Sending out 2012

Bless me, followers, for I have sinned. It's it's been five months since my last post.

It has been a hard year, friends. And a lot has changed since July 8th, when I was complaining about moving to Saint Paul. We have since settled into our small apartment in a beautiful section of the city. And when I say "settled in" of course I mean that our books are continuously scattered everywhere, and we have broken many kitchen glasses accidentally.

I do so love living in Saint Paul. I have a writing group that meets every few weeks or so, and sometimes I even do the writing assignments we come up with at the end of our time together. Which is not to say I have been writing a lot--I haven't been.

In fact, one of my goals for the year was to write 250 poems, and I'll be lucky if I close in on 100 poems for the year by the end of December, which is just a little more than a week away. I had several other goals for the year, involving my running a half marathon (nope), getting into at least one top-tier journal (nope), and putting together another chapbook (nope). But just because I didn't meet these goals doesn't mean that I wasted my year, I think.

I have spent a good deal of the last month or two really focusing on myself. I joined a magical yoga studio and started noticing muscles in my body I didn't know I had. I have been breathing through stress, and I finally feel like I am rewarding my body instead of just punishing it for eating too many cookies. I have also been thinking a lot about the people I'm blessed to call friends and family. Sometimes we learn too late to tell people every day that we love them.

Christmas is coming up, and New Years, and I know I don't own the monopoly on advice-giving, but this is the only piece I have: be good to each other. Be good to strangers. Tell and show people that you love them. The end of the year always gets me a little reflective, and I apologize for not being funny in this post. But sometimes I have to just allow myself to be honest, and this is what I have been thinking about for the past few months.

Be good to yourself. Be good to each other.

Summer Post

The summer has been a lazy, crazy time so far.

My husband and I are getting ready to move to St. Paul in a few weeks, and our living room is full of boxes that contain mostly books. Packing up books is sort of like playing an enormous game of Tetris, which is the only thing that makes moving fun. But we are looking forward to living in an area where you can use the term "bustling" unironically.

Aside from packing, I've been spending most of my time away from the internet. Because of the nature of our poorness, we have chosen to go without the internet for the summer, which has proved both a challenge and a blessing. It is true, I can no longer waste entire days (weeks?) watching episode after episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or the X-Files on Netflix instant stream, but I have been reading a lot and writing a lot of letters. It's nice to get something real in the mail every once in a while.

In a couple weeks I'll also be leaving for Mallard Island, where I'll spend a week with other writers doing writerly things. So if I don't update again until after we move, all this! is why. 

About a week ago, the July issue of THRUSH came out, which I'm totally delighted to be included in. In another few days, the summer issue of Sixth Finch will be released, and I'll have three poems up there. So many bird journals!

That's about it for now, besides this picture of an old lady. Stop complaining about how hot it is. Have a great summer!

YOU CAN'T MAKE ME WRITE A BLOG

YOU CAN'T MAKE ME!

DOG ON A BIKE DOG ON A BIKE DOG ON A BIKE.

Gonna go write a poem now. Go away.

Feet People

On Wednesday, I got hit by a car while I was running through a crosswalk with a stop sign at it. I guess a more appropriate term is that I was nudged by a car, since I am not in any way injured. I don't even have a bruise. Luckily, the bad driver saw me just in time and slammed on her brakes. People in this town hate pedestrians. Or, as my husband and I call ourselves, feet people. I don't know Latin, but I like to pretend that I do. Ped, meaning feet. Estrian, meaning people.

Anyway, I'm very glad to say that we're moving this summer to St. Paul, a town where feet people are probably more widely accepted. A place where people are less likely to yell "Drive a damn car!" at you from the windows of their crappy pickup trucks.

In addition to the big moving news, there is other news! Issue 5 of TRNSFR magazine is now available to purchase, where I'm happy to keep company with such wonderful writers as Russ Woods, J.A. Tyler, James Tadd Adcox, and Hazel Foster, whose piece you can read for free on the TRNSFR site.

I also have a few poems in the April issue of elimae, and a poem that went up in the February issue of Midway Journal.

I know it's not new news, but I'm still getting rejections like crazy. Since September 1st, I've received almost forty. But I have a bunch of pending submissions, which will either blossom into tiny little butterflies of acceptances, or rot in their submishmashable graves, with a little red "Declined" staring me dead in the face. Each one is like a little wish.

Happy weekend!

I Have a Book and You Don't (Or Maybe You Do)

My husband wrote the title of this blog post for me.

Anyway, the first part is true: I have a book. It's a beautiful little thing, and you can hold it with your real American hands! Or your hands of other nationalities, if you're willing to pay for international shipping.

