9 to 5 Poet

I just want to mention that I never win things.  My dad and my brother are both really lucky. Before I was born, my dad won a bunch of stuff of game shows, including a car.  My dad would challenge my brother to all sorts of ridiculous long shots and my brother would win. 

Me, not so much.  A game of Monopoly or Trivial Pursuit every now and then. But never a sweepstakes or contest. 

So I’m incredibly excited that I actually won something today.  Sheri, over at one of my favorite photoblogs Today is Pretty, hosted a freebie contest. All one had to do was comment on a specific post and she would draw names for people who won a print of one of her awesome pics.  And I won!  Something I can actually use, beautiful photographic art!  Yay!

You can check out the photo I won here (mine’s the one in the middle).  I’ll post a pic of where I hang it, once I find out where it goes in the home. 

Tonight was a really good night. 

My husband is just completing Thesis I, which means he is 90% done with his MFA. The only thing he has to do is revise his thesis before September.  Literally, he’s in the home stretch. But revision, as many of us writers know, is probably the most challenging aspect of writing, so he’s got the hardest 10% left.

But he’s approaching it in a really smart way.  He sent his manuscript to 5 friends he really trusts, (5 talented writers I might add) and asked for critique. He gave us a couple of months and then hosted a mini-party to discuss the work.  The party was tonight. 

What’s interesting about this group of people is that none of them know each other — they come from different spheres of our lives.  Yet we all played nicely with each other and (I hope) gave him enough encouragement and direction for the final leg of his journey.

I am amazed at the way he’s approaching the final stage of his master’s degree. He’s been pursuing this frickin’ degree for 6 years, while working full time.  Despite all of these challenges, he’s trucking along and approaching his work with care and ambition.  I feel pretty lucky to be part of this process.

To prepare for tonight’s bash, we visited the Farmer’s Market and purchased bushels of produce, including fixings for salad, green peppers for stuffed peppers, mushrooms for pasta, and the above cherries for dessert.  Between the great food and the lively conversation, we had an awesome night.

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Jeanine over at Art Play Possibility tagged me with a fun meme — write a six word memoir.  Unfortunately, I already wrote about this back in February.  (There’s a kind of funny story involving bagels and stitches there.)  But, I really liked this exercise and the result, so I thought I’d share it one more time.

So here’s mine, reheated:

Some stitches, not too many scars.

I want to hear what Aaron, Mr. Horrorpants, Susan, Jo, and Christine have as six word memoirs. 

In Minnesota, lilacs are finally in full bloom. The bushes are so weighted down with blooms that their brances are sagging.  Even so, the air outside is fragrant and everyone seems to be in a slightly better mood.  I was stuck for a poem, until a bus driver pointed out some lilacs on my commute home. 

Thursday Evening in June, #2 Westbound

I see you, bus driver,
crack open the door, breathe
deeply the scent of white
lilacs blooming beside
the bus stop.  A smile spreads
across your dour face as

you turn to the woman
behind you, cloaked inside
her beige hajib.  “Do
you like lilacs?” you ask,
as she nods, smiles.  “I love
lilacs. I wish they’d last.”

Behind me, the rough boy
in over-sized sweats slides
open his window, sticks
his face out and breathes in
spring.  We all watch you, see
our neighborhood as new.

In Ripton, Vt., officials used a poetry class as punishment.  Apparently, a group of 25 teenagers broke into Robert Frost’s summer house last December and trashed it through partying.  So, they had to do community service and take a poetry class taught by Jay Parini, a biographer of Frost and professor at Middlebury College.

I don’t know where I fall on this. It’s apt punishment, especially since I would guess that these kids may not have known whose house they were trashing.  And according to the NY Times article, the instructor used the following Frost line as a governing principle in his class:  “Unless you are educated in metaphor, you are not safe to be let loose in the world.”  So, it would be a good class.

