded by wanting to give and give. The interviews (over a hundred of them) need to be translated into English: I don’t know where these will end up, but I’m so interested to read them if they surface somewhere accessible.

Patricia Smith’s work was new to me, and I’m so glad that I got to experience it: she finished with a poem written in response to Hurricane Katrina, and the 34 residents of a nursing home that were left behind and died. As she was introducing it she said “the poem is long—but the stanzas are short,” which for some reason was charming! The poem was in 34 sections, the voices of the dead: it was a beautiful elegy for these forgotten people. Her next book as a whole addresses the aftermath of Katrina. If this is an example of the work she’s doing with that, then I’ll be interested to read the book as a whole when it comes out. Again, I’m hoping that an interview will emerge—we talked about finding a time in between two readings today to have a brief chat.

The festival has also been my first real opportunity to explore the U Street neighbourhood—I get the impression that it’s more of a nighttime area than a daytime place, but it’s been great wandering around. I don’t know why exactly I hadn’t made it over there earlier, but I hadn’t. I really love the multicultural areas of DC though, and am looking forward to getting to know the area better.

Speaking of things to look forward too, I’m excited that Siri Hustvedt’s new novel, The Sorrows of an American, will be coming out on the first of April. I wonder if I’ll be able to make some out-of-university time as the final phase of the semester starts kicking in to read it…

2008-03-21T13:39:00.007-04:00

I mentioned to a friend that Namibia’s Independence Day falls today, and she told me that all she knew about Namibia was that it was where Brad and Angelina went for the birth of their child. Somehow this information had passed me by—I mean, I knew it was Africa, but I have to admit that I hadn’t been interested enough to learn which country in Africa. I’ve been wondering whether this ignorance about the movements of Brad and Angelina makes me more or less shallow? It’s an oddly troubling question.

My friend Sheena spent time in Namibia, as it’s a place where she could use her German (though English is the official language, both German and Afrikaans are recognised—and of course all three languages reflect Namibia’s cultural heritage)—so my main association was with the fact that she had lived there for a time. But reading about it, I’ve got to say I felt a real desire to go there—it’s the pictures of the Namib Desert that got me.

I used to be so overwhelmed by the ideas of Africa—and, too, Central Australia—that I just didn’t know how to engage them. Their vastness was so difficult to comprehend. I guess it’s a reasonably common experience in that situation that people turn away from contemplating the hugeness. (It can be as mind-bending as solid light currently is to me…) I’m still not one hundred percent sure what turned me around—although I do know that a major factor was the writing of the sadly deceased Polish writer Ryszard Kapuściński. His work is so extraordinary—if you haven’t read it, all I can do is urge you to do so. I can’t wait for the rest of his work to be translated into English—at the moment not even half of it is available. (Alternatively, I can’t wait to learn Polish—there are so many Polish writers I would love to read in the original…) It’s wonderful to place him alongside the other writer I’ve working my way through outside of university, Bruce Chatwin. (I'm currently reading In Patagonia. Learning more about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, too.)

It has been suggested that, at the end of a year of researching independence days, I will be the perfect partner for a trivia night. As if I'm not trivial enough already. And since when is independence trivial? I'm tempted to mention the notion to an American on the Fourth of July...

I have to write about catching up with Elena Knox yesterday—that will come. Later. Right now, I plan to spend a few hours highlighting the uses of silence in Paradise Lost. Perhaps an odd pursuit, but I'm sure it will have a payoff.

2008-03-20T12:34:00.003-04:00

Some days I feel like perhaps I’m a little crazy. I’ve been coming to the realisation that I’m happier writing on poetry than I am on prose—when I’m writing about poetry, I’m (obviously) thinking about poetry. I feel that it’s more likely to lead me back into my own writing. This means that I’m thinking about what exactly to do with my thesis next year… The work I’d like to do on Dickens is, I feel, an important project—and it’s less about Dickens than about Australian national identity (yes, I’m feeling a little self-exiled these days, and have become, perhaps, more Australian than ever) which appeals to me. But—I want to write about our poets, and promote contemporary writing that is exciting. I’ve thinking and talking and wondering. (Perhaps I can do some smaller papers on Dickens. I don’t know if I would be able to get hold of the materials I need to do the kind of large-scale study I have in mind anyway. The records I need are most likely all in Australia.)

