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Uncollected

It’s been quite a month, and while I’ve been able to spend a lot of time with my daughters, it’s also been exhausting. I’ve had to choose sanity and take a few expectations off of my plate: mostly self-imposed expectations, often the heaviest ones. Not all laundry must be clean and put away at all times; not every snack my girls eat at home must be homemade and organic and local (you can take the girl out of the Bay Area, but…); dinner does not need to be simmering on the stove when anyone walks in the door. Or, maybe one might be feasible, but not all three in the same day.

And yes: not every blog post must be perfect, beautiful, articulate, collected. For now, the point is to keep writing, whether it’s for the joy of it (Stephen King’s On Writing) or if it’s only for 15 minutes a day (Summer Pierre’s The Artist in the Office).  It’s the writing as habit that’s been an important transition for me this summer. And because of writing, I think I newly understand the phrase “collecting your thoughts.”

So there are a few thoughts I’ve collected, picked up, from the cluttered floors in my mind:

1. I’m not entering a writing contest just to win, really. Although winning would be fabulous, it’s more about the commitment to set a larger goal and put my writing out there. A lot of my thirtysomething peers seem to be running 5Ks or triathlons (or marathons) to commit themselves in similar ways. The contest deadline‘s this week, so I’m going to be working on that application. I’ve got a cover letter mostly finished, and am going to be revising these pieces.  And after that, I’m going to try to submit things elsewhere, maybe here and here. But I just want to keep my head down: write, revise, occasionally send (or hit “publish”).

2. Ever since I wrote about libraries a few weeks ago, I’ve been thinking about ways to help public libraries, beyond donating my books and beyond using the facilities. I was shocked to see that Seattle’s Central Library will be closed for a week next month, due to budget cuts. That library seems to serve so many, in so many ways. I’ve been heartened by NPR’s prediction that libraries will be the next cupcakes. I’ve seen several articles about libraries that have continued this thread in my mind. But I want to know what else I can do, or where to begin. I’ve been committed to American ethnic studies for almost a decade now, and I wonder if there’s a place for me to combine my commitments to that field with my renewed commitment to public libraries. Both of these institutions are firmly committed to radical inclusion and social diversity and educational justice; it shouldn’t surprise me, but it does, that both of these things are also currently under attack.

3. I’m going to look a bit more into metaphors for history. Ever since I read my first piece of historiography in grad school, I’ve wanted to know more about it. I’m fascinated with Walter Benjamin’s “angel of history,” with Suzan-Lori Parks’s “great hole of history.” I’ve been thinking more about it ever since I came up with my own metaphor for history and title for the book.  Any cheap ventolin inhalers sale suggestions are more than welcome.

As a subset of that, I’m also curious about what makes something or someone historical. I’ll have to ask my historian friends and colleagues about that.  What strikes me about internment and Japanese Americans is that in some ways, internment is a big part of what makes Japanese Americans “historic”—and there’s so little about what happened to them after they left camp.  Are they no longer “historic” once the historical event has passed, in other words? What’s left once the boat and the wake have disappeared?

I’ve been mulling over the main character’s struggles in Louise Erdrich’s novel Shadow Tag:

How many times have I told you how difficult it is to resist the lure of the historical moment? The one action, the instantaneous truth that changes everything? How many times have I described my own struggles in telling stories, relating historical occurrences, searching for the sequence of events that results in a pattern we can recognize as history? There are always many moments, there is never just one. There are many points of clarity and many causes to one effect. However, after many, many of these points, these moments, have occurred, there is, I should tell you, a final moment. A final scene.” (48)

But I wonder about the desire to resist the lure of the historical moment. We find that the character’s narration is somewhat unreliable. I wonder if her desire to resist transcendence and knowledge (that is, the epiphany) is in itself revealing, and if so, how.

