The Cave of Making and Making the Most of Time

I haven't been much of a blogger for a very long while, so when Superstition Review asked me to write a guest post on their blog leading up to the AWP Conference in Los Angeles, I jumped at the chance to force myself to write prose. And force myself I did, pushing past all levels of procrastination and distraction to send the post to the editor, only a few days after I had originally promised.

Cueva de las Manos, Argentina

The title comes from the phrase that started rolling around in my head while I was working on poems, and poems were working on/in me. I ended up talking a bit about my writing process and the image of the cave for creativity (borrowed, I discovered, from dear Uncle Wystan--I am on sabbatical, so I am actually writing for the first time in a very long time--and also about the panel I'm on with Laura Valeri, Brendan Constantine, D. Gilson, and Zohra Saed.
Go here to read it!

I love the image at left, which I found by Googling "cave" and "creativity." According to this article in the Smithsonian, experts now believe that most cave art was made by women, based on the measurements of the handprints and stencils like these.

Ah, Summer! Taking the Virtual Blog Tour...

Summer is half over already (or something like that), and all of the "real work" I was gonna do has yet to be done. Instead, I have been teaching (2 online classes in June), parenting (more on that later), and plunging into a healthy new lifestyle of plant-based food and regular exercise. Oh, and recovering from one heck of an academic year, both for myself and my kids. As I have learned many times over the years, I really need a deadline, and a metaphorical cattle prod, to get words down on the page and out in the world.

So I was delighted to be invited by a dear and long-time friend, April Lindner, to participate in a "virtual blog tour," aimed at giving more exposure to blogs that readers may not have seen before. It's been quite awhile since I've posted (yikes!), so I figured this would be a perfect opportunity to get Saint Nobody up and running again--in hopes of revving up my own writing. This is the first in a series on various subjects I've saved up since my last post--time to put it out there.

First, meet April, the author of two poetry collections, This Bed Our Bodies Shaped from Able Muse Press and Skin from Texas Tech University Press.  She also has written three young adult novels—Jane, Catherine, and the forthcoming Love, Lucy, all published by Poppy. With R. S. Gwynn, she co-edited Contemporary American Poetry, in Longman’s Penguin Academics series.  A professor of English at Saint Joseph’s University, she lives in Havertown, Pennsylvania.

April and I were classmates in the PhD program in Creative Writing at the University of Cincinnati many moons ago. We read drafts of each others' poems in workshops, were roomies at my first-ever AWP Conference (Pittsburgh '95), and walked together for our doctoral hooding ceremony in 1998. It's been wonderful to see April from time to time at AWP and the West Chester Poetry Conference near her home in the Philly area. I've been a fan of her poetry for years, and have watched her career as a YA novelist with admiration ever since my niece, Mary, devoured the signed copy of Jane I gave her in 2012. I'll be posting a poem of April's, which I've used often in my classes, later in the week.

The next component of the blog tour meme is a quick "self-interview." Because this post is already fairly long, I will answer briefly here, and elaborate a bit in future posts.

1. What am I currently working on?

best american poetry....and best of the net!

I'm getting some great poetry news so far in 2013. My poem "I take your T-shirt to bed again..." was selected for The Best American Poetry 2013, which will be published by Scribner in September. I've written for the Best American Poetry blog several times, but this is the first time my work will actually appear in that estimable annual collection.

Furthermore, Gerry LaFemina's poem "Bright Windows," which I selected for the Summer 2012 issue of Ducts.org, was chosen for the 2012 Best of the Net Anthology! That should be online later this month, I hear. I'll post again when it's out.

abba: the debut

Denise read at the New School on Tuesday--and she generously invited me to read one of our ABBA poems with her. We also had chapbooks on hand for the first time ever! Liz Howort wrote this post about the reading on The Best American Poetry Blog. Woo hoo!

weekender

NOTE: It is perhaps unsurprising that I originally drafted the following post LAST weekend and am just finishing and posting it now.

