Signs of Application Season

So this is going to be a short post, because, amazingly, it's the final week of the term before exams / portfolios are due. I've got work to do!

I had to take a moment though to reflect on this time last year -- a reflection prompted by the terrifying sight of file boxes in the conference room of the Alder Building (U Oregon Creative Writing HQ) labeled "MFA APPLICATIONS." These four, terrifying boxes prompted in me a quick memory of the preparation, the worry, the sweat, the heartache and uncertainty surrounding application season for me last year.

Seeing them, I also felt a bit of awe at how much work goes into choosing each class (two student aids have been assisting our department business manager with organizing / preparing for the influx of materials...) Last, I felt the warm flush of gratitude -- that last year I was one of the ones who made it in, that despite the hard work and occasional frustrations that have cropped up this first term, I'm so happy to be a poet in U Oregon's Program. I'm exhausted. But I love my teaching placement. I have 17 new poems (in ten weeks), new amazing people in my life to share this strange journey with, and most importantly - for me, I'm beginning to feel my soul thrive. My writing's on track; I'm chasing elusive happiness. I made it out of the application box and all the chaos was worth it.

First years, I hope you're able to look back with awe, too. Applicants, best of luck to each of you.

Obligatory application season post

Any applicants out there considering applying to the University of Houston for either the MFA or PhD track, I just thought I would put my e-mail out here in case you have any questions (jsgottliebmiller at gmail dot com).

I especially recommend our program if you are interested in wonderfully stimulating academic coursework, having a fantastic dual MFA-PhD cohort, great funding, and an awesome post-graduate success rate (in job placement, fellowships and books).

I could go on and on and it would be really annoying and way too long, so really, just feel free to e-mail me.

No offense intended to anyone on this blog with the short program boosterism--I think everyone here could talk for hours on end about the strengths of their programs, and all with good reason.

Good luck to everyone in your applications!

PS. I hope there are actual non first-years reading this blog! Again, apologies to all of the first-years who aren't applying to anything because they are already in programs they love.

Google Wave

by Christopher Cocca

Do you any of you have a Google Wave account? If so, how do you envision using this tool for workshopping? Are any contributors to this blog interested in workshopping pieces over Google Wave during the upcoming semester break?

What Are You Thankful For?

by Christopher Cocca


Nathan Bransford has nice Thanksgiving meme up at his blog today: What are you thankful for in the writing/publishing world?

Nathan is an agent at Curtis Brown and a soon-to-be published author himself. His blog and twitter feed are worth following.

Call for Submissions (Poetry): Love Rise Up Anthology

Here's a solicitation letter from Steve Fellner to all of us unpublished and emerging poets out there:

Hi,

WE’VE EXTENDED OUR SUBMISSION DEADLINE UNTIL JANUARY 15.

Because a number of potential contributors have asked for more time, we thought it was only fair to extend the deadline until after the holidays.

Phil Young and I have been asked to co-edit an anthology for Benu Press; its working title is Love Rise Up.

We both have been invested in the literary world for some time. I wrote and published a book of poems entitled Blind Date with Cavafy (Marsh Hawk Press, 2007) and a memoir entitled All Screwed Up (Benu Press, 2009); Phil has published in literary magazines such as Antioch Review.

The editor who commissioned this project asked that we focus on contemporary poets and poems that succeed on the following levels:

1.) The poem deals with social justice, not simply a social issue. In other words there has to be some action or suggestion of resistance or dealing with a social issue, not just having a social issue somewhere in the background.

2.) The poem offers an element of hope. This hope can be somewhat ambiguous, but at least some level of hope has to be detectable to the average reader. Think “Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes.

3.) The poem is an “accessible narrative or lyric that contains elements of genuine drama or comedy.”

4.) If the poem were a movie, it would have to receive somewhere between a G and PG-13 rating.

We would really like to include a poem of yours in Love Rise Up. If interested, please send us a poem(s) for us to look at as a Word document. We would like it emailed it to us at sfellner@brockport.edu or pyoung@brockport.edu

How do you balance your ruthlessness?

Composition theorist Peter Elbow has this theory about pedagogy: that helping students write is about liking their writing. Actively liking it. He points out that most of us are best able to make progress in our own writing when we start from a point of liking what we are doing.

At the same time, I've noticed that in some of my more successful poems I've been able to make giant changes from the original draft, changes that came from places the original draft did not even indicate. (One fun project is taking poems that don't seem to have similarities and seeing what they do when formed together--but that's a digression). One of the ways I do this is by keeping a copious pile of notes and constantly applying them, another is by consciously taking the risks that aren't yet working if I think there's something there, past those failures. Another still is in cutting everything that doesn't for sure belong in the poem.

So I like my poems, but when I'm really ruthless with them, I get to a point sometimes where no matter where I take the poem it's a failure (even if it's a pretty failure), and at those times I've tried to be even more ruthless--to discard the poem until a much later date.

Today was one of those days when I went mining old drafts for notes, and found some poems were in better shape than I thought (or only needed a few shots in the arm), and I realized that I liked these poems again. I spent a good amount of time fixing these up and then I realized, they're still not very good, I'm just being more honest with myself about the fact that I do like them, even though they are not really successful.

I am of course assuming that most poets aren't writing with an eye to future publications (seeing as how there's no money in it), but that doesn't mean we're not interested in how people receive our work (even if its not so many people). Fictioners, you might have a slightly different view, although I doubt its philosophically removed...

But what I'm really wondering about is: how do you balance your liking and your ruthlessness?

What Are You Reading?

by Jennifer Brown

Writers read.  A lot.  At least they should.  And they learn from it. 

My semester has been about reading at least as much as it has been about writing.  I’ve read (or reread) Countless short stories by the likes of Lorrie Moore, Flannery O’Connor, Tim O’Brien and Stuart Dybek; The Odyssey; Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; Hamlet; Eliot’s Wasteland and The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock; The Crucible; Huck Finn; Tom Sawyer; Roughing It; Life on the Mississippi; A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court; Pudd’nhead Wilson; The Conjure Woman; Moby Dick; Country of the Pointed Firs; St. Mawr; Hemingway Stories; Faulkner Stories; Death Comes for the Archbishop; Under the Volcano; East of Eden; Wolf Willow; The Sheltering Sky; Light Years; Far Tortuga; Legends of the Fall; The Crossing; and a lot of Chekov.  

That is quite a list.  And I’ve learned from all of it and grateful for having been introduced to it all. 

But what I really want to tell you about is this:  This week I have fallen in love with Ambrose Bierce. I think my writing life has changed forever.  A friend of mine sent me a link to a story of his called “Chickamauga,” and I will never be the same.  When I proclaimed my love for it, she said “It’s so you” and I was overjoyed—because I hope it is.  Oh, how I hope it is. I sit here now next to a copy of The Complete Stories of Ambrose Bierce. 

Y’all know how it is right? When you find that special writer, the one that really speaks to you and you just fall hard?  This has happened to me before, with Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Faulkner, John Irving, Salmon Rushdie, and most recently with Cormac McCarthy.  But this Ambrose Bierce thing—this is serious!

So what have you read this semester, and have you fallen in love with any writer in particular?