this post is more for me than you, but Hi! Welcome!

It's that time again when I need to just stop, think, and type out all of the ideas/projects/tasks floating around in my brain before they crash into each other and start a fire.

I'm overwhelmed but in a good way! I'd always rather be overwhelmed than underwhelmed. First, my new position with H_NGM_N (like us on Facebook!) has exposed me to and connected me with so many talented and inspiring individuals. I am blown away and so thankful to be in contact with these people, to read their work and share it with others. And the more I read, the more I want to write! I want to write all the time! I'm suddenly overcome by ideas for my own work and there's so much I want to do with my manuscript! SO MUCH. I just need to find the time! I'll be sending Packet #3 off in a week and after that have just two left... I'm at the point where I kind of want to tear everything up and make a big mess. Probably that's what is going to happen.

Also, my lecture! At graduation residency I have to give a lecture, and I just got this book from the library that has my ideas exploding left and right... I have a draft of the lecture that my advisor responded to, and I have quite a bit of revision/editing that needs to be done... but need to wait until I have an entire day, a full 8 hours or something, to devote my attention to it.

And photography! I've gone back and forth about whether I should continue with the business, and after photographing a gorgeous wedding this past weekend, I feel confident about continuing the business for now.. I've launched a sister site to my main website, called FOTO, as a way to better promote what I really want to do. I love photographing people but am most interested in fashion and weddings and engagements... so this site is geared towards that. With the photography business, as with most businesses, it's very easy, and tempting, to get caught up in trends. There is SO MUCH you can do with a business, and I found myself becoming wrapped up in the trends, in the blogging and the packaging and all of that, the commercial side of things, when really I'm coming at photography as an artist. I am not a business person. I am an artist, and that's how I need to market myself. The people who dig that will hire me, and that's cool. Photography will never be my full-time career, so I'm okay with not being the most popular or being featured in Minnesota Bride and all of that... BUT, I do have a ton of photo projects coming up! SIX couple/engagement sessions within the next month! And besides Facebook, word of mouth from clients is the best advertising.

On top of all of that, plus some other projects, I just started a part-time job at a liquor store in town. As much as freelancing is awesome because you get to be your own boss and make your own schedule, it's also awesome to be clocked in, knowing you're making money, knowing you will get a paycheck, however small it may be. I've got big dreams and need some money to make them happen! And student loans I'll need to start repaying once I graduate this winter... Yikes.

My "down-time" is the time I get to spend with Evelyn. The past few days here have been crisp and wonderful, and we love being outside! Yesterday we went for a great nature walk, found a "deer castle," played at the park, stood still and breathed in the air...

She's my love bug and keeps me sane, reminds me to look at the pretty pink sky, the moon and the stars...

H_NGM_N is rad

If you haven't spent some time over at H_NGM_N, you should! There you will find a current issue of wonderful & eclectic poems, prose, and even some comics, from various & talented artists & writers. You will also find yourself easily lost in the beautiful archives, or perhaps you'll wander over to purchase one of the books H_NGM_N has published (Alexis Orgera's incredible stellar book of poems How Like Foreign Objects is on sale until the 27th! Pay whatever you want!), or maybe buy a T-shirt? Or maybe YOU are a writer and have some words of your own you'd like to submit!

Why am I telling you all this stuff about H_NGM_N? Besides the fact that this is a very cool journal, I am also now a part of the H_NGM_N team! (click here to see the proof!) As you'll see, my official title is Social Media Wrangler, which makes me feel super cool & bad ass.

Something else that's super cool -- this Coldfront interview with Nate Pritts, editor-in-chief and founder of H_NGM_N. Here Nate gets into some details about the magazine's history, but he also says some great things about poetry, the modern world, technology, etc.... making this an excellent Sunday morning read...

Some quotes I love too much to not share:

"All this structure – online environments & categorical identity schema – is a strategy, a device to get us to give over the only thing that matters: the spark of intrinsic humanity in each of us. Poetry can be, is allowed to be, a record of how we save our souls."


"Also, let’s not use the word “hurdle” – or even “challenges” or especially “problems.” I love the course & I
love the obstacles. Without them, without this playing field, you’d have no idea how fast I can run. We
need the constraint just as much as we need the universe it tightens."


