So this has been a productive week for me. Unfortunately, it's not new poems (one might be finished, but it could hardly be called new as it's been in the tinkering stage for quite some time now); but, we have finally picked a wedding band. As in music, not as in leaves a tan-line on your finger. Rubberband, yes it's a cheesy name, but they actually funk out enough to satisfy me. Also, their bass player is Ben Folds brother. Shelley made me promise her that that's not the reason I picked them, and it's not, but I certainly am going to enjoy telling people that.
Also, the syllabus for the fall is done, or as done as it's going to be. I'm looking forward to the class, though I worry that I'm not giving them enough diversity, in terms of aesthetic. I really had to resist the urge to simply teach my favorite writers. But for poetry, we're reading: Elizabeth Bishop, Mark Doty, A.R. Ammons, Mary Oliver, Charles Simic, C.K. Williams, James Dickey, Adrienne Rich, Robert Lowell, Sharon Olds, James Wright, Mark Strand, Louise Gluck, Robert Penn Warren, and Frank O'Hara. It's tough with only six weeks for each genre, but there were a few on this list that I simply couldn't let myself leave out (specifically Bishop, Ammons, and Wright), but hopefully the students enjoy it. For fiction it was a little bit easier, as certain stories lend themselves to certain lessons, but there are a great number of stories I'm in love with that I can't wait to teach: "A Temporary Matter" by Jhumpa Lahiri, "How Far She Went" by Mary Hood, and "The Hermit's Story" by Rick Bass. These are just a few of my favorites, along with some others I feel obligated to teach: "Things They Carried" simply because it's gorgeous, "Girl" because Jamaica Kincaid is reading at Hollins this year, and "Silver Water" because I think the class will fall in love with it and hopefully seek out more Amy Bloom.
Well Fall Submission season is almost upon us, and I think I've got my list of where I'll be sending my first round. This list is much more ambitious than last year, and I can only imagine will result in across-the-board rejections, but a 23 year-old-boy can dream. For your viewing pleasure: Iowa Review, Barrow Street, AGNI, Virginia Quarterly Review, Colorado Review, Shenandoah, Gettysburg Review, Tin House, Meridian, West Branch, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Tar River Poetry. All magazines I've had the chance to get my hands on, all magazines I'd lose a fingernail to get in. Here's hoping the last two weeks of summer are productive.
Showing posts with label teaching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label teaching. Show all posts
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Sunday, August 3, 2008
August Already
Middle-schoolers don't like Tim O'Brien, I do. This was a discovery I made over the past two weeks while I was teaching at the Young Writers' Camp at Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania. They do, however, like poems that rhyme and stories with dogs. Rick Bass was a hit, as was Jack London; they liked the E.B. White, Elizabeth Bishop, and William Meredith poems I brought, but my oh my, they did not like the Things they Carried. I know what you're thinking...really, Luke--You brought in a gruesome story about Vietnam and taught it to sixth graders? Not quite, I picked just about the most tame passage I could find, but the sentences were incredible, the pacing, but they would just not get on board. Anyway, it's not a huge deal, I was simply a bit crestfallen as I love his prose, and was sad to see the students didn't.
I read this passage from Rilke's Letters on the last day: "A work of art is good if it has sprung from necessity. In this nature of its origin lies the judgement of it: there is no other. Therefore, my dear sir, I know no advice for you save this: go into yourself and test the deeps in which your life takes rise; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept it, just as it sounds, without inquiring into it. Perhaps it will turn out that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what recompense might come from outside. For the creator must be a world for himself and find everything in himself and in Nature to whom he has attached himself."
In other news, I'm still riding the Best New Poets wave, though I arrived home to six rejections (count 'em: Yale Review, Gargoyle, Poetry East, Michigan Quarterly Review, FIELD, and Southern Humanities Review) which effectively took my head out of the sky, despite kind notes from the editors at MQR and Gargoyle. Anyway, I told my friend and former professor (and poet) Kevin Boyle about the good news, and he informally invited me back to read at Elon during the spring, more news there once things become more official. It would be a tremendous honor to read at my alma mater.
Three new poems up at the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature today. If you don't know the journal, keep an eye on it, they publish some great poems and each one is accompanied by a "Southern Legitimacy Statement" which trumps a Contributor's Note by a Mile.
And it's starting to smell like Soccer Practice outside...
I read this passage from Rilke's Letters on the last day: "A work of art is good if it has sprung from necessity. In this nature of its origin lies the judgement of it: there is no other. Therefore, my dear sir, I know no advice for you save this: go into yourself and test the deeps in which your life takes rise; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept it, just as it sounds, without inquiring into it. Perhaps it will turn out that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what recompense might come from outside. For the creator must be a world for himself and find everything in himself and in Nature to whom he has attached himself."
In other news, I'm still riding the Best New Poets wave, though I arrived home to six rejections (count 'em: Yale Review, Gargoyle, Poetry East, Michigan Quarterly Review, FIELD, and Southern Humanities Review) which effectively took my head out of the sky, despite kind notes from the editors at MQR and Gargoyle. Anyway, I told my friend and former professor (and poet) Kevin Boyle about the good news, and he informally invited me back to read at Elon during the spring, more news there once things become more official. It would be a tremendous honor to read at my alma mater.
