Amy Tan writing from experience

Alice Munro Interview

hot Sunday

It's not that hot really, but I'm sweating. I took a lot of dog naps yesterday. No dog naps today but I'm not getting focused. I think working full time means you really have to rest on weekends.

Last week's report:

Xena's ear canals swelled shut and she got a bilateral yeast infection. She now gets two medicines twice a day in her ears and she doesn't like it that much. The hair on her ears is greasy and filthy from the medications.

I have on a dress that is not fit to feed the birds--Maxine our little plucker screams every time I go in the bird room wearing this thing.

Brocco escaped from his cage this morning somehow and flew at Eleni and bit her on the face. He's getting his wings clipped this week and may find himself going to live in a fancy exotic bird sanctuary!

I got sucked in to Farmtown on Face Book, then Farmville, then little farm something. What a time waster. I'm harvesting strawberries every 4 hours because I need the money to buy a farmhouse. I can't hardly believe it myself.

No new poems but I found out that my poems are probably postmodern poems. Amazing. I have been reading two anthologies of postmodern poems.

Until then.

Deer at Centrum Behind Dormitory

Mark Doty--poet & memoirist [at Centrum this summer]

First Book Poetry Contests--Submit in the Next Few Months

APR/Honickman First Book Prize | Guidelines

Colorado Prize for Poetry

Many Mountains Moving Press

Mississippi Review

Ohio State University Press

Walt Whitman Award

More Here!

Franz Wright

Franz Wright

A priest.  It figures.  Those who know me will understand.

Poets they said I should read:

1. Franz Wright
2. Mathew Dickman
3. Michael Dickman
4. Michael Burkhard
5. Joshua Beckman
6. Blue Mountain Poets
7. Robert Creeley

Poets I have read:

1. Jane Miller
2. Olga Broumas
3. Jorie Graham
4. Judy Grahn
5. Rita Mae Brown
6. W.S. Merwin
7. Galway Kinnell
8. Marvin Bell
9. Steven Jesse Bernstein
10. Dr. Seuss (does he count?)

Why is validation for your poems so important?

I have so enjoyed this week.  It's like a real vacation and I haven't thought about work or my responsibilities at all.  I wake up, get myself off to breakfast and then to my workshop with the fabulous Mark Doty and all the other chapbookers in my class.  There are 15 of us plus Mark.  I feel that I'm learning a great deal about how to read poems in a very warm, safe and loving environment, and in a fairly brief period of time.  Mark is a great teacher and I highly recommend him to anyone!

Each day we do either 2 or 3 students.  This means we go over each collection of poems for approximately 35 minutes.  We have all read all the poems prior to the workshop--almost 400 in total.  We are predominantly looking at the form of the chapbook, but we review individual poems at times.  Many of my classmates have already published a fair number of poems, chapbooks and even books, and all of them are very well read.  They have been especially kind to me because I haven't.  I feel out of my depth most of the time.  I get symbols, mood, tone etc., but I am not well read in poetry and do not have much to recommend.

I was the 3rd student to read--my classmates picked out two poems they wanted me to read.  They knew much more about the poems than I did, they had given them such a close reading, and in many cases several close readings.  They said things like quirky, creative, interior, funny, etc.  My cheeks were bursting to smile I was so happy.  This was pretty scary for me to do.  The poems have been put away for about 12-15 years due to tragedy and pain.

What I've Done this Past WEEK!

1. talked to my dear friend Tracey from ETSU days.
   
2. read about 500 poems for Centrum
3. gained about 4 pounds in one day due to birthday cake to die for by Margurite at work!
4. proofread the two papers to be published in ANS this fall from my dissertation!
5. wrote first draft of grant request for HITECH money
6. trained a new ARNP for the hospital
7. attended 14 meetings at work and didn't fall asleep.
8. started a new blog: Lisa Trigg's Poem Repository
9. loaded most of my poems to the new blog
10. reloaded the wordpress software for PR about 4 times before I got it to work.
11. learned a lot about my host/server and wordpress.
12. the new Thesis Theme is fantastic, and I will be using it for a while.
13. lost my content for my of Course Foucault, the autoethnography of my dissertation blog and will have to start over with it. Had to load it 4 times to get it to work.
    
14. did not buy a new computer. my better smarter half pointed out that I bought 3 new ones last year, so. I still feel like I need a new one!
    
15. made a new friend on FB who wants to deposit some poems in my new poem repository! Hello Paulinerose!
    
16. found denise's phone number and heard her voice on the voice mail
17. mailed regalia back to the graduation people.
    

In Preparation for Centrum

I have spent a quiet morning without television reading poems for the workshop. I'm about half way through a 1 inch binder of poems. When I get tired of that, I read my own poems aloud to reacquaint myself with them and to remember that young woman who wrote them. They are all about women. I don't know how I could have cared so much. Now I'm looking for lost poems on among the files I found from my first computer, the old 286! So far I've found several that I haven't seen in many years:

Benediction

Blank Pages in a Letter of Regret

Four Lebel Interchange

We Will Give the Names New Gods

I've also found a letter from my brother when he started college!

I'm missing some poems too. News From A Board, and one about a homecoming queen. I guess I'll have to dig out hard copies.

These poems are about women for the most part and a little juvenile! I did find some fiction I liked.

I've been looking for good self publishing software for an online chapbook. I just downloaded and will try the new Thesis Theme for Wordpress.

While reading the poems in my red chair I fell asleep and dreamed the poems were read on a game show and we competed for something I can't remember now. Maybe that's the point!