But, poetry is already seen as punishment by many children (and adults) and this only solidifies the claim. Of course, how we teach poetry in elementary, middle, and secondary schools has much to do with it. I became a poet despite, not because, of my eighth grade teacher’s forced memorization of “Road Not Taken” and “In Flanders Fields.” This short article in the NY Times in someways reinforces that belief.  We already hate poetry, and now we can use it as a punishment, and oh how sweet, the kids may get something valuable out of it.  Thank God it’s not us! 

Meanwhile, I’m looking at Parini’s background and thinking, hmm, what can I break into to get a class with him?  Does that mean that I’m a masochist?

Sigh. 

Above is my view of the Minnesota State Capitol building while we waited in line for the Obama rally in St. Paul.  My friend and I waited two hours, only to be turned away when we were two thirds of the way to the front door of the Xcel Energy Center.  Instead, we heard half the speech on MPR and watched the rest on CNN. So, I can tell my future children and grandchildren that I almost made it. 

Oh well.  If you crop the screen crawl at the bottom, it totally looks like I was there.  Right?

This weekend, Soulless Machine and I got to attend an art festival in our neighborhood, Red Hot Art.  It was probably the most punk art festival I’ve ever been to.  (I felt very uncool — no tattoos or dreads on me.)  There were several clusters of musicians, slack rope walkers practicing on a small slack rope tied between two trees, and very affordable and cool cutting edge art, including…

• There was one gentleman (who’s name I didn’t get) taking votes on two of his paintings. The winner “lived” and the loser was going to be whacked with an ax. 
• Cody Kiser, who had cool Picasso-ish paintings
• William Hessian, an illustrator and painter
• Elizabeth Montgomery, mixed media collage-y type paintings
• Lucas Glusenkamp, really awesome sci-fi/horror inspired art

Looking at the list of artists, I noticed that cris t halverson, whose very cool digital images got published in the first issue of Asphalt Sky, attended, but I didn’t see his booth. Bummer!

I am also a little bummed that I didn’t buy a very specific painting.  It would have looked so nice in our living room, another red item to match our red couch, curtains, chair, etc., and now I can’t find it online. The moral of the story:  buy it now. 

Despite these two disappointments, I was really impressed by the Red Hot Art Fair. It was partially supported by the local arts organization, Steven Square Center for the Arts, and I’m wondering: why am I not a member?  Something to ponder for later.

I’ve called myself a working writer before, but that’s because I work at a full time job and write on the side.  But now, I can call myself a working writer — someone who gets financially rewarded for writing.  I’ve been hired for my very first paying freelance job!  A good friend of mine from college hooked me up with a gig and I get to work at it over the summer.   It’s perfect timing, because my job slows down in the summer (due to the students being done with school), so I’ll have energy to devote to other work.  I am really excited to try something new, and of course, get paid for it.   If it works out, I may try to actively seek out more freelancing later.  Woo-hoo!

This weekend, my husband and I took a road trip to Madison, WI to visit some close friends.  As a pit stop, we hiked in Devil’s Lake State Park, a gorgeous state park that surrounds a large lake, but also has an oak forest and a huge rocky hill you can climb. 

The weather was perfect — sunny but not sweltering and we hiked several interlacing trails, including one up some stone stairs built into the rocky hill. The top picture is of the “Devil’s Doorway,” a rock formation at the top of the hill.  It was nice to stretch our legs, take some pictures, and get some much needed sunshine in before we finished the drive.  Check out my husband’s blog for more pics from the weekend!

This week, I read a wonderful chapbook called Savage Machinery (18 pages) by Karen Rigby.  I don’t want to spoil my review for it, which will appear on Read Write Poem on Wednesday, but this is a wonderful series of poems. 

My husband read over my shoulder while I was writing my review and said, “Oh an Adam and Eve poem.  You must like this chapbook!” And of course, I did, for more reasons than having an Adam & Eve poem. The chapbook weaves together several of my favorite themes. It’s about sensuality, food, religion, human connection despite distance and dang it, it rocks. 

When it comes out from Finishing Line Press in September, I heartily encourage you to pick it up!

Total For 2008: 3819 pages
Genres: Memoir (3), Essay (1), Graphic Novel (1), Non-Fiction (3), Poetry (5), Comic Book Anthology (1), Novel (2)