over the cliff

My first poetry workshop is today. 3:30. It’s almost 12. I’m nervous.

I’ve been out of the Poetry Workshop environment for about 2 years. That’s a long time. The only poems I’ve written since then are Spec poems, and I don’t know what these people think of Spec poetry.

One cool thing though… last week when we got the chance to meet the faculty in our departments, all the MFA people were in one room and Allison Joseph seemed really excited to have me in her class. Granted it’s probably because she’s downright tickled with the fact that my name is Hel… but it still made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

In other poetry news, I finally got a response to my query I sent the New Yorker. Let’s recap. I sent them “Smell of Burning Suburban” on Dec 13. I sent them a query on June 8th. I got a response to that query yesterday telling me to resubmit. I did. I got a rejection less than an hour later.

Oliver said, and I agree, that I probably got a response so quickly because it had “Resubmission” in the subject line.

But the worst part was, both in the query and rejection, it started with “Dear Sir or Madam”. That’s cold. Not even taking the time to copy and paste my name? Who do they think they are?

Oh that’s right… The New Yorker. *sigh*

So I sent them “Rational Fear of Cockroaches” immediately. I’ll never learn.

I just graded some sample student essays as part of the norming process for the Pre Semester Workshop. These were the grades I gave:

D
C
F
D
C
D
D

…was I being too harsh?

UPDATE: In our small groups, my group decided to award all Ds except for one F. Another kid in the class said he would’ve liked to fail all of them. Now I feel a bit better about being a bitch.

My poor students… hehehe

Okay, so earlier I was flipping channels and I came across this VH1 show about female actresses and their eating disorders. It was going on and on about how women in Hollywood feel the pressure to be thin, and starve themselves, etc etc etc. Very social conscious and saying what a travesty this trend is and how dangerous blah blah blah.

So just now I was flipping channels again and VH1 is showing this thing called ‘Anna Nicole Smith’s Most Outrageous Moments’. They got to the part about when Anna Nicole started gaining weight and they just went into this huge long spiel of fat jokes.

…

Wtf. You can’t play it both ways bastards.

Everyone knows that if you watch the Wizard of Oz while listening to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon that they match. Well there are other pairings too. Please add your own!

Wilco’s A Ghost Is Born and The Passion of Christ

The Soundtrack to Kill Bill: Volume 1 and Shark Attack 2

I just heard this great interchange on Designing Women.

See, this is the South. We do not hide our crazy people up in the attic. We bring them right down to the living room and show them off. We do not ask people if they have crazy people in the family, we ask ‘Which side.’

‘And which side are yours on Ms. Sugarbaker?’

‘Both.’

And it’s so true.

So I’m in Carbondale. Oliver helped me pack in the rain. Two days in a row. How cool is that? Allison’s guy friends and James carried all the heavy stuff. I barely had to do anything. They rule.

My cat has adjusted. Turns out that he can be happy anywhere there’s canned food.

Mediacom sucks ass. They were supposed to be here yesterday by 12 to set up my internet and cable. I was hoping they’d err on the side of being early… like between 8 and 9. But no. 4 o’clock. And I had to sit here all day reading the Engl 101 books. Which are really boring.

And the eye doctor tells me that the flap has dried out so I have to keep using eye drops. My eyes are uber uber uber uber light sensitive now. I can’t leave the house without really dark, polarized sun glasses. He says that’ll go away eventually. It’s not painful or anything, just annoying.

And now I must run over to SIU so I can get a photo ID. And then to the bank so I can open up a checking account.