So this is the new year.

a night of coffee and cheesecake with friends, harolding in 2011, a new year, a year of expectations....

:
and always in my mind a line of poetry I did not write:

walking in my silver shoes, my fear outweighs my hope...
:

Resolutions:
1. Grow my hair long (a goal that can be accomplished by inaction)
2. Publish my book. Or, at least, keep trying.
3. Be consistently mindful of how I treat my body (diet, exercise)
4. Read the rest of Virginia wolf's novels (jacob's room, The voyage out, night and day, Orlando, The years, between the acts)
5. Finish reading through the bible

::

So everybody put you best suit or dress on, let's make believe...

( for just this once )

Home again.

Christmas was the best we'd had in years. Jonesboro & Memphis, beard-hats, gatherings of the entire family and the family friends I grew up with, trivia night and cooking Italian with my little sis...it was the first time that I really felt like part of the family when I was with my in-laws (not by their fault, I am hard to get to know). And all the things in my family that had been worrying me seemed gone (and for once the seeming was enough).

I don't have work til Monday, so tomorrow will be for getting caught up on the to-do list that grew in our absence. Grocery shopping and such. Redecorating, thanks to my mom's clever and much appreciated gift of slipcovers, tablecloths, and various apartment beautifying things ( is it true that the new look will help this year go faster?). A last edit on my manuscript then mailing it to Louise for her critique-- it has taken me all year to work up the nerve to send it to her, and i am glad it took that long, since it is a much better book Now.

Tonight I am tired but restless..feeling a little overwhelmed by it all and a little overcome too. But I think things will look better in the morning.

The Whitest Sheets

My second chapbook, The Whitest Sheets, was released today. I'm particularly excited about the cover art (by Debra Howell)

In general its a very different little book than my first one--much more emotion-driven and raw (if that is the right word), I feel. But I guess readers can determine for themselves how it is different or not so different.

sample poem:

Breadcrumbs

Lying across the unmade
bed. The room would be
dark if it were not
for the pale seeping
through the blinds, drawn
to hide the dripping world.
She doesn’t want to see it like this,
it was so glorified yesterday:
pink and blue azaleas, sumac and oak,
the crows killing a young rabbit,
first one dive, then another.
She thinks of the flowers
she saw on the mountain:
white like breadcrumbs
in the tangled confusion
of fallen leaves and branches.
An open secret.
The way you leave a diary
on a bookshelf in the living room,
between two ordinary books.
The way a word will hang
in the air, a hinge undone.
On the bed, tracing the stitches
in a star-patterned quilt
not made for her. Delicate
wren movements, quick and fragile,
the small bones of her wrist.
She could get up and raise the blinds.
She could knock on the neighbor’s door
for a long afternoon of hot soup,
fruit salad, Wheel of Fortune.
The day passes her as a stranger on a train
who paused for the scent of her hair.
Drowns her out like applause,
like many people laughing.

It Was Winter by Czeslaw Milosz

Winter came as it does in this valley.
After eight dry months rain fell
and the mountains, straw-colored, turned green for a while.
In the canyons where gray laurels
graft their stony roots to granite,
streams must have filled the dried-up creek beds.
Ocean winds churned the eucalyptus trees,
and under clouds torn by a crystal of towers,
prickly lights were glowing on the docks.

This is not a place where you sit under a cafe awning
on a marble piazza, watching the crowd,

Or play the flute at a window over a narrow street

While children’s sandals clatter in the vaulted entryway.

They heard of a land, empty and vast,

Bordered by mountains. So they went, leaving behind crosses

Of thorny wood and traces of campfires.

As it happened, they spent winter in the snow of a mountain pass,

And drew lots and boiled the bones of their companions;

And so afterward a hot valley where indigo could be grown

Seemed beautiful to them. And beyond, where fog

Heaved into shoreline coves, the ocean labored.

Sleep: rocks and capes will lie down inside you,

War councils of motionless animals in a barren place,

Basilicas of reptiles, a frothy whiteness.

Sleep on your coat, while your horse nibbles grass

And an eagle gauges a precipice.

When you wake up, you will have the parts of the world.

West, an empty conch of water and air.

East, always behind you, the voided memory of snow-covered fir.