4. An MFA usually requires a large project. I’ve got my project. It’s already larger than I’d anticipated; at first, I thought it would be a reworking of a response to my dad’s manuscript about our family’s internment. And it is, but among other things, it’s also about:

  • technology and memory: how do different forms of documenting (from typewritten manuscripts to Facebook photos) inflect how and what we remember?
  • family and endurance: how has my family maintained its ability to laugh?
  • creativity and multimedia: the textual, the visual, meshed with the archival; the creative lives of me, my dad, and my sister

After I enter the contest, I’ll need to figure out how to plot my next steps. In the meantime, I’ve been happy to spend so much time with printed pages and much less time with online pages (not that I don’t appreciate you reading this!). More printed pages have meant that I’ve been reading books, not just replenishing the well but also stirring up the pot, and seasoning the stew, to mix a few metaphors.

Four things: that’s the collection which is in the laundry basket for now: a few wrinkled items, a few fluffy items, a few that need to be hung up and put away. I’ll add some links to this post tomorrow evening or Wednesday, and I’ll post more about my entry in the contest towards the end of the week.

(For those of who you who asked for a post about farmers markets, I did write one, but it became something else entirely: a meditation about home and a marching song. I’ll keep trying. And I’ll post that one, too, once I revise it.)

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About a library

“I want you to write the blog post about the library,” my dear friend B said to me yesterday.

Last week I told you and B that I found myself wandering—and, let’s be honest, a bit low on funds. And instead of going to the bookstore where I knew I couldn’t buy anything, I found myself on solid ground at my public library. (That’s the main branch, in the photo above.)

I was stunned, literally stunned, at what wonderful places libraries can be. I felt occupied by exclamation points, like Ginsberg’s supermarket in California: there were whole families shopping for books! Shelves and shelves of books! People from all walks of life! Passes for area museums! Movies and TV shows on DVD! A reading area for the kids!

My daughters got their first library cards this week, and though neither of them can even read just yet, it warmed my heart to see them grabbing books off the shelves, then sitting quietly on the alphabet block carpet and turning pages. They made for the reading area as if they were at home. They’ve been to libraries before, but with their cards, I got to introduce them to the magic of libraries: so many books to read, take away, return, and then, the miracle: you can get more!

At their best, libraries strike me as an exercise in loving generously: one that I can only begin to compare to my mother’s love. My mother loves so abundantly that if you love peanut M&M’s, giving you a handful of them is not enough: she must buy you the entire 5-pound yellow bag. This is a literal, not a symbolic, example.

My library visit made me wonder: why in the world do I not visit public libraries more often? For that matter, why have I chosen to haunt bookstores, (mostly) new and used, independent and corporate, over libraries? Why would I rather buy my books, rather than borrow them? And now this tendency even strikes me as miserly, particularly in comparison to the trust and abundance of libraries’ (and yes, my mother’s) goodwill: I don’t want to have to give books back. I want to be able to keep them all to myself, forever and ever if I want. With apologies to Marxists, it’s not Scrooge’s piles of wealth which are the real problem, right? It’s his unwillingness to share.

Well, why not hang out in libraries? There’s the too-quiet atmosphere, for one thing. In cafes, I like working around others who are working. But I want to be able to talk to them occasionally, too, maybe even to ask what they’re reading. I want to be able to listen to music, sometimes even music that the baristas choose for me from their iPods. I want an iced mocha that I can nurse and an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie that I can nibble. Give me a piano that an earnest teenager will ventolin or albuterol occasionally strum. Since we’re in the Pacific Northwest, give me warmly painted walls, and lots and lots of windows for natural light. Give me babies who will peek at me over their mothers’ shoulders, and a space where toddlers can wield their crayons freely. No cubicles. Give me tables, lots of tables, ‘neath the reading lights above. Don’t fence me in.

Libraries are not my preferred workspaces, and for a long time, especially during graduate school, libraries meant research libraries. They did not feel like spaces designed for pleasure and quiet revelation (or revolution); they were spaces designed for hushed, solemn work. Gorgeous, but intimidating and uncomfortable.

But why in the world have I not visited libraries more often? See, if I had just discovered libraries, if I hadn’t come from a family of voracious readers and librarians, that would be one thing. But if you’ve been reading along for a while now, you already know that the written word is earth, air, water, fire for my soul.  And I went to the library all the time when I was a little girl. Summer reading clubs were a way to keep track of books I had read, sure, but they were icing on the cake. Moreover, one of my aunts was a children’s librarian in San Francisco. Her husband, my uncle, was also a librarian at the Western Addition branch there, and was a major force behind its Japanese language collection. And my dad was a librarian, the head of Circulation, here.