I haven't posted here in awhile (again). Mostly it's because I've been doing other things, but there is always the shadow of blogger's block. I still don't know what it's about, exactly. Partly it's the same as regular writer's block, but the other part of it is the public nature of blogging. I have a link to my blog on my email signature, it's on my facebook page, it's the first thing that comes up if someone googles my name. So there's no way I can really hide here, unless I have some "restricted" posts, and I don't really see the sense of that. If I have something to say that's private, for a small group, I either just write in my notebook or send an email to a couple of friends.

Anyway, lately I've been remembering the words of Dave Smith, who with Claudia Emerson led the workshop in which I was a fellow at Sewanee last summer. Dave really held my feet to the fire, but it was something I needed. I'd submitted a manuscript of work-in-progress (something that most of the fellows don't do, for some reason, but I thought I'd take advantage of having a thorough reading by some experts, free of charge). After my hour-long conference, I read the three-page single-spaced letter Dave had written--it was more like an essay directed to me individually, engaged, elegantly-written, and incisive. At the end, I broke down and cried because he had hit the nail on the head--not so much about the poems themselves (although his comments were useful and on-target) as about my commitment to poetry.

I think the "serious" poet is not competing against stand-up comics but against the great poems in our language. To bear that burden of competition is a killer weight, but if a poet is not trying to do the best possible work, how is he/she different from the literary week-ender?

That, dear reader, is the question, and underlying that is another series of questions: am I destined to be a "week-ender"? what would I have to do to be "serious" about poetry? something's gotta give, but what?

At the end of the letter, Dave wrote:

I think you can be a very entertaining poet, especially reading to small crowds who have every reason to like not being challenged; or you can be both entertaining and much better, the kind of poet whose language has resonance and durability.

He went on to name some poets (all women, of course) he considered "non-week-enders" and the list included some of my personal heroes and one of my close personal friends. That was when I cried. Yes, I want to do what these writers have done. What has been stopping me? Why, if I consider my writing so central to my life, do I always give other work, the work that is for pay, more legitimacy and thus more of my energy? How can I change this?

If I don't get a handle on this I'll never have a second book. I'll never finish the memoir. I'll always be a might-have-been, an also-ran, a "but she had so much potential." I'm working on finding another way.

snow day

The only reason I can even post this is that FIT is closed (along with the NYC public schools) due to "inclement weather." We've got a snowstorm on our hands and, although at the moment it looks like it may be petering out, it's dumped several inches already and is supposed to leave us with up to a foot on the ground.

Bob came over to take the kids out sledding. So here I am, just you, me, and my computer. I have so much to talk about, but I just can't bring myself to write much. I don't know what it is--some of my "stuff" is not suitable for public consumption, but mostly it's just too daunting to shape and craft and wrestle with words right now. I've written dozens of emails for work, done some Facebook status updates, exchanged some messages with friends. Maybe I'm worded out. I'll keep trying, though. I promise.

logos, ethos, pathos....

Actually, I don't plan to discourse on the three rhetorical appeals in the title, above. But I do find it positively pathetic that I haven't blogged here in over a month! I've been posting at the Red Hen Press blog (rather sketchily) and doing a lot of other stuff, mainly fixing up the apartment so that, after six months, there are finally more actual pieces of furniture than cardboard boxes. The place is starting to live up to its potential.

I've also been baking a lot of pies. And eating them. More about that another time.

je suis un auteur

Big Little Wolf has pointed out to me that Saint Nobody (aka Ste. Nadie) is available on Amazon.fr. Qui sait?

She's also graciously included me on her "holiday book pick list" along with The Shipping News, Jeffrey Eugenides' short stories, and Francis Ponge, published on the fabulously titled a Femme d'un Certain Age.
Joyeux Noel, vraiment!

back on track

It's time I reminded myself how essential writing is to my general well-being. Not just because it can be therapeutic to "journal," but because writing is my medium, my passion, my vocation, the art form I am trying to master or at least practice consistently.

While I haven't been posting here, I've been reading other blogs and marvel at the consistency and clarity of these writers. One of them, Big Little Wolf's Daily Plate of Crazy, is like a magazine with posts that are funny, touching, helpful, and cogent every day.The author D.A. Wolf's post from yesterday is amazing in articulating the fear of not being able to articulate. I have read few accounts that are so honest and accurate about writer's block, guilt, grief, fear, self-recrimination, being overwhelmed, the power of rage to sidetrack us, and trying to parent--because we haveto parent--despite it all.

