The Journal, Now with Online Submissions

Hello all,

I am writing this brief post to inform you that the literary journal I edit for, The Journal, has recently switched over to online submissions, joining a growing trend in literary magazines that encourages a greater quantity of submissions and makes the process of submitting more organized and easier for the submitters. Anyway, I invite you guys, and anyone reading this blog, to submit to The Journal electronically!

Find our submission manager here. Good luck to all the returning second years and brand new first years on this blog! Hope it's a great year for us all :-)

Nick McRae (The Ohio State University, 2013)

Decision Time, at least for this exiled poet, is over. Last night, I very happily accepted a poetry spot at The Ohio State University. I cannot even express how satisfied I am in my decision, and how ridiculously glad I am that this thing is finally, FINALLY over. I hadn't expected to make the decision so early, but I did a lot of hard thinking this weekend, and I discovered that I already knew what I wanted. I can't say how grateful I am to have this opportunity. I look forward to joining the good Mr. Adkisson and the other fine people of Ohio State in Columbus this Fall. Thank you all for your support. It is truly appreciated.

Wrapping Up My First Quarter at OSU

I meant to write this ages ago, but since it is still a little more than a week before the next quarter, I don't feel like a complete lame-o writing my wrap up now. So let's see, where to start, where to start...

I enjoyed workshop for the most part...We had a class of thirteen, including one fiction writer moonlighting as a poet, and it was for the most part very free form: no assignments, no mandated types of poems, etc. Basically we were told write what we wanted to write. Kathy Fagan, who ran the workshop in the fall, was very accommodating and friendly, and always let me come to her office to freak out, complain, or just palpitate wildly, which I was glad for. The workshop was actually a little more genial than I'm used to, and there were times where I was people bared their teeth a little more, but I did find the support encouraging just as I found several good, productive readers of my work who were unafraid or unwilling to tell me where I needed improvement. Next quarter will be different, I'm certain, but fall was nice and the workshop was a good place for adjustment. I wrote maybe three poems I still currently like, so that's something. We'll see how it goes from here.

The reading series we have at OSU is pretty awesome. We have three really, a visiting writer series, a student-faculty reading series, featuring second years reading with the faculty, and Mother Tongue, a much less formal student-run reading series held at the bottom of a rather overpriced bar. We had Linda Bierds come and dazzle us with her work (we read her Selected Poems in workshop) as well as a host of others including Amit Majmudar and Dan Anderson. The student-faculty readings were great because I was introduced to Andrew Hudgins' work (I hadn't really read him before) and got to here the second year's work which, in the case of the prose writers, I wouldn't have heard much of otherwise. Mother Tongue was always a blast because of the hilarious introductions and light atmosphere that characterize the events.

Additionally we held Writer's Harvest where we beat out the MA's and PhD's in a canned food drive for the Mid-Ohio Food Bank. At the event some fellow writers performed stand-up, sang music in tandem with faculty, raffled off dinners to be made by fellow MFA'ers and all kinds of other fun stuff. It was a gala event in my estimation.

I also read slush for The Journal and for the OSU Wheeler Poetry Prize, which publishes the winning manuscript. It was an eye-opening experience and an unplanned confidence booster considering how much bad poetry came through my desk while I was deciding what to send forward to Andrew (who was the judge this year). I read 50 manuscripts with a partner, and we had a few standouts, but most of them were varying degrees of awful. Yes it's all subjective, but if you have your physician writing the forward to your book of poetry, and he ends the two page preface by saying "hello," you probably need to reevaluate things a bit. Slush reading was much the same, some good stuff, a lot of bad stuff. I tend to think I have a broad range in my tastes, but I surprised myself with how much I was left wanting more from the stuff I read.

The other class I took (GTA's only need to take 9 credit hours and most grad lit/workshop classes are 5 each) was a graduate level intro to film theory and film criticism. I just loved this class. I felt prepared since the required critical theory class I took at UCLA for my major was a special topics class taught by the dean of the film school, maddeningly subtitled The Regime of the Visual and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion. Many of the texts I read for that class (Eisenstein, Saussure, Mulvey) reappeared in my film class, and many of the films we analyzed were ones I hadn't really seen before. It was a lot of work (two short papers, one 15 page final paper) but I found it more enjoyable than vexing. In a way, it confirmed the suspicion I've had that a critical path of study could work me too if I go down that road at some later date. Now I am happy just being an erstwhile MFA taking glee in the fact that he wrote his final film paper on WALL-E.

