First of all, let me emphasize–my health is good. This has been an intense year in so many ways, and one of them was going through the process a lot of us have been through, where the screening mammogram is followed up by a diagnostic mammogram and ultrasound, which is followed up by a biopsy. There were two main saving graces during those hurry-up-and-wait weeks. One, I was writing a poem every day about the process. Two, I was distracting myself with Heated Rivalry (which I’ve already written about some, here.) O.k., more than two saving graces: I also have an amazing husband and very good friends.
The results of my biopsy are that I have LCIS/classic (still called “carcinoma” BUT IS NOT CANCER). Because of that (it does put me in a higher risk of developing cancer) and my family history (mother and grandmother had breast cancer), I’ll be following up at the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Breast Clinic. The results were a relief and I’m very happy to be in good hands at Carbone.
The beautiful men in my poem are two of the stars of Heated Rivalry, François Arnaud & Hudson Williams. (Also in my cartoon–I edited a screen cap & I very much hope THAT DIDN’T MEAN I USED AI BECAUSE AS HUDSON WILLIAMS SAYS IN THIS VIDEO, FUCK AI.)
Why were they doing that? Well, Novartis has an awareness campaign called Your Attention Please, about getting screened for breast cancer. The site features clever videos with lots of images of how we typically view women’s breasts, including lots of cheerleaders’ chests, then cuts to black with this box:
The first video features Wanda Sykes at the end, and was shown (I’m guessing) on Super Bowl Sunday. The second one is the same idea, same black box, but features women on the red carpet because it was shown during the Oscars. It features Hailee Steinfeld at the end.
At one of the many, many pre-Oscars parties, Hudson Williams and François Arnaud took their turn in a photo booth sponsored by Novartis, People magazine, and The Motion Picture and Television Fund (MPTF).
I appreciate that those two busy guys lent themselves (albeit briefly) to the campaign, and I also appreciate that they’ve been using their Instagram feeds to promote miscellaneous good books.
I suppose I am sharing this poem to do my small part to say do all the screening you can. I have been doing my yearly mammos for a lot of years, and I will happily do more and even MRIs as part of my ongoing care.
I suppose I am also sharing this poem to be a little more public about what I’ve been going through.
And also to let my friends know LISTEN JUST BECAUSE I NO LONGER TALK ABOUT HEATED RIVALRY ALL THE TIME DOESN’T MEAN I’M DONE.
Oh, and also, I haven’t yet scheduled my next colonoscopy and I need to. I wonder if there’s a photo booth somewhere for beautiful people to grab other body parts, those more germane to colonoscopy. . . . JUST TO RAISE AWARENESS OF COURSE.
I mean obviously you can break the law but I can’t so what if I park legally and holler at you so long as I don’t call you a fat boi? No? Not even if I promise? Maybe just my bumper stickers say things you don’t like on a public street? I guess not. So how about I sit in my car at home and scream with helplessness and rage if I leave the windows up? What if I just sit there real quiet but think angry thoughts? No? What if I sit on my couch with my cat and write a poem? Oh that’s right. You kill poets. What if I decide you are right about everything? Except attesting to something and not believing it might kill me, might give me a fact aneurysm, cognitive dissonance made flesh, a little emotional infarction, a pulmonary symbolism? Is it o.k. if I die quietly? Yes? O.k.
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.]
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.)
Today was my second Poetry Pop-Up Shop & they’re so fun, I may keep doing them even when I’m done raising money for Tupelo Press.
I was at the Spring Green General Store today & wrote an ode. It really has been a special place over the years, and it’s one of the main places people know about if they know about Spring Green:
AN ODE TO THE SPRING GREEN GENERAL STORE
Early spring, the flower boxes have funky tulip whirligigs, birch branches and metal insects on sticks, but soon enough the plantings will stretch up, spill over, glow in the afternoon sun. When people ask directions I tell them it’s the only giant blue building on Albany Street, “You can’t miss it.” And really, you shouldn’t.
There’s a chocolate therapy bar that fulfills its promise but also a chocolate chip cookie bar I love even more.
My favorite pants I ever had I bought there: linen crepe, black, palazzo. Too many amazing shirts to list.
They made a set of directions for the burrito that was safe for my son to eat (so many food allergies!) and posted it several places and this gets at the best reason to go— not just food and clothes and jewelry and toys and honestly the best dish towels you ever saw in your life,
it’s a place you can go for company, for community, for care.
I’d love it if you wanted to make a donation to Tupelo as a way to support a good press, to celebrate National Poetry Month, to pat me on the back, to just say, “hey, I really liked this one.” AND there are thank-you gifts! Click here to donate.
marniere 