Speaking of writing on poetry, I’ve been having some slightly crazy thoughts on Milton’s Paradise Lost. These emerged from thinking so much about travel literature recently—and I was thinking of the ways Milton employs aspects of travel writing in the poem. And then—perhaps crazier—I’ve been listening to a lot of (Australian) Radio National podcasts as I’ve been going to sleep, including a few science shows. The most recent one was talking about solid light and the idea that at a critical point light crystallises. This got me thinking about the ways Milton uses light and darkness in the text, including light that “pierces.” But thinking it through I just couldn’t figure out how to turn either into a paper in the next month, and instead it looks like I’ll be looking at patterns of silence and sound in the text. At times I start to realise that I have “grad school brain.” But then, I don’t exactly think it’s even a normal grad student reaction to listen to a science show and think “Ah! Milton!” so perhaps I just have my own (extremely idiosyncratic) brain.

Today I’m seeing a face from home—like ships that meet in the night, I’m going to have an hour or so with Elena Knox, who’s passing through DC on her way to elsewhere. She has three hours at Union Station, and I’ll spend about half of that with her. There’ll no doubt be food, talk, and possibly a (very) quick interview—I want to catch up with the creative force that is Elena, and hear all about what she’s up to with her writing and performance.

Also today, the beginning of the Split This Rock poetry festival—more poets to meet. There’s an exciting line up over the next few days. I just hope that my (sometimes delicate) energy holds up and that I actually get some university work done at the same time!

I went looking for poetry from Pacific islands yesterday—I found a lot, which was lovely, but am particularly keen to find a poem/poet from the Marshall Islands. Anybody got a suggestion?

2008-03-17T10:19:00.006-04:00

A few frivolities:

On the weekend, I gave myself my first completely solo haircut. I’ve had good feedback so far. And, yes, I’m glad to save the $50 + it would cost to get it done by someone else in DC. I went the route of first cutting it in a ponytail, though in reality my hair is too thick for that, and then tidied up from there. Opinions? (The very sexy decor of the Georgetown Writing Center lies in the background.)

St Patrick’s Day. Yes, I made the effort to wear green. The thing I love about St Patrick’s Day, though, is that it is also the assigned birthday of our family friend Tram. She was born in Vietnam, and doesn’t actually know the date of her birthday. My dad took it upon himself to give her a birthday, and St Patrick’s Day is the day. It makes me happy.

A week ago Sir Walter Scott and I weren’t getting along so well. Our relationship is improving—the second volume of Waverley is somehow more engaging than the first. Or maybe Professor Ragussis has piqued my interest more.

My friend Amy Espeseth said she felt really famous when I mentioned her on my blog previously. So, I’m mentioning her again. You should look out for a novel from her sometime in the future. It’ll be something special.

After what I saw almost as a challenge from Hazel last week, I dropped in at The Bean Counter on the weekend to try their coffee. Good stuff! This reminded me that there are many more cafés to try out around Georgetown, before I swear complete allegiance to one. But then, I’ve never sworn complete allegiance to a single café. Within a few blocks of each other in Carlton, you would be equally likely to find me at Tiamo, Trotters or Big Harvest. I miss Big Harvest’s spectacular muffins.

I found a beautiful poetry anthology on the weekend—Language for a New Century: Poetry from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond. It helped me fill in some gaps by finding some poets for countries I didn’t have “covered” for the Independence Day Project.

This week I need to look for a poem from Namibia. I have a list of poets—good start—it’s just a matter of choosing the poem.

Speaking of African poets, Dennis Brutus will be in DC next weekend for the Split This Rock poetry festival. I’ve been reading some of his work recently, and I’m excited I’ll have a chance to see him.

Still some catching up to do today—more of Waverley to read before 4pm. I have faith it’ll get done. Based on the experience that I somehow always do.

2008-03-16T14:31:00.002-04:00

Kevin Rabalais was interviewed on Ramona Koval’s program recently. His first book, the novel The Landscape of Desire, was released by Scribe at the end of February. It’s already been getting wonderful reviews. Listen to the interview. Read the book. Support an exciting new writer. And, yes, he’s a friend of mine. I admire the seriousness that both he and his wife Jennifer Levasseur display regarding their writing.

Speaking of interviews, I may also be the subject of an interview soon. I’ll keep you posted if it’s happening.

