Today is graduation. My husband G and my friend Lana are up to celebrate it with me. Seemingly appropriately, the sun in shining, and although I’m exhausted – the bad beds, bad food and grueling hours can be taxing – I feel happy that it’s finished. I’ve enjoyed the readings, the talks, even teaching the class and having the thesis review were pretty fun. Highlights – Sandra Alcosser’s and Dorianne Laux’s readings, sitting by fiction faculty Claire Davis while she drew sketches of the backs of the heads of other faculty, talking to Valerie Miner and Peter Sears, listening to the new students’ readings – really good. We have a new cadre of girl-power writers – mostly prose writers – but maybe some of them will convert to poetry. Oh, and standing on my balcony and watching a comet over the ocean’s horizon. And running through the snowy sand the morning it snowed. I forget how magical snow can be, and how I’m really more of a cold-weather than warm weather person. Marvin Bell kept saying how I should get a Phd. LOL. Maybe I need a short break from school first.
I haven’t written much since I’ve been here, and trying to keep up on my freelance work in the middle of the ten-day crush of events has been tough. But hopefully I’ll write some new poems when I get home. That’s usually how it is for me – I’m more of a contemplative writer, I need those hours-long stretches of free time, apparently. We had a good panel on publishing yesterday, I got to talk to Christine from Lost Horse (who’s advice on starting my own publishing conern was “It’s like having a baby – if you think too much you won’t do it. I say, jump in!”) and Michael from Copper Canyon. I’m even more excited to start my own magazine and book publishing thing after this. I think I’m going to try an internet quarterly with a print version yearly, and then maybe one or two books a year. Still going back and forth on the POD thing.
Also, nagging at the back of head is the notion I still need to buy tickets to Atlanta for AWP (check out this awesome reading!) I’m trying to talk Tom from Steel Toe into having Mary Biddinger and I do a book signing together at the Steel Toe Books table. I think that would be much more fun than standing there by myself. Also, I have to represent Pacific at the table on Saturday. So, it seems important that I actually get there. Which, from Seattle, is proving to be complicated. Very few direct or inexpensive flights. Oh, curse you, overly complicated and expensive air travel! If only I was like my friend Alaskan ER doctor Kathy McCue, I’d be able to just hop in my own plane and fly myself there.