It’s not that I like rejection. I vacillate between responding well to it or ignoring it or putting it in the appropriate context and then sometimes taking it personally and deciding it’s a sign I’m the biggest loser. Or not even the biggest loser, just a pitiful loser, too pitiful to be the biggest loser.
But I keep putting myself and my writing out there, and that involves A LOT of rejection.
This Sunday, I’m presenting the amalgamation/transformation of rejection from a couple of places–a poetry book competition and a playwriting competition. Both were encouraging, but the answer was no.
I have this idea I’ve been working on since 2021. I write plays and poetry and want my plays to get produced and my poetry to get published. Somehow, in the month before I was set to have a hysterectomy (which coincided with a book competition deadline), I decided I should combine narrative poems written in the voices of particular characters into a play.
Wouldn’t that be cool? I thought and still think, to have a play that works well onstage and a book you could just open up and read the poems in order or randomly or whatever.
I got the manuscript done in time for the deadline, had the surgery, started attending a food behavior class from UW Eating Disorders Clinic, and went back to work, etc. etc. etc.
Since then, I’ve started and finished a lot of other projects (started way more than I’ve finished, if I’m honest). But the play-made-of-poems stayed in my head. It’s called Impelled. Here’s the news release I wrote & the poster I’ve been sharing on social media & putting up various places:
NEWS RELEASE:
There’s a lot of drama—and poetry—in an ordinary day.
Impelled, a new play by Marnie Bullock Dresser, premieres onstage in Spring Green on Sunday, April 27 at the Gard Theater from 2-4, with a staged reading and a talkback. Terry Kerr is the director for the one-act play set on the campus of a formerly-Baptist college. An administrator tries to help a student and a professor is sort of helpful, but under the surface of the everyday, these three characters express a huge range of thoughts and feelings and questions.
The actors for the staged reading are Melinda Van Slyke, Douglas Swenson, and Hannah Jo Anderson, all familiar to audiences in the River Valley and Madison theater scenes.
Marnie has published poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and journalism, and taught English at UW-Richland for more than 30 years.
Impelled is made up entirely of poems. But also jokes, sex, food, and God. By the end of the day, our characters are not just indulging in really good barbecue from a food truck on campus; it’s almost as if they have gathered together for communion.
A grant from River Valley Arts provided the opportunity for table reads, revision, editorial feedback, and the staged reading itself.
Note: due to adult themes and spicy language, the play is not recommended for those under 17.
I’ve been sucking it up and ignoring the awkwardness I always feel when I’m self-promoting. Yesterday I recorded a segment which I think will appear tomorrow morning on WRCO’s “Morning Show,” which you can listen to live or later.
All this is made possible by two things:
retirement means I can spend time not just on writing, but also on follow-through (the thing I struggle with the most, and the thing I found most impossible when I was working full-time).
I got an Artistic Development grant from River Valley Arts, a wonderful organization you should consider supporting.
It’s like growing carrots: on the surface it’s an ordinary day but below you may have giant carrots.
I’m hoping Sunday’s staged reading will lead to more good stuff for Impelled, but even if that’s somehow the end of the line, it’s been an amazing ride to get to work with the poet Rita Mae Reese on editorial feedback, and with Terry Kerr as my director, and three fabulous actors: Melinda Van Slyke, Douglas Swenson, and Hannah Jo Anderson. I asked my cast in an email if they had a word or a sentence they thought of when they thought of Impelled. Hannah said “rhapsody,” which honestly makes me feel rhapsodic, and Doug said “It’s like growing carrots: on the surface it’s an ordinary day but below you may have giant carrots.” And he included a picture, which I think is a good way to end this particular post:
We’re coming up on the one-year anniversary of when I wrote a poem every day in April to help raise money for Tupelo Press. I wrote about it here.
I’ve been slow about finishing the odes for some of the local businesses who were nice enough to host my poetry pop-up shop. It’s very much connected to how much interaction I got–on the days when people just kind of smiled nicely and didn’t stop to talk or donate or buy some coasters, I was able to write the ode while I was on site.
But several places people were super interested and talkative, and it was harder to get anything much written. That was good though!
But as always, it’s hard for me to avoid procrastinating. And then when I did sit down to write, I put all kinds of pressure on myself to write A REALLY GOOD ODE.
