Troy Urquhart: Blog

And here are four things

2012-02-11T12:27:00.002-05:00

1.
My world lit classes have just finished reading Heart of Darkness. Discussions started off pretty slowly, but as we neared the end of the book, they became more and more engaged. It's fascinating, in a way, but I suppose that it's also entirely predictable: the pace of discussion has almost exactly mirrored the pace of the narrative.

2.
Also, I'm about 450 pages into 1Q84. Or maybe something like 500. In any case, a little over halfway.

So far, I find it intriguing.

Here's a line that sticks with me:

There is nothing in this world that never takes a step outside a person's heart.

3.
If you haven't watched Shawn Achor's talk "The Happy Secret To Better Work" on TED, I recommend it.

4.
The weather today is amazing. I ran eight with Tyler and Susan, and I can't remember better weather for a morning run.

Here are five things

2012-02-08T19:22:00.001-05:00

At the end of January, I got the chance to attend the FCIS Academy over in Tampa. It was three very long days--on Sunday, we worked until a little after 6:00 and then had to read a book in the evning; on Monday, we worked until about 8:15; and on Tuesday, we worked until about 3:30 and then drove back to school--but I'm very grateful that I got the chance to go. I think I learned some new things, and I think that some things that I already knew about learning and behavior styles were brought into sharper focus for me. There were parts of the material that are debatable, of course, since the current research is divided (right brain/left brain issues, for instance). But that's always the case--it seems like for every study, there's another study contradicting it. What's most important, I think, is to try to find the practical things I can take back to use in the classroom. And so far, there have been some ideas from the Academy that have worked well for me.

Plus, it was great to get to relax over a Sam Adams after the sessions each day and spend some time talking with colleagues.

2.

The fall issue of Willows Wept Review is up, at long last. There's some mighty fine work in there, if you don't mind my saying so, so please stop on by over there and give it a read.

3.
Did I mention that we got to see the Mountain Goats a couple of weeks ago? Check it out:

The last time they were supposed to be in town, John Darnielle got sick and wound up in the hospital, so he came back a few months later and played a solo show. But this time, it was the full band.

4.
We got a bag of Ethiopia Mordecofe in the mail from Stumptown the other day. Melissa and I tried it in the Chemex yesterday--delicious.

5.
Right now, I'm listening to Joshua James. But I want to remind you about Bryan John Appleby. Seriously, click on over there and give it a listen--you can stream the whole album. I've got vinyl on the way, but it hasn't arrived yet, so for now, I'm making do with the download. (We're not even going to talk about the iTunes play count for this one. Let's just say it's a big number.)

What you might be listening to

2012-02-06T20:37:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I've published a "current rotation" list, but I really do think that you should stop whatever it is you're doing right now and listen to these.

Bryan John Appleby, Fire on the Vine
The Careful Ones, Moths, Flames, Etc.

Happy birthday, Uncle Al

2012-02-02T15:13:00.000-05:00

Today, take a moment and remember this guy, my Uncle Albert, whose birthday would have been, or rather is, today.

When the fog lifts

2012-01-26T16:57:00.002-05:00

1.
The week started with overcast skies and fog so dense that visibility was pretty tight--during Monday morning's run, there were times when we couldn't see more than a few houses down the road.

And it was hard not to see the fog as a metaphor for the week: it promised to be one of those weeks when there would be much more work to be done than there would be time to do, one of those weeks when it was hard to see any space of clarity ahead.

But by the time the sun rose, the fog had almost burned off, the clouds had thinned, and the sky looked something like this:

The picture doesn't do it justice, of course, but it's hard not to be hopeful when you look up and see that.

2.
I'd planned for my world lit classes to spend the first three days of the week talking about four of Derek Walcott's poems. But, as things go sometimes, we ended up spending all three days on a single poem. It was refreshing to move slowly through a poem, to spend a couple of hours weighing each word, each phrase.

My favorite day, I think, was Wednesday, when we talked about the volta. I was going to say that the volta is one of my absolute things to talk about in poetry, but maybe I'll just say that it's one of my favorite things.

3.
Last weekend, I tackled a home-improvement project.

This so-called "five-minute" fan from Hunter took me only seventy-five minutes to install. It didn't help, of course, that the first time I got everything put together, one of the wires came disconnected, so I had to take the whole thing down and re-wire it.

I also tried my hand at making scones last weekend. I started with my recipe for biscuits, added a couple of eggs, a bit of brown sugar, cinnamon, raisins, some vanilla, and then tried to balance the quantity of flour by feel.

Next time, I'll change a few things, but overall, they weren't bad for a first attempt.

In which I do not resolve to blog more frequently

2012-01-11T15:52:00.000-05:00

1.
Look, I just want to be upfront about this.

I know that in the spirit of making resolutions for the new year, people across the internet have been committing publicly to write more frequently on their blogs.

You'll get no such promises from me.

In which I consider running and pain

2011-11-22T17:39:00.000-05:00

1.
There was a great post from Jeff a while ago over at The Logic of Long Distance on running and pain. Jeff writes,

While the runner must monitor his effort closely and be very attuned to sensation and impending or present pain in the early stages of the race, James helps us understand how attention to pain can be detrimental in the later stages of the race. If, as he writes, "the preperception is half the perception of the looked-for thing," then the runner has to be wary of projecting onto his experience more pain than is actually felt. As pain rises up in the latter part of the race, attending to the pain actually magnifies its quantity, adding to the "actual pain" the image of pain in the mind's eye.

2.
As a coach, this problem presents a challenge nearly every day. After all, distance running--almost by definition--hurts. I once heard someone describe distance running as management of the body's pain. And so nearly every day, I have runners telling to me about the things that ail them. "Pain is inevitable," as that saying goes. "Suffering is optional."

3.
The trick, of course, is to know which pains to ignore and which to heed. That's a difficult enough challenge when you're considering your own pains. Is that pain in your lower leg a muscle that's pulling, a tendon, the beginning signs of a stress fracture, or what?

4.
But when it's another person's body, it's even more difficult. Maybe even impossible. Especially when we consider the differences in people's tolerance for pain.

5.
Lately, I've been asking runners to define their measurements of pain based on their experiences with it. "Ok," I tell them, "so this feels like a 7. Now tell me, what's the most painful thing you've ever felt? What's a 10?"

In which I talk about writing and money

2011-11-01T12:59:00.000-04:00

1.
I have a post over at Vouched this week in which I talk a bit about writing and money.

And running.

Of course, and running.

In which I do a bit of running

2011-09-08T19:35:00.000-04:00

1.
I've been getting back into fairly decent shape these last few weeks. Last week, I entered 40+ mpw range for the first time since June, and I've been keeping my rolling 7-day average above 40 all week, so I feel like I'm staying on track.

Also, things are a little faster. And it's a good feeling when the easy pace is getting faster, especially since I know that when easy gets faster, hard is getting faster, too.

2.
I ran eight yesterday afternoon, mostly in the rain, and I'll say this about running in the rain: you're only going to get so wet before you can't get any wetter.

I'll also say this about running in the rain:

Q: You know how many other people I saw running in the rain?
A: One.

I like to think that means that I was getting faster yesterday while the competition was sitting on the couch.

3.
And that one guy I saw? He's pretty strange. Always wears a visor. Never makes eye contact. Never waves. Never says hello. Never even nods. I've never seen him acknowledge anyone else in any way. Strange.

4.
Over at The Logic of Long Distance, Jeff wrote this:

I've said this before, and I will say it again: one of the best reasons to run is its utter uselessness as an activity. Horkheimer makes the meaning of this clearer. The fact that a run has no exchange value on the open market is a mark that it, as an experience, cannot be exchanged. Its value, like that of life itself, is inherent and singular.

Certainly, there's some attempt to commodify running--professional runners get paid, after all, and there are prizes at some races. But running does resist commodification in a way that appeals to me a great deal.

5.
On my eight-mile run yesterday, I saw a group of peacocks. At first, I thought it was a pair of them, but as I came up beside them, I realize there were seven. Three of them were huddled under a tree, while the other four nosed through some tall grass--looking for dinner, I imagined.

6.
It occurred to me yesterday that there is often so much about a run that is wonderful. But once the run is over, it usually feels like it's impossible to explain the wonder of the run to another person.

Jouissance? Objet petit a? It's been too long, perhaps, since I've read Lacan, so I'm not certain which. But it any case, there's something there that resists signification.

7.
In other news, John Darnielle (yes, he's that guy from the Mountain Goats) writes a poem to power metal bands about the importance of playing a real piano here.

In which I am even more amused by search terms used to find this blog

2011-08-21T16:32:00.000-04:00

1.
In my last post, I talked about the annual end-of-summer searches by students looking for help analyzing Frederick Douglass's writing.

2.
The latest inquiry is really much, much better. Here it is:

hi mr urquhart!! frederick douglass

3.
To which I will, of course, reply:

Hi, Alli!

In which I say something about summer reading and Frederick Douglass

2011-08-16T16:09:00.001-04:00

1.
I always know when schools assign Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself as summer reading for AP Language, since a disproportionately large number of people wind up on this page using search terms like these:

narrative of the life of frederick douglass rhetorical analysis
narrative of frederick douglass similes
narrative of the life of frederick douglass simile quotes
the narrative of the life of frederick douglass syntax
frederick douglass allusion to the lions den

and so forth.

2.
Hey, if that's you, dear student who wound up here looking for help with your assignment for AP Language, that's great. Just don't plagiarize, ok? Because that ends badly.

3.
And seriously, if you have questions, ask.

In which I say eleven things about a nail and one about a poem

2011-08-11T16:38:00.003-04:00

1.
So I got this hole in my foot. Actually, it was a nail.

2.
They re-roofed our house a few weeks ago, and since then, we've picked up fifty nails at least from the yard. This one, I found the hard way.

3.
This one that I found with my foot was pretty rusted.

4.
It'd been a while since I'd had a tetanus shot, so we got to spend our Sunday evening visiting the fine folks at the Emergency Room in South Lake Hospital. Fortunately, things were quiet, so we were in and out of there in very little time.

5.
I previously had no idea what our copay was for an ER visit. Now I know. It's a hundred bucks.

6.
The nurse in the ER was delighted when she heard that I was wearing Crocs when I stepped on the nail. I know, you're going to tell me they're ridiculous looking, and you're right. But they also don't hold on to all of that bacteria that fill my retired running shoes, so evidently, if you're going to step on a nail, Crocs are pretty much an ideal thing to be wearing.

7.
Actually, work boots would be ideal. I stepped on a nail a couple of weeks ago while I was wearing work boots and didn't even know it until I heard the nail scrape against the driveway. But if you're going to go all the way and get a puncture wound, it seems that Crocs are much preferable to other forms of footwear.

8.
I kept trying to talk to everyone in the ER about John Thoreau. He was Henry's brother, and he died a pretty gruesome death of tetanus after cutting himself while stropping a razor. He was 27, and he died in Henry's arms. "That's not the way I want to go," I kept telling people.

9.
So I got a tetanus shot.

10.
But the good news was that the ER doc cleared me to run, as long as I promised to clean the wound well as soon as I finished running.

11.
So I promised, and I ran the next morning, and I cleaned the wound well when I was done. But while I was running, it was hard to resist thinking a little about Steve Prefontaine, who won the three mile at NCAAs in 1970 with a dozen stitches in his foot. It's hard to imagine enduring pain like that.

12.
Also, did I mention I have a poem over at Wonderfort?

In which I say something about banned books

2011-08-05T12:25:00.002-04:00

1.
I know that you think it's a free country and all, but there are still people out there banning books. Like the folks in Republic, Missouri, who recently banned two books: Sarah Ockler's Twenty Boy Summer and Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five.

2.
I'm not familiar with Twenty Boy Summer (to be fair, it doesn't look like anything I'd choose to read--but I'm glad to be able to make that choice), but Slaughterhouse-Five is, in my opinion, one of the most important books about war ever written. Certainly, it's one of the most important books about war written in the twentieth century.

3.
In fact, students who are taking English III Honors with me next year are reading Slaughterhouse-Five as part of their summer reading assignment. Since school starts in less than three weeks, I'm imagining that many of them are reading it right now.

