Category Archives: Uncategorized

Purgatory, Kentucky (3/7)

Posted on April 8, 2014 | 2 comments

The young ones priss around and stew and fret,
yes, even here they do. I tell them to relax,
but I do recall what it was like, all fraught
with longing for a certain someone’s kiss,
the way a particular set of hard calluses
could raise a wave of shivers on my skin,
and one touch later heat me up fast,
so hot for more, I would do anything….
There is no profit in that kind of thought.
The man whose hands I speak of is not here.
I’ve grown restless all the sudden, not
full of life, I wouldn’t say, just bored.
Turns out I dislike it, this world without end.
The ferry’s here. I guess I’ll drive on in.

Ferry on Highway 169 somewhere in Kentucky (a Creative Commons shot from Edlitmus on Flickr)

Ferry on Highway 169 somewhere in Kentucky
(a Creative Commons shot from Edlitmus on Flickr)

___
For National Poetry Month, I’m trying to write a lot of poetry–I’ve given up on writing one every day, but still–trying to write a lot. I reviewed what I’d written last year and found Purgatory, Kentucky, which I’d TOTALLY forgotten about. So I decided I’d see if I could write a crown of sonnets. And I wrote #2 of 7 the other day. And now almost halfway around the crown with this one.

2 Comments

Posted in NaPoWriMo, Poetry, Purgatory Kentucky, Uncategorized

Tagged , ,

Purgatory, Kentucky (a crown of sonnets?)

Posted on April 2, 2014 | 1 comment

Last April I wrote a fair bit towards the NaPoWriMo goal of writing a poem a day during National Poetry Month, including the sonnet called “Purgatory, Kentucky” in honor of and gratitude for doing a poetry reading at UW-Manitowoc.

This year, I’m shooting for writing a new one each day, or revising one. It’s 9:52 p.m. and I haven’t written a poem today yet.

Can I write a sonnet to follow the original “Purgatory, Kentucky” piece? Could I do a crown (7 sonnets where the last line of one is the first line of the next one, until you’ve done 7 and come full circle).

Less see:
_____

This ain’t hell. Of that I am assured.
Would there be apple pie corn whiskey or
this nice soft chair if I was to be tortured
for now and all time to come after?
You might say yes, but I think not. No way.
I will allow to having had odd dreams.
But nothing scary, really. Nothing mean.
Just weird. Like a long old nap in the middle of the day.
There’s not much else to do. I could reflect
on all my trials and tribulations, the error
of my ways, but where would be the profit in that?
The wicked queen’s mistake was looking in the mirror.
She couldn’t rest in her own head and let
the young ones priss around and stew and fret.

_____
Why yes, yes I can. Can write a sonnet before sleeping, anyway. We’ll see about the crown. And I do intend to do some revising this April. Just not tonight.

Here’s an image my beloved made for a poster for an event from a while back, Speak Easy Love Hard, which reminds me of the tone of these Purgatory, Kentucky poems:

slh

1 Comment

Posted in NaPoWriMo, Poetry, Uncategorized

Tagged ,

At Least More Immune

Posted on April 1, 2014 | Leave a comment

It was a flu bug of panic,
a bad cold of shame,
and mostly I’m over it,
but it comes back again

like a lingering cough,
a fever at night,
and I almost expect it,
but I can’t manage tough

stances and logical self-talk
right when I want to
not each time I want to
even though I know I need to

become immune.

At least more immune.
_____

20130728-104507.jpg
A Kafka t-shirt to launch NaPoWriMo in which I will post a poem every day until I don’t, either a new poem or a revision.

Leave a comment

Posted in Anxiety/Depression/Yuck, NaPoWriMo, Poetry, Uncategorized

Tagged ,

Missing the Magpie

Posted on March 27, 2014 | Leave a comment

Here’s a long overdue shout-out to my good friend Robert, who contributed to my Indiegogo campaign last year (thanks, and thanks again!). His contribution and others allowed me a “half-battical” last fall, which meant teaching two courses instead of my normal four.  I spent time working on creativity research, and I’ll be offering my first 2-hour workshop this Saturday.

 

You know how everyone is always posting all kinds of everything on Facebook & Twitter and some of it’s great but so much of it is….not?

What if someone had a blog in which they gathered all kinds of awesome stuff in one place, week after week?  That’s what Robert’s “Magpie Monday” did, and even though there hasn’t been one in a while, it’s still WELL WORTH a look-see because he finds awesome stuff, such as Bookshelf Porn and Ask Baba Yaga and a site with details I didn’t personally actually know or remember about the Piano.