Marveling at the wonderfulness of my public library, I thought: Oh, shit. Is that why I’ve avoided libraries?

For a month I’ve been working on a project which involves my dad. So everything, even grilled cheese sandwiches, feels like it’s circling back to him. Characters in Colson Whitehead’s amazing novel The Intuitionist are nervous in elevators because elevators remind them of coffins. By comparison, I wonder if I’ve avoided libraries because their silence reminds me of the silence of uncomfortable introspection, or death.

But here’s a clue. I am writing this entry the night before Father’s Day, a holiday that’s been difficult for me since 1984.  (More difficult memories: I wrote a poem for my dad a few weeks before he died, and my uncle read it as part of my dad’s eulogy.) And this week at the library I was looking up Zadie Smith’s book of essays, and reached over to get some scratch paper. I stared at the yellowing piece of paper for a minute, with some nostalgia and even love. For scratch paper, my library still uses old index cards from card catalogs. “Research outlook,” the title on my card said.

Publication year on the card: 1983. That’s the year before my dad died.

Maybe that title’s a command.

P.S. Coming up this week: revisions of earlier assignments. A break from death, for us all. If you’ve been reading from the beginning, many thanks.

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Now, contemplate death

A few years ago I asked a group of students, bless their hearts, to write their own obituaries.

Now, of course there was a reason. It was a course which introduced students to the English major, and I thought that writing their own obituaries would help them to articulate their life goals, even if in a surprising fashion. Or rather, I hoped that the surprise of the assignment would propel them to unexpected insights, to help them answer that eternal question: “What are you going to do with an English major?”

And yes, it was a morbid assignment; I’m not sure that it worked for everyone.  Confessing further, it might not have been the best idea to ask them to write it on, um, the first day of class. In class. Oh, my. “Welcome to the class: now, contemplate death.”

(Then again, many great works of literature have said the same thing, if much more poetically. Maybe not on the first page, however.)

Nevertheless, I didn’t expect that my own response to the assignment would startle me.

While my students wrote, I wrote quickly too, scribbling notes and sentences down the page of my teaching journal. I envisioned what I would do when I retired from teaching, and I envisioned what others would say. I even found myself picturing what my daughters would say, and this sentence emerged from my fictionally-grown-up eldest daughter:

“She really loved all the ways that the written word could bring people together.”

Today I’ve been thinking about what this sentence means. This morning, my husband said that in itself, it’s a blog post, or a longer essay. And one of my failings as a writer is that I can be too elliptical: too often, readers will have to ask me to explain further about what a statement means, or to give an example. I discovered a few years ago that I’m an under-writer, rather than an over-writer. I suspect this is why I’m more of a poet than a novelist. I expect very little to say a great deal.

Exhibit A: my short paragraphs.

Exhibit B: “Say more,” urged one of my early graduate school professors. Still terrified of speaking in class, I stumbled when so pressed. I said something! Now you want me to say more?

And of course, I know there are exceptions to my rule: there are many wonderful novelists whose prose conveys a great deal with very little. But what does this sentence from my own fictional obituary mean? I’ve got just over half an hour left of power on my computer, so I’ll use that time pressure (raging against the dying of the long-overdue Northwest sunlight) to see where it takes me. All right:

• I love how intimately the written word can bring two individuals together. In one of my favorite moments from the film Before Sunrise, Julie Delpy’s character says something like, “If there was a God, it wouldn’t be in you and it wouldn’t be in me. Just in the space in between.” I feel that way about writing: at its very best, the space between writer and reader holds the potential for the divine: for the transcendent. I can travel far from my self, see unexpected reflections of myself—and return, forever changed.