4.
The full title of Vonnegut's book is Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., a Fourth-Generation German-American Now Living in Easy Circumstances on Cape Cod (and Smoking Too Much) Who, as an American Infantry Scout Hors de Combat, as a Prisoner of War, Witnessed the Fire-Bombing of Dresden, Germany, the Florence of the Elbe, a Long Time Ago, and Survived to Tell the Tale: This Is a Novel Somewhat in the Telegraphic Schizophrenic Manner of Tales of the Planet Tralfamadore, Where The Flying Saucers Come From.

5.
The good folks at the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library in Indianapolis are offering free copies of the banned book to any students at Republic High School who want them.

6.
You can help. Send KVML a few bucks to help them pay for shipping. You'll find a link to donate on their home page, or you can get there directly by clicking here.

7.
If you want to read more, there's plenty about it in today's news.

In which we salute a great Southern writer

2011-07-24T18:53:00.001-04:00

1.
Raise a glass tonight--preferably a glass of something made in Kentucky of at least 50% corn--to celebrate the birthday of Brad Watson, one of the greatest voices in Southern fiction of our time. And one heck of a great guy.

In which we do some of the things that can be done on a Saturday

2011-07-23T22:14:00.001-04:00

1.
At the farmers' market in Winter Garden, we bought two big boxes of produce and some eggs.

2.
The new Sam Flax location is quite nice.

3.
Dandelion Communitea Cafe. The guy warned me that I was going to be full.

He was right.

4.
Park Ave CDs, where we bought records, not CDs: Bon Iver, Old Crow, and the Weepies.

5.
Whole Foods filled in the gaps--there are things that they didn't have at the market this morning. Kale, for instance.

6.
Dinner with Mom and Dave to celebrate their wedding anniversary.

In which we move the rest

2011-07-22T21:55:00.002-04:00

1.
Mostly to the garage, because we made a rule about not bringing anything inside unless it had a place.

2.
Also, I have an incredible new bike. Many thanks to Dave!

In which I note a few things about cultivation and patience

2011-07-13T15:31:00.000-04:00

1.
Socrates, in Plato's Phaedrus:

Would a husbandman, who is a man of sense, take the seeds, which he values and which he wishes to bear fruit, and in sober seriousness plan them during the heat of summer, in some garden of Adonis, that he may rejoice when he sees them in eight days appearing in beauty? at least he would do so, if at all, only for the sake of amusement and pastime. But when he is in earnest he sows in fitting soil, and practises husbandry, and is satisfied if in eight months the seeds which has sown arrive at perfection?

2.
Henry David Thoreau, in "The Bean-Field" from Walden:

Ancient poetry and mythology suggest, at least, that husbandry was once a sacred art; but it is pursued with irreverent haste and heedlessness by us, our object being to have large farms and large crops merely. . . . He sacrifices not to Ceres and the Terrestrial Jove, but to the infernal Plutus rather. By avarice and selfishness, and a grovelling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives.

3.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, from A Defence of Poetry:

Pleasure or good, in a general sense, is that which the consciousness of a sensitive and intelligent being seeks, and in which, when found, it acquiesces. There are two kinds of pleasure, one durable, universal, and permanent; the other transitory and particular. Utility may either express the means of producing the former or the latter. In the former sense, whatever strengthens and purifies the affections, enlarges the imagination, and adds spirit to sense, is useful. But a narrower meaning may be assigned to the word utility, confining it to express that which banishes the importunity of the wants of our animal nature, the surrounding men with security of life, the dispersing the grosser delusions of superstitions, and the conciliating such a degree of mutual forbearance among men as may consist with the motives of personal advantage.

In which I don't think I'm invincible

2011-07-11T15:21:00.001-04:00

1.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:

So the thing to do when working on a motorcycle, as in any other task, is to cultivate the peace of mind which does not separate one's self from one's surroundings. When that is done successfully then everything else follows naturally. Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at he center of it all.

2.
On Sunday, I started a Lydiard-based training program leading to the OUC Half in December. Sunday's run was the long one for the week, and while the running itself wasn't difficult, the heat and/or humidity made things extremely hard. About seven and a half miles into the nearly ten, I was wondering a little bit if I was going to make it.

But of course, I did.

3.
I say "of course" not because I think I'm invincible. Only because if I didn't make it, I obviously wouldn't be writing this.

4.
In fact, I often tell the runners I coach that we're all only one bad step away from disaster: holes, cars, rocks, and everything we can't predict.

5
I also tell them, "I love hills. Hills are speed work in disguise."

6.
It's my brother and sister-in-law's anniversary today. Just think, only a year ago, we were in tuxedos trying to ignore the impulse to wipe away the sweat or swat at the swarming gnats.

He had a class this morning, but I hope they're spending the rest of the day doing something much more enjoyable.

7.
In other news, it's the last week of summer school. After this week, I'll have a little bit of time off. I'm ready for it.

In which the little guys look out for each other

2011-07-06T15:14:00.004-04:00

1.
Yesterday morning, while I was out for a run, I watched as a hawk dove and snatched a bird that was sitting on a power line. The hawk carried it down into the grass beside the road, both the hawk and its prey screaming while the hawk held the smaller bird down.

Then, from a nearby tree, two mockingbirds flew out and attacked the hawk, circling and crying out.

Finally, the hawk, harassed by the mockingbirds, lost its grip on the bird it had captured. I'd assumed it was a mockingbird, since two mockingbirds were defending it, but as it broke free, I discovered it was a blue jay, and it and the two mockingbirds ran the hawk off.

2.
Anybody using Google Plus? (or is it Google+?)

So far, it's like going to a party at a really good venue, except there's almost nobody there.

3.
AP scores are out, and I'm proud of how all of my students did.

I'm also super proud of Hillary, who did well on both of her AP exams this year.

In which we arrive in a new home

2011-07-04T18:27:00.002-04:00

1.
Well, we made the big move this weekend. There are still some odds and ends to move, but most of our things are at the new place.

2.
Some of that stuff is in the garage at the moment, because we're trying out to figure what might go where.

3.

4.
That twenty-six-foot sucker was a beast to drive, especially with the perpetual construction on Highway 50.

5.
I went for my first run in just over two weeks this morning. It was humid, but not too hot, and it felt good to be running again.

To be honest, the first mile or so didn't feel so good. But after that, it felt good to be running again.

6.
You know you're living in the country when you're out running and you see more rabbits in the road than cars.

7.
I'm on duty this evening, but being closer to campus makes that a bit easier.

8.
Henry David Thoreau, from Walden:

When first I took up my abode in the woods, that is, began to spend my nights as well as days there, which, by accident, was on Independence Day, or the Fourth of July, 1845, my house was not finished for winter, but was merely a defence against the rain, without plastering or chimney, the walls being of rough, weather-stained boards, with wide chinks, which made it cool at night. The upright white hewn studs and freshly planed door and window casings gave it a clean and airy look, especially in the morning, when its timbers were saturated with dew, so that I fancied that by noon some sweet gum would exude from them. To my imagination it retained throughout the day more or less of this auroral character, reminding me of a certain house on a mountain which I had visited a year before. This was an airy and unplastered cabin, fit to entertain a travelling god, and where a goddess might trail her garments. The winds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it. Olympus is but the outside of the earth everywhere.

9.
By accident, indeed.

10.
Happy 4th of July!

I'm looking forward to the fireworks this evening.

In which we move books

2011-06-30T15:46:00.001-04:00

1.
Maybe some of you can relate, but it seems that my experience of moving is different from that of most people.

Most people, I imagine, have boxes labeled "Living Room" and "Dining Room" and "Hall Bath." We have boxes labeled "Books #1" and "Books #2" and "Books #3" and so forth.

2.
Matt Bell has an excellent idea about moving books. I wish I'd thought of it.

In fact, I wish I'd thought of it a week ago.

3.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:

What Copernicus did was take the existing a priori concept of the word, the notion that it was flat and fixed in space, and pose an alternative a priori concept of the world, that it's spherical and moves around the sun; and showed that both of the a priori concepts fitted the existing sensory data.

4.
Jason Anderson has a new album. It's not quite as amazing as The Hopeful and the Unafraid, at least not on a first listen, but it's worth every bit of five bucks. And then some.

5.
Socrates, from Phaedrus:

Now I quite acknowledge that these allegories are very nice, but he is not to be envied who has to invent them; much labour and ingenuity will be required of him; and when he has once begun, he must go on and rehabilitate Hippocentaurs and chimeras dire. Gorgons and winged steeds flow in apace, and numberless other inconceivable and portentous natures. And if he is skeptical about them, and would fain reduce them one after another to the rules of probability, this sort of crude philosophy will take up a great deal of time. Now I have no leisure for such enquiries; shall I tell you why? I must first know myself, as the Delphian inscription says; to be curious about that which is not my concern, while I am still in ignorance of my own self, would be ridiculous.

6.
Must it rain while we're trying to move?

Evidently, it must.

In which I wonder about toilet seats

2011-06-29T15:44:00.004-04:00

1.
Imagine the conversation that someone had, standing in a home-improvement store and deciding to purchase this item:

2.
Next, imagine the same sort of conversation, the same thought process, as (presumably) the same person decides to purchase this one as well:

3.
Yes, that is paneling. Or is meant to look like paneling.

4.
No, those won't be around for long in our house.

In which I mention a knife

2011-06-28T06:52:00.003-04:00

It is important to see this knife for what it is and not to be fooled into thinking that motorcycles or anything else are the way they are just because the knife happened to cut it up that way. It is important to concentrate on the knife itself. Later I will want to show how an ability to use this knife creatively and effectively can result in solutions to the classic and romantic split.

--Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values

2.

The second principle is that of division into species according to the natural formation, where the joint is, not breaking any part as a bad carver might.

--Plato, Phaedrus, translated by Benjamin Jowett

3.
I also mentioned a knife here.

In which I say a few things

2011-06-27T15:19:00.001-04:00

1.
I'm teaching summer school. It's a four-week term, and we've just begun our second week, so things are well under way.

2.
Teaching during the summer is a different sort of experience. There are lots of drafts, lots of feedback, lots of direction, lots of revisions. But there is very little group interaction.

3.
Eddie Vedder has a new album titled Ukulele Songs. It's full of songs played on a ukulele--just what you'd expect from the title.

I tried to listen to it over the weekend, but it made me feel anxious. I'll try it again another day.

4.
Did I mention we're moving?

Yep. So that's where all of our free time was spent this weekend. We're planning to make the big move on Saturday and then be settled by the weekend.

5.
Did you get a copy of this yet?

6.
I haven't run since I got back from Louisville.

First, there was the catching up on rest from the trip and recital, and now, there's the move.

Next week, once the move is mostly done, I'll get back into a regular routine.

Current rotation

2011-06-25T08:31:00.001-04:00

Bon Iver, Bon Iver
Creedence Clearwater Revival, Willy and the Poor Boys
Frontier Ruckus, Deadmalls & Nightfalls
Gregory Alan Isakov, This Empty Northern Hemisphere
Thao & Mirah, Thao & Mirah

In which I return from Louisville

2011-06-19T06:44:00.000-04:00

1.
I'm back from Louisville and happy to report that this year's Reading went well. I was a Table Leader for the first time this year, and I read a bazillion student essays (give or take) written in response to Thomas Paine's characterization of American in Rights of Man.

2.
I did a bit of running while I was up there. I've run every year at the Reading, but this was the first year that I ran every day.

All said, I ran somewhere around 65 miles in Louisville, and along the way, I met a few great folks.

3.
The food was terrible. It was, without question, the worst food I've had at any of the Readings.

4.
Who puts tuna salad as the main item on the vegetarian menu? And the other meals weren't much better. I'd rate one of my meals as "adequate," while all of the others were far worse.

5.
Now, I'm back, and we're getting ready to move.

In which I arrive in Kentucky

2011-06-09T18:23:00.007-04:00

1.
I am in Louisville. It's hot here.

It feels hotter than it felt in Florida, which is a little surprising.

2.
Today, I ran eight miles along the Ohio River.

I ran alongside a barge.

As I passed it, the men on the front guiding it along the river called out to me and waved.

3.
Today is a pretty important day for me. You know why.

Or maybe you don't.

But I sure do.

4.
I just told a friend of mine who is joining me in Louisville tomorrow, "Travel safely."

He replied, "It's not really up to me."

5.
Of course, I like the new album from The Mountain Goats.

But when I listened to All Survivors Pack the other day and heard the demos of songs from All Eternals Deck, I thought, "Oh, there you are."