In any case, I’m getting them done. Here’s one I wrote for The Slowpoke Lounge in Spring Green.
Since it took me so long to finish it, I decided I should make a fabric collage/poetry frame (which was one of my giveaways for people who donated at a certain level last spring). I’d recently organized my fabric stash, so was very glad to find these pieces to use.
More of last spring’s odes and new ones coming soon.
Should I do it again this April? Have pop-up shops & write local odes as thanks for my hosts?
The penny will certainly live with the dodo in the part of heaven reserved for extinct things if I defend it. I have a knack. I never vote right in the primaries, and Tommy Herr was traded to the Twins the week after I got his Cardinals card. Nonetheless, I can't quietly watch the penny become the business of second hand shops and children bored with monopoly money.
It has in its favor these things: its name, the name of a girl or a lane; its color, the sign of good plumbing; its heft, just right for dead eyes; its love of prime numbers, seventeen cents and forty-one cents and seventy-three; its president, symbol of my native Illinois, a hard working man who would respect me for saving my pennies and rolling them up and spending the quarters I get in exchange in Laundromats and newsstands only; the only president to wear a bow tie on his coin, the only one tall enough to carry off a coin worth so little, worth one more than nothing, worth saving.
[This poem is actually 25 years old or more. Relevant again.]
Dick Van Dyke isn’t from Southern Illinois where I’m from, but I do have a remote connection because my Aunt Pat dated him when they were both in high school in Danville, Illinois. She wasn’t my Aunt Pat then, and would never have been my aunt if she’d stayed with Dick Van Dyke, but I didn’t understand that at first–I remember saying “You mean if she hadn’t married Uncle Leroy, Dick Van Dyke could’ve been my uncle?” Nope, because Leroy (who later went by Foster and became an art professor in Texas among many, many other things) was my blood relation, my Gran’mommy’s brother.
Uncle Leroy and Aunt Pat at (I assume)their wedding.
Of course Dick Van Dyke feels like family because I’ve known about him my whole life; Mary Poppins was released not quite a year before I was born. He’s just always been there.
I’ve been thinking about Dick Van Dyke because of the director’s cut released last week of the Coldplay song “All My Love.” Honestly, it’s the most I’ve ever listened to or thought about Chris Martin. Not that I disliked him or his band before–just hadn’t really entered my attention span much. Watching Chris Martin with Dick Van Dyke in that video and then both of them on Jimmy Kimmel, it was so clear they have a real friendship, that they’re both incredibly talented, and what a gift to see such a rich tribute to the man for his 99th birthday, not for his passing, which as he says, could be any day (and it sounds as if the current fire season almost made that day happen this week–news stories report that neighbors helped him and his wife evacuate, and they’re back now & only minor damage to a guest house–and all pets accounted for).
Today is Dick’s 99th birthdays and the official video was released, but honestly, I like the director’s cut better.
I think I’ll return to it for comfort as the years go by. The mix of music and dancing and family and that light in his eyes, along with the still very solid clown work he’s got going–well worth revisiting.
I feel like I’m forgetting some important ones, but these are the ones I revisit when I need to get revved up or remind myself what’s important or just need some comfort and joy. And even though I’m not related to him, I’m happy to have one more way Dick Van Dyke is adding comfort and joy to my life. Thanks to everyone involved in the video for that, and thanks to the neighbors who got him in his car!
What are some of your fave comfort/rev up videos? Post a link in the comments!
In April I pledged to write a poem every day to raise money for Tupelo Press. I met my fundraising goal (although as I’m re-reading the post, I hadn’t YET met the fundraising goal–but I did) and more importantly, wrote my way through the month preceding my father’s death from Alzheimer’s.
One of the things I did to “get the word out” was have Poetry Pop-Ups at various local businesses. Very grateful to them! NOTE: image says “this week” but that was way back in April….
Here’s the first poem, for Arcadia Books in Spring Green:
AN ODE TO ARCADIA BOOKS
As if drawn close by a copy of Silent Spring, three eagles are circling on a thermal above the shop, the white on them flashing when their circuit brings them into the sun. That particular magic’s stopped, but inside, on newly reconstructed floors, the hefty spells of ten thousand books just carry on. Maybe some new recipes to cook, a caramel latte, that novel you’ve been looking for, they’re all here. The Driftless Stargazing guy stopped by to say hello—I’m so happy for him that reading is disconnected from teaching now, that pleasure’s why he’s here. That pleasure brought all this into being, the creak of a wooden floor, the smell of caffeine and new paper, a zillion words just waiting to be seen.