My twenty-sixth birthday has come and gone, and I am no longer halfway between twenty and thirty. I am getting further and further away from twenty-one, and have fewer opportunities to blame my indiscretions on being young, in college, everything that goes with being in college, etc.

Now I just have to blame them on the truth: I'm an idiot most of the time.

The book is no indiscretion, though. I did this on purpose. And I don't think it sucks. If you have five bucks, you can read it for yourself and decide.

LOVE STORIES HATE STORIES

When I was in high school I called Valentine's Day "Fake Crappy Love Day." I have no comments to make about that, I just remembered that today.

I co-authored an e-chapbook called LOVE STORIES HATE STORIES, which is available for free today at NAP. You can go read it. I wrote the Hate Stories poems, except for one. And Russ Woods wrote the Love Stories poems, except for one. I'll give you a clue about which Love Stories poem I wrote: it has to do with Abe Lincoln. How is nobody surprised?

Anyway, go read Russ's Love Stories and my Hate Stories, for whatever mood you're in today. And since it's valentine's day, remember to do something with candy today. As if I need an excuse to eat candy all day. Pshaw! I most certainly do not. But I'll take it.

Fat Turky, A Million Hours

I just got back from a weekend in Providence. I could live in that city. I guess I could live in any city, as not much is required of you to be able to live in a city except that you spend the majority of your time there, and you know where the grocery store is, and that sounds simple enough.

I had an interview at Brown for a spot in their MAT program. I don’t usually interview very well, because I usually start accidentally talking about Abraham Lincoln for no reason or something like that. I will know in several weeks about the decision. I’m not stressed out about it, because I know that I will either get in, or I will not get in. There is no unforeseen option.

If you haven’t seen it yet, my infamous poem FAT TURKY is up as bonus material on the Stoked website. It’s the original copy, and you can even see where I erased a lowercase “t” in “Turky” to replace it with an uppercase one, even though the word “fat” is not capitalized in the title. My first grade brain is truly something to behold.

Lots of other things are happening, though most of the time I’m not even certain what those things are. I have a list of projects that I am slowly working through all at once. On my family’s first computer, we had dial up internet, and I downloaded Napster onto it. You could download one song in a few hours. Often, I would download nine or ten songs at once, and it would take a million hours. This is the same way I write. All at once. A million hours.

Brand New Blog Post

I haven't blogged since last year! Yes, I'm sick of hearing and making that joke over and over in different contexts, but I just said it aloud to my husband and since he had to suffer it, so do you.

It's a brand new year, like it is every twelve months, and I get to decide what to do with it. Last year I was newly married, living in a tiny apartment (still in that tiny apartment), blogging and writing and not going to the post office. I'm still doing most of that. Well, all of that, I guess.

Last year I got my chapbook accepted for publication by NAP.

Last year we drove my old car to a buncha places on the east coast.

Last year I lost thirty pounds.

Last year I wrote 250 poems.

Last year I got over 100 rejections.

Last year I became the managing editor of Specter and the poetry editor of Stymie.

Last year I bought the most magical shirt from a thrift store around the block from our apartment.

Last year I chopped down a tree and put that sucker in the living room. (Okay, so Will cut it down and I pushed on it until it toppled over.)

Next year I have all sorts of big plans, and will put down my resolutions here so that I don't mess it up and forget about them. And so that you can point and mock if I abandon them.

1. Get into at least one “top tier” journal.

2. Do at least one poetry reading. (This will be easily accomplished, as I'm reading twice at AWP.)

3. Lose fifteen more pounds. (I think that should do it.)

4. Read fifty two books. (That’s only one per week. I failed hard at my goal for last year, meaning I read like, fifteen books, max.)

5. Run a half marathon. (This is a lofty goal, but I’m registering for one that's not until September. I feel like if I spend the 45 smackers, I'll be more likely to commit to it. I do love money very, very much.)

6. Enter ten writing contests. (I don’t have to win any of them, I just have to try to win them.)

7. Get 100 rejections. (This shouldn’t be hard at all.)

8. Write at least 250 poems. (Last year my goal was to write one a day, and I wrote approximately 250. I’ll strive for that again)

9. Put together another chapbook. (My first one, Ether/Ore, is coming out in April.)

10. Work on my full length manuscript. (It’s being read by one company right now. If they don’t pick it up, I'm going to do some major redecorating.)

11. Miscellaneous. The usual, and some not so usual: make a conscious effort to be happier, stop cutting my own hair because my hairdresser gets mad when I do, take more pictures, write more things down, learn new recipes, exercise once a day, make more things, dress better, all that.

And the resolution I've had since I was twelve or thirteen, which I have yet to do: teach a monkey to smoke.