6.
I read nearly all of Brave New World on the plane today.

7.
Tomorrow, I'm going to start reading essays. Lots of them.

Current rotation

2011-05-16T15:47:00.003-04:00

In no particular order.

Ferraby Lionheart, The Jack of Hearts
Manchester Orchestra, Simple Math
Iron & Wine, Kiss Each Other Clean
Brett Dennen, Loverboy
The Decemberists, The King Is Dead
Gregory Alan Isakov, This Empty Northern Hemisphere
The Donkeys, Born with Stripes

In which I briefly recount recent events

2011-05-07T14:18:00.004-04:00

1.
I ran a 5k PR last weekend at the Run in the Garden 5k, a great race in downtown Winter Garden hosted by the great folks at Tri & Run.

2.
I mentioned this already here, but Hillary committed to Rollins last week. We're still quite thrilled.

3.
There's a lizard living in my classroom. I might post pictures.

4.
If you haven't seen them yet, I've had poems published recently in Mudluscious Press, Caper Literary Journal, and elimae.

5.
We had a successful end to a successful track season. We didn't advance anybody to the state finals this year, but we took more people to the regional meet than either Sue or I can recall.

6.
I've been eating lots of apples lately.

7.
My honors American lit class just finished reading Huck Finn. We moved through it pretty quickly, and while I'm glad we read it this year, I'm also glad to be done with it. Next week, we'll start work on Streetcar, which I'm excited about.

8.
We released a new issue of Willows Wept Review yesterday. Please, help spread the word.

9.
This year's Celebrating Education event at the Academy was 1920s themed. Good times.

10.
Does anybody else listen to Gregory Alan Isakov? He came up on Pandora the other day, and I've been listening to him pretty obsessively ever since.

In which I mention nothing

2011-05-04T09:32:00.000-04:00

In which I share exciting news

2011-04-28T19:32:00.004-04:00

It's official: Hillary will be attending Rollins College in the fall. For a while there, we thought she might be headed to South Carolina in the fall, but we visited the Rollins campus today, and you know how when something's right, it's just right? Well, it's right.

We're entirely delighted and entirely proud of her.

In which I mention six, or rather seven, things

2011-01-29T13:42:00.000-05:00

1.
It's MAIT weekend at the Academy, which means I get to watch lots of really amazing basketball. Unfortunately, it also meant a heartbreaker last night, as we lost 41-40 in overtime against a really tough team.

2.
I'm a little sick with whatever is going around, and worked at the game until after 9:30 last night. This morning, we had an open house at 9:00, and Sue and I scheduled a track practice for 7:00 this morning. What I wanted to know this morning was, are we dedicated? or dumb? I think we decided it might be a little of both.

3.
Speaking of open house, I think it was the best open house I think we've ever had--lots of great folks coming out to visit the school.

4.
The new issue of Willows Wept Review came out yesterday. I'm pretty delighted with it, and I hope you will be, too.

5.
I'm drinking a cup of really great coffee from Ethiopia that a friend brought us from California. I don't usually like Ethiopian coffee so much, but this stuff is pretty great.

6.
Have you listened to this yet?

7.
Yesterday, I saw the bunny that lives behind our house. We hadn't seen him for months. It's good to know he's still out there.

In which I begin a new year

2011-01-02T14:01:00.005-05:00

1.
The year's first issue of elimae came out yesterday, and it includes an excerpt of one of my poems. There's also great work there from other folks, Howie Good and Eric Beeny among them.

2.
For my first run of the new year, I ran an out and back on Hancock Road, with a bit of the NTC's cross country course thrown in for good measure (and to round it out to an even eight). Nothing flashy, nothing too fast, but a good run with some nice hills.

3.
I'm currently reading Shya Scanlon's Forecast. More on that later.

Current Rotation

2010-12-17T16:13:00.000-05:00

1. Justin Townes Earle, Harlem River Blues
2. Creedence Clearwater Revival, Willy and the Poor Boys
3. Junip, Fields
4. Jukebox the Ghost, Everything Under the Sun
5. Taylor Hollingsworth, Life with a Slow Ear
6. The Avett Brothers, Live, Volume 3

In which I run a half marathon PR

2010-12-05T18:50:00.002-05:00

1.
Monday, 4:45pm
Eight around Lake Minneola

2.
Tuesday, 4:15pm
Seven and a bit

3.
Wednesday, 5:30pm
Six

4.
Thursday, 4:15pm
Three and a half easy

5.
Saturday, 7:00am
On Saturday, I ran the OUC Half Marathon. I got there a little later than I usually like to arrive at a race, but I did that deliberately since it was in the 40s and the OUC doesn't offer bag check. Fortunately, I was able to stand inside the Panera near the start until just before the start. I lined up midway between the 8-minute and 9-minute mark--this turned out to be a mistake, both because I ran close to 8-minutes and because lots of people lined up too close to the front. So during the first mile, things were pretty bogged down. Somewhere around the quarter-mile point, somebody kicked me in the right knee--unintentionally, of course, but it was pretty tight, and I was trying to pass when this guy brought his foot really far back and caught me in the knee cap. I felt pretty warmed up after the first couple of miles, and things felt good, running easy, and after the five-mile mark, things felt even better, and I was running sub-8.

Around mile eight, a woman yelled at the group of us, "Piece of cake." I pretty much wanted to strangle her.

I hit a bit of a crisis around mile eleven. My blood sugar crashed, and my core temperature felt like it started to drop. I started feeling nauseous, started wondering about my ability to finish. In hind sight, I should have grabbed some Gatorade around mile seven, because after I drank a little at the aid station at mile twelve, I felt better almost immediately.

Overall, I ran 1:45:56, an average pace of 8:06, which is far better than my last time at the OUC in 2008 (2:05, 9:33 average) and better than my goal for this race (1:51, 8:30 average).

6.
Sunday, 10:00am
Recovery run of Two and a half, and the first half-mile really hurt.

Total miles this week: 40.7

In which I report little more than numbers

2010-11-28T15:17:00.004-05:00

1.
Monday, 4:30pm
Eight

2.
Wednesday, 11:00am
Eight

3.
Thursday, 8:00am
Eight

4.
Friday, 9:00am
Six

5.
Saturday, 10:00am
Twelve

Total miles this week: 42.1

In which the first digit is a four

2010-11-20T16:27:00.000-05:00

That's right: a four. For the first time ever, I ran more than forty miles in a week. That feels pretty good.

1.
Monday, 4:00pm
Eight and a quarter around Montverde with the team. Coming down Osgood Road, the oranges are nearly ripe. I can't wait until the citrus stand goes up by campus. I was ravenous when this run was over...went home thinking about the wedge of brie we had in the refrigerator.

2.
Tuesday, 5:00pm
There was no practice on Tuesday because the boarding students had their annual pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving dinner at 5:30, and we wanted them going to dinner looking sharp. So I went down to the West Orange Trail and ran eight. Things would have been a little better if somebody hadn't turned off the water to the aid stations along the route. And I felt a little twinge of something in my throat that I spent the first few miles worrying about, thinking what kind of illness I might be coming down with and what I might do to avoid actually coming down with it. But somewhere around mile five, in spite of being thirsty and in spite of the little spot of pain in my throat, I realized that what I was doing was easy, that I felt like I could run all day, all night if need be. I know that isn't true, know that there is a limit, but it was a nice feeling, running easy and letting the miles just fall behind me.

3.
Wednesday, 4:15pm
Easy four and nearly a half with the team today. Felt pretty sluggish, but that's just a result of the mileage build-up this week...in fact, I'd say that Wednesday felt like Thursday usually feels.

4.
Wednesday, 7:15pm
I dropped Hillary off at the dance studio and then ran three down by Lake Minneola. I felt like I was working pretty hard here, harder than the results would indicate--I felt like I was running 8's or maybe a few seconds under, but they was really 8:21's.

5.
Thursday, 4:10pm
Our last cross country practice of the season: the Easy Six. Susan ran most of this workout with me, with everybody else trailing behind. Some of them wanted a speech when we were done. Mostly, I just want them to keep running during the off season so we'll be ready when track starts up in January. It was a strange feeling, too, since over half the team was already gone--some of them to basketball, some to soccer.

6.
Saturday, 11:30am
Cross country state finals were Saturday morning, so I was up way before dawn and went out to Dade City to see Ciara run. Then I made a quick stop back at the school, where the grand opening of our new athletic complex was winding down. And then to the West Orange Trail for twelve. Can I tell you that there still was no water at two of the stations? Come on, Oakland...please? Nothing flashy about Saturday's run, just easy 9's pretty consistently the whole way. Still fighting that bit of illness from Tuesday, which seemed to have moved out of my throat and into my sinuses. But things felt pretty good, even with a touch of sickness and the increase in miles this week. The OUC Half is in two weeks, and I'm still feeling pretty good about it.

Total miles this week: 41.7

In which I run, or remember running

2010-11-14T13:32:00.002-05:00

1.
Monday, 4:00pm
Much of the XC team disbursed to other sports today, so it was a smaller group than we've had in a while. We ran the Easy Six and then tacked on a short loop at the end to make it a run of 6.75. Things felt pretty easy today overall, and Susan and Alli accused me of picking up a bit after the first three. Looking at the splits, it's true: I did. But the first three of that course are pretty hilly, so the effort actually felt easier in the second half.

2.
Tuesday, 4:15pm
Team practice was canceled today so the boarding students could have an afternoon study hall, so I ended up running solo: seven miles. Everything on the right side felt great, but everything on the left side felt less so: a nagging twinge in the calf, and manageable but steady pain in the hip--possibly the IT band. So I ran the seven, focused on getting my left foot under my body and landing mid-foot, and then came home and spent fifteen minutes with fifteen pounds of ice.

3.
Wednesday, 4:30pm
Easy four and a half today with the team--I ran in a group with Alli, Ciara, and Susan. Things felt pretty good, so the ice bath was a good idea, in spite of how unpleasant it was. Also, I got a rock in my shoe around two and a half miles in, so I had to run a pick up to get back with the group.

4.
Wednesday, 7:15pm
I dropped Hillary off at the dance studio and then ran three down by Lake Minneola. It doesn't show in my Garmin data I started out a little quick--felt like I was getting into anaerobic territory for maybe a minute, but got things under control and had a nice, smooth run.

5.
Thursday, 4:00pm
Seven and a quarter with the team. Things felt easy, especially considering it was the fourth consecutive day of running and that I've picked up both pace and distance this week. Pace was a little slower on Thursday than it was earlier this week, but hey, it's Thursday.

6.
Saturday, 1:30pm
Ten on the West Orange Trail. I was tempted to slow things down a little and go for twelve, but decided to stay focused on keeping the run to the upper end of my aerobic range--seventy-five or eighty percent--rather than going for more distance. It was tempting, though, knowing that forty for the week was in sight.

Total miles this week: 38.4

In which I list fifteen authors at the request of James Mayo

2010-11-08T18:48:00.003-05:00

1. J. M. Coetzee
2. Li-Young Lee
3. Walt Whitman
4. Michel Foucault
5. Homer
6. Henry David Thoreau
7. Jack Kerouac
8. Beth Ann Fennelly
9. Franz Kafka
10. Ralph Waldo Emerson
11. James Joyce
12. Flannery O'Connor
13. Brad Watson
14. Tennessee Williams
15. Allen Ginsberg

In which I express gratitude for a kind award nomination

2010-11-08T15:24:00.001-05:00

Many thanks are due from me to Justin Evans and his outstanding online journal, Hobble Creek Review.

My poem "Where It's Likely To Go Better" just received one of HCR's nominations for the 2011 Pushcart Prize. I'm very happy to be in such fine company--HCR's nominations this year also include work by Angie Macri, Jason Irwin, Rachel Bunting, Ryan Holden, and Jeff Newberry. I'm especially pleased to have my name alongside Jeff's, not only because our MA programs overlapped at West Florida but also because he's a heck of a nice guy and a heck of a writer.

If you're so inclined, you can read my poem at HCR and then listen to Nic Sebastian's reading of it at Whale Sound.