 

I’m missing Magpie Monday, but at least there are nests to look back through!
cropped-crane19

Leave a comment

Posted in Creativity Workshops, Indiegogo Perk "A shout out", Uncategorized

Desperate for Silliness (Be There Now)

Posted on March 11, 2014 | Leave a comment

And so I take these online quizzes all the time
I’m every awesome everyone except
when inexplicably I’m Reagan or a ham
cured by local artisans. These I accept:
I’m Sherlock and Muttley and living in Paris.

So long as I’m not me, not being where here is.

And now I see I’ve failed to impress
you in your social media seriousness
“be authentic” is your web address.

They are made of pathos, these straws I’m grabbing for.
I’m plunging down and down in shallow water
with you with me, ending up we don’t know where.

___
A good friend complained on the Book of Face yesterday that he was tired of seeing everyone’s Buzzfeed quiz results.

I sympathize totally in one way–as these things go on social media, I participated early on, got tired of it, went back when it caught my eye again, got tired of it again…. And it is interesting to me, and curious, how eager we all are to answer questions about ourselves online and see what a random quiz tells us about what character or place or random object is a good match.

But I can’t frown too hard in the direction of people who are still quizzing themselves relentlessly because they may well be tired of how often they’re notified that I’m playing Candy Crush (though I will say I try very, very hard not to inadvertently click on “invite your friends to play Candy Crush,” but the game sneaks that into its long list of “click to send this person extra moves,” which I’m happy to do if I know that person is actually playing Candy Crush. Unless they emerged from Level 181 sooner than I did in which case why do they need extra moves? Harrumph.)

Another friend said last week she wanted to see more of our own pictures, not silly pictures we were sharing that someone we didn’t even know had posted.

And yes, let’s do that–let’s share some more of our authentic selves with each other.

And yet, is there a spot on our social media that could be an authentic medium for authenticity?

These are lines I cut from the sonnet:

You could eat a salad at McDonald’s, true,
but once you’re there, honestly, why would you?

Paris by Rui Ornelas on Flickr

Paris by Rui Ornelas
on Flickr

Leave a comment

Posted in Authenticity, Bloem or Pog, Poetry, Searching, Uncategorized

Tagged , ,

Jimmy Fallon: Happiness Engine

Posted on March 5, 2014 | Leave a comment

It’s not that I think the Age of Irony is over (if irony didn’t die on 9/11, it can’t die), but something strange is afoot–I’m enjoying comedy bits on TV that are funny…because they’re funny.

What a revelation David Letterman was in 1982–things were funny because they weren’t funny. I was drowsy every morning my junior and senior year in high school because I stayed up for Letterman, and the not-funny=funny spilled over so many places–my dorm’s fundraiser in the Fall of ’83 we had toast on a stick….

I barely ever stay up until 12:30 a.m. any more, and when I do, it’s because I’m grading papers (YES I HAVE A VERY EXCITING LIFE). I still love Letterman in the abstract, but I can’t even manage the 10:30-11:30 CST slot.

However, I have spring break in a couple of weeks, and I’m looking forward to getting to stay up a little later, but sorry Dave–it’ll be the new Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon that I’ll be watching live-ish before I go to bed (instead of on the computer the next day or the next week).

I’m so motivated to watch because the clips I’ve caught have not so much made me laugh out loud (or, as I’m hearing people SAY now, verbally, not type, “LOL”) as they have just MADE ME HAPPY.

The first clue I had that Mr. Fallon was onto something was the verbal hash tag war he had with Jonah Hill. My Mom & I had a conversation about this, in which I was able to explain hash tags to her by comparing them to Library of Congress subject headings (I’d previously explained subject headings to students by saying “they’re like hash tags that old white guys use”).

But here’s when I started to crush on the new Tonight Show pretty hard–Paul Rudd killing it in their lip sync battle.

I’ve watched this so many times. Just–thanks, guys. Wonderful. Just what I needed. Awesome. Every little moment of it. Really.

And here’s when I realized Jimmy Fallon is not just funny, not just really doing great as a new host–

HE IS A HAPPINESS ENGINE.

Idina Menzel sang just fine in the Oscars* and I loved Frozen (happy it won), but this is my favorite version of “Let It Go.” The Roots Crew is so great, and they’re all so happy, and it’s so silly, and it’s just–I watch it again and again.

It just makes me happy.

When I lecture on humor, I point out that one of the categories of humor is delight, or childhood wonder–that humor doesn’t have to involve aggression or meanness or irony. It seems to be Jimmy Fallon is trafficking pretty heavy in delight.

I know he did a lot of these things on his other late-night gig, but I’m just now seeing people post them all over Facebook, and I know for a fact my Mom never watched him before he took over for Leno–so, wow.