I think odes are really important–they’re celebratory, and in a challenging time, it’s more important than ever to find things to celebrate, to be grateful for. I’ve been practicing making bracelets (still working on those knots!) and wanted to make one with a message to myself. I chose Warren Zevon’s quote from Letterman, when Dave said “now do you know something about life and death that I don’t know” and Zevon answered, “I know how much you’re supposed to enjoy every sandwich.” So I’m using odes to celebrate all kinds of things and yes, I want to enjoy every sandwich.
My son and I walking next to Brush Creek at UW-Richland, around 2011.
My son, my mother, my husband and I trekked to Center Cinema in Richland Center last night to watch Ken Brosky’s film Closure. On Facebook, one of my friends commented “I would think this film would be so unbearably sad.” But it’s not. It’s very much bearably sad, and there are some bright spots and funny moments, such as when a UW-Washington County student told a UW-LaCrosse professor who expressed ignorance of the Wisconsin Idea, “Why don’t you fucking Google it,” and when Ken played guitar while waiting for Board of Regents folks to return his calls (spoiler alert: they didn’t return his calls). I also found it therapeutic to boo Ray Cross and Scott Walker. I was wishing we’d set up some sort of interactions, a la Rocky Horror Picture Show, because I very much wanted to throw something when Jay Rothman appeared onscreen (was apparently out of boos by that point).
Obviously those of us directly affected by the closings of various UW Colleges campus (Richland, Washington, Marinette, Fond du Lac, Fox Valley, Waukesha, and counting) find the subject matter compelling. But everyone in Wisconsin has a stake in the education of current and future students, and since Wisconsin ONCE had the reputation of supporting a high-performing university SYSTEM, and had a reputation as a state that cared about education, and now is such a dramatic mess–everyone who cares about education in the United States could find something of interest.
And Ken did a really nice job. He worked fast with a low budget, and it’s his first film, but to his credit he conducted a ton of personal interviews and edited them well, and included so many archival campus photos (and more recent photos, like the one of me & my son above). The film has a clear thesis: these closures weren’t necessary (given the budget surplus–in BILLIONS–that Wisconsin currently has available), were a self-fulfilling prophecy (“your enrollment is low so we’re going to cut your budget and eliminate course offerings and restrict recruiting…hey, wow, your enrollment is really low so now we have to close you”), and that drastic budget cuts brought about by Wisconsin Repugnant-cans are to blame. One really effective moment showed how many lawyers, financiers, and business people were on the Board of Regents when lots of bad decisions were being made–how they had no previous education experience, how much money they donated to Republican candidates. He did also, accurately, and fairly, point out that one recent bad decision (voting to eliminate the positions of/lay off/fire 30+ tenured faculty at UW-Washington County and UW-Waukesha) was made by a Board of Regents that consists largely of appointees by Democratic Governor Tony Evers.
My good friend and former colleague Ellyn Lem writes well about that firing of tenured faculty in an article today in Inside Higher Ed. One poignant quote among many: “What is saddest for me about losing my tenured job is that I used that ‘commitment’ from the UW system to be committed back.” That was certainly true of Ellyn, and I saw my work the same way, as did sooooooo many other faculty members. I’m very luckily and happily retired now, but it’s just luck that I was on a campus where losing my job wasn’t in play.
I should disclose I’m biased about the quality of the personal interviews in Closure, since I was one of them, and I show up a lot early in the movie. (Fair warning if you’re used to my looking snazzy–I look pretty ratty, like someone who’d been moving boxes and had maybe been through a hard time for several years, both of which were just true. Good thing I’m not vain.) It was nice to be able to talk about the campus, about trying to scramble to do something, anything to help keep it going and open, and what it was like to be a parent on campus. Ken, novelist that he is, picked up a nice narrative, that my son grew up on campus, felt comfortable there, took 10-credits of biology on campus, would have taken more except the campus closed, and is currently working retail and working on a novel (about which he would only say is “post-apocalyptic.”)
