End of Winter

This picture was taken at the end of winter by my dad. That's how we looked all winter, Ben in his blue and white hat, me with my unwashed hair and old black coat.

I've had trouble keeping up with this blog, but I'd still like to do it when I can. I have so little time, and usually when I'm on the internet, I just want to read other people's blogs, news articles, etc.

I'm writing, I'm submitting, all that. It's going well. I hadn't written anything good for months, and then I read Elizabeth Alexander's Antebellum Dream Book. I'd been reading poetry books for a while, hoping to get inspired, but this book knocked my brain around the right way and got a good poem out of me. Then I read this poem by Liz Rosenberg and wrote another:

Learning to Speak

She was the quietest thing I'd ever seen.
It was so restful, being in her company
For hours, neither of us uttering a word.
I'd read the paper, look up, and she would smile,
Her lips half-pursed, just tucked up at the ends
As if holding a blithe secret.
When I fed her, she'd silently nod and smile,
Like immigrants you see
In train stations or in the movies,
She'd take the bowl from my hands
And nod again and smile again
And neither of us would say a word
From sunup to sunset.
When son and husband came home,
Both talking at once, both talking
With their mouths full,
My daughter and I could only look at them
With our dark quiet eyes.
Siddown, she says now.
I sit down
Without argument.

Thank you Elizabeth Alexander. Thank you Liz Rozenberg.

I'll try to blog more. I want to. Happy Spring!

Rush Hour

Well, here I am in New York City, no ticket to AWP, and all the outside events seem to be in the evening when the baby's asleep. I always wanted to go to an AWP conference, but I never had the money to fly somewhere and pay for a hotel, so I thought for sure I'd go when it came here, but here I am, Friday night of the thing and I have no plans to participate in any way. It's a funny feeling, but I don't feel very regretful about it. I'm not really sure what I'm missing. But maybe it will be like my high school prom. I didn't go, and then I regretted it like mad five years later.

I've been busy turning thirty (!), taking the baby to Barnes and Noble almost everyday so he can crawl around in a big space and play with books and toys, working these two new poems to death (possibly literally), sending out my manuscript to contests, working on my La Leche League application, practicing yoga, feeding the baby's bottomless appetite, cooking, cleaning, watching all the presidential debates, and trying to go to sleep early enough so that I can survive the day without napping now that the baby has dropped his morning nap. Should that sentence been punctuated with semicolons?

No publishing news lately, except that my breastfeeding article is out in Lilith Magazine, though I haven't seen it yet. I keep getting these very kind and personalized notes from respectable journals, but no one seems to want to take the plunge and actually publish the poems. It's so slow sometimes. It's easy to doubt one's self.

And now it's the weekend. I'm getting a massage for my birthday, which I'm excited about, though I always feel disappointed after I get one. I've never had a massage that's knocked me off my feet. I don't know -- I'm not sure I can ever relax enough with someone I met five minutes ago massaging me from head to toe. I've gotten much more out of Danny doing it, and he's far from trained. In fact, his massaging and back scratching are what got me through most of my labor.

February's here. We're kinds sorta getting closer to spring.

Lovely

I got a great rejection from The Kenyon Review, calling my poems "lovely" and citing one in particular that I've been waiting for someone to love. Bit by bit, my new poems are acquiring fans. It's a nice thing.

But I need more readers. How do I find someone who loves my poems and whose poems I love to exchange poems with? I've found people in the past, but I feel like I've been searching forever for that kindred poet who just really gets my work (and vice versa). Running an ad won't work.

Ben's turning one on Friday, which means I gave birth to him a year ago. I keep thinking about the birth, the dark winter days leading up to it. The birth was much easier than I expected to be and the moment the midwives handed him to me was also very different than I imagined it would be. I thought I'd see him and, well, recognize him or something. But when his sharp wail filled the room, when he lay sprawled on my chest, I wasn't sure who he was. I see now that he was entirely himself, but I didn't know him at first. It was a strange feeling and I'll never forget it.

Florida

Batman!

Apparently you can buy my book at Target! It was very weird to search for myself on their website, and then have the cover to my book appear. I've been spending the past year going on there and buying stuff like bibs, sassy seats, and onsies. I like Target, but not that much.

We were driving home today and I was looking out the window, spacing out. Houses, winter branches, that misty cold light of a December afternoon. I thought, that's what I miss: daydreaming. That's one of the few things I want back from my other life. It would help me write poems, I think. I'm in a bit of a rut when it comes to the poems. I have my bits of time, which have proven to be enough over the past year, but I guess I don't have enough time to zone out and just be. Gotta go on more walks. Ben likes walks. We both do.

Ben is starting to say more words, but sporadically. He mostly repeats them after we say them. He's said book and yogurt several times. And he's said baby, goodnight, more, cracker, candy, latke, doggie, woof, and my personal favorite, Batman. By the way, we don't give him candy, but that's what we call his homeopathic teething tablets :)

Gook!

Rhino took a poem. Yay! I think it's the first acceptance since the baby was born (I say "I think" because my mind is too foggy to quite remember!). I didn't start sending out until August, so I'm pretty happy with this. And it's from my second manuscript, so there continues to be interest there. I certainly need the encouragement. And I've always liked Rhino. I'm happy to be in it.

Ben's unofficial first work is "book." Four different times we've sat down to read his nighttime books, and when we say "Do you want to read a book?" he says "gook!" and waves his arms around excitedly. It doesn't happen every night, but it's happened enough times that we think he's trying to say that. Of course, we're both over the moon. What more could two writer parents want?

tidbits

Baby's sick (just a cold, but his first). I cut my hair short, a chin length bob. It's November and I can't believe it. Danny's turning 30. Ben will be 1 soon. The leaves are falling finally. Whenever the hell I go back to work, I'm thinking of ditching academia and becoming a childbirth educator. I've gotten a whole slew of terribly sweet notes from journals, but no acceptances. The lactivism article's done, thank God, it was a lot of work, and I have absolutely no idea how mothers of babies return to work so soon. Florida in three weeks, Vermont in a month. I need new clothes.

Saturday Night

I've been pretty engrossed in writing this "lactivism" article. I have a deadline and everything. Now I know why I'm a poet and not a prose writer: too many words! I guess I have a short attention span or something. I've wanted the article to be over several times, way before it's done. But then I come back to it in a few days and I'm happy to be writing. But still, too many words. And I keep cutting them too. I said to myself that I'd only write the article if it didn't cut into the precious little poetry writing time I have. I did well for a few weeks but yesterday I just had to work on it. So there goes another Friday. At least I have a new poem I've been tinkering with all week during naptime. It has a line in it from this blog: "he's been out as long as he was in."

It was lovely to see Paul the other night. He looked smashing and was sweet as ever. I was so proud of him! I got to see the check. Wow! And those Whiting people are so secretive. I got an invitation in the mail and someone wrote on it: "sent at the request of one of the recepients." As if I didn't know who sent it to me . . .

I got a rejection in the mail the other day from one of those big journals. The envelope was their stationary, not the SASE I'd sent. I got really excited, thinking this was how they sent out acceptances, all offiicial and everything. Later, after I'd opened it up and cried (just kidding), I saw that my stamp had been cut out and pasted on it! I'm sure some kid spilled coffee or pea soup on it. Sigh.