Warning: There will be no technical jargon in this blog entry.

So, I have noticed a proliferation of poet blogs in the universe lately, which, generally, is a good thing. I like hearing from other poets, especially about the frustrating nature of the poetry “business,” such as it is. Here are some (non-comprehensive) links to some interesting poetry blogs: Kim Addonizio’s, Victoria Chang’s, Jeffery Bahr’s, Kelli Russell Agodon’s, and Oliver de la Paz’s.

I am reading some books for school right now, including Alicia Ostriker’s Stealing the Language, Galway Kinnell’s The Book of Nightmares, and A Donald Justice Reader. One of the chapter’s of Ostriker’s book is really interesting to me; it deals with violence and anger in women’s writing, and how she thinks women tend to write “victimization” poems where the women passively receive bad treatment from men/husbands/fathers/society etc or “revenge” poems where women are the ones doling out abuse. I have been thinking a lot about how women in my generation can transcend either of these none-too-desirable options – how to respond to violence against women, or to our own anger, without being a victim or an abuser? This is why I keep going back to comic books. For me, the best role models didn’t come from the Bible, or Greek mythology, or fairy tales, all of which pretty much had nothing but women victims and femme fatales. (There are, of course, certain exceptions: imagine my delight when I learned about the character from the Apocrypha, which I borrowed from a Catholic college roommate, of Judith. Don’t know why she didn’t make it into the regular old testaments.) My role models were the slightly alien race of women like Wonder Woman, and Batgirl (don’t ask me why, as a kid I just thought she was the coolest) and later, the female characters in X-Men and even later, characters like Sarah Pezzini from the Witchblade comics and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. These women were feminine without being meek and overly self-sacrificing, and there was no doubt they could fight and overcome villains. The idea of being able to directly confront evil, as opposed to waiting around for someone else to do it for you, has always been very appealing to me. So I write a lot of poems about female comic book heroines, and video game heroines, etc.

I am hoping to someday do an all-comic-book-heroine chapbook, maybe even with illustrations. Wouldn’t that be cool? Yah, apparently poetry book publishers are not clamoring for this kind of subject matter, sadly. Oh well, a girl can dream.

I am preparing my poetry book manuscript once again to make the rounds of submissions to poetry manuscript contests, including the Bakeless, the Yale Younger Poets, Winnow Press, and a couple of others. Last year, in my first attempt, I was a finalist at Winnow Press and a semifinalist at the Bakeless – and I’ve spent a year (hopefully) making the manuscript better, so I am crossing my fingers for a win this year. I’ve also gotten a bunch of “positive” rejection slips from journals lately – i.e. – “This was close!” “We really liked such and such a poem, and it made it past three rounds of editors, but in the end we didn’t go with it” etc. These are odd to receive, because you’re happy your poems were read – and weren’t spit on – but…in the end it’s still a “no.”

Parallel to this, I have been writing what feels like non-stop articles about WS-Security and WS-Policy. This is only exhausting because WS-Security has changed so much from when I first learned about it a couple of years ago – in fact, it seems to change specifically around the dates I have to turn each article in. I was really excited about this spec when I first learned about it – although it wasn’t perfect, it had real potential – and I still think it is something people should be considering when they think about implementing web services systems for themselves and their businesses. But I’m starting to get that burnt out feeling, like Security? Noooo….

Did I also mention that the Sp1 of the WSE is already out? Did I mention I haven’t updated my code download for this SP yet? And I have a month of family visitors, so I won’t get to it til September, probably.

Thanks to all you guys who have been writing in with positive comments on my site, my book, and my articles. It makes it all worth while. I mean it. And, to ask a favor of strangers, (always dangerous) if you did read my book and liked it, please please please put up a review on Amazon…I know those things make a difference.

The Residency for my MFA was quite an adventure – got to see Yusef Komunyakaa, Dorianne Laux, and Marvin Bell read and teach – and, of all things, Sharon Olds reading humorous poetry along with a jazz bassist. Surreal. Met a lot of nice writers as well, including this wonderful fiction writer named Debra Magpie Earling, who is just a beautiful person inside and out, who writes the kind of lyrical, mesmerizing fiction that I would call some of the best poetry I’ve heard. Her new book (which is not yet published)will be fantastic, based on what I’ve heard of it.