In which I consider the week's running

2010-11-07T11:04:00.001-05:00

1.
Monday, 4:15pm
I ran the Easy Six on Monday with the team, and coming off Saturday's eight, which felt great, my legs felt a little sluggish in the first mile or so, but then things became easy. Several of our XC runners were at JV soccer try-outs, so it was a smallish group, and many of the ones who were present were suffering a little from Halloween the night before: lousy food and not enough rest.

2.
Tuesday, 4:30pm
We had a team meeting to talk about this weekend's District Meet. And then, just as we started the warm-up for the 200-meter repeats they were scheduled to run, the bottom fell out of the sky. We were drenched, and everybody left.

3.
Tuesday, 5:15pm
I checked the radar after everybody left the track and saw that the rain wasn't nearly as heavy over in Orange County, so I headed over there and ran six in light rain. Not a particularly great run, since my shoes were heavy from the rain, but the second half felt a lot better than the first.

4.
Wednesday, 4:15pm
A very uneventful three easy miles on the track while the team was running the 200-meter repeats planned for Tuesday.

5.
Wednesday, 6:00 pm
Ran from the house, an easy four miles, but my legs were starting to feel that wear of three days in a row, especially since I ran a couple of strides with the team earlier in the afternoon. I do think it's worth mentioning a few things from this run. First, I saw a woman who looked possessed. Seriously, she made me afraid, stumbling on the trail, water bottle and white towel in hand, a wild look in her dark-ringed eyes. Second, I saw our Headmaster. And third, as I was headed home, just running easy on the mostly downhill return toward the neighborhood, a pair of sand hill cranes circled over the pasture by the trail, calling to each other.

6.
Thursday, 4:15pm
Easy two and a quarter on the short Montverde loop with the team. A very, very easy day for them before the District Meet on Saturday.

7.
Thursday, 6:00pm
I dropped Hillary off at dance--she's sick, but she went to watch so she doesn't get too far behind--and then went down to Lake Minneola and ran four along the lake, up through Minneola, almost to the trail head and then back. From the way my legs were feeling, it was pretty clearly Thursday, but I still managed to run 9:02, even with a pretty steady headwind all the way back. Pretty much all I could think about for the last mile was huevos rancheros.

8.
Saturday, 1:45pm
The XC team ran in the District Meet at the Villages in the morning. We'll only be advancing one runner to the Region Meet next weekend, but I couldn't really be much happier with how they've worked and progressed and run this season. After the race, we stopped by Crisper's, and I drank coffee while they ate, and everybody talked and generally had a nice time. After taking them back to school, I went down to Killarney Station and ran nine out to downtown Winter Garden and back. Things felt good, averaging an 8:30 pace with fairly even splits. The OUC Half is in roughly a month, so I'm feeling like I'll be able to improve a good deal from how I did there in 2008. I'd like to take at least five minutes off, but right now, I'm feeling like it'll be possible to take off ten, or maybe even more.

Total miles this week: 34.6

One of my poems is at PANK. More are forthcoming.

2010-11-03T15:28:00.005-04:00

1.
I already mentioned this over at Facebook and Twitter, but I've got four poems forthcoming in the next print edition of PANK Magazine. You can get a peek at the first of them online here.

2.
Of course, I hope you'll want to read the others, and that you'll order your very own copy of PANK 5.

3.
You'll find the rest of the line-up for PANK 5 (which looks pretty awesome, I must say) here.

4.
Maybe it's worth mentioning that these four poems at PANK are from the same series as these poems at >kill author.

P.S.
I don't know if this sways you to order a copy of the issue, and I don't know that writers should really have favorites from their own work. But one of the four poems is my favorite. It's about this guy.

Number 9. Number 9. Number 9.

2010-10-29T09:25:00.000-04:00

That's right. We released Issue Nine of Willows Wept Review this morning, and I'm really anxious for people to read it--I'm excited about the great work that people sent us for this issue.

Whale Sound

2010-10-26T20:05:00.001-04:00

There's a poem of mine included today at Whale Sound, the excellent online audio project of Nic Sebastian. The poem is "Where It's Likely To Go Better," which was recently published in Justin Evans's journal, Hobble Creek Review.

I'm very grateful to Nic for including my work in this project, and also fascinated, listening to her reading of the poem. For me, the writing process often involves a great deal of reading aloud, thinking about the cadence, the rhythm of the lines, so it's interesting (and quite wonderful) to hear what she's done with it.

(My apologies to Roger Rosenblatt, of course, who told a group of us a couple of weeks ago that a writer should not think about the sound of the words. I respectfully disagree.)

Dear America

2010-10-16T20:26:00.000-04:00

Please stop eating fast food and watching so much darn television.

It's Saturday

2010-10-16T17:16:00.005-04:00

1.
I spent most of the afternoon nursing a cup of coffee and proofing the forthcoming issue of Willows Wept Review. I'm really excited and grateful to get to read such great work.

2.
The first quarter ended this week at school. I know it's a feeling that will soon end, but it feels like there's a little space to breathe, so I'm enjoying it, even if it's only for a moment.

3.
There are some cool things happening over at Vouched.

4.
Three of the last five weeks, I've run in the mid-twenties. I'm starting to feel like a runner again.

5.
Now, I have to resist the urge to jump to the mid-thirties too quickly. I know how that ends: illness, injury.

6.
But still, it's so tough not to run when you start to feel fit again.

7.
We saw Azure Ray last week at The Social. They were good, but the best part was discovering Dead Fingers, a new band made up of Taylor Hollingsworth and Kate Taylor.

Not To Rain on your Facebook Parade, But

2010-10-06T19:39:00.000-04:00

I'm pretty sure your Facebook status won't cure cancer.

No matter how titillating it might be.

Matt Bell and Beautiful Weather

2010-10-05T13:27:00.004-04:00

Just two quick things.

1. Matt Bell's excellent collection How They Were Found was released today by Keyhole. If you haven't ordered a copy of this book yet, you really should. If you need some convincing, you can check out early praise and reviews at Matt's website, including my review of the book for PANK.

2. The weather these days is beautiful. It makes me feel like running, pretty much all the time.

New Poem at Turk's Head Review

2010-09-27T11:44:00.003-04:00

I have a new poem up today over at Turk's Head Review. I know that if your Monday is anything like mine, you're pretty busy, but I'd be much obliged if you'd take a moment to slide over there and give it a read.

Many thanks to James Esch, who edits THR, and to Chelsea Wardlaw, who wrote a poem a while back--a couple of years ago, actually--that prompted the writing of this one.

In Which I Mention Eleven Mostly Unrelated Things

2010-09-23T12:00:00.008-04:00

1.
I have been buried under a mountain of grading. The end is not quite in sight, but I'm trying to tell myself it is.

2.
I lost my favorite pen the other day. It's nothing fancy: a blue Waterman Phileas that I bought specifically because it wasn't particularly expensive for an everyday fountain pen. At the time, I thought it wouldn't matter much if I lost it, since it didn't cost that much. But after using it for the better part of a decade, I rather miss it.

3.
I locked myself away last night and made most of the final decisions about pieces for the fall issue of Willows Wept Review. Some tough decisions, but I'm very excited about the work we're going to be able to include in this upcoming issue.

4.
Class officer elections can be ridiculous. Have you seen those movies about how ridiculous high school elections can become? They're not far from truth.

Unfortunately.

5.
I wish that I could say that "real-world" elections were less ridiculous.

However, I don't want to lie to you.

6.
If you haven't checked out Vouched Books, please do. I'm contributing over there.

7.
I waited 224 days for a form rejection from a journal.

To save you the trouble of waiting 224 days for your own form rejection, I'll go ahead and share it with you here:

Dear Writer:

We appreciate the opportunity to read your work, but unfortunately this submission was not a right fit for XXXXXXXXXX.

Thank you for trying us.

Sincerely,

The Editors of XXXXXXXXXX

8.
I was not surprised when I discovered that the journal referred to in #7 has the following distinction over at Duotrope's Digest:

This market ranks among the 25 Most Slothful Poetry Markets.

9.
Much of what I've been writing lately includes these statements:

You must support your claims with quoted evidence from the text.
Begin your paragraph with this idea.
Combine these ideas to form a single sentence.
You use many phrases from the text, but you do not demonstrate your understanding of them.

10.
The pen I lost? I found it. It's frustrating and wonderful the way that you find things sometimes just as soon as you stop looking for them.

11.
I had a pretty great run today.

New Poem at HCR

2010-09-13T20:05:00.003-04:00

I have a new poem up over at Hobble Creek Review, one based loosely on a poem by Robert Frost. Many thanks to Justin Evans for including it--it's an honor to be included in such a fine online journal (twice!). It's interesting for me to read that piece again, since it's loaded with the imagery from a place where we no longer live.

If you're so inclined (and I hope you are), you can read it, along with the rest of the issue, here.

PS. I'm not going to tell you which Frost poem it is. Really, it's pretty darn obvious. Really.

Postman: Building a Bridge

2010-09-08T20:40:00.004-04:00

I just finished reading Neil Postman's Building a Bridge to the 18th Century: How the Past Can Improve Our Future:

What will happen if a student, studying history, asks, "Whose history is this?" What will happen if a student, having been given a definition (of anything) asks, "Who made up this definition? Are there other ways to define this thing?" What will happen if a student, being given a set of facts, asks, "What is a fact? How is it different from an opinion? And who is the judge?" What happens, of course, is that students not only learn "history," "definitions," and "facts" (which Bloom and Hirsch want them to learn) but also to learn where these things come from and why (which Bloom and Hirsch don't care about). Such learning is at the heart of reasoning and its product, skepticism. Do we dare do such a thing? (162)

And

If parents wish to preserve childhood for their own children, they must conceive of parenting as an act of rebellion against culture. . . . most rebellious of all is the attempt to control the media's access to one's children. (129)

And

The most obvious question to be asked about any new technology . . . is, What is the problem to which this technology is the solution?

This question needs to be asked because there are technologies that are employed--indeed, invented--to solve problems that no normal person would regard as significant. Of course, any technology can be marketed to create an illusion of significance, but an intelligent, aware person need not believe it.

Notes on Tuesday

2010-08-03T16:24:00.003-04:00

1.
Did I tell you that my review of Matt Bell's How They Were Found is up over at PANK? It's kind of old news by now, I know, but I don't think I told you.

My favorite comment so far on it is this one:

Thank you for sharing this. I’m always looking for valuable resources to share with clients and my coworkers, and this article is certainly worth sharing!

What does that even mean?

2.
I read this today:

Standing there I wondered how much of what we had felt on the bridge was just hunger. I asked my wife and she said, "I don't know, Tatie. There are so many sorts of hunger. In the spring there are more. But that's gone now. Memory is hunger."

Hemingway's pretty freaking amazing sometimes.

3.
I went running yesterday afternoon. I took all of July off from running--not deliberately; I was just being lazy. It's pretty tough to get acclimated to the heat when the temperature is pushing double digits and you're out of shape. I'm going to run again today.

4.
I got a new desk at school. It's not as nice as the one that Melissa bought for me a few years back, but it's pretty nice. And it's got nice big drawers.

5.
There is no number five for this post.

6.
Chris Lutz is writing with us over at Willows Wept Review. Today, he wrote something titled I guess we’re just more fond of the British than the Maltese.

7.
Evidently, some people think this is a new punctuation mark.~

The News Today

2010-08-02T16:01:00.000-04:00

I turned on the news this morning on the drive in to work, NPR's Morning Edition, to hear a story about the drug war in Mexico.

For a minute, I was engaged.

But then I found myself wondering, Why am I listening to this? How will this inform whatever decisions I'll make today?

Or to frame the question more precisely: Is this news or entertainment?

So I pressed the button and enjoyed a bit of Conor Oberst's Cassadaga during the rest of my drive.

WWR: Issue Eight

2010-08-02T13:20:00.003-04:00

I'm a couple days late mentioning it here, but the eighth issue of Willows Wept Review is up at our entirely redesigned new website.

Stop on over and give it a read, will you?

Turk's Head Review and Other Friday Notes

2010-07-02T09:31:00.000-04:00

1.
I have a poem up at Turk's Head Review this morning.

2.
Have you pre-ordered Matt Bell's How They Were Found yet?

What are you waiting for? An invitation? Well then, consider yourself invited.

3.
We're halfway through with our summer session today, and I'm really looking forward to the weekend. I haven't had a real day off in something like three and a half weeks.

4.
There's an interesting conversation about community and independent publishing going on over at Annalemma. Bits of that conversation are also over at HTMLG and BIG OTHER.

