The Girl and the Fox, the MFA and tea parties, chronic illness and academia, and other assorted bits

As some of you might now, I have a thing for the connections between women and foxes, and they show up frequently in my poems. But even if you haven’t written a whole bunch of poems about fox-girls, you should drop everything and immediately watch this gorgeous short film with no dialogue called “The Girl and the Fox.” It also reminded me of the new novel, The Snow Child, about a feral girl in Alaska whose only companion is her fox. I love all alternative re-tellings of fairy tales, and I liked the way this one combined the gritty realities of homesteading in Alaska in the twenties with the Russian fairy tale, “The Snow Child,” which I’ve always loved. Thought a little slow at times, I really enjoyed this for the most part, and her delicate balance between aforementioned realistic grittiness and magical realism was pretty interesting!

Two articles were really interesting to me recently. One was from The Millions, called “From Teaching to Tea Parties,” discussed the difficulty of making a living as a writer and teacher with an MFA. The expectations of many of my students at National is that they will get their MFA and automatically get a teaching job that will support them. But the reality is much different. I often hesitate to tell my students how hard the path is for most writers, even writers with books and teaching experience who really hustle. Most of us are cobbling together a living from multiple jobs, most, sadly, less glamorous than high tea and vintage fashion.

The other article tackles the difficult problem of having chronic illness in academia, how it might interfere with the job path and create awkward situations with work. Of course, that would be true in any work or social situation, but I thought it was interesting to examine it through the lens of teaching:
http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/academe/2012/MJ/Feat/good.htm

Sorry to hear about Ray Bradbury’s passing, who was one of my favorite childhood writers; his Illustrated Man still influences the way I think about tone in successful short narratives, and I admit to some compulsive memorization of literature due in part to reading Fahrenheit 425 at an impressionable age. But celebrating new Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey, who, yes, already won the Pulitzer, you know, no big deal, and what is she, 45? It’s a lot to live up to! Her book that really won my affection was Belloq’s Ophelia, which contains some really beautiful persona poetry and interesting character/historical storytelling work. Now I will have to check out her new book as well.

I’ve turned in my final grades and am finally able to turn my attention back to my own reading, writing, and submitting, which unfortunately, between the class and the move and other distractions, had gone by the wayside for a while. I wrote a new poem, sent out some work, and am finally turning my attention to the new townhouse’s smaller pleasures: planting in the tiny little outside back plot, putting miniature roses in the window box. Still dealing with the grand space issue in townhouses (where in the heck do you store things? Where can we put towels? Why does the bathroom have no place to put anything? Thank goodness for the handy husband who keeps installing shelving in every possible space…) but all the downstairs bookshelves (all five of them) are now filled – filled! – with books. That’s just the necessary, needed-to-get-to-them-right-away books. The rest of the books are still hiding away. And I think we’ve got all the cardboard boxes out of the downstairs living area, if not from the upstairs OR the garage yet. Thought it’s June and I see blah-blah news about hottest spring on record, we have had nothing but chilly rain here in the Northwest for as long as I can remember. I think we’re going to get some sunshine soon…send some of that warm sunshine our way, rest of country! I didn’t move back to Seattle to get depressed by record rain and cold!