Santa Fe had an interesting effect on my grad school momentum: inertia. Complete shutdown. I have not been looking at the MFA blog, trawling for schools, sitting at my desk and studying for the GRE, reading anything apart from graphic novels (totally loving those, though).
Certainly there is decompression from a hyper-social home visit and the work week that followed hours after our reentry. Attendant money woes. Jonanna left for Portland this morning and I am a little bereft, lying on the couch and digesting everything that accumulated on our DVR while we were gone.
But really I think it was SFe. Dana said something very wise about making the self the stage for experience rather than the place–if Dallas can create the kind of vaccuum that creates internal focus and action rather than external observation and (interrobang?!) reverence, then it’s serving a great purpose.
Almost finished working out a new poem, which keeps edging in while I shower and as I am waking up. The strange languagey stuff I have been lately reading is starting to creep in. Gotta get back to work.
Submission to Mannequin Envy
Hi, Farren –
I’ve decided to pass on these. I enjoyed reading your poems, will welcome more, whenever you take a notion to send them. I hope you will. Our winter reading begins in November, give or take.
The rejection here has as much to do with the huge number of quality submissions we’re getting as anything else.
All best–
Dear Mom and Dad,
Santa Fe today is like Portland, with more art and fewer hippies.
Look what I just found in my email!
Dear Farren Stanley,
Thank you for your recent submission to The Centrifugal Eye.
After careful consideration, I’ve decided that none of the three poems are quite a match for the upcoming “Predilection for Prediction” issue, however, I believe that your prose poem, Animus, might suit the Spring 2009 “Quantum Mind / Consciousness” issue (rather in line with your cover comments; dreams / symbolism are, of course, part of prediction, but I’ve already had lots of that sort of material for this Autumn), quite nicely. Are you amenable to the idea of allowing me to hold onto this poem that long before publication?
I also have some editorial suggestions and housestyle preferences to run by you, so I’m querying now to see if you are negotiable to revisions. If you are, I’ll send you my notes for your own consideration.
Looking forward to hearing your response, at your earliest convenience.
Since J will be in Portland for my birthday (lonely holidays, HOLLA!) I am thinking of convincing her that we ought to go here to celebrate. There are cats! And evidently the ocean puts on quite a show in the winter months. I could stay in the Melville room and read Moby Dick while the ocean pounds and rages beneath my window!
The whole mailbox smelled like lavender
Wow. Everyone was so right about this book.
Had a low-grade, three-day migraine. My first! Usually they are 12-hour intensies. Kept slurring and forgetting words and staggering around, was pretty light-and-sound sensitive. Which meant I didn’t do much besides walk from couch to bed and back for two days. No GRE studying, no writing poems, no journalling, no nothing except a lot of round robin with several mechanics on my car’s transmission, which punctuated aforementioned low-grade migraine. Altogether a really crappy writing week. And now the work-part!
On the upside, I finished Clarice Lispector (meh) and started in on Grace Paley (yay!) and it’s just a few more days until Santa Fe. I finally had a conversation with my Dad, which went much better than I expected. But I am feeling mighty reticent about the topic of my parents divorce so I think I’ll just skip it.
J’s taking a temporary editing position at Bitch magazine after we get back from Santa Fe. She’ll be living/working in Portland for two months while I stay in Dallas to stay on top of MFA applications and take care of the pets. I’m so sad she’ll be sojourning in the PacNW without me! But I’ll get to come see her/stay with her for a couple of weeks. So that will be fun.
I am still brain dead.
