it's all downhill from here...

It's that time of the semester...you know, when your days are filled with equal parts panic and procrastination, when you know (because it's happened every semester for the past five years) that you will somehow finish everything even though you can't actually imagine how. The momentum of the semester is such that you can't quite keep up with your laundry or your dirty dishes, but you can find time to watch Grey's Anatomy reruns (again) and take two or three naps while you're "reading." ...when you take a half-hour to update your blog because, clearly, that's the best use of your time.

So, some updates.

Learning Italian
At the moment, I'm at New Wave Coffee, where in a little while I'll be meeting Federica, my Italian conversation partner. This is only our second meeting and quite possibly our last. This is for a couple of reasons, one being that I can't really see myself having time for another meeting before the end of the semester, which I think is when she returns to Italy; the other is that it turns out I don't get to take any more Italian classes, so the urgency to learn has fizzled. I wasn't using very much foresight when I decided to take 4 semesters of a 4-day-a-week class...as a grad student/TA, I just don't have enough control over my schedule. The class I need to finish my coursework on time conflicts with all three sections of Italian 102 next semester.

When found out about this conflict, I started looking into my other options and found out that the Spanish translation test is probably well within my abilities, so that's the new plan. Maybe someday I'll be able to go back and really learn Italian, but it's not going to be possible while I'm getting my PhD.

Intro to Poetry
I think I've learned way more in this class than any of my students, but that's okay. They're improving, they're writing interesting stuff, and they seem to be enjoying themselves. I can't ask for much more my first time out of the gate. In the future, I think I'll spend a lot more time preparing my materials and will without a doubt use a real textbook instead of a course packet. I also don't think I'll spend quite as much time workshopping if I teach this class again. It feels like we're repeating the same conversation every day, every poem, and the students would probably be learning more if we were doing different types of writing exercises, if we continued to read published work throughout the semester, etc. Like I said, I think I've learned a lot more than my students.

Workshop
I'm stumped. I turned in a revision last week that AW hated, completely tore to shreds, and I'm afraid now to revise the rest of the poems for the portfolio. It's so strange how some days she compliments what I'm doing and other days she just throws up her hands. I think one thing I gained during my MFA was the ability to defend my work even when a reader (mentor, even) didn't like what I was doing--but this past year or so has diminished that ability...I don't trust my gut anymore, and so I don't trust my work. I just want to finish a poem and be sure it's done, ready to be out in the world...and I can't remember the last time I felt that way.

Next Semester
The class that makes it impossible for me to continue with Italian is in Renaissance lit. It's not one of my main areas of interest, but it's a real, honest-to-goodness lit class: we'll be reading plays and stories and poems and not just theory! I can't begin to tell you how excited I am about that. I'm also taking two workshops, one poetry (with Christina Pugh) and one non-fiction (with Luis Urrea). It may not be a good idea to take 3 grad level classes, but I'm not teaching next semester, so I think it'll be okay. Plus, I've had this non-fiction project in my head since my last semester at Akron, and my newest poems are leaning toward flash non-fiction, so I really have got to work with Urrea when I have the chance. The best thing, though, about next semester? I only have to be on campus 3 days a week, and I don't have to get up at 6am every day!

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And Federica will be here any minute, so that's all for now. Happy Thanksgiving!

happy

My sister is here, last night I did my second reading since Flood Year came out and then went to Little Joe's to belatedly celebrate my birthday, today we're going to wander around the city like tourists and the weather is perfect.

Compliments from lots of folks, including the department chair and AW, after the reading. Sold a couple of copies. Felt like a rock star.

Karen wrote a little review of Flood Year that's just amazing...I kind of can't believe she's talking about my poems. Thanks so much, Karen!

Rigoberto González had nice things to say about Flood Year and dgp over at Critical Mass. Awesome!

verve

I have been sitting here all night, fighting with the internet, chatting with a poet friend/classmate on facebook, watching Grey's episodes online (when the internet is working)and now it is 11:56, past my bedtime, and I'm not sleepy, but I am tired, and I do have to get up in 5 or 6 hours depending on whether or not I want my hair to look decent tomorrow, but I haven't done any of my homework/grading, and I've figured it's safe to put some of it off until tomorrow night or the next night, but a lot of it (writing a sonnet, revising a poem, reading some Dante) needs to be done by 3pm tomorrow, and minus the time I'll probably spend sleeping, I only have 3 free hours between now and then and usually trying to write in fixed form takes me a really, really long time, and I keep thinking that Anne said I don't have to write the sonnet because I did okay on the sapphics, but it would be good for me anyway, and I'm wondering what's up with this never-ending run-on sentence?

I took my birthday weekend off, officially, but the truth is I've been phoning it in for a couple of weeks. Why? Who knows. Winter doldrums kicking in early? Mid-semester burnout? General laziness? Can't quite put my finger on it. Just know I haven't had much verve lately.

Speaking of verve, Anne also told me my poems have no intensity/focus/urgency. I'm supposed to be revising to find the moment of urgency/intensity/focus that is at the root of each draft. When she said this to me last week, it sounded profound and right and productive and now it just feels heavy and sad and impossible. Oh, she also said I have a small vocabulary. boo.

and now I'm good and depressed and ready for bed. I'll do what I can tomorrow and what doesn't get done will go on the permanent record of things-Sara-didn't-do-well-enough-according-to-her-own-stupid-standards which I think all perfectionists have except I'm a lazy perfectionist and even though I want everything to be perfect I usually don't get there.

self-pity, it's good for my art.

Birthday (and Halloween) redux

I turned 29 yesterday. I'm not one to worry about getting older (for the most part), primarily because I love to celebrate my birthday. Usually, I try to have a huge party and am subsequently disappointed when I end up with a small party. So this year, I started small, stayed small. Four of us went to dinner at Quartino, which is quickly becoming my favorite restaurant in Chicago. We drank too much wine, ate too much food, talked about babies, relationships, school...got a little rowdy and offended people at the next table...and generally had an amazing time. I don't think I've ever had a group of girlfriends that felt as solid as these girls do for me.

I can't quite give up on my love of big, rowdy birthday celebrations, though, so I'll be having a second celebration on Nov. 13 after I read at the Hull House. My sister Carla will be in town, and a lot of folks will already be around for the reading, so it just seemed like a better day for a big party. I'm looking forward to that, too.

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And it wouldn't be right if I didn't mention Halloween. Four of us dressed up as smurfs and went to the costume parade on Halsted street. We were nearly celebrities...everywhere we went, people shouted: "Look, it's the smurfs!" and asked to have their picture taken with us. But really, the best part for me was checking out all the drag queen costumes. I have a bit of a secret obsession. The best was the human disco ball, who I unfortunately couldn't get a very good picture of.

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I did more socializing this past weekend then in the whole month prior, so I'm quite exhausted today and even further behind in my work. I guess that means I should sign off and get to it.

Happy November, folks!