Teaching was by far the most exhausting and difficult part of my adjustment, but now I feel more than prepared to tackle it next quarter. I've gone through the curriculum now and have a stronger handle on it, and I know some of my weaknesses as a teacher and feel I can account for them. Aside from one minor kerfuffle with a student, last quarter I had a wonderful, patient, and understanding group of students, and I do think they learned from me. However I think I may have been to colloquial with them from the outset, and not as much of a taskmaster and school marm as I should have been. I had a good relationship with a number of my students but I am not sure I had as much respect as I would have liked. My theme next quarter will be more conducive to handling things a little more professionally, but at the same time, part of my persona is being relaxed and somewhat casual. It's a balancing act. Hopefully I can keep on the wire the entire next quarter and not err to far on one side or the other.

Well there you have it. My life as an MFA'er this past fall. Stay tuned for more details!

First Week at OSU

By Tory Adkisson

Hey friends,

I can now stand among you (well, sit and blog anyway) as one of the few, the proud, the first workshopped! I have finished my first week at the Ohio State MFA and I am so pleased with the way everything went I could dip myself in butterscotch! Let me just breakdown what happened.

First off, we started school this week on Wednesday, so I have not yet had a full week yet--I doubt, though, that that will have any appreciable effect on my experience next week, and anyway, I need to tell you about what happened this week since it was, for me, the first foot dipping into this whole grad school enterprise. *Phew* anyway...

The first thing I did was teach my English 110 class. My lovely roommates made breakfast that morning, so I had a bite of something before running off to Denney Hall. I showed my friend how to make double-sided copies, printed off the most updated version of my syllabus then rushed off to the computer classroom I teach in on Wednesdays. This Monday I will be in a normal classroom. Our program is really invested in teaching new media and using technology in the classroom. Anyway, I was fine but became very frazzled when I had problems getting the technology to work. Luckily that fright subsided and the class and I began to sync as I found a comfortable footing as their teacher. They were enthusiastic about the topic I chose for the class ("Writing about Reality Television) and very receptive to discussion. Not all of them talked, but it was the first day, so I am not too concerned. I am very happy with my class so far and look forward to working with these kids and watching them grow!

My first class is a graduate level English class which is an introduction to film and film theory. The professor, Ryan Freidman, is a very nice and very cool guy, and the bevy of readings and films we will be discussing in class had got me percolating with glee. I love film theory and the idea of becoming more cultured though film is fantastic (right now we are watching Umberto D.) and exactly the kind of thing I hoped to take as a grad student. The class is themed around the notion of the decline of film and subsequent rise of digital cinema, and the implications that has for study of film as a discipline. Pretty cool, right? I love talking about the decline of things...it makes me feel so "in the know."

As far as workshop is concerned (remember why were here friends?) it was great. Kathy Fagan teaches the fall workshop, while Andrew Hudgins teaches it in the winter and Henri Cole (!!!) teaches it in the spring. Kathy assigned us the dubious task of writing a poem about finality (essentially a kind of death poem) after reading Frost's "Directive" and Yeats' "The Circus Animals' Desertion". It ended up being her birthday on our first day of workshop, so we got her a cake and sang the celebratory song to her as she blushed and thanked us for being so sweet. After that Kathy workshopped us in alphabetical order and, being gifted with a last name starting with "A," I was the first one up on the chopping block. I have to say it was great and an eye-opening experience--sure there was some requisite praise (about my sounds, use of meter, my ending lines) but the class addressed issues I hadn't considered such as the nature of the speaker's relationship to the you, and whether some of the imagery in the poem was useful considering its ultimate trajectory. It reminded me, after several weeks of TA training, that I came to OSU for my writing, and if the first workshop is indicative of what experience at OSU will be, then I am glad to be along for the wild ride.

Additionally, I have been reading slush for The Journal and will soon be reading poetry manuscripts for the The Journal's Wheeler Prize (judged this year by Andrew Hudgins!); I can hardly believe the way my life is going. I am really pleased with everything I have been exposed to so far! Here's to a wonderful year, and a great MFA program (my program) at OSU!

Moving to Ohio, Pre-Quarter TA Training, and More (Not Really)...

By Tory Adkisson

Hello friends. How I have missed you (except for those of you who mutually stalk me on facebook)! It has been ages since I last posted, but for the last two and a half weeks I’ve been locked in Denney Hall from 9-3 every day preparing for the first-year English composition class I will be teaching. Wait a minute…back up! Let me tell you about Columbus and me.

I landed in Ohio on August 22 and spent the first days in a deep depression. This was the biggest move of my life—my first time away from home, and I mean away (like 2000 miles away) and I was stranded in the Midwest: a foreign environment if ever there was one. My gas was not turned on, neither was my cable or internet. I felt like I had entombed myself in a Gulag. I began questioning whether or not this was a good idea, whether going to an MFA was worth transplanting myself this way. All hope seemed lost…

Then I got up, walked to the closest internet café I could find and ran into Rachel, one of the now-second year poets in my program. It was the best possible thing that could have happened to me. Rachel and I talked for hours about the upcoming GTA training, what to expect in my first workshop, where a guy can get another guy, how sad it is to leave home. In four hours she reminded me that I was here, at Ohio State, to be a writer (and an adult) and that meant shaking up my perspective and resisting complacency. And so…here I am!