5.
Could I get you to read Brad Watson's latest collection of stories?

6.
I know that news in The Onion isn't usually meant to be taken literally. But increasingly, I think that maybe this report from The Onion is absolutely true.

When All our Days Are Numbered

2010-06-25T16:07:00.006-04:00

I've got a review of Sasha Fletcher's excellent novella When All our Days Are Numbered Marching Bands Will Fill the Streets & We Will Not Hear Them Because We Will Be Upstairs in the Clouds over at PANK.

If you haven't read this book, you should. You can pick up a copy over at Mud Luscious Press.

New Poems in >ka and Writers' Bloc

2010-06-25T08:02:00.005-04:00

I have two poems in the latest issue of Writers' Bloc.

And three poems in the latest issue of > kill author. The issue is named after Flannery O'Connor. Years ago, when we visited O'Connor's childhood home in Savannah, the docent took us upstairs to the then-unrestored bedrooms. I remember standing in the young Flannery's room, staring out her window onto the square, imagining what it must have been like for her to live in that room while her father fought lupus in the next, probably knowing or at least suspecting that she would share his fate.

Also, the editors of >ka kindly noted this connection on their blog.

Ceci N'est Pas Une Blog Post

2010-05-20T16:52:00.003-04:00

It's my Birthday. Please Buy Yourself a Present.

2010-03-26T06:40:00.001-04:00

Well, it's my birthday today, so let me encourage you to buy yourself something. More particularly, let me encourage you to buy yourself a book. Even more particularly, let me encourage you to buy yourself a book from any one of the many fine small presses out there. Really, it's your choice: buy any book you want, so long as it's from a small press. Small presses need our support, financial and otherwise--they're vital to contemporary literature, taking risks that the bigger publishing houses won't take, and helping new voices be heard. And often, they just make really nice books.

Of course, you could pick up a copy of my new chapbook from Greying Ghost Press. (Sorry, I couldn't resist the plug. Please forgive me: it's my birthday, after all.) But you could also check out the other titles available there. Or, if you've got a bit of time to look at some options, you might check out Small Press Distribution or Press Press Press.

Addendum: I really, really hope you'll buy something from a small press. But if you don't buy a book from a small press, at the very least, buy yourself a good book today. Get yourself a good copy of Homer or something. (No, not that Homer. I mean The Odyssey or The Iliad.)I'm serious. Stop reading Dan Brown and all of that schlock, and read something good.

On Sleeping and Not Sleeping

2010-03-24T11:03:00.004-04:00

Yesterday, I overslept for the first time in a long time. I woke up, saw there was daylight, and knew that something was horribly wrong. It was 7:14. It takes 18 minutes to drive to school if I catch the light. I'm supposed to be there by 7:30. You do the math.

I still don't know what happened. Either (a) I was so tired that I slept through the alarm not once, but twice, or (b) the alarm on my phone just didn't go off. I'm suspecting it was (b), only because later in the day, my phone stopped connecting to the internet, refused to send text messages, etc., and had to be rebooted.

So this morning, of course, I wake up at 5:04 and can't go back to sleep because I'm afraid the alarm won't go off.

In other news, I've been reading Christopher Higgs's new novel, The Complete Works of Marvin K. Mooney. A review of it will be forthcoming, I think. I'll recommend that you read it, but if you've never taken a theory class, maybe not. Maybe, but maybe not. I mean, if you've got no idea about rhizomes, maybe not. But still, maybe.

In still other news, it looks like we have the housing thing figured out. It looks like the beginning of April will be goodbye, quaint downtown, and hello, ticky tacky. But it'll be a good thing, I think. More on that later.

The Volta: Not a Bridge, but a Turn

2010-03-18T19:31:00.000-04:00

This morning, I wrote this on Twitter and Facebook:

Let me say it again: The volta is not a bridge; it is a turn.

Almost immediately, I heard from Molly Gaudry, who wrote:

I asked a bunch of poets once about the turn and nobody gave me a satisfactory answer.

Molly, here's my attempt at an answer for you. I don't know if it'll be satisfactory, but I'll try.

Typically, we associate the volta with the sonnet, and we think about it as the turning point of poem. And typically, that turn happens in line nine: either at the beginning of the sestet of a Petrarchan sonnet or at the beginning of the third quatrain of a Shakespearean one.

As a first example, here's Shelley's "Ozymandias."

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

It's in line nine, with the introduction of the pedestal's inscription, that the poem turns toward its powerful and ironic conclusion. The inscription doesn't connect the "lone and level sands" of the poem's last line to the image of the statue from the poem's beginning; instead, it gives us a different perspective from which to understand that image.

Zachary Schomburg wrote about the volta this way in a prompt he offered over at Read Write Poem:

Almost all sonnets have some kind of volta, some turn of logic about three-quarters of the way through the poem (depending on whether it is Petrarchian or Shakespearean) that puts the poem’s last lines in emotional, narrative, conceptual contrast with what preceded them. It is where the poem gets turned on its head never to return to its original uprightness; it is where the poem hinges. I believe that without some sort of volta, a poem falls flat and is one-dimensional because it has nothing to butt up against.

Although we usually associate the volta with the sonnet (and especially with line nine of the sonnet), I think he's right in saying that all poems need this turn, what he calls a hinge here. Even if a poem has momentum, if it lacks the turn, it will often seem predictable, narrative, or (in its most extreme) trite.

There's a John Darnielle lyric that describes "a stomach-churning shift / In the way the land lies," and I often think of the volta in those terms.

As another example, consider Dickinson's "Success is counted sweetest."

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple Host
Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of Victory

As he defeated -- dying --
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!

Although clearly not a sonnet, this poem does include a turn in line nine. It's not until that moment ("As he defeated -- dying --") that we really understand what the poem's getting at when it makes its initial claim about success. This line moves the eye of the poem from the field of victory to that of defeat and death, and it is in its focus on the dying man who hears the sounds of the victorious celebrations of his enemy that the poem's claim about success becomes clear.

Dickinson's volta here doesn't connect or reconcile the image of defeat in the last stanza to anything earlier in the poem so much as it turns the poem's eye to another place, a different perspective--a "stomach churning shift," if you will--from which we can look back at the poem's first stanza and know something more of what is really meant by "sorest need." In other words, if we think about the path of a poem as more or less linear, the volta turns the path of this poem so that we can look back and see the poem's opening from a different perspective, from a slant.

Or, as a more contemporary example, consider Mark Doty's poem "A Display of Mackerel." It's in the tenth and eleventh stanzas that we find the turn:

Suppose we could iridesce,

like these, and lose ourselves
entirely in the universe
of shimmer...

Before this moment, the poem is simply about mackerel. Beautifully written, yes, but just fish. But the turn here is toward the self, toward the question of individuality:

...would you want

to be yourself only,
unduplicatable, doomed
to be lost?

Without the turn inward, away from fish and toward the imagining of humans as fish, the poem's conclusion, which sees the fish as "together, selfless, / which is the price of gleaming" would mean little. With that turn, however, the poem has great power, because we have left the line of thinking of fish and turned toward ourselves, and when we see the fish again, we see them from this different place, a place in which we try to insert ourselves in their position.

In this sense, the volta is not a bridge between the beginning and end of the poem. It is not a way of reconciling where we end up with where we begin.

Rather, it is a turn that forces us to reconsider the place from which we came. Our understanding of the poem before the turn is changed by the turn, not because of a logical connecting of the things, but because of the construction of a different perspective. We turn, and from this new direction, we are able to see the place from which we came with new eyes.

It's Not That I Don't Want To Talk To You

2010-03-17T20:20:00.004-04:00

I know it's been a few days. It's not that I don't want to talk to you. It's just that it's been busy.

Track season. Six classes. Four preps. Getting the Academy's lit mag out. Dance competitions. Looking for a place to live. Writing like a loaded gun. Grading a stack of papers that keeps growing. Reading, but not enough--that stack keeps growing, too. And missing sleep.

And It's Thursday

2010-03-11T11:19:00.007-05:00

1.
Ruthless editing this afternoon.

2.
Dear Students,

Just so we're clear:

If you don't pay attention in class, please don't ask for my help after class.

If you do, please do.

3.
This post from The Onion reminded me a lot of what it feels like to be an English teacher on a bad day.

4.
Inexplicably, The pinky finger of my left hand keeps sticking down on the shift key this afternoon, so when I capitalize the first letter of a word, I get a couple extra letters capitalized. LIKe this.

Annoying.

5.
It's my brother's birthday. I wish I could make fun of him for being old, but I'm older, so I can't.

Wolf Parts. Be a Patron of the Arts. And Three Other Things.

2010-03-09T19:01:00.000-05:00

1.
Without a doubt, the most-shared item in Google Reader so far this year: the article from Keyhole Press about Matt Bell's Wolf Parts.

At least, that's the most-shared item in my Google Reader so far this year. Maybe yours involved Tiger Woods, or a picture of a cute bunny, or something. I don't know.

2.
Want to be a patron of the arts?

Molly Gaudry will write a poem for you for only one dollar. I'm not kidding.

3.
You may not have noticed, but I changed the address of this blog a few days ago. If you've got the site bookmarked (hi, Melissa!), you might want to update your bookmark. If you don't, no worries--the old address will redirect you to the new one. But it'll probably load a little faster, and I'm not sure how long that automatic redirection will work.

4.
Great run today with the distance runners at school: we explored a new course. I suspected it would be hilly, but luckily, it turned out to be even more hilly than I expected.

5.
I'm feeling pretty good about the poems I've been writing lately--they seem, as a group, to be headed in a worthwhile direction. One consequence of that feeling is that I feel like I need to be writing right now. And now. And now. And, oh yes, now, too.

Instead, though, I have to iron some clothes for work and then do a bit of reading to prepare for tomorrow's classes.

Muffins. PANK Review. Editing Shadows. Hobo Dryer.

2010-03-08T14:17:00.002-05:00

1.
I made a huge batch of ultra-healthy muffins this morning. I mean huge. Like five dozen muffins.

2.

My review of A Cake Appeared, the new collection from Shane Jones, is up over at the PANK blog.

3.
We had the day off from school today, so a good portion of my day was spent working on the next edition of Shadows from the Bell Tower, the literary magazine at the Academy where I teach.

Working on our magazine always gives me a renewed appreciation for editors the world over.

4.
We have the most ridiculous dryer in the world.

We used to have a very reliable middle-of-the-road dryer. You know, one that costs a few hundred bucks and does what it's supposed to do: dry your clothes.

But then my brother moved, and there was a big swapping of dryers, and we ended up with this quite expensive thing that used to be my mom's.

And here's what it does. If you put anything large--say, a towel or a blanket or a sheet--in it, it will take all of the other clothes, put them in the middle of the towel or whatever, wrap them up, and tie itself into a gigantic knot. You think I'm kidding, but if you ever wondered how hobos got all their belongings wrapped up in one piece of fabric so they could carry it on the end of a stick, I'm pretty sure it was our dryer that made that possible.

Here, I Mention Ten (Mostly) Unrelated Things

2010-03-06T16:14:00.004-05:00

1.
Last night and this morning, I read and reviewed Shane Jones's new book, A Cake Appeared. More details on the review in the near future, but if you haven't ordered a copy yet, you probably should go ahead and do that now.

2.
Ah, the weather. This is what the sky looks like right now:

Actually, to be honest, I took that a half an hour ago while I was outside reading student essays. But it still looks much the same.

3.
I'm looking forward to tomorrow.

4.
I'm often amazed at the stupidity of people.

At this point, I supposed I've lived long enough that I shouldn't be so surprised, but still, I am.

5.
I had the day off yesterday, so we spent much of the day shopping for a prom dress for Hillary. Several stops that were (shall we say) interesting, but at the end of the day, success.

I'd post a picture or something, but I'm sworn to secrecy.

6.
While we were out, we stopped by Barnes & Noble in the hopes that I could pick up a copy of Brad Watson's new collection of stories, Aliens in the Prime of their Lives.

Here's what's puzzling: the folks at Barnes & Noble don't have the book and say that it won't be released until the 22nd. But both Amazon and Norton appear to be selling (and shipping) the book already. Hmm.