It's hard for me to put my inchoate thoughts and feelings into a form that I feel comfortable sharing with "my public" (however small that may be). It's not just about privacy and self-disclosure, it's about the writing itself, the feeling that it must be of a certain level to post here, and the inability at the moment to put in the time or effort that it takes.

Right now, it's crunch time at FIT (as in most academic institutions), and for me that means a desperate attempt to catch up on the seemingly insurmountable responding and grading that the students in all four of my writing classes need right now. It doesn't help that I've been dealing with a difficult Personal Situation (sometime I'll post about it on my new blog, which hasn't really started up yet) that has sucked up my energies and added to the sense of behind-ness.

This morning, looking out at the trees outside my "study" (first ever! my own little alcove for working, writing, dreaming, filing--urgh) and the brick two-family attached homes across the street (so like the one that houses my second-floor apartment), I actually got out the pink spiral bound notebook I'm supposed to be using for the erstwhile morning pages. I had been gearing up to write about the Personal Situation, to explore, get down, and somehow unravel all the roiling, looping thoughts and feelings that have washed around my brain for awhile. Yes, it helps. Yes, as I always tell my students, I discovered things I didn't expect to. Yes, it is a key to health and peace and productivity.

But yes, Stella is home from school for the fifth day this week--she has been suffering from a nasty cold, and I thought she needed an extra day to recover--so I could very easily be waylaid. Right after I put Bobby on the bus, I poured my coffee, went to my desk, and started writing. I put aside the dozens of students waiting for my comments on their poems, essays, and short stories--the screaming, steaming pile of guilt, and wrote. I knew I would be much better able to concentrate on the teaching if I got this out of the way first. I had a good hour or more before I heard her footsteps.

I have to keep at this process no matter what. I must prioritize it again, start over with the good intention, daily if possible, we shall see, we shall see.

Now to my students! (who are wonderful and have been extremely patient)

separated at composition?

NOTE: I have given up on being able to write a coherent, cohesive blog post for the time being. I managed to completely miss National Down Syndrome Awareness Month, the Buddy Walk, and even Stella's birthday--all of which I will catch up on. I promise.
For now, allow me to play a little musical "spot the similarity." One of my favorite random selections on Pandora.com (which comes up on the "Alexei Murdoch Radio" station I created) is David Gray's "Babylon." The song's delicate acoustic guitar flourish and sweet mellow mood remind me of an oldie from my childhood. See what you think!
You're gonna go....I kno-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-ow...

my friend, superwoman

I mentioned briefly last month that Vicki Forman's stunning memoir, This Lovely Life, has been released by Houghton Mifflin/Mariner. She has a fabulous website for the book here that mentions all the reviews, public appearances, and other attention it has garnered.

And as if that weren't enough, Ms. Forman has just completed a very strenuous certification program and exam, and is now a certified phlebotomy technician! Go over to her blog and congratulate her!

absence makes the...

blogger feel guilty. i am not going to even use capital letters in this posting because i feel very, very small as a blogger right now! it's been a full summer: three classes, four conferences, two rental cars, one new relationship (!), one new apartment (!!), one fantastic classic rock concert, a couple dozen books sold (i think), lots and lots of miles and not enough hours of sleep.

i am still surrounded by boxes, slowly settling in, just in time for things to start up at school again and take over my brain entirely!

some links to show what i was up to:

conferencing and communing:
west chester poetry conference
ocean state writers' conference
antioch writers' workshop
sewanee writers' conference

addictions, libations, birthday celebrations
brother bear's coffee cafe
young's jersey dairy
stirling's coffee house
lombardi's pizza
sugar sweet sunshine

romance, excitement, tlc
craftbar
new jersey transit
ferguson / commonhealth
look see chinese restaurant
bottle king
yes

Vicki's wonderful book is finally out, and here she is talking about the experience of premature motherhood on "A View from the Bay."

back to the BAP blog

I'm an occasional (very occasional) guest blogger again this week on the Best American Poetry Blog. I finally was able to put together some of my thoughts and feelings about the use of the "R" word. I won't post again about it here...please go, Dear Indulgent Reader, to this link to read more.