Three new poems up at the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature today. If you don't know the journal, keep an eye on it, they publish some great poems and each one is accompanied by a "Southern Legitimacy Statement" which trumps a Contributor's Note by a Mile.
And it's starting to smell like Soccer Practice outside...
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Crumbs from the Table
I spent the last week of June on scholarship at the Solstice Summer Writers' Conference in Boston. While there I had the chance to workshop with Cleopatra Mathis and Stephen Dunn. Below I've collected some of the things I jotted down throughout the week.
"The progress from stanza to stanza must be essential, if the poem could progress in any other order then perhaps the content of the stanza itself should be rethought. The poem must constantly move forward"--C. Mathis
"A line requires a tension within itself, at least two pieces of language interacting in a novel way." --C.M.
"Anything included arbitrarily immediately becomes suspicious."--C.M.
"Writers see the same things as everyone else, they simply see them differently."-Barbara Hurd
"The task of the writer is to familiarize what's strange, to de-familiarize the familiar."-B. Hurd
"Write what you're most afraid of."--Hayden Carruth
"Find in your poem your highest standard, and live up to it with every line before and after."--Stephen Dunn
"A good symbol is something that both conceals and reveals at the same time."--Stephen Dunn
"The facts of what actually happened don't matter, but what import they have to the psyche does."--C. Mathis
"For the poet who writes autobiographically, the burden is to get beyond the experience."--Stephen Dunn
"When beginning a poem, the poet must be at war with what passes for true, the language and rhetoric that is easily accessible."--Stephen Dunn
"The progress from stanza to stanza must be essential, if the poem could progress in any other order then perhaps the content of the stanza itself should be rethought. The poem must constantly move forward"--C. Mathis
"A line requires a tension within itself, at least two pieces of language interacting in a novel way." --C.M.
"Anything included arbitrarily immediately becomes suspicious."--C.M.
"Writers see the same things as everyone else, they simply see them differently."-Barbara Hurd
"The task of the writer is to familiarize what's strange, to de-familiarize the familiar."-B. Hurd
"Write what you're most afraid of."--Hayden Carruth
"Find in your poem your highest standard, and live up to it with every line before and after."--Stephen Dunn
"A good symbol is something that both conceals and reveals at the same time."--Stephen Dunn
"The facts of what actually happened don't matter, but what import they have to the psyche does."--C. Mathis
"For the poet who writes autobiographically, the burden is to get beyond the experience."--Stephen Dunn
"When beginning a poem, the poet must be at war with what passes for true, the language and rhetoric that is easily accessible."--Stephen Dunn
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Take 2
Looking back on this blog after a year of its existence, I realized that pretty much everything that had been written here was useless, uninteresting, or self-involved. Generally some horrifying combination of all three. So I deleted virtually all of the posts I've made up to this point, and I'm trying again; although I'm not sure what exactly it is that I'm endeavoring to accomplish.
This is my first summer in the Blue Ridge, and I'm ready to enjoy it. Unfortunately it seems as though I won't be spending much time here. In a few weeks I'll be putting on my grown-up boots and heading to the Solstice Writers' Conference at Pine Manor College (just outside of Boston) where I'll get the chance to study with Stephen Dunn. They've been generous enough to give me a scholarship to attend, if only my car survives the trip. After that it's down to Pennsylvania and Mercersburg Academy where I'll be leading a Nonfiction workshop at a Young Writers' Camp. Having never attended a conference or a 'camp' before, I'm not sure what to expect from either. Though I'm hoping to collect some poems along the way. It's a bit frustrating, with all the syllabus making for next fall, planning for this summer, and dog anxiety (Laddie has a tumor on his abdomen that is being removed next week), I haven't gotten much writing done. Probably because I've been wasting time doing things like reevaluating the literary merit of my blog and watching college softball games on ESPN. Nonetheless, I have nothing to do for the next three days except commiserate with my desk, so hopefully it will be a fruitful weekend.
And again with the self-involvement. Though I understand that no one reads this, I feel compelled to write something that someone else may actually care about. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow. Until then...
This is my first summer in the Blue Ridge, and I'm ready to enjoy it. Unfortunately it seems as though I won't be spending much time here. In a few weeks I'll be putting on my grown-up boots and heading to the Solstice Writers' Conference at Pine Manor College (just outside of Boston) where I'll get the chance to study with Stephen Dunn. They've been generous enough to give me a scholarship to attend, if only my car survives the trip. After that it's down to Pennsylvania and Mercersburg Academy where I'll be leading a Nonfiction workshop at a Young Writers' Camp. Having never attended a conference or a 'camp' before, I'm not sure what to expect from either. Though I'm hoping to collect some poems along the way. It's a bit frustrating, with all the syllabus making for next fall, planning for this summer, and dog anxiety (Laddie has a tumor on his abdomen that is being removed next week), I haven't gotten much writing done. Probably because I've been wasting time doing things like reevaluating the literary merit of my blog and watching college softball games on ESPN. Nonetheless, I have nothing to do for the next three days except commiserate with my desk, so hopefully it will be a fruitful weekend.
And again with the self-involvement. Though I understand that no one reads this, I feel compelled to write something that someone else may actually care about. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow. Until then...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)