• I also love how the written word can bring large groups of people together. I love how having a common buy ventolin online no prescription reading (if not a common reading experience) can open spaces for conversation. A few summers ago, I led a book group discussion for faculty and staff members on my campus. It was a relatively rare and relatively frank discussion about issues of race and privilege, particularly among faculty and staff. There are far more people of color on staff than there are among the faculty. While I know a common reading did not level the playing field, I loved how so many moments in the reading provided so many resonant spaces for people to speak.

• I love how the written word makes me imagine and makes me empathize, even and perhaps especially when it costs me something to do so. Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony, James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room.

• And—how do I say this without irony? I’ll risk it—I love how the written word makes my light shine. When I am passionate about a book, or a story, or a play, I want you to read it, and I want to talk about it with you and I want this experience to texturize the connection that we have with each other. Through sheer enthusiasm, I can bully you into reading whatever I’ve loved lately, or for a long time. (Don’t be afraid. I do take your preferences into account before I recommend anything.) Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Madeleine L’Engle’s A Ring of Endless Light, Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, Li-Young Lee’s first chapbook, Rose, the first and last stories in Nam Le’s collection The Boat, Haruki Murakami’s Dance Dance Dance, Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle, Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto. Just to start. Few things make me as happy as talking about a book that I love.

I am taking some time this summer to rethink what I’ll do professionally in a couple of years. So far, all I know is that I want my life to reflect that obituary sentence: “She really loved all the ways that the written word could bring people together.” I want it to be a sentence that could easily describe me, and not just by someone who knows me really well.

I’ve wandered a bit this week, trying to depressurize from a difficult year (see post below: 2-hour nap!). I reached some solid ground in the stacks of my public library, and, once I recognized it, laughed at myself. Oh, right: the written word. As I think and rethink, I’m calling on the wisdom of Baby Suggs from Toni Morrison’s epic novel Beloved: “She told them that the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine. That if they could not see it, they would not have it.”

If I don’t know what I’ll be doing in a couple of years just yet, I’ve got a compass direction.

P.S. For Monday’s post, blogger Shauna James Ahern (aka Gluten-Free Girl) has invited everyone to write about the first thing you cooked, and how it made you feel. She’ll be collecting responses, so you could send a message to glutenfreegirl at gmail dot com., or post a link in your comments on Monday. (Though the invitation was on Twitter, I don’t think she’ll mind if it’s over 140 characters or not.) I’ll be participating. I hope you will, too.

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The unbearable decadence of napping

I took a 2-hour nap today: middle of the day, middle of the week. When I woke up, it was noon.  Noon! I don’t mean to make this a long version of a Facebook status update, and I realize that this would not really be news for many of you except that:

1) I have two young daughters (who were in the care of others today–and I apologize to those with small children reading this post, for whom the 2-hour midday nap sounds inexcusably decadent);

2) I have typically hated naps, even when I was a baby, my mom says; until I had my daughters, I considered naps a waste of time when one could be productive;

3) I can’t remember the last time I took a nap that long;

4) opening my eyes to the brief bright sunlight through our blinds, I realized ventolin 100 mcg inhaler price that I may have been wrong about naps.

Clearly, it’s taking me a while to slow down from the school year, and clearly, I need time to do it. I’ll be back soon. I haven’t forgotten.

P.S. For those who love poetry and novels together–or for those who want to study narrative second-person voice–you might check out Nicholson Baker’s novel The Anthologist. Hilarious, poignant novel about an aging poet who’s trying vainly to write the introduction to an anthology of poems that rhyme. I’ve described it to friends as Prufrock and Project Runway. Among the figures and entities which appear frequently: writer’s block,  the staff of the New Yorker, Louise Bogan and Theodore Roethke, Sara Teasdale, Billy Collins, a chin-up bar, iambic pentameter, and a dog named (wait for it) Smacko. I laughed out loud several times.

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Summer skies

"Summer Sky," Mara Morea

I’ve finished my faculty seminar on Suzan-Lori Parks, and while it was a wonderful experience, I am so happy it’s over. Summer’s here!

For the teacher, summer’s often the happy ending to the work year, a time to relax, release, and renew. These last few summers have been packed with so much: two summers of adjusting to the births of my daughters (now almost-5 and 2 years old, babies born in late June and late May, respectively); one summer of moving to our current house; one summer of preparing for a large review. Now that I think of it, this is the first summer that I’ve had in five years where I don’t have a large project planned for myself, personal or professional, which is exciting and a little scary.  Oh, right, there’s this blog.