100 days of audacity

Arielle Greenberg and Rachel Zucker, who have collaborated on so many wonderful projects, created this blog, which posts a new poem, by a different poet, each of the first 100 days of Obama's administration.

I'm honored to be the poet for Day #61--a special request on my part, because today is World Down Syndrome Day (3/21 = Trisomy 21, get it?).

prayers for Avery

It had been awhile since I had caught up with Jennifer and her family. So, embarrassingly enough, it wasn't until Vicki told me that I knew Jennifer's son Avery was scheduled for surgery to repair a heart defect that had worsened in the five years since his birth.

Today is the day; they traveled to Seattle Children's Hospital for he procedure (read more here, in Jennifer's beautiful prose).

I know all too well the sense of helplessness when you give up your child and put her in the hands of others, and the tremendous fear, no matter how accomplished and celebrated those others are. I know many prayers and good thoughts are being sent their way, and many of us are waiting to hear how Avery is doing.

tired

Not feeling like much of a blogger these days. And I'm tired of worrying about who's reading my blog and what they make of it (and of me, my family, friends, etc.). Feeling like not being so public right now. And I need to see if I can actually remember how to write a poem. I'm taking a break for awhile. See you later.

in case you were wondering

Say you found my blog by googling my name. Say you heard my name through a mutual acquaintance. Say you were curious about me and thought you would check me out online. Say you read some of my poems, saw my students' comments on Ratemyprofessor, went to my department's website, saw my public Facebook listing, and read my postings as a guest blogger on the Best American Poetry blog.

And say you were still curious. Who is this Amy Lemmon person I've heard about who lives in New York? you wonder. So here you are on my blog, trying to read between the lines of my cheerleading, kvetching, and kvelling, clicking on my photo, looking for any clues to what makes me tick.

First of all, thanks for reading. I'm flattered that anyone would spend time with my maunderings, since I know how busy you are. Now let me make your sleuthing a little easier with a few facts that aren't in my "About Me" profile.