7.
It's time to order coffee again.

8.
Did I mention that I'm looking forward to tomorrow?

9.
I'm not convinced that Google Buzz is of any use.

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you're reading this, right now, in Buzz. If that's the case, will you let me know?

10.
There's an interesting (although not surprising) graphic over at The Consumerist about government subsidies and why a salad costs more than a Big Mac.

I, for one, wouldn't eat a Big Mac if it were free, but I think the graphic points to something important and too often ignored: the American government (read, "the American taxpayer") pays to make this sort of food cheap, at great profit to a select group of corporations.

That, I think, is evil.

Paradox? Coincidence?

2010-03-05T20:28:00.004-05:00

I think the picture speaks for itself.

Five Things on a Thursday That Feels like Friday

2010-03-03T20:24:00.009-05:00

1.
I woke up this morning to an email from an editor with good news. That's always a nice way to start the day.

2.
While taking a vocabulary quiz today,

Student #1:

These words suck.

Me:

I'm pretty sure it's your understanding of the words. Not the words.

Student #2:

Oh, he just made an educated diss.

3.
Dear students,

While I am reading your essays about Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself," I will automatically assign a grade of 'F' to any essay that includes either of the following phrases:

"circle of life"
"Lion King"

I am not even kidding. As soon as I hear Elton John and Tim Rice in the background, you're done.

4.
Look, there aren't going to be five things, so you should just stop reading now. I put "five things" in the title to try to motivate myself to write five things, but I just finished teaching a half day of classes (which is really nearly as much effort as teaching a full day of classes), and then I had a few meetings, and now I'm pretty tired. So that's all you're going to get.

5.
No, I was serious. You should have stopped reading after number three. Really.

Barry Remembered by Brad Remembered by Me

2010-03-03T19:51:00.006-05:00

I read an article about Barry Hannah's death today, one in which they quote Brad Watson. Brad talks about being Barry's student:

Sometimes, Barry would come in with a stadium cup of bourbon and Coke. . . . We’d throw the windows open and everybody was smoking cigarettes . . . and we’d get down to it.

Reading that made me think of a night back in late 2002. I was a student in Brad's fiction workshop at the University of West Florida that semester, and he took all of us to The Fish House, a restaurant down by the docks in Pensacola. Except we didn't go into the restaurant: somehow, somebody in the class knew somebody at the restaurant, and we ended up with a private room upstairs. As I remember it, it was on the corner of the building, and we did throw the windows open, and although nobody smoked indoors, I'm sure Brad stepped outside at least once or twice to roll and smoke a cigarette. There might have been a little bourbon. At least, there was a bit of beer. There was a lot of talk about writing. It was a great night.

Here Are Seven Things about Monday

2010-03-01T15:25:00.002-05:00

1.
Dear Jehovah's Witness person,

Please stop approaching me at the gas station. Really, I'm not interested. And by the way, nobody's impressed with your ability to swoop in, try to give your magazine to somebody, and leave before anybody there has a chance to have you trespassed from the premises. We see it as slick and manipulative, not skillful. (I mean slick as in slimy, not slick as in polished.)

And as long as we're having this conversation, please stop lying about the magazine that you're trying to hand me. It's really not about "safe driving tips" or "helping people deal with depression." I'm pretty sure the Bible says something about lying. Maybe instead of stopping by the gas station tomorrow, you should stay home and look that up.

2.
For the record, forty-four degrees and rainy is no way to spend your Saturday.

Yes, I know that this post is titled "Here Are Seven Things about Monday," and that I'm only on #2, and I'm already saying something about Saturday. But there are parts of me that are still cold after Saturday's track meet.

3.
After this weekend, I have an entirely new vocabulary for thinking about poetry.

4.
Michael Bible's chapbook Gorilla Math is now available from Greying Ghost Press. Ordering information is here and here; cover images are here.

5.
My copy of A Cake Appeared by Shane Jones is making its way to me as I write this.

6.
The ESL students in the classroom next door to mine have been listening to something today. For the life of me, I can't figure out what it is, other than loud, dramatic, and sometimes angry.

I've been teaching section six of "Song of Myself" today, so it's been a little tough at moments to explain what it means when Whitman writes,

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!

while there's this loud and sometimes angry recorded voice coming from the next room.

7.
Running plan for today's practice:

1. Run away for half an hour.

2. Now run back.

On Parent Conferences

2010-02-28T11:00:00.002-05:00

On Friday afternoon, we had parent conferences at school, and I wanted to mention this. I didn't include it in Friday's bit, though, because that post was titled "In Which I Say Five, Make That Six, Things about Today That Might Be Slightly Impolite." Adding one more thing would have made it seven. And I don't think that this thing is in any way impolite.

Anyway, here's the thing. Parent conferences are always better when you're brutally honest. And I mean brutally. Honest.

I'm not sure if I should write, "Not only are they more productive, but they're more interesting," or if I should write, "Not only are they more interesting, but they're more productive." But either way.

Probably, that's true about more things than just parent conferences.

In Which I Say Five, Make That Six, Things about Today That Might Be Slightly Impolite

2010-02-26T19:48:00.006-05:00

1.
Dear mother pushing the over-sized shopping cart that includes a race-car extension containing two somewhat unruly children:

Perhaps you should not take your eighteen items into the ten-items-or-fewer line. Perhaps if you went to the regular check-out line, you would not feel so exasperated.

2.
AP English Language essays are scored on a 9-point scale. I gave my first score of 8 so far this year tonight for a student essay that derides the prose of Dan Brown, Christopher Paolini, and Stephanie Meyer.

3.
Yesterday, Johnathan Williams wrote, "Only a career in telemarketing could add more rejection to my life."

For the record, if we consider it in terms of percentages, I was much more successful during my brief stint as a telemarketer working for one of the schools I attended. In my experience, getting people to read and publish your work is far more difficult than getting people to give you money.

What's the lesson there? Maybe it's that poetry editors are much less gullible than most folks.

4.
And, speaking of getting people to give you money, at what point do we draw a line between Girl Scouts asking for money outside the supermarket and outright panhandling?

I know there's a line there, and I know it involves cookies, but still.

5.
And, speaking of rejection, I'll say this: most of the time, when I get one of those polite thank-you-but-no emails from an editor, I'm a little disappointed but also very grateful for the time the editor spent reading and perhaps commenting on my work. But today, I got one that made me want to click 'reply' and ask,

Are you kidding me? Did you read what I sent you, or did you happen to be looking away and just hit the button to send the form rejection? Maybe your phone rang. Or you were texting. Or you reached down to get a swig of your Mountain Dew. Because, seriously, I've read your journal, and it's good, but it's not that good.

I didn't, but I sure felt like it.

6.
Yoko Ono is now following me on Twitter.

Do the math: 789,124 people follow Yoko Ono, and Yoko Ono follows 231,720 people. That means that Yoko Ono follows only 29.36% of the people who follow her. Yoko Ono is insanely famous. Should I take this as a sign of my own impending stardom? That Yoko Ono includes me in the less than one-third of people to whom she listens via social media?

Probably not. But still, it's fewer than one in three. And that's saying something.

Publishing and Profit

2010-02-24T17:44:00.001-05:00

Two recent events:

1. Several students in my poetry class seemed amazed when I told them that I was not making money publishing a chapbook. They were similarly amazed when I told them that, at the end of the process, after printing and shipping costs were paid, neither I nor the press would stand to turn a profit (or much of one). Some of them were resistant to the thought of publishing either (a) for the sake of the work or (b) as part of the long-term career of the writer.

2. One of my former students recently got a job. As I understand it, here's the story: the person doing the hiring searched for his name in Google and found poetry that the student had published in an online literary magazine I edited last year. Based at least in part on the merits of that work, he was offered the position.

Emerson and Black Holes

2010-02-24T10:32:00.000-05:00

Every time I teach Emerson, I'm struck by the difficulty of articulating what it is, exactly, that he's writing about. I mean both the difficulty that I have in articulating it, and the difficulty that he has.

Of course, Emerson himself describes it in "Self-Reliance" as "that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go." By his own definition, he's working with something that is undefinable. It's something intuitive; therefore, it's something that comes before all teaching; therefore, it's something that comes before language; and therefore, it's something that cannot be expressed.

Instead, it's as if Emerson's attempts to define the intuition, what he calls the genius, work like the attempts of scientists to define black holes. No light escapes the black hole, so it cannot be seen, but by tracing the edges, by finding the boundaries of light, we attempt to know the thing we cannot peer into.

Whitman writes, "You shall listen to all sides, and filter them from yourself."

When You Get an Email from Roxane Gay...

2010-02-23T20:57:00.000-05:00

...you can't help but be a touch hopeful.

Especially if you're a writer. And especially if the subject line is "Congrats!"

You just can't help it. Crazy things, like you hope for just a second that she's about to tell you that they want to publish not just what you've submitted, but everything you've ever written. And do you have a manuscript you could send? And then some.

But of course, it wasn't that.

It was, however, good news from Roxane. I won a drawing for a free copy of Kim Parko's Cure All today.

Feeling Sluggish

2010-02-23T20:01:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, I ran for the first time in two weeks: strep throat, coupled with a bit of a sinus infection and a touch of bronchitis. I wish I could say that it kept me home, but the truth is, I missed one day of classes and a half-day of meetings. Other than that, I was in the classroom. Or home in bed. Or, occasionally, on the couch.

But it did keep me away from running, and now everything feels sluggish and tired and sore.

I just keep telling myself to do the work, even though it would be so easy not to: I keep telling myself that the work hurts, but the work will bring results.

There's Not a Day That Goes By...

2010-02-22T15:17:00.001-05:00

...when I don't think about this man.

Not in years. Not in decades.

Springtime Pre-Order

2010-02-22T11:32:00.002-05:00

My chapbook Springtime Sea Bathing is now available for pre-order from Greying Ghost Press here: http://airforcejoyride.com/spring.

For a limited time, you can get my book along with books by Michael Bible and Jon Cone for a discounted price--all three for fifteen bucks, which is a mighty fine deal if I do say so myself.

Brooklyn Copeland at Cellpoems

2010-02-21T20:15:00.000-05:00

Brooklyn Copeland has a new poem up at Cellpoems.

I'd give you an excerpt, but it's on Cellpoems, so it's short, so just click the link, ok?

Odysseus and Penelope

2010-02-21T10:48:00.003-05:00

I finished reading The Odyssey again yesterday--this time, I re-read the prose translation by E. V. Rieu.

Here's the best moment from this time through the book:

Once more Athene of the flashing eyes took thought on his behalf. Not till she was satisfied that he had had his fill of love and sleep in his wife's arms, did she arouse the lazy Dawn to leave her golden throne by Ocean Stream and to bring daylight to the world.

Of course, there's a different "best moment of the book" every time I read it, but this time, that was it.

Chapbook Update

2010-02-19T20:34:00.002-05:00

From Carl's blog, update #0219210:

Books by Michael Bible, Jon Cone, & Troy Urquhart are or currently will be in the process of being built. Michael's just needs ink on the covers and string in its spine. The other two come back from the printer early next week. This un-related triptych will be immense. Hold on to your hats.

Ah, I'm super excited now.

People, prepare to pre-order. (Please.)

Who's Your Daddy: More South Lake Press Buffoonery

2010-02-12T15:57:00.004-05:00

It's been a while since I've written about the horrible problems in the South Lake Press.

It isn't because there haven't been problems. For instance, I didn't say a thing about their article last week about the MAIT basketball tournament. Well, to be fair, I did post a vague mention of errors in the South Lake Press on Twitter. But I didn't make a big deal of it, even though they wrote this:

Daniel Katuka, who scored five points in the third, contributed to the comeback.

In the opening seconds of the fourth quarter, a pair of free throws by Katuka gave Montverde a 45-44 lead -- the Eagles first advantage since the second quarter.

That's very clearly false. A more accurate report of Daniel Katuka's actions during the third and fourth quarters would go like this:

Daniel Katuka, wearing jeans on the Montverde sidelines, cheered enthusiastically for his teammates during the third and fourth quarters.

Because the thing is, Daniel Katuka didn't play in that game.

Anyway, that error isn't nearly as bad (I almost wrote "provocative") as this one, which is from an article in the Community section of today's edition titled "Trying Something New in the Bedroom." The article's written by Tori Kelley, Ph.D.