I’ve been sick/swamped with work since I returned, which is a good thing for my freelance writing and editing business, but bad for blogging 🙂 The weather here has been perfect too, sunny and 80 with a breeze, the blue water right outside my window…ah, it takes a lot of discipline to work at all during the summers here. This morning I saw a heron, two bald eagles, and a doe walking around in my yard. Wildlife abounding.

Got a rejection note for my poetry today and that was discouraging, although it was countered by an acceptance of one of my poems in the Washington poetry anthology put out by Floating Bridge called Pontoon. I am still hoping for some good news on my poetry book, which is out at several publishers.

I’ve been writing up a storm on Web services security too, it seems. Everyone wants to know more about security, especially with all the viruses and attacks that have been raging lately. I’ve been reading all the books I could put my hands on that address this subject and if you paste them all together, they just about give you enough information. Maybe my next tech book should be on this…

Well, I was a busy worker bee this weekend. New version (2.0) of the WSE came out at Tech Ed, so I had to take down my old downloadable sample (based on the tech preview version of the WSE 2.0) and build a new one taking into account all the changes they’d made to the code. I do that for free, because I love WSE programmers, (aww…)and I have read many tech books with samples where I was like, gee, I wish I could download bits that actually matched the current product release. I vowed my book would actually have up-to-date bits as long as possible…

I’m also trying to read about fifty poetry journals for reviews on NewPages.com, and found a couple where I started to remember why I read poetry in the first place. I mean, I read these poems that were really lyrical, then funny, then cutting, then heartbreaking, all in the right places. Spoon River Poetry Review was one of them, and I also really enjoyed this new journal, Cargnegie Mellon Poetry Review, and one I had never seen before, 5 AM. I guess it’s nice not to have to work so hard to appreciate poetry, you know, when an image just grabs you right off and then every line is perfect, you wouldn’t cut a word, and you can actually follow the train of thought in the poem, but it’s not over-explained, there’s still mystery. I have to say Beth Ann Fennelly has a new fan, I just discovered her. And I wrote about eight poems this week, one of which was worth anything, but still, that’s darn productive, I think.

I’m also writing a grant proposal and working on a tech article or two, and getting ready to start an MFA program. It feels strange to be going back to school again, but let’s face it, in a truly geeky way, I “just love learning.” Plus it’ll put me in touch with people who really love writing and manage to make a living involving poetry in some way. My mom just went back for her Phd this year, which is pretty darn inspiring to me, and she just got to interview the Halo 2 programmer team for one of her classes. She knows more about the game than I do now. Sweet, huh? I was like, where can I sign up for that class again? (PS – November release is what they’re saying now. How long have we been waiting for this?)

So, no barbeques and lounging by the pool this weekend, but I’ll make up for that sometime in August…Also, since Angel is now off the air (sniff sniff, goodbye Buffyverse), and Alias is gone til 2005, and the Daily Show seems to be in endless repeat mode, I seem to have all this extra TV-watching time to work. Now, if they load up all the summer and fall with reality shows, I may start to hate TV so much I will never watch again, and then I could take up one more hobby, like, say, fly-fishing or whale-riding or something.

(PS – Speaking of TV shows – My little brother has been putting pressure on me to go out and buy the DVDs of the Cowboy Bebop series sight unseen, because he is sure I will love it. No offense to him, but since he is an unqualified anime fan who has been known to spend hours watching Dragonball Z (which I refer to as Dragonball Zzzzz….) I want a second or third opinion. Any thoughts on this show? Post a comment!)

Did I say I had free time? Because what I meant was, I have no free time…I just had three projects happen all at once, so now it is back to work work work all the time…that’s good though, I like feeling productive. Another personal goal is to post some updates to the site with new WSE book code when the new version of the WSE 2.0 drops, which should be soon. My code was based on the tech preview of 2.0, and things like namespaces will change. Lots of fun for me, as you can imagine. Oh well, that’s what happens when you write a book before the final version of the product has shipped. Note to self: avoid the bleeding edge.

Just listening to the Radio Sunnydale soundtrack from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I have to say I recommend it. Many good tracks.

OK, back to work I go!