Anyway, while my program isn’t officially beginning until next Wednesday, I have to say…I love Ohio State and I am extremely pleased by my choice to come here. I definitely made the right one. The community at this program is incredible…within a week of being in Columbus, I attended a Mad Men viewing party, a pizza dinner, and multiple happy hours that were as happy as advertized. Columbus is a kooky town, but so far I love it. For me, cicadas have been the most notable feature of this place because we don’t have them in California. I have written several poems about the crazy little bugs that I hope will find their way into my first workshop. But that’s still about a week away.

For the past two and a half weeks I have been training for my job as a GTA, and I have to say that everyone who has called this period of time “information overload” is not joking. This fall I am teaching my own section of First-Year English Composition, which is a general education writing course, but one that I have a lot of control over, particularly in terms of theme. It’s a lot of pressure to manage, but the past couple of weeks have more than prepared me to handle the stress. I know time management is going to be an issue once the quarter kicks off, but for now I am finishing up my syllabus, managing my burgeoning social life, and writing as much as possible.

Once I have my first workshop, I will post about that, I promise. Ironically, my class will have a blogging component this quarter, so I will try to keep up with blogging myself!

On Cohorts, The Nerve to Apply, and Subject Matter in Poetry

by Tory Adkisson

My cohort is a young cohort; out of the six of us, four are entering straight out of undergrad, one is coming to Columbus with a year between her and her BA, and the oldest student among us is only 26. We hail from different locations; I am the farthest west, coming from California, three are from Ohio, one is from Missouri, and another will be coming from Pennsylvania. I am not traveled. I’ve been to Mexico (once), England (once), Nevada (a dozen or more times), Chicago (once), and Columbus (once, for my visit). Getting out of California, prying my lips away from the golden teat pumping me full of sunshine and warmth, was the most important thing for me when I was applying to MFA programs last fall. I knew that to really grow as an artist and writer, I had to get out, particularly I was forsaking the usual caesura that comes between finishing the undergraduate degree and entering one of these creative writing programs.

I have lived in California my whole life (accepting a few months in Reno, Nevada as a child), and everywhere I have lived has been within 100 miles of each other. When I applied I thought such things would be held against me, evidence of an immaturity I feared blighted me, depreciated my value as a writer, as someone capable of broaching that concept we know by many names (truth?) even slightly. Everyone I knew praised my decision to apply, commended me for following what they saw was the right path, the only certain path for me to follow. I often joked to people, in the self-deprecating way we Jews have perfected, that my skill set is limited, that writing, studying literature, and producing poetry are the only things I know how to do. I excused myself of being good at something by pointing out everything I failed miserably at grasping.

Applying seemed like the natural thing for me to do. I love school, and was never burned out except when it came to the few lingering general education classes I was required to complete. Earthquakes class was a particular pain, a stone I had to choke down uncomfortably. I was often bored by my undergraduate classes, and the professors I worked with would often ask me, or in some cases tell me, to apply to graduate school. I couldn’t see myself doing much else, especially given the way the economy began to tank right around the time applications were due. I entertained thoughts of applying to the JET program (I have a long standing love affair with Japan), or some similar entity that might facilitate me travelling and teaching, two things I love to do. Of course, both would inform my poetry too. I considered staying in LA to look for a job. Beginning this process, then abruptly ending it, put the limitations of my degree into perspective. I think I just needed to exercise more imagination.

To most people I know, getting accepted to a program seemed a foregone conclusion. They were certain I’d get in—and into more than one program—which made me feel extra-pressured to succeed with my applications at the risk of letting them all down. I had done my workshops as an undergraduate with celerity, getting into my first towards the end of my first year, an uncommon but not unheard of accomplishment. I wheedled my way into two additional workshops with Cal Bedient, who would become my honors thesis advisor. I was used to being the young one in workshop. Privately, I thought of myself as the young wunderkind everyone roots for. I was conditioned to, but I fought it, doubting myself, doubting the praise others had in me despite some evidence to the contrary. After all they had not seen the admission statistics. They did not all understand the maddening randomness and subjectivity of it all.

One of the first things I read that gave me pause to reconsider what I was doing was a comment someone had made on MFA blog concerning applicant ages. I knew that the average age for MFA students is around 27, but I knew enough about math to know that that means many people fall both below and above that age. Still, the comment I read hit me like a brick to the face. Someone said that they would not be able to respect someone who was not at least 30 years old, and that such people did not know enough about the world to be worth an MFA program’s time. That upset me, because it implied that quantity of life (age) was superior to quality (or lack thereof) of life, but it also scared me to think that this mindset might be shared among others, even those who might be sharing a workshop with me in my own future program. That person’s comments were roundly, and rightfully, rebuked, but it did make me think that by applying far outside my comfort zone, I would be encountering people with mentalities far different than my own, and as much as that could be extremely beneficial and fortifying, it could also be equal parts scary and destabilizing.