"We’re using poetry to accomplish all these very low level things – things that are important & 
human & fun, but we’re not reaching its potential. We’re not sounding it out, putting everything of
ourselves into it & so we’re not getting out of it as much as we could. We’re playing games with the only
weapon we have left."

"Everything I have in my life that means anything at all is a result of, or tied to, poetry."



Really, go read the rest and see for yourself.

Come On All You Ghosts....

This is the name of the book I've been reading this week, by the incredible Matthew Zapruder. Usually when I really love a book I devour it as fast as I can, but this book is so fucking good, so rich, that I find myself reading it slowly, bit by bit, savoring each poem as long as I can, because I never want the book to be over.

today my mouth
is an artificial lake
I'm too tired to swim across

I can't believe it's already September. Besides reading Come On All You Ghosts I've also been writing my ass off, averaging a new poem every other day, constantly revising both these new and old poems, constantly talking to myself in my head. And what's different this semester is that I actually have a working manuscript. With a title. With sections. With a six-page title poem in the middle. In a way I've been writing my first book since I began writing at all, but for the first time I feel like I'm writing my first book. Like, I tell people, yeah, I'm writing my first book! Of course, for it to be a book someone has to want to publish it, but we'll save that talk for 2013...or 14? I have no idea.

In other news, my friend Drew is doing cool things over at Tin House and Poor Claudia; my friend and VCFA roommate Emmalea is preparing the third issue of em:me  magazine; and the other day I got an email that one of my poems is going to be published in the next issue of The Coachella Review.

Oh, and in July I was asked to join the newly established literary magazine, Split Rock Review, as a contributing reader, which so far has been a very cool experience.  Things are happening.

And a really big thing that's happening:: Evelyn started preschool on Tuesday! A super awesome Montessori school with local art on the walls and plants and beautiful things all around. She loves going there, which I love.

My heart feels like a field of calves in the sun.
My heart is wired directly to the power source of mediocre songs.
I am trying to catch a ray of sunlight in my mouth. 

(also Zapruder. Go buy his book.)

PANK MAGAZINE

PANK Magazine is a very rad literary magazine. I am therefore very excited to have a poem featured in the latest issue, a special parenting issue. Click here and scroll to the bottom to read my poem, but definitely spend time checking out the other pieces. I'm honored to share space with such talented writers, and thankful to editors Roxane Gay and Amye Archer for putting together this incredible issue.

xxo

"Short Lecture on Shakespeare"

by Mary Ruefle, "Twenty-Two Short Lectures," Madness, Rack, and Honey, Wave Books, 2012

"They say there are no known facts about Shakespeare, because if it were his pen name, as many believe, then whom that bed was willed to is a moot point. Yet there is one hard cold clear fact about him, a fact that freezes the mind that dares to contemplate it: in the beginning William Shakespeare was a baby, and knew absolutely nothing. He couldn't even speak."

used without permission. sorry.

the universe inside you

"Each of us is conceived with a unique set of coiled genes 'primed' for realization. We are born with a desire to develop our resources and contribute our matured talents to the pool of human resources. This unfolding and becoming of an individual self is not only a biological activity--it is also a spiritual one. When we bring to life our unique personal contribution, we are active, local participants in the endless cosmic drama of the creation of ultimate meaning, as the universe, itself divine, 'becomes.'"

--Albert Pesso

Also, this:

"Letters to a young poet.."

My friend and incredibly talented writer Adam Love gave a lecture this morning titled "Letters to a Young Poet," in which he so beautifully addressed the nature of the MFA program, how it's about so much more than just getting a degree, that writing is living a lifestyle as opposed to practicing a profession, and how Rainer Maria Rilke basically set up the model of the low-residency MFA program, in his remarkable Letters to a Young Poet, the collection of letters he wrote to Franz Kappus, the young, confused, anxiety-ridden poet. Adam addressed the difficulty of explaining to others our reasons for writing, for paying $40,000 to earn a degree that isn't "practical" in the way an MBA might be practical. He addressed the necessary loneliness of being a writer, our obsession with not only language but what it means to be human..."The writing life is lonely, bred from your solitude..." he said, and he quoted the poet and former VCFA student Andrew Nurkin, who notes that the MFA is so much more than a degree, that "The MFA is a set of experiences, relationships, and revelations..."