I expect that I’ll be posting more regularly with the conclusion of the seminar. I still don’t have more MFA structure in mind just yet, but the commitment to more regular posts should help. I’m looking forward to that structure in itself, along with the exhilaration and possibility that summer always brings me. There must be something about the clarity, the openness, and the light of the summer sky.

  • Summer means summer reading, summer fruit: I can’t decide which one I like better. Knowing how much I love both, that says a lot.
  • Summer means beach picnics, bubble-blowing parties in the backyard, picking our cherry tomatoes and basil for dinner panzanella, the metallic humming and clicking of the canner heating on the stove, the vibrant colors and communities of farmer’s ventolin inhaler to buy online markets. (I live within five miles of three farmer’s markets and sometimes can’t believe my luck. Hmmm: I grew up next to a farmer’s market, the famous Denio’s Market in Roseville, California. I sense a post coming.)
  • Summer means time to browse through used bookstores and thrift stores. In both places, it’s all about the pleasure of the unexpected find, the willingness and imagination to give something old a new life. (yet another post?)
  • And this summer, I’m looking forward to learning how to sew: my mom’s just bought me my first sewing machine.
  • Summer means wonderfully long to-do lists with an equally long amount of compassion if I don’t check off every item on the list.

To reflect a bit on this first month of the blog, I have loved rethinking and reseeing the world as a writer. I’ve been excited to think about upcoming assignments for this space. (Other genre possibilities: book review, opinion piece, collage essay.) Being in the seminar for the past two and a half weeks, I’ve remembered how much I love being a student. While I need some time to relax and release, at the same time I can’t wait to carry that energy into the summer.

Summer: where the sunset clouds are Maxfield-Parrish-pink against the smoky blue sky. Where my girls are twirling in the grass and the sunshine, their skirts lifting lightly.

A small postscript: just found out that my friend R tried the adobo recipe and her kids liked it! I’m thrilled. Anyone else tried it? I’d love to know if the recipe itself needs tweaking, for those who love or need specific directions.

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Grading creative writing

Well at Sanyang

Grades are in for the semester! SO relieved.

Which means that the well’s rather empty for the moment. I should have more time and energy to write this weekend. But in the meantime, I have wondered: how does one grade creative writing? I’ve taken creative writing classes, but never taught one. One class was graded “pass/fail,” but the standards for the other classes were never quite clear to me.

My composer husband suggested that these classes might be graded as he grades musical compositions: risk-taking, originality, clarity, responses to feedback. I know that feedback is central to the writing process. But as I’ve played with creativity in the classroom through this seminar (both as teacher and student), I have also noted the importance of grounded encouragement in taking risks. The greater the student’s risk-taking, the higher their vulnerability.

How would you grade–or how do you grade–creative writing? Or did my professor have it right: is pass/fail the best option?

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Not the blue jeans, again

Here’s my claim for the day: good writers make the most out of the tension between structure and freedom.

My husband, who’s a composer, always tells me that the artist’s job is to play with tension and release. I’ll work with that idea in another post, perhaps even Assignment #2, but today’s lesson is about structure and freedom.

I was going to write another post tonight about fear (Internet trolls! Amazon reviewers!), but that topic is already starting to feel worn as the clichéd blue jeans. And I do know that creative writing’s not a linear process. Writing about fear for a few posts won’t clear away my fears forever, I’m sure.

In the meantime, what was originally a fun tag line has become a liberating way to think about this blog: as a private MFA. Heck, I’ve already applied and been accepted! With full funding! I get to decide when I’ve graduated! I can do whatever I want, whenever I want!

Uh-oh.

I can do whatever I want: the writer’s blessing and curse.