Keep cranking it out, Mr. Happiness Engine. So happy to be happy out here where it’s still winter.
_____

Proof I need a Happiness Engine–here’s what winter does to me without it:

The Furniture of Winter

Like layering rugs on top of your carpet,
Like your grandmother’s hutch
There is no room for,
Or the trundle bed you’re holding onto
For a friend who’s recently nomadic,
The furniture of winter piles up.

Each shovelful’s a stack of old news
Balanced on top of whole hallways of snow.

All paths are precarious.

The unruly sun shuffles everything by noon,
And then at night the moon freezes
Everything in place.

Like another Collyer brother, you lie
underneath, praying messy prayers
for help, deaf heaven sending down
only more of what you have too much of
already, more, and also too much, snow.

(I started writing it two weeks ago; sadly, we got four more inches of snow this morning, so it’s still relevant.)

______

Let’s not end there.

Let’s watch the lip sync one more time.

#awesome #thankyou #engineofhappiness

(Les Chatfield from Flickr)

(Les Chatfield from Flickr)

*Loved the Oscars. Probably my favorite ever, and Ellen actually reminded me of Dave a little–the pizza bit was funny because it wasn’t funny, or at least that was my take. Whereas the selfie bit was just delightful to watch.

Leave a comment

Posted in Bloem or Pog, Folks I Loves, Good Things 2 Good People, Poetry, Uncategorized

Tagged , , ,

The Dream of Perennial Corn

Posted on February 20, 2014 | 1 comment

1
Resource-hog sign of high summer,
high-fructose commodity seed,
short-term forest I missed sorely
in years Gran’daddy grew soybeans—

oh, corn.

Holding tight to cob-stabber handles,
letting butter invade where it will,
I demolish, row by row, kernel troops.
They leave behind mines in my teeth.

2
Fine people are already working
on sorghum and wheat
that don’t have to be plowed under,
replanted, cut down, plowed under,
and fertilized, fertilized, fertilized.

Much less practical is longing for perennial corn
but I do. I’m hot for it. Like August.
Imagine deep roots find Ogallala.
Acres jump up every year like bamboo.

We could wander and pluck at ripe goodness,
modern-day Eve, Adam, Abel, Cain.
There’s plenty enough for everyone.
More than enough for raccoons.

3
We probably won’t but we might
do the right thing, the right things
enough times in a row, enough rows
in a row, to harvest just once

without biting the hands that feed us,
without breaking our favorite jelly jar,
without zeroing out.

We might hold out our cup almost shyly
and blink, super-slow, as it fills up,
with sunshine, with sweetness, with juicy,

with corn.

___

You should check out The Land Institute if you don’t already know all about them. My husband and I have supported them for years, and in fact, my parents do, too.

(Apparently there are other people working on perennial crops, including corn, but it isn’t pretty yet. And I’m not familiar with this particular fellow.)

The Land Institute’s main site is here, and here’s an article from the Wall Street Journal which ends with a lovely little paragraph:

“‘We’ll get there,’ Mr. Jackson says, with the patient drawl of a plant breeder from Kansas. ‘But it is no instant gratification. We’re making considerable progress, but this is not for the conventional mind.'”

As always, I’m pleased not to have a conventional mind.

___
388108_10101425678827198_1617838374_n

1 Comment

Posted in Bloem or Pog, Opdyke, Poetry, Searching, Southern Illinois, Sustainable Chaos, Uncategorized

Tagged , ,

I blame Wallace Stevens.

Posted on January 24, 2014 | Leave a comment

It’s not that I don’t appreciate Wallace Stevens.  On an intellectual level, I do.  And I actually like “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.”  But wow.  Tired of winter, tired of cold, looking forward to this forecast next week:

NOAA forecast

NOAA forecast

So, when a friend posted a copy of his lovely poem, “The Snow Man,” I couldn’t respond to the loveliness.

Instead, I grumped.

_____

The Dirt Woman

“One must have a mind of winter” Wallace Stevens

I don’t have one. I won’t ever.
Go eat a bag of winter
old man poet, in your suit and tie,

galoshes buckled tight
against the slush and ice
the poor tree limb split from.

What is this January sun
You speak of? I see none.
The only sound is the wind

which hits me right in the bare place
between my turtleneck and long johns.
I can no longer feel my face.

The only thing that gives me hope
is beneath the snow
something alive will grow something red.

Leave a comment

Posted in On Wisconsin, Poetry, Uncategorized

Tagged , , ,

Pedagogy Stew: December 2013

Posted on January 9, 2014 | 1 comment

For a couple of weeks in college, I pretended there were writhing mounds of deadly, poisonous snakes in the middle of the dorm hallway, and you had to walk right next to the wall, on a very narrow not-real ledge, to escape them.

It amused me.  That’s my superpower. Amusing myself.

