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A surprise

I heard today that I have been awarded a scholarship from the Executive Women of New Jersey! I honestly didn't expect to win this one, but it's a huge honor to win this state-wide (never mind that it's not my state!) competition. 2 pieces of good school-news in the last 2 weeks- it's nice to have that sort of momentum. Now, if I could only finish my last term paper before the fall term starts...

Lazy Summer Days

I am out of the public blogging habit. It has been so long since I've posted I feel shy and timid. My fingers aren't working so good and it seems I am in perpetual edit mode.

So I think I will ramble a bit and try to loosen up. Not quite like the red Ravine Writing Practice up at RWP this week, but...

So I have been busy with blog activities, but they are all pretty much behind the scenes. There's "my" interview with the Funnelcakes. And helping get the red Ravine post up. (Hi ybonesy!) There is a new Stoney Moss in the works. But until WD vets it (and I do some banner work) I can't (officially) share it. You could Google stoneymoss.org if you want to see a work in process, I suppose. But the banner pictures are a mess. (They rotate through, and "ours" need to be cropped and sized down and "theirs" dropped.)

And I wrote and revised a CNF (creative non-fiction) piece for my live-CNF-writing group for this week. I was so flippin' nervous I sent them a long disclaimer when I emailed my work. I told them it was an experiment (it was) and I may have tried too many techniques from Charles Baxter's The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot (I did). I didn't want them to think I thought it was ripe for print. I wanted them to know it was a big shift (be kind, don't be too critical) and yes, I know that is whimpy. But I am really glad I set boundaries. It helped me help them help me. More.

And they liked it. There is lots of room for improvement. But they liked it. Even the part about my dad drowning kittens. (It was a dream. According to my mother. Rich stuff.)

WD and I are going to write collaborative fiction on the new site. I don't write fiction. SO I can hardly wait.

The last few years in review: doing stuff I never thought I would do. (Including gaining all this middle-age weight.)

The recent amazement? Getting to meet poetry-writer-bloggers face-to-face or on the phone. (Can I brag and toast? I don't count WD because we were friends before co-bloggers, but I still love her and brag on her. You are an amazing woman!)

Dale, Dana, Dave (a quick Skype call, but...) and ybonesy. This is a rich and rewarding world we bloggers live in. I feel so lucky. And it is real, people. (I wish I could meet all the poets and writers I have met virtually. I do. Well, nearly all. To be honest. But if you are here, I know you are one of the ones I want to meet. Sigh. Someday, perhaps.)

3 dogs

Old Man, Western Tennessee, 2002

dear uncle darius was dogged all day and all night
by demons:
the booze, the pills, the girls and the cards, until
red hearts bled on the table
and demerol danced like fuzzy dice
hanging from the mirror of his
92 chevy blazer plastered with stickers of "Live Girls"
and the playboy bunny who flirted
with Dover, his bloodhound who
took every trip with him and
the day darius drove into the ditch
Dover licked the blood from darius's
ears and looked up at sirius
and howled.

Chapter!

I was so happy to find this in my email box today:

Dear Kathryn Burrows:

Thank you for submitting your very interesting research for consideration as a chapter in the upcoming volume Understanding Emerging Epidemics. I am sorry for the delay in responding to you, but we received many more strong proposals than expected and, therefore, the review process took longer than we had allowed. I am happy to accept your proposal and offer you inclusion in the book if you are still interested. etc....

My book chapter proposal, which I submitted in June, has been accepted for publication! Apparently, they accept chapters based on the proposal alone- they have now guaranteed that my paper will appear in the book (as long as I follow through on my commitments to them). I have to have a first draft of the chapter in to them by November, and then will go through a peer-review/editing process through February. The final paper (after all revisions, etc) will be done sometime next spring, and they are hoping for a late 2009 publication. Which means by the beginning of my third year in graduate school I'll have a publication already out there!

It's going to be a challenge to manage my school workload, my Paul work, plus my qualifying paper (which I need to have done by December) and this paper next year, but if I am careful in the way I balance all the balls, it should work out. Which reminds me, if I was smart, I would finish my last term paper (about the social construction of pre-cancer) and get working on that qualifier right now- I should finish the term paper and get the 2nd draft of the QP done by the time the semester starts (not to mention a first draft of this chapter). I guess I need to stop procrastinating....!

Spam or actual inspiration?

This has been flying around the web for the last year, and even more in the last week when Randy Pausch died from cancer. This isn't quite "Tuesdays with Morrie" inspiration- it's about achieving- and identifying your childhood dreams. As I consider my last year; leaving the city I love and my friends and family who know me and love me, and leaving my dog I adore- I see how moving towards your dream is something of a waltz- a few steps towards, a few steps to the side- but eventually, you make it. I went to dinner with Nike friends today- it was fabulous seeing them, but I know that I made the right choice to pursue *my* dream- even as I cry when I walk the streets of Portland, see my nephew and niece and everything about this place I love. Are you pursuing yours?

My gorgeous puppy has a girlfriend

The Fire of Avocado (for TheCoPo)

The Fire in an Avocado

Vine tomatoes look ripe
Between the hard avocados
The ones I rock under a window

In the Port-au-Prince market
I reach to lay-in farmer’s bulbs
Themselves searching out of pliant tree

In their arms the burn of feast
Press after the gallon of gasoline
Stripes of grass for avocados

I offer a mother lunch of shady mounds.








These are Christine's words, rearranged into a poem of my own making.

I tell you, this is harder than it looks. It forces a different style, a different apporach. I am sure I've not done her words justice, for she's a favorite poet, and I am not satisfied with my own small attempt. I'd love to read the original, her poem that put the words together. Perhaps it will be revealed on ThePoCo sometime.

A birdy told me to CoPo

Hands dance out of love.
She strings talk like spells over birds.

* * *

Another CoPo, this time using Slynne's words.

I came up with a half dozen plus arragements of a dozen words. It was a joyful experiment. Joy. Truly. It was full of joy. I sighed with joy.

Short, but sweet, her words offered me a way to enter the idea of completely reconfiguring another's poem...not easily, but with pleasure. Birds. That is the pivotal word of hers that caught me.

Birds
dance
hands
like
love
of
out
over
she
spells
strings
talk

Places I've been

I've been fortunate in my life to do a lot of travel- both professionally and for fun. I still consider travel- travel that requires personal and psychological risk of some sort- to be one my guiding forces. I haven't left the country since the spring of 07, and that is one the greatest losses of being a grad student. I don't expect to travel much on my grad student salary. But I hope we're able to get out of the country again soon- perhaps for our honeymoon? Northern Africa?

In any case, here is a poem that melds some of my favorite images from my travels. I am also experimenting with longer lines in this poem.

From My Vantage Point

Dawn in Hong Kong rises as the sun sets in Manaus
two rivers pushing life in junks and cruise boats
past spiders fat with venom and eggs
anacondas coiled in trees waiting for a weak sloth;
named for slowness of speed not slowness of mind
they slink around Grecian columns and Thor's Temple
crawling into Dionysius' ear to reach the peak
of Petronis- twin towers of the modern oil god
linked since birth to dwarf temples of an older god
but the little clown fish darts past the coral.