First of all, a shout-out to my little brother, who turns 30 today – Happy Birthday Pumpkin!

Sorry I haven’t been blogging much – all of my accumulated words are going into the first draft of the dreaded “Essay,” pretty much the only requirement of my MFA program’s third semester. It’s on “Why We Wear Masks: Contemporary Women Poets and the Persona Poem.” Right now it’s nine pages of incoherent thoughts pasted together. Yesterday I used three dictionaries, the MLA handbook, a primer on Jung, and seven web sites, all to write about a paragraph on what persona means. I’ve also been trying to write up two poetry book reviews, long overdue, finally finish commenting on a friend’s manuscript, catch up on e-mail (and Hotmail has been having some glitches, I lost some mail – so if I haven’t responded to any one of your urgent messages please re-send! This includes people who sent over the web form from this site) recover from my ten-day-absence (and the thirty-day absence of sun, blessedly broken by yesterday’s amazing, if cold, day-long sunfest.)
More on Atwood – I didn’t notice this at first, but one of the reasons I think I enjoyed her novel “Blind Assassin” so much is that the main story is a re-telling of the Procne and Philomel story, from Procne’s point of view. Agree? Disagree? Let me know!
I’ve written three poems since I’ve been back, all on the themes of Japanese fairy tales and animé. Hmph. This doesn’t belong with the other poems I’ve been writing at all. One is very formal and structured, and the other two are prose poems, which I have just barely started to write as a form. I think I was influenced by reading Sandra Alcosser and Kristy Bowen, who both have some kickass prose poems.
I’m having some poet friends over tonight so must concentrate soon on cleaning. I am generally a creature of some chaos, and straightening up is often a Herculean task. I may have convinced the husband to make his famous scones for tonight. (Using Tom Douglas’ secret cherry-almond scone recipe – the best in Seattle!)