And extending from your outspread arms

Nothing but bronze grasses, north and south.

We are poor people, much afflicted.

We camped under various stars,

Where you dip water with a cup from a muddy river

And slice your bread with a pocketknife.

This is the place; accepted, not chosen.

We remembered that there were streets and houses where we came from,

So there had to be houses here, a saddler’s signboard,

A small veranda with a chair. But empty, a country where

The thunder beneath the rippled skin of the earth,

The breaking waves, a patrol of pelicans, nullified us.

As if our vases, brought here from another shore,

Were the dug-up spearheads of some lost tribe

Who fed on lizards and acorn flour.

And here I am walking the eternal earth.

Tiny, leaning on a stick.

I pass a volcanic park, lie down at a spring,

Not knowing how to express what is always and everywhere:

The earth I cling to is so solid

Under my breast and belly that I feel grateful

For every pebble, and I don’t know whether

It is my pulse or the earth’s that I hear,

When the hems of invisible silk vestments pass over me,

Hands, wherever they have been, touch my arm,

Or small laughter, once, long ago over wine,

With lanterns in the magnolias, for my house is huge.

Berkeley, 1964

Sausage Bread

Ingredients:
1 package of ground sausage
8 0z cream cheese
shredded cheese
a french loaf (or italian loaf, or bread of your choosing)

Directions:
cook sausage and drain. then mix with cream cheese. slice bread in half and spread mixture over the two halves. cover with cheese. bake at 350degrees until cheese is melted. slice up and serve!

***
My aunt made up this recipe and I immediately had to try it out for myself! I've had nearly ten people ask me for the recipe this month, so I figured its time to share it with the world.

SHR and C&L

published in Southern Humanities Review*
and Christianity & Literature this week**

when i first started sending out my poetry, i started off with littler magazines; this past year or so i'd decided it was time to only try for the mid-level to "big" magazines from here on out--which means more rejections. Rejection Rejection. so to {finally} get some acceptances, at the tail-end of the year, feels good. i was feeling down about my work (hence the flurry of November activity--when feeling down about poetry, create more poetry). now i feel a little more optimistic--i guess that's the good part about publication. so maybe i'm not just spinning-my-wheels.maybe this is all going somewhere...

*SHR is exciting because of Stephen Dunn, Natasha Trethewey, R. T. Smith (and, its southern)
**C&L is exciting because of Franz Wright, Wendell Berry, Dana Gioia (and, its christian)

a desperately important shirt

Can I just say, my husband is THE AWESOMEST HUSBAND EVER?

Being a seminary couple, we are a very limited budget. Most of my clothes are things that my friends and sisters didn't want anymore and passed down to me, from the free seminary thriftstore, or from Target's clearance rack.

I do dream though. I often peruse Anthropologie, Ruche, and Francesca's websites, picking out wishlists of things I'll never feel right about buying for myself.

Is a shirt really EVER worth $328? Is it EVER? I just can't justify spending that much on an item of clothing.

So even though I'd been wanting the Three Rivers Top from Anthropologie for an AGE, I wasn't going to buy it at 50% off or even 75% off, just sat there looking at it, whistfully

Until my amazing amazing husband saw this gazing/sighing and was like "come on, it is only $29!!" and bought it for me for an early Christmas present!?!?!!!

Now I have this lovely shirt coming to me in the mail:

$29 still feels like a little too much to me--usually $20 is my Absolute limit! and $10 is my preferred amount to spend---or, honestly, Free is my preferred amount to spend......

but B. insisted! and who was I to refuse a gift from my darling husband?

book mobile

its like literature gone wild. i love it.
{p.s. all you need is an old book, glue gun, and 15 minutes}

DIY to try

collecting diy ideas to get me through the long winter...

new project: necklace display

 I saw this on pinterest and thought I'd try to make a smaller version for myself--so here it is:

 I picked up a picture frame from the beloved free seminary library. I was going to paint it blue, but B. really liked it gold, so I stuck with the original color. I got the sticks from a nearby tree and hotglued them to the frame.

I decided to add a few fabric flowers, since I've been itching to try my hand at making them. Maybe they are too much? or not enough? I haven't decided if I'm going to add more or less to the frame.