2008-03-16T13:40:00.008-04:00

It’s been a week of just barely keeping up (or, in a few cases, catching up) but it’s been a good week.

Tuesday was another Lannan reading—E Ethelbert Miller and Ilya Kaminsky. Both the seminar and the reading were great. I’m so glad that I have the combination of my poetry class with David Gewanter and a lot of readings that I can go to this semester. I’m feeling words as very tactile objects right now—it’s a beautiful experience. I’m still finding it difficult to find time to write myself (and when I do, I feel like I’m not quite reaching the place I want to go) but at the same time, it’s been a really fruitful time for editing work that had been in the unfinished pile for a long time.

The theme for the latest Lannan reading was “Ancestors,” which proved an interesting starting point. Miller talked about poets that he has known personally whose work he tries to keep alive: he likes to include a few poems by these poets when he does a reading, and this was no exception, with work from, among others, June Jordon and Charles Bukowski included in his reading. I always find this a generous act on the part of poets: I suppose it is so rare that you have an audience for your own poems, that to use some of that time promoting the work of others is a lovely thing. He read a series of poems on Iraq that were particularly moving—I’d like to see these in print.

Miller also gave me an odd moment that pierced what I thought was relative anonymity—upon entering the seminar (early, as usual) he greeted me with “Ah! The blogger!” and gave me a hug. He wouldn’t tell me how he found this little blog, nor how long he has been reading it, but it was a lovely moment to realise that there are occasional readers beyond the audience I was aware of. I have a copy of his most recent book—How We Sleep on the Nights We Don’t Make Love—that I’ll be reading soon—and it looks like a (face-to-face!) interview will materialise, in between the juggling of everything I find myself doing.

Ilya Kaminsky was equally wonderful. I’m already a fan of his book (once again, Dancing in Odessa. If you haven’t read it, do.) In the seminar I was particularly fascinated—and delighted—by the approach he took to ancestors, which was so text-based. In particular, the way he looked at the continental European poets that I love so much—Zbigniew Herbert for instance. (I have to say it once again: I love the Polish poets so much. There is so much at work in their poems.) He traced the movement of ideas and forms from a poem by one poet into a poem by another: unfurling genealogies that he had obviously thought deeply about.

His reading was also a treat: eccentric and musical. Kaminsky speaks with a Russian accent, and this is particularly strong when he is reading his poems. Aware of this, he distributed copies of his book for the audience to follow as he read. I had brought my own copy with me, but I laid it aside—I already knew the poems, and while I didn’t catch everything, I wanted to listen to the rhythms that came out in his reading, that I felt in my own reading, but not quite as strongly. This is, I suppose, because I had the meaning-making foremost in my mind—and because I didn’t read most of the poems aloud. Hearing him read, it was rhythm that I wanted to think about the most, and it came out beautifully.

On Wednesday, I put on my academic hat again, and headed to Charlottesville for a conference at UVA—“Things Matter.” Last year I wrote a paper on Samuel Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, and the notion of a mental cabinet of curiosities. I had rewritten this paper to include Bruce Chatwin’s The Songlines, thinking through aspects of travel writing as an experiential “thing” that acts as both journey and souvenir for the reader. I wasn’t sure if I had spiralled into abstractions until I presented it, but I got a good reaction.

What I saw of Charlottesville was lovely, but as it was really all about the conference, I have to go back sometime for a more leisurely visit. And I have to get to Monticello.

Attending the panel following mine, I met four girls who are doing interesting work in nineteenth century literature—Emily Madsen (her paper was on the image of the black doll that appears in three illustrations in Dickens’ Bleak House), K. Irene Rieger (she was looking at nineteenth and twentieth century texts and nostalgia—she had a lot of fascinating information about hair jewellery that made me want to look into the phenomenon) Christen Mucher (a paper about the “ginger nut” in Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener, that unfolded into an investigation of the relationship between the Caribbean and the US) and Eugenia Gonzalez (writing on “the doll” in Vernon Lee’s story of the same name). It was a really rich experience—both to see what graduate conferences are like in the US, and also to meet people. The standard was really very high.

Rewriting my paper, it made me interested in doing some more work on travel literature—particularly some early travel texts from Australia. Another little island of material to connect with my work at some time.