The teacher in me wants to begin with a syllabus, a reading list, a schedule of assignments, a final project. It’s an MFA, right? Semester 1: finish X. Semester 2, finish Y. Repeat for 2-3 years. Degree granted. Ah, the comfort of a schedule. I like schedules, and as you saw, I like lists. The Capricorn part of me wants schedules…and features…and regularly scheduled features, and featured schedules, and scheduled regularity. But phrased that way it sounds, well, boring, doesn’t it? Why do a private MFA if it’s where to buy ventolin inhalers boring?

Thus, because it’s against my nature, and I think it’s good for me, I won’t create a full structure just yet, to see how things develop. For now, I want to post several times a week. The posts will include these musings about my new writing life, and my self-assignments, and the results of those assignments. As a partial reading list, I’d like to revisit some books about writing, including Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, and I’ve been told to pick up Stephen King’s On Writing. (Other suggestions and websites welcome.) However, if it weren’t so mid-90’s, and so ugly, and so distracting, I’d put up those pixilated flashing “Under Construction” signs all over this site. You’ll just have to imagine them whenever you click anywhere here. Or not.

And so I told you that I didn’t want to write about fear again, but I think my desire to hyperschedule may be another way of trying to control the fear, to dance the Procrastination Waltz around the fear. Hitting “publish” on this post was freeeaky, let me tell you. But it’s that kind of fear that pushed me to write creatively in the first place, to start this blog, and it’s that kind of parachute jump fear that artists take whenever they share their work. You get a rush from parachute jumps—or so I’ve been told. It’s the ultimate metaphor of structure, then freedom.

Enough procrastinating! I’ll have an assignment for you next time.

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Writing takes ego

So…what do you do when you’ve been introduced at a party by your cool popular friend?

If you’re like me, you duck your head, stare at the ground, and smile nervously: “Um, hi, everyone.” That’s me today. I’m so grateful to Shauna for urging me to start a blog, and chances are, if you’re reading this now, you’re here because of Shauna. (Or you’re one of my Facebook friends. Oh, and hi, Mom.) Welcome, each and every one.

But it does leave a certain amount of expectation: your friend’s cool, so you must be cool, too. Oh, the pressure.

I’ll be trying on different genres here (food writing’s up soon!), and I’ve got a number of blog assignments lined up. But for now the most comfortable genre, the one which gets me typing the fastest, is this one: the reflective, the notes-towards-my-memoir-project, the musings about this new writing life.

I’ve decided to write through the fear, and not apologize for this experimental space. I toyed with writing a separate entry about the first assignment. As in: “OK, yeah, I don’t think it worked, and here’s how, and I’m sorry that what you came for isn’t here, and ….”. This apology, of trying to speak for the work, is a no-no in writing workshops. I can see why.

Sounds like I’m back to some of my old writing neuroses, if not some of my old personality neuroses. This doesn’t mean that I won’t revisit that first assignment, and perhaps even post draft #6 of the poem, but as I retrain myself to think as a writer, I have wondered about my fear of writing. In my case I don’t think that fear is about writer’s block, or the inability to say something.

See, I used to apologize for myself ALL the time. You can ask my high school friends, my husband who I’ve known for more than half my life. I was Insanely Insecure Girl (IIG), the one who needed lots of ego uplift.
“Do these pants look terrible on me? I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry I keep order albuterol inhaler non prescription asking, but will I EVER find someone to love?”
If you met me about twenty years ago, I might not have met your eyes for longer than a second. Maybe two.

I didn’t realize how hard this trait was on my friends until I made friends with another IIG later on. Having to talk her up all the time was exhausting, to tell you the truth.
“No, those pants look really great on you.”
“Yes, you’ll find someone to love.”
And of course I did support her, and I did so sincerely. But I recognized some of myself in her, and tried to stop some of that insanity in myself, the incessant self-questioning and the hypercritical apology.

Happily, I’ve got both good pants AND the most wonderful person to love now. Not to equate the two. You know what I mean.

So this insecurity might have something to do with my latest theory: that writing, creative or argumentative —indeed, creating art at all—takes ego. By “ego,” I mean the belief I am Someone with Something Important to Say that Someone Else Would Want to Hear. And twenty years ago, ten years ago, perhaps even five years ago, it was hard for me to find that sense of ego.

