Home Again!

I arrived back from Ashland on Saturday. It was a great tour, with stops in Roseburg, Klamath Falls and Ashland. As soon as the photos I took are up on the Literary Arts web site, I'll let you know!

In Ashland I saw On the Razzle , a Tom Stoppard play. We're taking the kids back in July and we're going to see Romeo and Juliet. I hadn't been to Ashland since high school. I recognized the Best Western motel our high school group stayed in. It was a Thespian field trip! We saw Macbeth that year.

It's nice to be home. Laura and I went to see Waitress today, the movie with Keri Russell. We both liked it a lot.

My Marylhurst students turned in their rough drafts. Tomorrow I am at home and I'm determined to set aside some time to write poetry. Yes!

The Clientele

I was messing around on Itunes today, which is kind of fun to do. Anyway, I found this band, The Clientele, that I had never heard of before. They are British, with a very ferry-cross-the-Mersey sound, but modern(ah, I have discovered my new career as music reviewer!). And when I saw the picture of their new album I decided I really liked them. Because I've been working on a poem where owls feature prominently. And I just like the way it looks in general! So yes, their cover has good art direction. You can hear one of their songs here.

Then I found out they are going to be at the Doug Fir Lounge next Sunday the 27th, but I think Michael and I have a previous engagement.

Janine sent me her thesis and it is amazing. I have been having fun reading it.

I leave Wednesday for Roseburg.

Laura is downstairs reading for an hour and a half so she can get on the computer for 40 more minutes today. Max is watching MONDAY NIGHT RAW! or something like that - his Monday night wrestling show that he loves so well.

Tomorrow my new car stereo will be installed, just in time for my trip!

Half Marathon

Amy and I ran the Hippy Chick half marathon on Saturday. We rule!

The picture is from a book I was working on today. I also ran a little over four miles, and tried to finish poems, but to no avail. I like writing avail so I guess there's the silver lining!

Next week I leave for Roseburg, Klamath Falls and Ashland on the Oregon Book Awards author tour. I looked at Klamath Falls on a map today and it looked very far away.

Laura found out today she was accepted into the National Junior Honor Society so congratulations to Laura she rocks.

We're going to Max's game tonight.

I have been reading Take What You Want by Henrietta Goodman, the 2006 Beatrice Hawley winner, and liking it very much.

My coreopsis are coming back! Those are flowers, not a skin disease. Let's hear it for perennials.

Pets and Feeders

I ran eleven miles today - yes I'm bragging, but eleven miles - come on! - and I passed this house that had a sign out front "Rats for Sale" and then below it it said "pets and feeders."

So I wondered, did that mean that you could buy the rats for pets or you could buy them to feed to your snake? Are the "feeders" smaller ones? Or maybe they meant you can buy them as pets and you could also buy the feeders they were selling, which was something for dispensing food to your pet rat.

I don't know, but it was kind of creepy.

We saw Volver this weekend, and it was great. Volver means "to return" in Spanish, which I didn't know until I looked it up. I love Almodovar's movies.

I had a poem accepted at Siren so I'm feeling very Siren-ish.

I have been reading Joshua Beckman's Shake this weekend too. Also reading a lot of back issues of Somerset Studio and thinking about altered books.

May Thursday

I wrote my first poem of May today! I spent a lot of time on it but now I'm not even sure if I like it. I think it may be one of those poems that gets written so you can write other poems, that you like better. So, I was thinking a lot about syntax today and that was fun. And I messed around with a few other new poems. I seem to like writing about owls.

Laura has a Girl Scout campout Friday and Saturday. Max has a chess tournament Saturday.

I am reading Matthew Zapruder's The Pajamaist and I like it very much.

Okay, ten minutes later, I revised my poem by taking out the first line and now I like it much better. And it may rain so I might not go running but I have to run 13 miles on May 12th. So Amy I may walk the last three but I tried. Really.

17 years

Today is my 17th wedding anniversary.

I love you Michael. Happy Anniversary to us!

Second Thoughts

I miss Caffeine Destiny. I changed the home page. Now it says "Not the Final Issue."

That feels better.

Fiction

Sometimes I think I would like to write fiction. Stories seem so substantial, so important, such complete little worlds. They take longer to read than poems, they can be optioned for movie rights (okay, seldom but still) and they can be published in collections which are several hundred pages long, and if you start a story and kind of just keep going for like ten years it can grow up into a novel, which are even MORE substantial than poems. Plus fiction's appeal seems more universal - to the reading public I mean - than poems. Whether any of that matters is anyone's guess.

I love to read stories.

I am not very good at writing them, I have been finding out this week. Or finding out again, I should say.