The other exciting aspect of the conference was that the keynote speaker was (the almost impossibly hip) Bill Brown from the University of Chicago, who edited the issue of Critical Inquiry entitled Things, and a few years ago also published the book A Sense of Objects. Working on Henry James and systems of collecting, his work was particularly inspiring. Similarly, I found the collection of essays on “Things” just as I was starting to get really interested in the subject.

In his keynote he talked about the art of Brian Jungen—I wasn’t familiar with the artist before, but I was fascinated. I have to read more. The masks he made using deconstructed sneakers are beautiful. Last week (gosh! only last week?) I was making collages, and looking at art again made me want to get right back into making things. I started thinking about the number of things I could recycle, transform. Brown talked about the desire of materials to be transformed—I felt myself responding.

He also mentioned that in the book that this writing is going to be a part of, he has written on Walter de Maria. I asked him if he is also writing on other earthworks artists, Robert Smithson in particular. I’m always excited when I get a chance to talk about—think about—Smithson in any way. I feel like an interrogation of Smithson, and the way he uses entropy as a subject for his work, is such a fruitful area to look into. And it reminded me again (travel being on my mind) of my determination to get to the site of the Spiral Jetty in Utah. One day.

2008-03-09T11:49:00.005-04:00

Upcoming this week is Ilya Kaminsky's reading at Georgetown as part of the Lannan series - also reading is E. Ethelbert Miller, who I'll have to familiarise myself with before then. In the mean time, I've recently read Kaminsky's wonderful first book, Dancing in Odessa - which, when I find that elusive time, I plan to review here.

If you're in DC, come to hear Kaminsky and Miller read: Tuesday 11 March, 8pm at Copley Hall, Georgetown University.

2008-03-07T18:49:00.005-05:00

Yesterday was quite a day—mostly spent at the Library of Congress, after a coffee at my new favourite DC café, Baked and Wired, (red velvet cupcakes, “manly” quiche and great coffee) and ending with whiskey, mussels and chocolate mousse at Bistro du Coin, home at midnight.

Yesterday I participated in a master class with Charles Simic, the current poet laureate of the United States. In an hour and a half he looked at one poem apiece from about fifteen poets from the DC area. Apparently it hadn’t been well-advertised, which, ironically, is how I came to hear about it: one of the staff of the Library of Congress emailed David Gewanter last week because the class wasn’t full, and he forwarded the information to us students. I seem to have been the only one to follow up (I guess because so any people were out of town this week—and those who weren’t work fulltime, so couldn’t make a daytime class) and so I found myself in the room with a group of poets I hadn’t met before. There was one that looked youngish, but I felt like I was the youngest by quite a lot of years. (I thought this experience would have ended years ago...) There’s no shortage of poets in DC, that’s for sure…

What I liked about the class was that Simic was much more interested in the poems than in the poets. I guess for most people (those wanting to make a personal impression on the poet laureate in order to help with their careers) this may have been a little frustrating, but I found it wonderful how much his attention was on the words themselves. I was pleased that he seemed to like my poem (“Fat Ben Jonson”—written for the lovely Anne Brumley, then in the throes on the aforementioned fat, literary man) though he did point out that, self-indulgently, I had probably used the word “fat” too many times. It was just such a satisfying word at the time. Still, he was right.

The other thing that I really valued was that we were all there to listen to his comments, and so no-one was trying to one-up everyone else.

I also got a chance to write a new poem while I was drinking a post-class coffee. Ah, coffee.

After a few hours break, I went back to attend last night’s reading by this year’s winners of the Witter Bynner award, Matthew Thorburn and Monica Youn.

This was one of the best readings I’ve ever been to—both poets have published one book (Thorburn’s is Subject to Change and Youn’s is Barter), and each have second manuscripts that appear to be ready to go. There was such energy and playfulness—even exuberance—in their work. The audience was also clearly there with them—there was a lot of laughter.

I bought both poets first books (again, hopefully in the coming months some more email interviews will unravel) and last night, on the way to Bistro du Coin, I read a third of Thorburn’s book. Again, I’m hoping sometime I’ll find a moment to at least post a brief review. Sometime.

I’ve been realising just how many very good poets there are in America that we never hear about in Australia—it’s such a pity. Even big names don’t get much press at home. It’s still the case that most poetry is published by small presses—so of course a huge number of very fine poets don’t get distribution outside of America. It’s exciting discovering these poets—I hope other people will discover them too.