There's so much more I could say but don't have the time right now, so I'll leave you with an excerpt from one of Rilke's letters:

"No one can advise or help you -- no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "I must", then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse."

"There's not enough room in the world..."

"There's not enough room in the world
to turn your life around..."

--from a poem by Mark Cox, read this evening, thunder outside

And lucky to be here

"Even though we are in poetry school - -and lucky to be here -- isn't it true that we are dealing with something that began before time...?"

--Matthew Dickman in his lecture today

quitting the photo business?

I think I might have to give up the photography business. Or should I say, I think I want to give up the photography business...

At least, I'm not taking on any more new projects starting now. I'm following my instincts. It's just not where my heart is, and for the amount of time and energy it takes, the little money I make is definitely not enough to make me want to keep going. In the business world, you have to keep up if you want to survive--keep up with technology, equipment, trends, marketing, etc....

I could half-ass it, but that would be wrong. Do it right or don't do it at all.

Poetry. That's where my heart is. And I'm about to begin my fourth and final semester of grad school at the best low-residency MFA writing program in the country. And I'm working with Matthew Dickman, a personal favorite and truly talented poet. And he's going to help me put my first book manuscript together, and there is no other option but to pour my absolute all into this, which, this time around, means making big cuts to other things, like the photography...

And I couldn't be more thrilled.

p.s. the Fucking Lit Party was fucking amazing, although I didn't come away with photos. The setting was so warm and intimate, once the reading began I just wanted to be in the moment, no distractions, no photographs.

F**king Lit Party

It's the morning of the fourth full day of residency, the sky is blue, and I'm feeling pretty good. It's around day 3 that everyone begins to feel pretty settled, sliding into the routine of things. And after tonight everyone will be much more relaxed, once we find out which advisor we'll be working with all semester. Fourth semester students, like myself, virtually always get their first choice of advisor, but we still have to list three preferences, which kind of freaks some people out (like me!).

It's difficult to summarize experiences here in Vermont, partly because they're so amazing that no words seem right, and partly because there is so much going on, my brain feels more cluster fucked than usual. But in a good way, because it's cluster fucked with everything poetry.

A few of my friends are staying in a house off campus, and tonight we're having a reading there, with a few students and even some faculty members, aptly named "Fucking Lit Party," and so I have to decide which pieces I want to read...

I have a feeling today will be a long, exhilarating day. The best kind of days.

Also, yesterday I finally had the opportunity to meet the poet Ralph Angel, a faculty member who hasn't been on campus the past few residencies, though I wish he would have! I'd like to have an extra semester so I could work with him. Very, very cool. Read his poem, "The Loneliest Man in The World."

Also, can you believe I haven't taken my camera out of my bag yet? It's interesting, when I'm doing a lot of photography work, I really miss writing. And I get anxious if I don't make time to write. But when I'm focusing on writing... I don't really miss photography. Not in the same way. I think that says something. I should probably take the camera out tonight though, to capture some of the Fucking Lit Party, which is bound to be epic, because the people here are [epic].

"To live is so startling..."

"To live is so startling, it leaves little room for any other occupation."

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. But hey, that's writing poetry. It's also getting out of bed every morning."

--quotes from yesterday morning, from Mary Ruefle's lecture on lectures she will never give

What it's like to go to Vermont in the summer...

Let me elaborate: What it's like to be a grad student at the Vermont College of Fine Arts and attend summer residency.

Awesome.

That's one word to describe it.

And exhausting.

And pretty much awesome.

I leave for Vermont in just six days, and yesterday the residency schedule was emailed to us, which makes me extra excited/nervous. Because of Evelyn's birthday and the wedding I have to photograph, I don't have much to think about/mentally prepare for my time away, but I thought I'd share a little about what we writers actually do when we're there.

When I say that I'm going away for school people automatically assume I go there and attend classes. But no, there are no classes in Vermont. There are lectures, usually about an hour long, given by the faculty and graduating students (yes, in the winter I'll be giving a lecture!) And there are readings, also given by the faculty and graduating students (and yes, in the winter I'll be giving a reading!), as well as workshops. These three things make up what I would call the "academic" component of residency.

