Still recovering from the seven-day-stomach-flu-of-death. No real food all week. And tomorrow afternoon I’m reading at the Jewel Box Theater in Poulsbo, WA – I hope I will be cogent and no one will even notice the dark circles under my eyes! I’m going to debut some new poems I haven’t read out loud before, all about my fox-wife (kitsune) characters.
I just recorded two poems for Pebble Lake Review, the poems are going to be in their Fall/Winter issue and they are going to post them to their Audio Project. Pebble Lake is such a cool magazine. I hadn’t read either of these poems out loud before; they’re nothing like my superhero/villainess poems, and they “play” differently somehow. It’ll be interesting to see what people think of them.
I think this week I have felt a little discouraged – two “no” responses from grants, two rejections, and an overall feeling of tiredness with the process of sending out poems or manuscripts. This may also have to do with the fever and the not-eating and constant nausea. I did, however, turn in my work for graduate school, the final assignments except for the class I have to teach and my reading and thesis defense at the January residency. Wow! I think MFA programs can kind of burn you out, for two years you try to produce and produce and read and absorb poetry. At the end, you’re sort of sick of your own work and sick of talking about poetry, a little bit. But again, maybe that’s just the flu talking.

Okay, I feel I should leave you with a more upbeat message. Next week, I promise. Til then, here’s the new kitten effectively blocking the act of printing out poems.