What made it a game was that I convinced a few other people to walk along the wall and shriekingly warn others who were walking in the middle.

I knew the game was awesome when I saw a couple of gamer types from down the hall, the Dr. Who guys, we called them, walking tight along the wall. I hadn’t told them about the snakes, but someone had.

I still spend a fair bit of time amusing myself, but I’ve added to that a layer of thinking hard about games. Jane McGonigal’s Reality is Broken is blowing my mind in really terrific ways, and I’m understanding gaming in ways I could never have imagined in the late 80s, when my cousins Jamie & Josh asked me to watch them play video games and I almost always said no. I just didn’t get it. I get it now.

This semester in my composition classes, the default topic is whether the success rate in ENG 102 would improve if it were re-imagined as a game. (Students do have the opportunity each semester to choose their own topics, but if they botch that by missing the deadline or not following directions, I get to pick.)

There’s a basic problem, however, in this concept of course-as-game. McGonigal lists four things that make something a game: goal, rules, feedback system, and especially the idea that it’s voluntary.

ENG 102 is a required course. Still, you might view college itself as voluntary, but most of my students don’t see it that way. They’re being told by people they know and by the world that in this economy, they have to go to college.  (Whether or not that’s true is a whole different column.)

In my favorite totally voluntary addiction, Candy Crush, if you complete a level, but barely, you get one star. Depending on how much I enjoyed the level, I might let it slide at one, or play again and again to get to two or three.

What if a C in ENG 102 were one star?  And once you got there, you could move on—be done with the course and focus on other courses? What if you could get there by midterm?  And then “level up,” if you worked hard enough, to a B? Or to an A? It seems possible to me that would emphasize the voluntary nature of excelling.

We’ll see what my students and I can come up with on that front.

Next up, inventing a game for elementary-age students to play at recess that will keep them out of trouble, lower the incidence of bullying, and improve their reading and writing and math skills. Wouldn’t that be epic?

(This column originally appeared in Voice of the River Valley. The January issue is available in MANY, MANY locations in southwest Wisconsin; when the the February issue comes out, I’ll post my January “Pedadgogy Stew.”)

1 Comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Pedagogy Stew: October 2013

Posted on January 9, 2014 | Leave a comment

Picture an eighth-grade boy in the late 1970s. Sort of a cross between Richie Cunningham and Shaun Cassidy. Watch him as he jams a little nubbin of a pencil so far into an electric pencil sharpener that it runs continuously, leaving the not-too-bright teacher to puzzle over the mystery of it all.

Don’t worry about that boy. He’ll grow up to be an aeronautics engineer.

The teacher? He’ll get fired. He had so little control in the classroom, we looked like one of those inspiring hero-teacher movies BEFORE the hero shows up.

That’s the closest I ever came to being homeschooled, when this teacher was in the process of being fired. My Dad was on the school board, and when the teacher accused me of crying to my parents about how mean he was (I complained, but I don’t remember crying), they pulled me out of school. But it wasn’t really homeschooling. I just sat in a lawn chair in the corner of my Grandma Roane’s lawn (which was kitty-cornered to the school) and waved at everyone when they were at recess. Soon enough a hunky-hero teacher showed up and I went back to school.

I was lucky enough to spend an evening with many of my eighth grade friends in early August this past summer, and it was terrific seeing all these folks again. What we went through in grade school bonds us in deep ways.

We caught up on all kinds of things. We agreed the hunky-hero teacher still looks pretty great, thirty-plus years on.

We chose to get together this summer.

But the time we spent together back then wasn’t out of choice. Not ours, and not our parents’.

We went to school where we went to school because there wasn’t an alternative.

Since most of us were from staunch Baptist or Methodist or Pentecostal families, the Catholic school in the next town would never have seemed like an alternative, though it occurs to me now that it was.

I don’t think any of us had ever heard of homeschooling.

Homeschooling is but one of many, many alternatives now. School choice in Wisconsin means my husband and I can send our son to any local elementary school, including our choice, the Studio School, which is a public school/charter school/school within a school. Next year, there may be a STEM school (focusing on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) in Arena we could send him to. School vouchers in Wisconsin mean we could send him to a private school and get some state money for it (wait—really? That can’t be right. Maybe I dreamed that).

Our two main criteria for deciding how to school our son are these: is he happy? Is he learning?

I’m glad to have alternatives. I’m glad we get to have criteria beyond “if the teacher is horrible, we’ll try to get him fired.”

But it’s not just nostalgia when I miss the simplicity of how I went to school.

(This column originally appeared in Voice of the River Valley.)

Leave a comment

Posted in On Wisconsin, Opdyke, Pedagogy Stew, Politics, Searching, Southern Illinois, Teaching, Uncategorized

Tagged , ,