Here is what a typical day at residency might look like:

8:30-9:30: lecture

9:45-10:45: lecture

11:15: meeting

12-1:15: lunch

1:15-3:45: workshop

4-4:30: reading

4:45-5:45: lecture

6-6:45-dinner

7:15-8:15: reading

8:30: student readings

That's actually what my first full day of residency look likes (if you're super interested you can access the schedule from the VCFA website. It's not private or anything. See here). And if my workshop leaders decide to go through our packet alphabetically, that  means I'll be workshopped on the first day (which means I will sit silently for an hour while the rest of my 11 or so peers and two faculty leaders will discuss the four poems I submitted for workshop. It's as fun as it sounds! Haha). Also, not everything is mandatory. You don't have to go to every lecture, and you technically don't have to go to any readings if you don't want to, but who does that? There are normally two lectures going on at a time, but it's usually divided by genre, so a poetry faculty member will be giving a lecture at the same time a prose faculty member is, but poetry students can attend prose lectures and vice versa. And sometimes lectures apply to all genres, to all writers.

On this first day, I will go to every lecture and reading because the 8:30 AM lecture is by Mary Ruefle (a truly incredible writer and artist--it's the first lecture and it's early but the room will be full, I'm sure); the second lecture is by Rigoberto Gonzalez, who was my amazing advisor for second semester, so of course I have to go! And the third lecture, after workshops, is by the also incredible Jen Bervin. Wow, talk about a day full of brilliance! And, to add to that, the reading at 4 includes Matthew Dickman (one of my favorite poets and hopefully fourth semester advisor!), among others, and the reading at 7 includes Leslie Ullman, the advisor I just had for my third semester. Wow wow wow.

Not every day is always this full, and it just so happens that a bunch of faculty I'm interested in hearing are giving lectures/readings on the first day, but yeah, I might be exhausted. And the student readings are a casual thing held almost each night, where non-graduating students have a chance to read their work out loud, as a way to practice the whole reading in front of a group and hearing yourself in the microphone thing. It's fun to get up there and read some poems, and it's cool to hear what your peers have been working on, but damn, a lot of times by 8:30 people are tired of sitting and listening and thinking, so then it's either time to 1) lie in bed and let your brain rest, 2) go for a walk, 3) crack open the wine, or 4) go downtown.

Sometimes, usually, it's a combination of the four, and sometimes there are things going on through the school, like the Talent Show and the Grad Party, which, because it's graduate school and we're all well into our twenties (and beyond), are really fun events (by which I mean there is usually alcohol involved. Duh.)

And on the 4th of July there is a softball game, prose writers versus poets, and a catered picnic and fireworks and all of that. Good times, good times. And, for me anyway, most nights end in good times, in amazing conversations with talented and unique individuals from all over the place, each with their own quirks and styles and fucked up stories to share, some of them fictional, all of them true.

I've never done much actual writing at residency, but I have a feeling it'll be different this time, since I've been so busy these last few weeks and unable to devote much time to my poetry. But, you never know how you feel when you arrive in Vermont. The place changes you. And after spending the past five months writing in your little corner of the world, the sudden wave of inspiration and information and writerly camaraderie can be a little overwhelming at first, especially if you're like me and somewhat neurotic and socially awkward (see my last post).

Okay, I need more coffee.

writer's block

For the first time this semester I've had true, hardcore writer's block. I thought this was something I'd outgrown, but maybe it's one of those things that plagues all writers for all of time... and by writer's block I mean that everything I try to write just doesn't work. For some reason I can't access the part of my brain that I need... maybe I've been watching too much television. Maybe it's the weather. I always blame things on the weather. Oh! Maybe it's my spider bite! Lately I'm blaming everything on my spider bite. Sore throat? Spider bite. Stiff neck? Spider bite. Feeling tired? Spider bite. Can't write a damn thing? Must be the spider bite!

Here's a quote I saw on Facebook that I love:

“Literature says nothing to those human beings who are satisfied with their lot, who are content with life as they now live it. Literature is the food of the rebellious spirit, the promulgator of nonconformities, the refuge for those who have too much or too little in life. One seeks sanctuary in literature so as not to be unhappy and so as not to be incomplete…to divest ourselves of the wrongs and the impositions of this unjust life, a life that forces us always to be the same person when we wish to be many different people, so as to satisfy the many desires that possess us. Literature pacifies this vital dissatisfaction only momentarily - but in this miraculous instant, in this provisional suspension of life, literary illusion lifts and transports us outside of history, and we become citizens of a timeless land, and in this way immortal.” - Mario Vargas Llosa

Hope your day is less frustrating than mine!