Anyways, it was a quick (took about 10 minutes) and free project, so I would definitely recommend giving it a try!

Storm Front

I listen to rain falling down the chimney,
rattling like bracelets on a bony arm.
The wind sucks out air
from the house, making the sound of fire
where there is no fire.
I am on our red couch writing,
you are in the bedroom sleeping.
If the storm comes, it will come
for us both, writing or sleeping,
so I let you sleep, the better way
to meet fate: with your eyes closed
thinking of something else.

***

I thought, now that one of my very bad first poems is available on my blog, I should maybe post a few of my favorite published poems, to redeem myself.

This is one of my own poems, already published (in my chapbook Something Like Flight and in 2River). I wrote this in college, a few months after B. and I got married, the semester before a tornado came and destroyed my school.

Note my lack of fear of storms? Ironic.

***

on another note,
Time of Singing accepted my poem "At the Seminary" for their winter issue! I was in their fall issue too, its nice to be in a magazine more than once.

{wintering}

Snow on the first day of December. promising a lovely winter.

***

We are now in the midst of the all too short Lull between Bryan's exam week and his accelerated class week.

3 things I love about the Lull:
1. Bryan having no homework
2. Bryan not being stressed
3. Bryan being at home

***

Now that the poetry-writing-blitz is over, I've started up on my editing. the work part of writing.

I am very systematic. I am editing all of my unpublished poems (58 poems?! 22 of them are from the 30poems in 30days. I didn't expect to keep that many, its like 5 months of work for me, if I'd been going at my regular pace!). I like to edit in rounds and right now I've just started editing round 2 (of 5). Once I'm done editing, I'll go in and update my book manuscript and probably just create a new chapbook manuscript rather than revamp an old one. Though most of these poems won't go in any manuscript yet, since they're unpublished.

so anyways, editing. not as good as writing but not too bad.

When I am in the act of writing a poem, I have this wonderful concentrated feeling of doing exactly what I was made to do.

My dear friend Ruthann aptly likens this artistic-zoning-out-wonderment to that Eric guy from Chariots of Fire, when he says "God made me fast--when I run I feel his pleasure." God made me poetic! and writing, I feel his pleasure.

***

How Working Out at Home  =  Not Actually Working Out
1. I decide to work out at home, since its too snowy to walk to the gym
2. Its too much work to make an exercise list
3. so I decide to watch youtube exercise videos
4. OR I could watch Psych and make up exercises as I go
5. OR I could just watch Psych

Which is why I had to renew my exercise fervor. So, Thursday I went to Fat Burner Express aerobics class, Friday I ran, and I'm going to go running today too. Hopefully I'll keep it up for a few more weeks--I usually work better with a foreseeable goal.

***

but it is hard to fight the Hibernation-Mode. I just feel so cozy and still and quiet and wait-ful. watchful. pensive. my coworkers make lots of jokes of how quiet i am. i am the strong silent type. why is that ok for guys and not for girls? i think its something to do with america. americans are so loud. i would've maybe fit in better elsewhere, where i don't make people nervous by thinking all the time and not talking.

The Garden of Wood by Jeanne Larsen

Is not built
of thick trunks & board-feet.

It yields. Or fractures.
It's a cavern of shadow,

luminous brown, chestnut
or oak, mahogany

red. It rots
into itself. Can be made

orderly. Yet prefers its own
stories: canopy, under

layer, roots coiled like fiddleheads.
It tends other gardens

with shreds of its skin.
Its secret is bending, is also

refusal to bend.

30poems in 30days

Heather and I have now completed the 30poems in 30days challenge!

It was a great (& very challenging) experience but has left me somewhat exhausted, so I'm giving myself a little break, just writing when the muse strikes, in December. I want to focus on editing what I've written, revising my newest chapbook manuscript, and revising my full-length manuscript.

Then, in January, I plan to get back on my poem-a-week schedule and start sending out my poems to literary magazines and manuscripts to presses.

I admit, I feel a little antsy taking a month off--I'm eager to send out my new work to presses and I always feel a little uneasy when I'm not sticking to my poetry writing schedule--but I think the month off will be good for me.

The poems will be better after having let them sit a month and my writing will be better if I give myself a month to recuperate.

So now for the editing...