-I grew up in Ohio and led a relatively sheltered life until my twenties, when I moved to the east coast then back to Ohio for graduate school, where my "liberal education" was completed. Or so I thought until I moved to NYC.
-I was raised in a politically and religiously conservative environment. The political I've diverged from significantly. The religious--well, I have diverged, but I still have respect for the faith of my fathers (and mothers). I'm working on my own version. Stay tuned.
-I grew up feeling like my family were the only people with our particular brand of beliefs. This dovetailed nicely into my already well-established sense of alienation from my peers stemming from hyper-sensitivity and an inability to discern "kids being kids" making fun and teasing from kids really hating me, which finally began to dissipate when I went to college and discovered beer.
-I once had ambitions to be a musician. I started piano lessons at six, played violin at ten, picked up oboe and trumpet in high school, was voted "Most Musical" in my senior class. Then, in college, after one term as a music education major, I switched to English because the music department building was just too far a walk from the main campus. That, and practicing so much made my neck hurt.
-Instead of being a musician, Reader, I married one. I moved to NYC in 1996 as a newlywed because my husband played jazz and got a full scholarship to grad school. I was finishing my PhD in English from the University of Cincinnati at the time.
-Twelve years later, I still live (with my kids) in the same two-bedroom apartment in Queens that I moved into less than a month after my wedding.
-I am in the middle of a divorce. Not a "messy" divorce, and not an "amicable" divorce, but just a plain old emotionally draining, heart-wrenching, soul-search-inspiring, therapy-requiring, do-what's-best-for-the-children intoning, financially discouraging, thoroughly depressing yet apparently necessary divorce.
-I did not expect to be getting divorced less than a dozen years after saying "I do." This does not mean I thought my marriage was perfect. It's just that throwing in the towel wasn't my idea. Although I'm starting to warm up to it.
-The whole divorce experience has thrown me for a loop. It has painstakingly laid a crunchy layer of chaos over my baseline neuroses and occasional hysterical tendencies that is quite astonishing in its power to thwart any plans, goals, or good intentions I might have.
-No matter how sideswiped I've been by the crunchy chaos, I have never for a minute considered keeping my kids from their father, or doing anything to damage their relationship with him. I know how much that would hurt them. (Okay, so one time I said "Daddy is an a*****e" in front of my son. But it was raining and there were no cabs and I had been late picking him up from after-school chess and felt like a total failure as a mother. And the kid had asked why I was upset.)
-I am grateful that my kids' father is still around a lot, even though it makes separating from him excruciating at times. It's good for the kids, who adore him, and heck, I can use the free childcare.
-Here's a secret: I have come to believe that maybe, just maybe, all this is part of a Plan, and that Somebody is in charge of the blueprints. I just have no idea what the deal is, where I fit in or what I am supposed to do. I am trying to be okay with not knowing, and just trust and have faith. You can imagine how hard this is for me.
-I am ambivalent about the public nature of my presence here. I want to blab to the world but feel anxious when strangers (such as you, dear reader) find me, especially when it has something to do with someone I am dating.
-Oh--did I tell you that I have been dating? No? Sorry. Forgot to mention that. (Actually, I haven't mentioned it on purpose. It's private, and as you know this is a public forum.)
-I find "dating" to be an odd and antiquated term, a bit "dated" if you will, because the experience post-divorce has felt for me more like hearing a carousel and letting the captivating music and smell of peanuts and popcorn lead me off the paved path only to get sucked into a wind tunnel while simultaneously trying to squeeze into a wetsuit in anticipation of being dropped into a deep, dark, cold ocean when the tunnel abruptly ends. But sometimes, sometimes, I catch that carousel and let it spin me 'round and 'round, intoxicated. (Maybe my memory is going, but I do not recall it being quite this way the last time I was single, in my twenties.)
-I have a tendency to be a bit of a drama queen. Let's just say I have a close relationship with my inner Eloise.
-I find music to be incredibly healing. For a broken heart, or a broken home, I highly recommend Ron Sexsmith. Or K D Lang. Or practically anyone Canadian.
-I do not wish to spend the rest of my life without a partner. Conversely, I do not want to be with someone just so I can have a partner. I want the (or a) right person. I want it all!
-I feel guilty for not blogging enough about my kids lately, especially about the T21 community and special needs advocacy. I wonder if I seem completely narcissistic to the casual reader.
-My extended family (I am the eldest of six children) is precious to me, but I don't always feel as if I fit in.
-My friends are invaluable. Simply put: I would not be here without them.
-My relationships with most of my friends are complicated. This is probably because I have the most satisfying and intimate friendships with people who are as complicated as I am.
-Sometimes I need a break from my friends, and my friends need a break from me. I am trying to teach myself that this is Okay and does not mean that I should not be friends with anyone. (I'm starting to realize that the same principle might just apply to romantic relationships, too.)
-I am, quite often, my own worst enemy.
-I love, I love, I love. It's my nature. Sometimes it hurts and it ain't pretty. But I can't seem to live any other way.
-I'm procrastinating right now. Papers, papers, papers. I have a tendency to hype up the negative aspects of my life when I am overwhelmed with work, as I am now. (In this economy, people who are employed should not complain. So I'm not. About work, anyway.)

If you want to know more about me, ask our mutual acquaintance for my email and I would be happy to answer any questions you might have.

Thank you again for your time. Have a good day.

miz lonelyhearts in the lone star state

She's at it again: the fantabulistic Jilly (aka Jill Alexander Essbaum), having returned stateside (namely, the Republic of Tejas) from a lengthy sojourn in Switzerland, is moving and shaking on The Best American Poetry Blog. No longer qualified to be a European correspondent, she's set up shop as an advice-to-the-lovelorn-and-poetry-challenged columnist (at least for this week). Head over to her "Dear Jill" posts...and send her your romantic and poetic "befuddled messes," as she puts it. She's spot-on, pulls no punches, and cracks me up.

blogalalia

I. Am. So. Tired. I can't believe I still haven't posted yet on the BAP blog. I'm in the middle of it. As soon as I finish, I can go to bed. Ahhhhhh.