[insert pause for soothing of a toddler nightmare. OK. Back to it]

Don’t believe me? Here’s a test: see all of those parenthetical phrases in my posts? They’re a stylistic tic. My dissertation reading group convinced me that I need to use parentheses less. (Doh! I’m still working on it, guys.) I adore parenthetical phrases, probably because of my first reading of this novel. And while I adore parenthetical phrases and their possibilities for multiple layered voices, sometimes the parentheticals represent me, trying to duck under my own words.

Now you see why I used that party analogy at the beginning of the post. I’ve been that girl.

Now I know I needed that kind of belief in myself in order to develop fully as a scholar, as a teacher, as a writer. And (gulp) now it’s here.

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Do I dare?

When I teach American literature, I always try to teach T.S. Eliot’s famous dramatic monologue, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” As a form of self-introduction on Prufrock Day, I ask my students to quote a set of lines that best describes them. Some of the greatest hits as we go around the room:

“I should have been a pair of ragged claws/Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.”

“I grow old…I grow old…/I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”

“I have measured out my life in coffee spoons.” (usually a favorite in the Pacific Northwest, many of the sleep-deprived heads nodding in agreement)

“Prufrock” is one of those quintessential English-major poems, one that my college friends and I used to quote to each other endlessly. As an undergraduate at Berkeley, I studied Modernist Poetry with the now-deceased British poet Thom Gunn. Ah, Thom Gunn. He delivered eloquent, beautiful lectures from behind the lab counter in 1 LeConte Hall. Once in a while, he would step away from the counter and slouch genially against the blackboard, usually wearing faded black jeans and a worn black leather jacket.

(I still remember my one shining moment of in-class participation, perhaps in all my 4.5 years at Berkeley: “Do you mean ‘wanting’ as in desiring, and ‘wanting’ as in lacking?” “Exactly,” he nodded. “I couldn’t have put it better myself.” My friend M and I practically squealed. Maybe we high-fived under our desks. We thought he was beyond cool.)

Anyway, in Modernist Poetry, Thom Gunn read Eliot’s poem out loud. And we swooned, all hundred thirty-something of us, in that lecture hall. We adored  Prufrock’s melancholy,  his world-weary angst, even (perhaps especially) his stunningly adolescent self-absorption and insecurities. We could relate to his passionate love affair—not with the “you” of the first line, but with indecision itself. We didn’t know what we were going to do with our lives, much less our majors in English! order ventolin inhaler online Prufrock captivated us—no, Prufrock got us. Prufrock was us.

But on our Prufrock Day, Thom Gunn’s fierce gaze pierced the room’s collective marshmallow adoration: “If you don’t think that this poem is funny,” he declared, “you don’t get this poem.”

I’ll always remember that moment, because I have used it over and over to teach the poem. It makes for great conversation: many of my students protest. Understandably, they feel sorry for Prufrock, even when I point out that only Prufrock, lovable Prufrock, could write a “love song” that begins as a pastoral ballad: “Let us go then, you and I” and just after, invite the object of his love to an evening “like a patient etherized upon a table.” (Really? What kind of evening is that? What kind of woman responds to this as a pickup line?) But remembering my own college marshmallow love, vaster than empires, we work through the poem together.

I am thinking about Prufrock today because I have been thinking about my last post. “In a minute there is time,” Prufrock says, “[for] decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.” What would I say to this creative writing teacher now? Why didn’t I become a professional writer?

I could answer with a number of reasons, including the undervaluing of creativity in American society, especially creativity as a form of intellectual activity; our lack of support and infrastructure for artists; the tunnel vision of graduate programs which insist that the tenure-track job at a research university is the only prize worth having.

To be clear, I don’t regret getting my doctorate, and I am still proud that I’m the first PhD in my Japanese American/Filipina American family.

But looking at my path in a certain Prufrockian light, I return to these lines:
“I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.”

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On haunting and marginalia: why the private MFA?

It’s hard to think about ways to follow up on that first post, and I am tempted, already, to go back and make changes. Maybe I will, eventually. But first: onward, forward, upward, which is the way to travel if I want to commit to this blog seriously.