Parts of fiction I can do. I can write a paragraph that sounds reasonably unmoronic. I have a few paragraphs in the story I'm working on - yes I've been trying to write a story this past week or so - that I like. But the rest of my story is kind of a mess. I wrote one very quick lame-o first draft, just to feel like I had a plot to fall back on, that it had some sort of a direction. Then I went back to the beginning to revise and make it sound like an actual story.

But I am at the point I usually get with a story, where I think, should I finish this? What is the point of finishing this?

But, however. I'd really like to write a few decent stories in this lifetime. I just keep putting it off. It's kind of fun, though, moving people around and making them say and do things, and being surprised sometimes when they say something you didn't really have to think about for that long - they just kind of say it and it takes you off in another direction, and that's fun. But plot - jeez! It's like math!

At times when writing fiction I think, be patient, just keep writing it. It takes time, a different sort of time, and it's a different proces.

Other times I think, oh go write a poem enough already.

Well, we'll see. I think it's just going to take a long time if I want to finish a story, because I write fiction slowly. I write scenes and then I cut them, or I have an idea for what I want to happen and then it changes completely. Due in a large part to the fact that I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to fiction. Still, there it is.

Well, we'll see.

Friday

I ordered a bunch of cool collage supplies from Art Chix Studio. I'm looking forward to making some new collages!

It's Friday night and Laura is making chocolate chip cookies and Max is at batting practice. This weekend he has two games, Saturday and Sunday.

Last Sunday I gave a reading at the Silverton Poetry Festival. It was really fun and it made me want to do more readings!

I saw a few poems by Rebecca Loudon online and I want to buy her book. Her blog is here, and she is also a violinist! So!

I ran three miles today; I'm supposed to run 13 on May 12 - I'm running the Hippie Chick Half Marathon! As if!

Have not kept up the poem a day thing. But I have several poems in the works and I feel fine about not churning out one a day. They will get finished.

Michael and I are going to see They Came From Way Out There on Sunday.

Rest in peace, Mstislav Rostropovich.

Spring!

I heard a frog tonight on my walk with the dogs. Spring is here!

The tour was an amazingly great time. I think the audiences in Newport, Lincoln City and Astoria enjoyed the readings. I know I did! I had never been to Astoria before and I want to go back soon. Our next tour is to Roseburg, Klamath Falls and Ashland, with Paulann Petersen, Scott Nadelson, and Keith Scales.

I didn't write any poems at the Sylvia Beach Hotel, but during my stay there in the Sigrid Undset room I did come up with the title for a poem, and I wrote the draft of it today. It's called "My Origami House."

Newport Bound

I leave very soon for Newport. Tonight Floyd Skloot, Gina Ochsner, George Aguilar, Sr. and Edwin Battistella will be reading at the Newport Public Library. You can read about it in The Newport Times or The Statesman.

The words on the collage are from a poem by Floyd Skloot, Dowsing For Joy.

I was reading Gina Ochsner's book, People I Wanted to Be last night. I'm really looking forward to meeting her.

We should return Saturday in time for Max's game, although if this weather keeps up I think it will be yet another cancelled game.

I have to write a poem or two on the tour, to keep up with my poem a day goal! I hope to write a poem at the Sylvia Beach Hotel while I'm there.

This just in - I won a copy of Kristy Bowen's Fever Almanac . If you read her blog, details of the contest are there. And look, I finally made it to Kristy's blog!

April Poems

For those of you are wondering how this whole "writing a poem a day" thing is going, it's going pretty well! I have written four since April 5th. Two of them I like, one I would like more if it were revised some more and the one I wrote this evening I am not so crazy about. However, I'm doing it! I think it's a good practice to get into.

Thursday I leave for the Oregon Book Awards Author tour; the writers and I are going to Newport, Lincoln City and Astoria. So come see us! There is information about it on the
Newport Public Library web site.

My mom told me two jokes on Easter. One of them I had heard before. One of them has the punch line, "Andy walks with me, Andy talks with me." It's a Forrest Gump joke. I laughed.

Bunny Found a Friend

Michael surprised me last night and brought home the other bunny. He put it on the table next to the other bunny, but I didn't notice it until Laura mentioned it. What a sweetie (the bunny and the husband).

I told Amy I like them too much to take them down on Monday! She said I can keep them up all of April. I guess it's a rule or something. Good!

I am going to try to write a poem every day for the rest of the month - in celebration of National Poetry Month! Can I do it? I think I can! I was inspired by Kristy Bowen, who has been posting some of her poems that she is writing for National Poetry Writing Month, which I had never heard of until yesterday. But Kristy is brave and posts hers on her blog and I don't think I'll post mine. Reb Livingston is also posting hers on her blog .

