Anyway, now, I’m pretty much the Teacher Cliche. Lots of Peter Pan collared blouses and macaron-colored capris. I like Madewell because it pushes back a little, with its purposeful mismatchiness and untucked tails, but it’s in the same bright colors and with the same sharp cuts. The fall collection is pretty much a dream. Some of my favorites:

We are coming with our hunger and our dragons and our poems. Look upon us and despair.

This thoroughbred of sin is researching feminist revisions of authority all night. it’s heigh-ho silver, signed Bad Horse!

Also, I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this, but I’ll be returning to Bread Loaf this August on an administrative work-study scholarship. Specifically, social staff. (Specifically specifically, I’ll be planning your barn dances. I am so effing excited you have no idea.) Feeling incredibly lucky to get to go back to what my 2011 waitstaff called ‘the summer camp of the heart.’

But it’s the next thing, since I can’t rewatch Buffy again this year for fear of ruining it completely, or Angel, or the handful of other shows I love. And I honestly don’t feel like immersing myself in Mad Men or Breaking Bad or The Wire or something else Our Culture Approves Of, because those shows don’t have demons. I like horror, okay? I like my brilliant writing washed down with a healthy swig of self-deprecation, metaphor, and, if possible, a girl with an axe. Hence my love for Joss Whedon.

So I’m on hiatus from grade-A-plus TV (this also explains why I’m letting myself watch Castle) and Supernatural is good, occasionally great. Jensen Ackles is a compelling actor, the mythology not only takes on Judeo-Christian dimensions but drags them to dark, dark places, and I love when this series lets Whedon alum Ben Edlund get his claws into a ridiculous idea and execute it flawlessly (start at 1:55 for max effect). Also, this show does meta like nobody’s business.

But really, would you believe me that I made this post just to talk about these wings? This is the scene where my favorite character is introduced:

Tomorrow, I write & comment on essays. Tonight, I load my gun with rock salt and go down into the ghost cellar.

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This April’s's poem a day went really, really well, right up until the 22nd when I honest to blog gave up. I haven’t done that in a poem-a-day before, at least not with my group. I watched their poems zip into my inbox; I archived them in shame. Though I think I know why I threw up my hands. And more on that in a moment.

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The end of the semester is buzzing along, and I’m trying to drink enough iced vanilla lattes to buzz along with it. Passed my academic review (yay!) so that means I’ll officially be here next year, and thanks for a fellowship, teaching only one class each semester. Hopefully that’ll allow me to spend more time on my poetry (as I’ve decided to take this summer to work on the novel-in-progress). I’ve noticed that, when working on any of these research-based historical projects I’ve undertaken, I need more lead time before I actually put words to paper than I do when I’m working with more intuitive poetry, the kind I’ve written in the past. Like, an hour to read biographies, historical accounts, pastiches, blogs, to start hearing the diction & tone that these poems demand before I can begin writing.

Probably a no-brainer, but honestly, with the PhD coursework, teaching, and the commute between Madison and Milwaukee, I’ve had a lot less occasion to think abstractly about my process than I did during my MFA. It’s strange, wanting to be writing these project-based poems, and just not being able to clear out enough head-space to do it. I’m hoping the move to Milwaukee this August will ground me enough to make this possible.

Of course, the universe has thrown me one bone: I’ll be spending this weekend writing a process essay cum poetics statement for my graduate poetry workshop that demands I do exactly that abstract thinking I’ve been missing. PhD, I do, in fact, love you.

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Today in Milwaukee it is so muggy that my hair looks half-wet. Wandered down from C’s apartment to the co-op, where I ate a sandwich called the Garden & Trees. Felt appropriate. We chased down someone’s runaway miniature pincher in the road. Washed my bangs in the sink. Now, lit theory class, which is, thankfully, air-conditioned.

Darcie Dennigan, Madame X

Canarium Books

Like the best feminist dystopian neurotic cake ever. I reviewed this for Devil’s Lake, I’m bringing excerpts of it to my graduate poetry workshop for show and tell, I keep it by my bed. I’ve been in a slump recently where I have no desire to read any poetry and what I have read, from recommendations or from my own library, does nothing for me creatively. This book showed up at the absolute right time.

Tana French, In the Woods and The Likeness

Penguin

Fact: These aren’t genre mystery, much in the same way that Donna Tartt’s Secret History isn’t. That book, actually, was the one that lead me to The Likeness – it’s billed as the next thing, of sorts, if you’re one of the legion of Tartt obsessive re-readers, clock-watching for the launch date of her next novel (which feels like it might be never, at this point). The Likeness really does feel like The Secret History, in its setting, its cast of characters (and really my only problem with this book was that Daniel felt like a dead-ringer for Tartt’s magnificently fucked-up Henry). French has spoken in interviews about loving Tartt, and it shows in the language — these books are dream-like, lyrical, first-person accounts of damaged people struggling with their pasts while neck-deep in impossible presents. Ignore all the Amazon reviews from angry genre fans not liking the open-ended nature of these books — they seem to be especially mad about the end of In the Woods, maybe because it’s so naturalistic, doesn’t tie up into a bow. And read In the Woods first, to let Cassie Maddox’s blustery bravado and sadness in The Likeness be more of a gut-punch than it is on its own. I didn’t follow that advice; now I’m waiting for enough time to pass for me to reread these. Like maybe another week.

APRIL POEM A DAY

1: Young Adult Novel
2: Forever
3: The Productivity of Loss
4: from The Hooded Woman, or: Her Last Run (i)
5: A Taxonomy of Sex
6: Where Are The Seats At The Feast? Where Are The Revels In The Hall?
7: Any Ordinary Hell
8: Coda
9: A Mile to Avalon
10: (missed)
11: Like a Lady’s In Sleep Sunk
12: (missed)
13: (missed)
14: Not a Question
15: Waiting
16: Shibboleth
17: Performance
18: from The Hooded Woman, Or: Her Last Run (ii)
19: Party

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I will fill in the missed ones as I go.