I have a PhD in English, rather than an MFA. I have thought about pursuing an MFA for a long time, or at least pursuing creative writing more seriously. There are a number of reasons that I won’t be able to do so, at least for now. I have looked at a few non-residential MFA programs, even one relatively close to where I live. These programs typically ask their students to commit to 10 days of residence at the beginning of each year (for about 2 years), and much of the remaining work is completed through correspondence, at home or off-campus. But I am not sure I can spend 10 days away from my family and my two adorable little girls, much less afford the tuition.

But, just for the sake of argument: If I did pursue an MFA, I would have had to choose a genre, I think. Poetry or creative nonfiction? I’ve got memories and attachments to each.

I remember writing one of my first poems about the color yellow, perhaps in second grade, with Mr. Daley. (I dated his grandson in high school!)
Mustard fields blossoming slowly
Flashing lightning

After watching the pine tree in the front of our house, I remember writing my first haiku in third or fourth grade, which my dad loved:
As the pine tree sways
Gently in the cool, swift breeze
I think it whispers

I wrote a lot of poetry through high school and college. In high school I kept a quote journal of quotations, bits, sayings from writings and writers that I loved. I wrote down spiral notebooks full of song lyrics, as many of us did. I’ve wondered if I wrote those down because I was too afraid to write my own poetry.

I began to write creative nonfiction, essays, at the end of college. Just after I graduated from college, I worked in campus administration. I had finished mid-year, and was applying to graduate schools. I was lucky enough to land a job in the same campus office where I’d worked as a student for two years.

During one lunch break I went to hear a former professor, Robert Hass, read from his work. At work I was steeped in the discourses of underground storage tanks and hazardous waste, and I fell promptly back in love (had I ever fallen out of it?) with poetry, with literary words. The next day I wrote an essay on my lunch break and submitted it to a contest; it won first place.

I wrote journals, diaries well into graduate school. I began to write and experiment ventolin 100 mcg online with artwork and color, joyfully, on September 10, 2001. I couldn’t journal or even open that book after that.

I also wrote a poem for my beloved graduate school advisor, about the memories we shared with each other about our fathers’ deathbeds. It’s called “Eating Grapes,” and I’ll have to find it someday. (I’m a hoarder; I suspect a great many writers are. )

Last year, on the spot, I wrote a poem for a colleague’s poetry blog.

These are some of the important moments of my intermittent writing life, at least to date. But when I think about becoming a writer, about writing this blog, the written word that’s haunting me today is a marginal comment from another college professor. When I was a sophomore, I took “Introduction to Poetry Writing” from the African American author Ishmael Reed. I didn’t really know who he was at the time, nor did I know that I would end up writing one of my dissertation chapters about him later on. I’ll have to find this poem and this piece of paper somewhere, too.

Here’s what he wrote:

“I think you could succeed as a writer. You have the talent, the skills, and the imagination.”

Best marginal comment, ever.

I am not writing these moments down to sound arrogant; they are more like the small squares of comfort I gather around myself as I think about stitching a new quilt of my writing life.

Now that I have had some years of teaching experience, I wonder what led him to write that comment. What does it take for a creative writing professor to write this on your student’s paper? Now I wonder what Professor Reed saw:
–if he knew the young girl who loved L.M.Montgomery’s Emily books, even more than the Anne books;
–if he knew that when I was thirteen I subscribed to an industry magazine, Writer’s Digest, “just to keep up”;
–if he could see those stacks of quote journals, the piles of partly-filled and empty journals, and the sheafs of poems, spilling out of my closets and desk drawers;
–if he knew just how desperately I wanted to be a writer.

I also wonder what he would say if he knew what I “grew up” to be. I wonder if I can unlearn, or need to unlearn, what I learned as an academic writer, as a critic, as a PhD.

And I don’t know if I will ever try to earn an MFA. But in the meantime, I’ll give myself assignments. Maybe I’ll ask from assignments from you reading out there, and I’ll work towards a larger project. Thanks in part to a new and dear friend, I pitched and got my first freelance writing assignment today!–which made me very happy. In the meantime, this is my own practice, my own private MFA.