I"ll just post a few lines of the poem I wrote today. Here's the first line:

You were a dove, an open window.

Here's the last line:

You made the trees misbehave.

Now you can make up your own poem, by filling in the rest. It's National Poetry Writing Month - you can do it!

I know my mother is coming for a visit. How do I know this? I dusted the end table in the living room. I never dust.

My big hope is that the dust-free end table will distract her from the piles of unfolded laundry and the counter in the bathroom, should either of those housekeeping issues not be remedied before her arrival.

Easter Bunny

Easter is 5 days away. I bought this bunny today. She is 18 inches tall. She is standing by the door because she is hoping I'll let her take a walk outside.

I have been reading Feign, a chapbook by Kristy Bowen, put out by New Michigan Press. Some of the poems were published in Caffeine Destiny. It's a great chapbook - and Kristy has a book coming out soon! She also has a blog and she is the founder of dancing girl press. A busy woman! I love her poems - here's one of hers from the Poetry Daily site.

I did yoga today, and planted geraniums even though it's a bit early for geraniums.

The Magazine is Over, the Blog Remains

The very last issue of Caffeine Destiny is now online.

Spring Break!

I'm on vacation!

We went to Mcminnville and saw the always adorable Carly and Tyler.

Watched the Ducks lose.

Saw Premonition with Amy and Laura. Not a very good movie.

I ran 7 miles today.

Check out Christian Hawkey's new book, Citizen Of. Wave Books is a great press.

You have to go here and try this! It's poems where you can erase words in the poem by clicking on them, and if you like them you can email them to friends and you can also look at erasure poems that others have made. I think it's cool.

I love vacation.

Top O' the Spring!

No there are no leprechauns in the art today! No little green men. I used to leave gold chocolate coins for the kids by their beds on St. Patrick's day.

But it's almost spring and the daffodils are blooming.

George Saunders came to town this week and he was inspiring and seemed like a great guy.

Max has his last basketball game today.

I am grading this week but my poetry class is over.

I am going to go run now. Far.

Term Winding Down

I can feel the end of the term approaching. I see it in my student's weary faces. But outside the earth is waking up to Spring! And we are springing forward earlier this year.

I'm still reading about Lewis and Clark.

The new Caffeine Destiny is late. I'm going to do it spring break, I think. Or maybe the week before.

Max has started Little League practice. Laura has a dance competition in a few weeks.

I haven't made any collages in a while. Maybe spring break.

Oscar Night

I want Mark Wahlberg to win but I bet he won't.

It's week eight of the term and I'm busy with classes and papers and all that good stuff.

I'm reading Undaunted Courage, about the Lewis and Clark expedition and trying to imagine my neighborhood as all frontier.

Last night on a brief evening walk with the dogs I saw something cross the street that didn't look like a cat. It disappeared quickly. Maybe a possum.

I imagine my neighborhood in the 1800's, near the Columbia river, teeming with foxes and raccoons and possums. And blackberries, lots of blackberries. In the 1950's this neighborhood was all farmland, so it's really not that much of a stretch to imagine it unhoused.

Max and Laura's teams both won their games yesterday.

Laura's hair was red but yesterday she dyed it back to light brown. So now it is light brown with some red streaks.

I have been eating too many Girl Scout cookies.

Happy Valentine's Day!

I know haven't been posting much lately, as many of my adoring fans have reminded me. Well, Amy reminded me anyway!

I have been reading Dean Young's new book Embryoyo and I love it! I finished Easter Parade by Richard Yates. I've started The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif, I haven't read very far.

I had a poem accepted by New York Quarterly!" I'll be in those pages ... eventually. I think they have quite a backlog. Still, a nice yes!

Matt Yurdana came to visit my Intro to Poetry class at PSU this week. I think the students really enjoyed it. His book is called Public Gestures - an Oregon Book Awards finalist!

Last night we went to see Sparklehorse at the Wonder Ballroom. They were good. They played a short set but Michael got a signed poster. We went to a bar I've never been to before, called The Echo.

Michael gave me some very nice chocolates and pink roses and a new desk chair which I have been needing! I made creme brulee for Valentine's Day and we are going to watch LOST later. Well, truth be told, I usually fall asleep or get up and go to bed to read during LOST. I am lost when I watch LOST. Matthew Fox can only keep me engaged for so long. I don't understand what they are doing! Why are they still lost? If they have all that other stuff they keep finding on the island than why wouldn't they also find like a cell phone or something? And they are all so serious all the time. I don't think it's going to be any FUN on that island until they find Gilligan and the Skipper. Then the party will start rocking!