Hello Again

I've been sucked into the immediate gratification of Facebook & Twitter. Is that good for me? I plan to return to blogging. Am preparing for Centrum Writer's Workshop with Mark Doty. I'm reading poems from my classmates and I never realized how many poems I'd be reading for this event! It's kinda fun but having no pometry background I don't know what to say about most of them!

Life's for Sharing

Saturday Chores

I spent all day in my office cleaning out the detritis of the dissertation.  There was also quite a bit of dust still remaining from the bathroom remodel.  I still have on my pajamas.  I cleaned all day in my pajamas.  One of my dissertation computers actually died today.  I scrubbed the dust off all the books I used for research and off the bookshelf itself.  I recycled all the extra drafts of the papers and quite a few articles I read to understand how to talk about discouse analysis.  I was a little sad to be out of academia but I work at a job that I love and that pays quite a bit better than university work would have.

I'm  free to start a new project now and thinking it might be some creative writing.  I've been collecting books about writing but a Walter Mosley interview on NPR told me to quit reading and start writing.  He says just write 600 words per day and I'll have my novel in a year.

Never one to settle for just one opinion, I've been reading The Passionate Accurate Story by Carol Bly.  She tells me to start out by writing a list of values and 10k word autobiography.  The values will help with the story later and the autobiography will help me avoid writing about myself.  I guess if I write a 50k autobiography, I'll have a book.

I'm going to combine the advice and write 600 words a day starting with the autobiography.

Singing Nurses of Harborview

Hurray for longer lighter days!

I'm coming out of hibernation with a lot more power since the days started getting longer here. I did the dishes and sorted the mail with nary a whine. I need light to think.  I didn't have any ideas for for my blog so I kept it going with stuff I was interested in from you tube.

Animal Report: The dog I'm training for my mother got a haircut and still has accidents in the house. One of the parrots bit me tonight and it hurt my feelings.

I went shopping and guess what? The recession has reached the outlet stores and the shops weren't sold out and picked over in my size! WooHOO!

I have recently read the new Walter Mosley book The Right Mistake and I really liked it. It is a Socrates Fortlow story.  I also listened to Blonde Faith on an eAudio book from the library.  I couldn't use my iPod to listen to the book because apparently the people at Apple don't believe in libraries!

Not Reacting to Content--Eckhart Tolle

Shameful beating of a teenaged girl in WA jail

Us-lim--a vid

Us - lim

Julian Curry -- Embryo

T Model Ford with Gravel Road--Wood Cuttin' Man

Poetry Friday---Carlos Andres Gomez -- What's Genocide?

Playing For Change---Stand By Me

Bad Love

Why come now bad love?
Bad love taunts me from death
as she did in life.


2/16/2009

I must be going to Maroc

I just bought the tickets. I've been trying to learn Moroccan Arabic, but that ship might have sailed. It's a tough language but I have two friends who speak Arabic so I'll try to pick up some phrases. So far no one to travel with me the first week. This might turn into my own little quest.

Morocco

I am going to Morocco in the fall with my friends. My partner was planning a horse trip to Morocco without me and I decided to go and see the culture while they ride. I will get some camel riding in. I'm researching how to best use my week in the beautiful country. I'm thinking of getting a place in Fez and just living a week there. I may have a friend or two join me. I'm hoping!

Yesterday I went horse back riding. I did ok except my legs were spaghetti when I dismounted and I landed on my fat butt on the ground!

big tree in australia

 

"Norman" by Mary Larson

This is a better picture of Norman. We have certainly enjoyed him.

Poetry Saturday--Czeslaw Milosz

AND YET THE BOOKS

And yet the books will be there on the shelves, separate beings,
That appeared once, still wet
As shining chestnuts under a tree in autumn,
And, touched, coddled, began to live
In spite of fires on the horizon, castles blown up,
Tribes on the march, planets in motion.
"We are," they said, even as their pages
Were being torn out, or a buzzing flame
Licked away their letters.  So much more durable
Than we are, whose frail warmth
Cools down with memory, disperses, perishes.
I imaging the earth when I am no more:
Nothing happens, no loss, it's still a strange pageant,
Women's dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley.
Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born,
Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.

Berkeley, 1986

Nostalgia

I have been corresponding with old old friends, high school classmates.  One friend is on a quest with the "angle of death" down in South Texas.  He's been reading Don Miguel Ruis and Ekhart Tolle.  I don't have permission to post his adventures here but they reminded me of the Porcine Canticles by the poet David Lee from the early 80s so I sent him a couple of poetry books.  Another old classmate found me on Facebook and wrote me about his globe trotting adventures and the sad tale and his regrets of a failed marriage.

I've also heard the sad news of the illness and death of my junior high and high school algebra teacher, Bob Boatright.  I sent him flowers before he died and I'd just completed my PhD so I told him about it in the card.  Like my success is his success.  Who knows how much the teachers remember about old students?  I sure remember him.  He was scary strict and I never did my homework for that class (3 years worth) but managed to pass the quizzes. I think he took pity on my miserable life.  My life was hard in those days.  He'd say "Trigg, if you'd just do your homework...."   Somehow when I got to college I just "knew" algebra and did well in my math and science classes, so I must have learned something.  Here is a youtube of Bob in a fiddle medley.  If you watch long enough you can see him and his chubby cheeks as he fiddles.  I think I would have liked this guy if I'd known him in real life.  As it was, I just felt bad about not doing my homework for those years.

I've also heard from a college friend.  I don't know what has gotten into me but I've been looking my old self up and trying to remember who I was.  Most strange, I'm not that different now, if anything more myself.  And our class song, Freebird still applies.

Hurray for the Class of '76.   We were all that and more!

Nostalgia--HS class song--Freebird