Choosing a Favorite Poem...

....to read tomorrow at the alma mater is darn near impossible. I did settle on one, though--the following one by Sharon Olds:



The Winter After Your Death

The long bands of mellow light
across the snow
narrow slowly.
The sun closes her gold fan
and nothing is left but black and white--
the quick steam of my breath, the dead
accurate shapes of the weeds, still, as if
pressed in an album.
Deep in my body, my green heart
turns, and thinks of you. Deep in the
pond, under the thick trap
door of ice, the water moves,
the carp hangs like a sun, its scarlet
heart visible in its side.



Mr. Strega and I are making a date of going to the alma mater tomorrow, too, which should be nice.

I do hope I get back to writing more poetry after the book is all done (this weekend, I hope, by the way, despite the mountain of grading I've got to do). I am glad I am close--I didn't want to keep saying, "I'm finishing my book" for the next twenty years!

I Don't Feel So Alone!

Gayle Brandeis, a writer whose work I absolutely love (Fruitflesh, a book on writing, is one of my very favorites), is also a bellydancer! Gayle looks about 180 million times better than I would in one of those cool spangly outfits--I'm doomed to the tribal look, alas, after having four kids. Click on the link to see her troupe.

Well, the school year winds to a close. I am so burnt-out.

Busman's Holiday

I'm at work today, both for student conferences and to get the heck out of the house. Sometimes home is the least creative place for me to be, simply because I will use any and all things to distract myself, thus diminishing my writing time. Given my natural clock, I would write late into the night and get up late, but this has actually proven to be something that contributes to my health problems--it's better for my mind and body to go to bed by eleven and get up at seven, so I have had to convert to sitting down to write much earlier.

My school year is winding down; I felt it was very successful, and I do hope that I can get in next year to teach a class or two (it depends on budgeting, as always)--I did send in some good support materials for my lecturer evaluation. I only had a couple of problems, but in general, despite my health issues, I ended up having a terrific time.

A nice thing happened the other day--the head of the MFA program invited me to read a favorite poem at The Favorite Poems Project this month at San Jose State. It was nice to be asked, and also good to say hello to him--I haven't been able to connect this semester with all the faculty that helped me so much during my MFA program, as we all seem to be so freaking busy.

At any rate, it's time to write, but not until we have a garden update: I have planted my tomatoes! A lot of my flowers will be going in this weekend, but there are already some planted, and a lot of volunteers coming up, mostly calendula, but also sunflowers that survived the winter. And the lilac is gorgeous--I am hoping I have a bit of time to go out and snap a picture of it.

Lilac in Bloom

My lilac is bursting into wonderful, fragrant bloom, a blessing after all the sadness shrouding my life for the last several months as my mother and two close friends all died within months of each other. It is the old story: winter passes, and the thaw does come around again. I can't believe I worked on my book through all this sadness, and taught, and was glad to have these things.

I went to Love Apple Farm this weekend with my friend Mary and bought my tomato plants: this year, I bought San Francisco Fog, two cherry tomatoes (a striped "Black cherry" and a bicolor, "Isis Candy"), and one standard-sized heirloom, "Chocolate Vintage." I find heirlooms to be a bit fussy, but I am putting them in a sunnier spot this year.
Mr. Strega laughed when he saw my tomato plants--I always resolve to buy "just one."
There's no way I can do that!

So, life goes on, slowly. The little things, the small positive things in life, move grieving forward.

Closer to the Finish Line

What I Should Have Done Tonight:

Grade papers


What I am Doing Instead:

Working on the book.

Oh, it's all falling into place, the way a ball of yarn, tangled and snarled, begins to smooth out with patient unknotting. Ten pages to go. Years and years of work, research, talking to relatives, uncertainty, always the fear that the writing wasn't good enough. Time soon to let it all go. I can't believe it! No matter what happens beyond this, I am proud I wrote this book.