Now, I'm going to resist all the temptations to say something crass here. (I mean, how is it that this headline makes it to the front page of one of the sections of the local paper?) And I'm going to resist critiquing any of the advice that they give this poor guy (who styles himself "Who's Your Daddy") (I'm not even kidding). No, I'm not going to take the bait and write about Dr. Kelley's advice "to pretend in your imagination that the two of you are doing something different, while you are being intimate with her." Nope, I'm not going to touch that one.

Instead, I'm just going to point out the importance of choosing the correct subordinating conjunction:

Take a bath together, where you put the kids to bed, light the candles, and pick out soft music, then scoop her up and put her in the tub.

My students will, of course, be drawn immediately to the comma splice, that error above all errors that even a lowly high-school sophomore would avoid at all costs, but I'll let that one go for now.

Not because it isn't wrong, but because it isn't funny.

Of course a comma splice is wrong, horribly wrong--and it's not the only one in the article--but what's funny here is the incorrect subordinating conjunction. What's funny is telling Mr. "Who's Your Daddy" to take a bath where he puts the kids to bed. Especially when it's the clear intention of Mr. "Who's Your Daddy" to put the moves (and, from the sounds of it, he has something kinky in mind that she just doesn't dig) on his wife.

Now, I don't have a Ph.D., so maybe you want to listen to Dr. Kelley instead of me, but I'm going to suggest taking a bath when you put the kids to bed. Or maybe after. But to each his own, I suppose. If getting all soapy and sexy where your kids sleep is what Dr. Tori Kelley is into, who am I to judge?

On Answer Keys

2010-02-10T17:50:00.000-05:00

It doesn't happen often, but it happens. Somebody--usually a zealous parent or a tutor of one of my students--asks me for an answer key. Or (and I don't know if this is worse) a teacher's manual (yes, probably it's worse).

I try to be nice about it, but here's the thing.

<rant>
I rarely use anyone else's curriculum when I teach.

Or, to be more accurate, I do a great deal of research and reading, and then I create my own curriculum based on that research and reading, drawing on the best ideas from a wide array of sources and combining them with my own ideas.

The very few times in my teaching career that I've followed someone else's curriculum for any length of time--say, for more than two or three days--I've regretted it. And, if we're going to be honest here, I really feel that if you can't create your own curriculum and materials for a class, then perhaps you shouldn't be teaching that class.

It's sadly ironic to me that we make such a fuss in education about teaching students to read widely and synthesize what they read, yet so many teachers copy-and-paste from pre-fabricated curriculum guides. To give you what I hope is an extreme example: I know of at least one English teacher who actually copied his (or her) quiz questions from SparkNotes. I'm not even kidding.

So please, parents and tutors, stop asking. What I teach is based on more than a decade of personal effort, and while I won't make any claim that it's the best curriculum in the world, I will say this: I don't copy it out of a lousy book.
</rant>

Walden and The Bean-Field

2010-02-02T09:00:00.000-05:00

At the conclusion of "The Bean-Field," Henry David Thoreau writes:

The true husbandman will cease from anxiety, as the squirrels manifest no concern whether the woods will bear chestnuts this year or not, and finish his labor with every day, relinquishing all claim to the produce of his fields, and sacrificing in his mind not only his first but his last fruits also.

I'm telling my students today that if they understand this sentence, then they understand the better part of Thoreau.

Teaching Philosophy

2010-02-01T13:16:00.001-05:00

If I'm ever asked about my teaching philosophy, there are a few things that I hope that I remember to say. It rarely happens--or I should say, almost never happens--that anybody asks, though. They ask about class sizes, or SAT scores, or homework loads, or grades, or something like that. I tell them the class sizes are below average, the test scores are above average, the work load is more than you think, and the grades, well, that's a mixed bag. And this seems to satisfy them.

But they almost never ask about your philosophy when it comes to teaching.

If anybody does ask, though, I hope I'll tell them a few things. I hope I'll say that I believe that technology should never drive curriculum. I certainly don't oppose the use of available technology when it can enhance teaching; in fact, I see many ways in which technology can benefit teachers and students. But I don't think that we should change the way that we teach students based on the latest new-fangled gadget. And, historically speaking, they're all new-fangled gadgets. Unless, of course, you're referring to that pen in your hand or a piece of paper.

I hope I'll say that I don't think that available resources or facilities should drive curriculum. These things may be obstacles to getting the work done, but they should not alter our goals.

And especially if it's a parent who's asking, I hope I'll have the nerve to say that parents shouldn't drive curriculum, either. The parent who entrusts his or her child to me should do just that--trust me with the education of the child. Truly, I am not really here to explain methods, or to rationalize, or to make anyone feel better about the way I do things. I am here, however, to do my best to teach kids. And while I'm willing to do a great deal to that end, to give a great deal of my life to that end, I sometimes begrudge the time I have to spend in explanation, especially when it's about the short-term. Parents should be concerned about the long-term education of their children, and they should trust teachers with the short-term decisions that lead to that long-term result.

I hope I'll say that all people need time to rest, that the balance of work and rest is an important one to find. Coaches are careful not to over- or under-train their athletes, and teachers should be similarly careful. Students, like all people, need time to rest; otherwise, the work can lose its effectiveness.

I hope I'll say that teachers should deliberately give students alternative ways of seeing the world, giving them the means to critique their own society (even their own views) by having a vision of other ways of living. Teaching which simply reinforces the dominant attitudes, politics, and culture accomplishes little.

And when people ask about test scores, I hope I'll say that test scores, while valuable in a limited way, are not the goal of education. Well educated people, as a group, will score well on standardized tests. A high score on a standardized test, though, is not necessarily an indication of a well educated person.

Perhaps above all, I hope I'll say that grades should not be valued more than learning. I know it's not a popular thing to say in education, but to be honest, I don't care much about grades. I do care about personal growth. And where grades offer some measure of personal growth, I support them. But too often, they don't. I think we should all--teachers, students, parents, administrators, government agencies--focus less on grades and test scores as the products of a system of education (that is, as salable commodities) and focus more on the personal growth of individual students.

Running Update

2010-01-21T17:44:00.003-05:00

I didn't run much over the Christmas break. An old injury to my right Achilles was starting to flare up, and it was giving me those messages that warned of serious consequences if I didn't pay attention and give it some rest. So, I rested.

But now I'm back, and on my third run of a deliberately easy running week, everything feels sluggish. With every step, my quads tell me that they'd really rather be doing something else. I'm trying to treat them like my students: ignore their whining and have faith in the knowledge that one day (perhaps one day soon, perhaps one day in the distant future), they'll be glad they ran today.

On a side-note, I saw two of those lanky, I-ran-in-high-school-and-yes-even-in-college, slightly taller than average guys running on the trail today, cruising along, running what looked to me like 8s with almost no effort. It always makes me wish I were taller, or at least that my legs were a little longer. It makes me want to run up to them and ask them if they know how good they have it to be biomechanically geared for running. To ask them if they appreciate the gift they have.

But then I see somebody chugging away, killing himself with 11s or 12s, and I feel like one of those lanky guys, just for a second.

And then I remember that it's always hard. Everybody who runs faces the same struggle, even though we face it at different paces. I guess it all works out.

Weekend Plans, Reading

2010-01-16T12:17:00.003-05:00

I'm on duty at the Academy this weekend, so some of my weekend will be occupied working in the gym and the student center. Also, I'm carrying the emergency transportation phone. Here's hoping it never rings.

Several new chapbooks arrived in the mail last week from Greying Ghost, and I'm anxious to spend a bit of time with them. Of course, finding that time amid the grading and preparing for next week is a challenge, but I'm looking forward to at least a little while spent reading them, especially Andrew Terhune's Helen Mirren Picks Out my Clothes and Kathryn Regina's I Am in the Air Right Now.

The second week of my poetry class went well. This semester (unlike last), I have a group of students who are willing to engage in discussion about poems, even when they admit to feeling a bit out of place doing so. The class has gotten a bit large--we're up to sixteen--but we'll find a way to manage the size, I think, as long as everybody stays engaged. And if the rumors hold true, there are at least a couple of students who have heard about the class and intend to join on Tuesday.

Also, it's worth mentioning their villanelles. We spent the first week doing little, mostly talking about the idea of a creative writing class and what it means (in practical terms) to take a class in poetry. The second week, we read villanelles, with drafts due on Friday, and I think that these may be, collectively, the best group of beginning-of-term drafts I've seen from first-time poets.

More on that later, I hope.

Current Rotation

2010-01-12T20:01:00.001-05:00

Here's what's occupying a good bit of my listening time lately...

The Low Anthem, Oh my God, Charlie Darwin
Noah and the Whale, Peaceful, the World Lays me Down
Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, Advance Base Battery Life
Creedence Clearwater Revival, Willie and the Poor Boys
Breathe Owl Breathe, Canadian Shield
Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago
Devendra Banhart, What Will We Be

Walden, Materialism, CCR, Letters

2010-01-07T19:00:00.004-05:00

In the very first paragraph of Walden, Henry David Thoreau writes:

At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again.

"At present," he writes. As if the future might hold an escape from this so-called "civilized life" that he will later call a life "of quiet desperation."

There is so much about which I disagree with Thoreau. But it's hard for me to argue with his critique of materialism, which in his day was certainly becoming rampant and in ours has become perhaps exponentially more so. He describes himself as a "sojourner," indicating from the very beginning of Walden that he is in this "civilized life" but not of it, that his life away from society and its love of stuff and money (and the work that must be done to earn the money to pay for that stuff) is really his home.

All this is to say, perhaps, that I've started teaching Walden yet again in my classes this week, so I should give you fair warning. Those of you who know me well know that every time I read Walden, my critique of contemporary materialism becomes a bit...intensified, shall we say?. So consider yourself warned.

In other news, I'm listening to CCR's Willie and the Poor Boys on vinyl at the moment, and I don't know that I've ever spent a better twenty bucks on music. (I know, I know, I just was complaining about materialism, and here I am spending twenty bucks on an LP. Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself.) I've listened to it a bazillion times in iTunes, but it's quite a different experience on vinyl.

I've also been working on the last of this year's recommendation letters to go along with former students' college applications. And there are several that I put off writing, not deliberately, and not because I had nothing to say, but perhaps because I had too much. The length of the last two letters has been twice what I normally write, and both of them have been pretty difficult for me to bring to a conclusion. In both cases, for students whom I taught for three years, students whom I will miss a great deal when they graduate this year.

Tiger

2009-12-24T12:03:00.004-05:00

It was nearly a year ago that we saw Tiger Woods. It was Melissa's birthday, and some friends had invited us to the Blue Martini for an after-dinner drink.

Tiger was sitting alone--or mostly alone, I should say--for most of the evening, behind security guards in a roped-off area of the club. There were a few minutes when he was sitting with an older gentleman, but the gentleman soon left, and Tiger was alone for the rest of the evening. He drank and texted, and I remember Melissa and I wondering why a person would choose to sit alone in a bar on the night after Christmas. We asked ourselves, Didn't he live in the area? And didn't he have a family?

Of course, much has been said recently about the allegations of his affairs, and I won't repeat them here. I don't even mean to condemn Tiger Woods or his actions here, only to comment on the loneliness that seemed to drape him then and to share a poem I wrote the following day.

At the time, I was writing a series of poems about doors, about the space of the threshold. To date, only one of those has been published, but if you're curious, you can find it in very good company in Rose Hunter's online journal YB--the spacing on the page isn't quite right there, but I know she's working on the formatting a bit. You can find the poem here and the commentary I wrote about it at the time here.

Which brings us back to this poem of a year ago.

Tiger

A rope, c-hook on its end, hanging loosely from an eye bolt.
A hired man, black jacket and earpiece, far exceeding the averages
for human height and weight. Sometimes, a door isn't a door at all.
Only an empty space through which we are allowed or not allowed to pass.

A path is cleared when he has to go, and when he returns,
always by a different route, to the table where he sits behind the rope,
behind the hired man, behind the rocks glass,
sending messages on his cellular phone.

And you say what a lonely life it must be, and we agree,
the life of a man whose name is known by everyone in this Orlando nightclub,
a man to whom no one will dare to speak, or even nod in the way that men do
when they recognize each other, when they mean no harm.

Springtime Update

2009-12-10T15:26:00.004-05:00

I got word today that I'll be seeing proofs for my chapbook Springtime Sea Bathing next week. It's perfect timing, really--we have exams next week, and then the Christmas break.