I'm famous!

Not really but I've been interviewed as part of my good friend Azia's "Creative Minds" project. I've written more in response to her questions than I've written on this blog in a long time, so go check it out!

Also, here's some pictures from two recent concerts in downtown Minneapolis, Gotye and Trampled by Turtles, both of which were incredible! At the end of the month I'm seeing Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes! Wooo!

(if you're wondering about the quality of the photos, it's because I brought a disposable camera. My regular point and shoot broke a while ago (SAD FACE) and it'd be very dumb to bring my nice camera to a concert. Things get rowdy.)

"There is a world..."

"There is a world which poets cannot seem to enter. It is the world everybody else lives in. And the only thing poets seem to have in common is their yearning to enter this world."

from Mary Ruefle's "Someone Reading a Book is a Sign of Order in the World."

Mary teaches poetry at VCFA, and I'm highly considering working with her for my last semester... she is brilliant.

More quotes from the above piece:

"I am a writer, and the next step is inevitable: I used what had been revealed to me in my own writing."

"We are all one question, and the best answer seems to be love—a connection between things."

"Our minds and the universe—what else is there? Margaret Mead described intellectuals as those who are bored when they don't have the chance to talk interestingly enough. Now a book will talk interestingly to you. George Steiner describes the intellectual as one who can't read without a pencil in her hand. One who wants to talk back to the book, not take notes but make them: one who might write "The giraffe speaks!" in the margin. In our marginal existence, what else is there but this voice within us, this great weirdness we are always leaning forward to listen to?"

And she quotes Kafka:

"'Altogether, I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book we are reading doesn't shake us awake like a blow to the skull, why bother reading it in the first place? So that it can make us happy, as you put it? Good God, we'd be just as happy if we had no books at all; books that make us happy we could, in a pinch, write ourselves. What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to the woods, far away from any human presence, like a suicide. A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us. That is what I believe.'—Kafka in a letter, 1904"

"However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light."

A poet friend just posted this on Facebook and it's exactly what I needed (that and hollow milk chocolate Easter eggs). And, interestingly, that bit at the end about light and dark fits perfectly with my critical thesis. In my thesis I approach poetry through the lens of literal light and dark as used in photography, which leads to metaphorical forms of light and dark... Both light and dark are necessary...it's the darkness that's inevitable, and it's light that we have to make. One way I make light is writing. Another is friends. I think I would like to have more friends.

source

letters from friends

It's amazing how friends can brighten your day even when they're thousands of miles away... we're all under the same moon tonight.

xo.

reading: poet Kim Addonizio

I read a lot of books and thought I could start sharing more of what I'm reading on a daily basis. Yesterday Kim Addonizio's poetry collection Lucifer at the Starlite arrived in my mailbox. The first poem in the book:

Sign your name

on a scrap of paper,
crumple or tear it up and throw it away:

that's how the world works, friend.
Maybe you can't even get as far

as gripping a pen, maybe your hand
is scrabbling in a few dirty grains

of rice, or you're licking a tin plate
or just your fly-crawled lips. Welcome

and farewell: your stacked or stashed
or set aflame, turning on the spit,

the axis, the long pole that runs
through everyone. If you're here

you're already nearly gone. Write
if you can. If you can, give us a song.


(read it on Google Books)

Marguerite Duras {Writing}

"The solitude of writing is a solitude without which writing could not be produced, or would crumble, drained..."

"The person who writes books must always be enveloped by a separation from others. That is one kind of solitude. It is the solitude of the author, of writing. . . one must ask oneself what the silence surrounding one is--with practically every step one takes in a house, at every moment of the day, in every kind of light, whether light from outside or from lamps lit in daytime. This real, corporeal solitude becomes the inviolable silence of writing."

"There is a madness of writing that is in oneself, an insanity of writing, but that alone doesn't make the writer insane. On the contrary."

--from the essay "Writing" by Marguerite Duras, pub. 1993