finding an identity

It hasn't been easy getting back here, with all kinds of email account problems.

After the mfa residency, I've been curious about my own reaction to being there.  First, I was a student, but I felt more of a connection with the several faculty I knew than with the other students.  That feeling was peculiar, and I'm still working on it.  I do understand it because I was a faculty member for 43 years, and it has been 46 years since I was officially a student.  I was fumbling for an identity in the mfa program, and I managed to find one by the time the residency ended.

The kindest move, the one that eventually helped me the most, was a little acknowledgement from Craig Lesley, who taught at PSU during my last several years there.  The residency had been going on for a couple of days, and he came up to me during one of the moments before one of the faculty readings when everyone was milling around, and said very quietly, "I've heard people say they're glad you're here."  That doesn't sound like much, but it really resonated with me, like an echo in a big cave.

Another thing that helped were my two "suite mates," Frank and Fred, men "of a similar generation," as an mfa administrator named us.

Now on to the second packet.  I'm reading Robin Robertson's Swithering, Mary Jo Bang's The Eye Like a Strange Balloon, and Lucie Brock-Broido's The Master Letters--all three comprise a big challenge, each for a different reason.  The first has lots of Scots dialect, the second is totally ekphrastic, and the third is just, to me, obscure.  But it's my list, and like Popeye says, "You've buttered your bread,  now lie in it."

After a 10-day pause

OK, so I haven't written here since June 25th, but I've written 5 poems, read three books, written three reading commentaries, along with a substantial cover letter.  So there.  I just finished the cover letter, so I declare myself Independent of the first packet until I send it off to Kwame by email on July 9th.

In preparing to work on the next packet, I've been reading Christian Wiman's book of essays, Ambition and Survival:  Becoming a Poet, and I'm disappointed.  I thought I'd find something instructive; after all, he edits Poetry, and I expected this collection to be something like Louise Gluck (excuse the lack of umlaut) or William Stafford in saying how they came to poetry and giving a sense of vocation.  But I don't find it in Wiman.

After Wiman, the next three books on my list of twenty are Robin Robertson, Swithering; Mary Jo Bang, The Eye Like a Strange Balloon; and Lucie Brock-Broido, The Master Letters.  I'll see what I can do with them.

After this, I'm taking the day off.