I'm anxious to see the proofs, but more than that, excited to see what the kind folks at Greying Ghost put together.

After Countee Cullen, "From the Dark Tower"

2009-11-10T18:49:00.001-05:00

Today, like many days, I feel as if I am sowing, never reaping,
and wondering if I ever will. I think of late summer, the fruit
sweet and swollen and ripened on the vine and watch,
silent and outside as too many harvest fruit they did not plant.

There is a price we pay, a price we assign to our brothers,
we sell them for a price too cheap, we rob them of their labor.
And yet I know this will not last forever: this blindness is not eternal,
this distraction of song and story that tells the lie we want to hear.

It is not forever that we will give way, give in to these urges,
to the not altogether hidden manipulation of our desire.
One day, these tears and pain will end, and we will see
our fullness, sweet and swollen and ripened on the vine.

And tonight, when day gives way, and night offers some relief,
our eyes will fix on things more distant, on stars and things beyond ourselves.
We will find hidden the beginnings of these flowers, of fruit beyond this world:
more delicate, more perfect, like fruit before the fall.

And in this stillness we will put away the pain we feel
and wait with hope and patience, tending to these seeds.

Peter Bulkeley's "The Lesson of the Covenant"

2009-10-17T18:22:00.007-04:00

After being asked by a couple of friends in the last week about my political views, and having a bit of time this evening--I'm much too tired at the moment to approach schoolwork, but being more inclined toward meditation than vegetation--I found myself reading Peter Bulkeley's "The Lesson of the Covenant, for England and New England."

These lines from Bulkeley seem timely:

Though in respect of order and government all things may become new, yet look not after new substantials, new foundations. . . . Take heed of too much of that "new light" which the world is now gazing upon. Some have reported sad things concerning thee in this respect: so much new light breaking forth that the old zeal is almost extinct by it. Herein take heed. "The old way is the good way": this is now ready to be revealed.

And these:

Be not high-minded because of thy privileges, but fear because of thy danger. The more thou has committed unto thee, the more thou must account for. No people's account will be heaver than thine if thou do not walk worthy of the means of thy salvation.

On a related note, my friend Ryan Alexander will be on the radio tonight talking about a project to feed hungry people. You can find out more about the project at youarenotanisland.com, and find out where to listen at reachfm.org. Or watch a short video on YouTube.

Sonnet for Hungry Children: Too Much an Island

2009-10-07T20:33:00.000-04:00

I am too much an island, insular and insulated and deaf to the pleading
     empty mouths, voices that might have reached me if I hadn't turned
     away. If no man is an island, then why is it that I've spurned
     these youngest parts of me? Their loss should leave me grieving,
devastated, willing to sell the things I have and give them food, but I am turned
     away, and they are mute, faceless, nameless, voices that I spurn, deceiving
     no one. No one believes that they are mute. I do not believe their grieving
     does not exist. But still I turn away, pretending not to hear, enjoying things unearned.

I drive my car, make plans for dinner, I sip a cup of coffee and ignore
     or make myself forget the things you said. They die, and I know you meant
     it when you said that I should do for these as I would for you. But still, we store
up things, televisions and telephones and computers and automobiles and home decor
     and designer label clothing and money in a 401(k). They die, and I know I have misspent
     the things you've given. Thirty thousand every day, and I am too much an island, too content.

Pantoum for Hungry Children: If We Are Not Islands

2009-09-30T22:14:00.001-04:00

If I am involved in mankind, and any man's death diminishes me
so much, you say, as if a piece of this continent were washed into the sea,
then how much might I do, how much might I give, to keep one man alive?
And what, I might add, if it were not a man, but a child? Or many children?

So much, you say, as if a piece of this continent were washed into the sea,
but a younger part, a part of possibility, unplanted soil that has yet to yield its fruit.
Then, how much might I do, how much might I give, to keep one man, one child, alive?
It is too much to stand and watch. It is so much that I might turn my eyes away.

This younger part, this part of possibility, unplanted soil that has yet to yield its fruit,
a life barely claimed, a child whose name I might have known, and thirty thousand more today.
It is too much to stand and watch. It is so much that I might turn my eyes away
from their cries, thirty thousand empty open mouths today that cry to me and say,

"my life is barely claimed, I am a child whose name you might have known," and thirty thousand more today
in a chorus whose pleading is an accusation I can barely stand. It would be better not to watch
their cries, thirty thousand empty open mouths today that cry to me and say
things I cannot understand. I cannot understand hunger. Even when I hear them all

in a chorus meant as pleading, it is an accusation I can barely stand. It would be better not to watch
them die, I think. I am involved in mankind, I will admit, but not in this, I will not admit these
things I cannot understand. I cannot understand their hunger, even when I hear them all.
I cannot face their deaths, individual and collective, early lives cut too soon.

They die. I think I am involved in mankind, I will admit. But not involved in this, not in these
lives so far away, so easily silenced with the flick of just a switch, the push of a button.
I cannot face their deaths. Individually and collectively, these early lives cut too soon
by a hungry reaper who cuts down lives instead of grain, barren fields and empty bellies.

These lives are so far away, so easily silenced. Just the flick of a switch, the push of a button,
and they are mute, faceless, nameless, not a part of me, they are not me, I am not
the hungry reaper who cuts down their lives instead of grain. But instead of barren fields or empty bellies,
they might have lived. Instead, I might have turned toward and not away or listened

when they were mute, their desperate nameless faces not a part of me. They are not me, but I am not
so separate, either. I might have listened when you warned me not to turn away from the least of these,
and they might have lived instead. I might have turned toward and not away or listened
when you said that whatever I did for the least of these, I did for you. But there was a failing, a feeling

of separation. I might have listened when you warned, not turned away when the least of these was hungry,
I might have given food, might have sold the things I have and given, and fed, and known
that it was right to do whatever I could for the least as I would do for you, but there was a failing, a feeling
that perhaps you didn't intend what you said, that it was parable or metaphor or symbol.

I might have given him food, might have sold the things I have and given, and fed this child, and known
that I am involved in mankind and that any man's death, that every child's death, diminishes me.
I lie and say you didn't mean it when you said, perhaps it was parable or metaphor or symbol.
I try to add, to make the sum of loss, the loss of many children who might be kept alive.

Thirty thousand every day, and I am too involved, too separate, too content, too much a piece of earth.

I've Never Taken a Train

2009-07-19T07:03:00.000-04:00

I've never taken a train before, except for the train
we took from the east of England north to Scotland.
That ride was blurred by jet lag and fatigue and the worry
of taking our two-year-old daughter to a foreign place.

It was the time we took her to the castle, the one we said was hers,
where the monster no one sees lives in the deep.

We have it still in photographs, sheep still
on the hillside, and in the foreground, the ruins
of the castle that my family once destroyed to keep it
from coming into the hands of the enemy English.

An explosion of gunpowder, the collapse of stone,
I imagine it as a final act of will: desperate men
gathering families, with daughters of their own,
pressing north into a land colder even than this.

There is little I remember of that train. We ate
sandwiches wrapped in cellophane from the dining car
and through giant windows, watched the sea pass on one side
and the snow-capped late-March mountains on the other.

As we passed a city on the line between these two countries,
the rock jutting out to a point, buildings like castles
and the train running right along the coast,
we promised one day to return to make it ours.

I've never been on a train before, except for that one
and the one we took returning.
But that trip is lost—to sleep, perhaps, or the haziness
that comes with age and distance and forgetting.

I say I've never been on a train before,
but one day I will take another with you
up another coast to another place
we might imagine as our own.

Our daughter is grown now and nearly gone
from us, and we from her almost,
almost to the age at which travel for her
will be to us and from us instead of with us.

I imagine us, two instead of three, in a car
of the Silver Star riding coach up an eastern coast.

We'll eat sandwiches from the dining car
look out of giant windows at the passing landscape,
foreign cities and imagine—no, promise
to visit them one day, to make them our own.

She's Still Not Calling Back

2009-07-18T21:49:00.003-04:00

Or, What Happens When Days Pass and a False Hope Keeps Control

3.
Hi, Jackie, I was
trying to get ahold
of you.

Ah—

Call me
when you get
a chance.

Alright?

She's Not Calling Back

2009-07-14T08:04:00.004-04:00

Or, What Happens After Jackie Gives Out the Wrong Number on Saturday Night

1.
Hey, Jackie, it's me.
I'll call you back later on.

Alright?

Or call me.
I'm at home
right now.

2.
Hey, Jackie, let me
call you back later.

I'll be at work—
won't get home until
later on tonight.

If you get my message,
call me—
before eleven.

Alright?

Annotation

2009-07-08T13:16:00.014-04:00

I've been thinking a lot about annotations lately. Partly, I guess, it's because I have my students annotating books for their summer reading assignments, but mainly it's because I feel like I learn a bit about people when I see their marginalia.

For instance, I have a photocopy of some pages of "Spring" from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek from a friend. She's marked paragraphs in their entirety, nearly the entire chapter in fact, with square brackets, broad vertical lines in the margins. But what gives it away is the question in script that begins the chapter: "Why such extravagance?" Ah, I want to say, of course it's the extravagance that has you. The extravagance is what compelled you to mark nearly the entire chapter. And the extravagance is what took you to the photocopier, book in hand, to make this copy for me.

I even like my own annotations, as if they offer some vision of myself in the past, a sort of time-travel mirror in which I get to see my younger self. Many of my notes seem utilitarian, place-holders I suppose, but they also serve as some indication of what I believed to be important at the time. A note in "Bartleby" reads "unmanned" next to a repetition of the word in the text. Another states simply, "Bartleby stops writing," at the appropriate point in the text.

I tend to by cheaper copies of books, especially of the books that I teach—mostly, that's my way of encouraging students to buy them and write in them. I figure that if a novel costs ten or fifteen dollars, most of my students aren't going to buy it and write in it, but if it costs two bucks, more of them will. But unfortunately, the margins are always small in those cheaper editions, and I find it's difficult to write more than a word or two at a time there.

In my buck-and-a-half copy of The Awakening, I find my note "like the parrot" next to some French: Robert recalls Madame Ratignolle's spurning his prior year's advances: "Passez! Adieu! Allez vous-en!" (The parrot, of course you've not forgotten, opens the novel with the repeated exclamation "Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi! That's all right!") And I wrote "Edna's coup d'etat—Her last supper" at the beginning of chapter 30.

Sometimes, I wish that they would make my favorite books with huge margins, maybe just print the text of the book on the left-hand page and leave the facing right-hand page for notes. I wonder, in a world where the Kindle threatens to supplant the printed page, if there's a market for this sort of thing. I can imagine it, though, the entire book a sort of dialectical journal.

To be fair, the annotations sometimes give us insights into people's minds that we probably would have preferred not to have. Thumbing through a used copy of Portrait, I found where Joyce wrote this:

Evening had fallen when he woke and the sand and arid grasses of his bed glowed no longer. He rose slowly and, recalling the rapture of his sleep, sighed at its joy.

He climbed to the crest of the sandhill and gazed about him. Evening had fallen. A rim of the young moon cleft the pale waste of sky line, the rim of a silver hoop embedded in grey sand: and the tide was flowing in fast to the land with a low whisper of her waves, islanding a few last figures in distant pools.

Sadly, someone has written in the margin, "These sentances barely make sence."

(Sigh.)

But sometimes, I find things so wonderful I can't let go of them.

In a heavily-annotated 1927 edition of Howard Judson Hall's Types of Poetry that I bought for three and a half dollars from an antique store in Savannah—or perhaps it was somewhere else; the place where I found this one escapes my certainty—there are notes in pencil about odes, about the rhyme schemes of sonnets, Italian and Shakespearean. There is a pressed flower in an advanced state of decay between pages 282 and 283, in the middle of James Russell Lowell's "Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration." There is a bid card from Kappa Kappa Iota dated March 1934. By Amy Lowell's "Patterns," the note reads, "No poem expresses more vividly beauty of words." There is a record of grades earned, all of them high marks, in literature, contemporary poetry, interior decorating, and architecture. By John Donne's sonnet "Death," the note: "Defiance. Pity. Triumph."

But before that, and really, what I keep coming back to, is the address of one Mrs. L. H. Pechacek of Oklahoma City, and a circled note: "DO NOT SELL. Keep for Larry always."