Ultimately, I am absolutely pleased with my decision to go away from home, because what I am seeing in the poems I read from my fellow poets every two weeks, or so, are voices very different my own. I can’t speak too much about my “project” as it were; I can say this about my writing: I am very interested in issues of sexuality and masculinity, in the male body, and in wordplay, metaphors, and puns. I like to incorporate mythology when and where I can—particularly Greek mythology, as well as food. I like fragments. I like to play with syntax and occasional rhyme. I am committed to free verse. My cohorts write about many things too, but one thing I have found to be a kind of common thread is nature.

I don’t have the best relationship with nature because I hate insects and don’t like to sweat. I pretty much despise camping. Forests scare me. I find it somewhat ironic that I live in a desert, but don’t write about so much as a tumbleweed. I think I am purposefully avoiding it because it is something I haven’t worked out in my head yet, something I don’t see much importance in. My relationship with the desert is complicated. I see it as a desolate wasteland that people of promise seldom escape. I see it as a land of meth and weed, of white boys in beanies, dressed as if they were Black or Mexican, as a place with aging veterans who don’t know what to do with themselves, as a place with a glass ceiling so low it very nearly touches the ground. Yet it is capable of beauty, but the beauty exists separate from people. I guess that is what ‘nature poetry’ is, beauty separate from people. People are what I am interested in though, because they fascinate me. I can’t figure them out.

Sharing poetry helps though, which is maybe why the whole workshop model works. I am presuming it does since I have some experience with it, and have seen my work grow since I was a wide-eyed college freshman too nervous to speak up. Reading my cohorts poetry in a vacuum has been odd since I am left alone to ponder the poems without much discussion with the other poets about them. I don’t see what other people write to the poet in question, so I don’t have my ideas supported or rebuffed. They are independent assertions. I wonder how this dynamic, and the rapport we’ve begun to establish, will play out between us when we meet the other half of our 12 person workshop. One thing is for certain—I won’t be turning in any poems about mesas.

Tory Adkisson (Ohio State University, 2012)

Hello there friends! Reading all of these splendid introductions causes me to take pause and consider the amazing community I, as an MFA candidate, have now become a part of. If anything, reading about the people blogging on this site has only intensified my desire to fast forward through summer and start getting down to business—luckily, I only have three weeks left.

My name is Tory Adkisson, and I am delighted to report that I will be an MFA candidate in poetry this fall at Ohio State University. Like many of my colleagues here on The MFA Chronicles, I am a tart cocktail of excitement and anxiety, with just a touch of salt along the rim of the glass for good measure.

So, here's a little bit about me: I am twenty-two years old (in November) and a native of Southern California. (Note that I am not, nor ever have been, a cast member of The Hills.) I was born and raised in the small desert towns that dot the freeways leading to Las Vegas, tiny settlements that serve as little more than glorified rest stops for weekend tourists. I am the oldest of three boys, raised by a single Mom, and am of mixed ethnicity—I am 1/4 Mexican and 3/4 Eastern European (Russian/Polish mostly), as well as an Ashkenazi Jew on my Mother’s side. I was raised in a pretty secular environment though. I am also gay, and have been living openly since I first started college four years ago. I just graduated from UCLA last spring with a BA in English and a concentration in creative writing, and have worked a variety of temp jobs during that time, most recently as an office assistant (a job I hated) and composition tutor for college students that come from historically underrepresented backgrounds (a job I loved). I am a night owl who enjoys cats, baking, quoting TV shows, irony, scarves, kvetching about nearly everything, and tripping over my own feet.

I chose Ohio State University for a few very important reasons: their excellent faculty, their excellent funding, and (most importantly) the strong sense of community that exists between the students in the program. I also really like that it is a three year program, reasonably small, and will give me plenty of teaching experience. I am excited to be teaching one composition class a quarter, though worried about how I am going to get my students to see me as someone of authority rather than someone who is only marginally older than they are and still looks like a fifteen year old. Nonetheless, I am excited to move to Columbus because I will get to have a white winter (something I see as romantic despite the warnings others have given me about the cold), and because rents are exponentially cheaper than what I am currently paying in LA. It doesn’t hurt that Columbus is a gay friendly city too, ensuring that, at the very least, I have no excuse for living a celibate life for the next three years. Important, since male sexual desire features heavily in my poetry.

Okay, enough about me. If you are interested to know more, please feel free to check out my blog, Neurotica Exotica, where I blog about everything from my MFA application experience to my self-destructive sex life—always, of course, in an amusing light. I am very happy to be a part of The MFA Chronicles family and look forward to reading about everyone’s struggles and successes. Until then, ciao babies.