A couple more shots of my son on campus–doing some shredding for me and learning about brains from the amazing biology professor Jennifer Gavinski.
There are several reasons I wanted to blog about Closure. I wanted to recommend Ellyn’s column, I wanted to vent a little/grieve a little, and I wanted to recommend the movie. You can see it in person in Oshkosh, but there is the opportunity this weekend to watch it online. Click here to get tickets to watch it between October 4-5.
It is a very sad story, but I promise it’s not unbearably sad. Regardless, I think it’s really important to bear witness to the work so many of us did for so many students for so many years.
Clockwise from upper left: Fun Infusion Task Force shooting water balloons at the band (we were aiming for the tuba), me & the Roadrunner showing what you might do in the arts with a Richland degree (highlighting rockstar alum Michael), me & English colleague Amy at a meeting, me protesting in Madison in 2011, me & colleagues in Madison at a meeting, me and Rebecca who later volunteered to do recruiting for Richland and was told no thanks. NOTE: the duct tape medallion on my regalia was so I could point to it when speaking to other faculty with medallions and say MINE’S BIGGER.
P.S. if you agree with me that a HUGE part of the problem here is the Wisconsin legislature, dominated by Republicans because of unfair gerrymandering, you should consider donating to Wisconsin Dems. It’s a link connected to my fundraising–I’ve pledged to raise at least $210.
sorry to use this blog so extensively for fundraising (I WILL FIX THAT). In April, I was raising money for Tupelo Press, and I was pleased with how that went. Tupelo really is a good press, and even more importantly, pledging to write and post every day in April got me a lot of good poems, and helped me process my father’s dying. He passed away on May 4. I hadn’t realized it was coming quite that fast, but I knew it was coming. Here’s one poem from that batch:
GREEN FROST
Even when I was driving to work all the time, it was hard to spot: the precise day the hills were no longer gray but just slightly, in the right light, very, very pale green, a gray-green, Russian olive, iceberg, dusty aqua, Pantone 5506. Snapping a picture, next to impossible but I kept trying today, even though I had a curbside pickup deadline to meet. Pull over, compose, click, certain disappointment later when I scan the shots. The phrase is from my father. I remember him hunting on Sundays when we were all in the car together, going to church, early 1970s it had to be, because my brother stopped going in high school. It was almost always a little ahead or a little past, so now I wonder if he ever did say, “There. That’s it. Today.” I just learned he always thought rain drops hitting the sidewalk looked like little ballerinas. This story from my brother, in town to visit because Dad’s disappearing, little by little, faster, slower, faster, and getting extra care from women smart enough to ask if they should say the word “hospice” to him. Great question and the answer is no. I say it better than I thought I would, but saying good-bye when that time comes, soon apparently, will be hard because I have been saying it for years as he’s faded and is now essentially gone, the poet, the bear, the rock, the smartest man who would tell me the precise moment is coming but isn’t here yet.
for Brian
Thanks again to everyone who donated (finally got the thank-yous sent, and I’m ALMOST done with the odes to local businesses who let me set up poetry pop-up shops).
My NEXT fundraising adventure is for Wisconsin Dems. I have pledged to raise at least $210, but I would love to raise a lot more than that.
Why that number? A friend and I were doing a very Wisconsin thing a few weeks ago, making a pilgrimage to Norski Nook in Deforest for pie. The farms between Spring Green and there were OFTEN boasting huge Trump signs. It was distressing. I proposed that we counted the signs on the way back, and I’d make a donation of the # of signs x 10. (This is how you know I’m a retired public educator. I can’t think in terms of multiples of 100 or 1000.)
Wisconsin Dems gave me this link to use, so I can see how much I’m raising.
Thanks for your patience with my fundraising and thanks for any donation you can muster.
Well, I did it in terms of writing a poem every day in April. I actually wrote 45. You can see them here.
But I haven’t yet met my fundraising goal. I’ve gotten lots of positive comments, so I’m hoping just a few more of those turn into donations. Click here to make a donation. There are thank-you gifts (from me!) for online donations of $25 or more, but even $5 or $10 will help me meet my goal. Tupelo really is a fantastic press, and like William Hurt says in The Big Chill, let’s go out with a bang, not a whimper!
(o.k. so that’s not the scene in the jeep where he says the line, but still.)
marniere 