Katie's Blog

Ok so I pushed myself today and sent out another submission. This one went out to Hayden's Ferry Review. I'm completely intimidated. Reading their latest issue made me feel completely and poetically inadequete. But I thought... let me just... give it a little trysie. So it's out in cyber space. I can't take it back :) On another note, my laziness is overcoming me. I don't know how much of it I can blame on my physical health, and how much I can blame on my own sloth. This must stop. I cannot cannot cannot keep looking for excuses to avoid working on this thesis. Aye.

I got my payment from Barnes and Noble yesterday!! Woohoo! A whole $40! You know what? It was the best $40 I've ever earned. Actually it was $40.92. I proceeded to buy a mocha frappucino and a vanilla latte for my love. Ah, yes, there went almost a forth of my poetry earnings. But let me tell you... overpriced coffee has never tasted so damn good. LOL, that was my payment for that book signing I did like... a long ass time ago. I'm actually getting paid to do something I love. Is there anything better? No. No there is not. Got my contributer copies of Reflections yesterday in the mail too. I had almost forgotten about that little publication. Yum. Another one for the good ol' CV. So yesterday I was riding on the waves of my ego. It felt damn good to be Katie the Poet, as it usually does. Today I'm wrestling with a new poem, that originally was a short story but I'm working it into a poem. The next manuscript is growing quickly, and I'm excited for what may come ...

Sort of. And I haven't had enough coffee. Ugh. Right about now my brain is completely shutting down from caffine deprivation. I'm such a pathetic addict it's not even funny. I drank just about an entire pot since 7am this morning, and I'm ALREADY shutting down. And I wonder why my stomech is completely messed up.... This aside, I find out today that I've been nominated for an award :-D Yay! I hope I get it. I'll post more details when I get them~ apparently a prof that I've never met forwarded my manuscript (I didn't even know it was common knowledge that I had a published manuscript) to contest thing and yay, I'm nominated. So this MIGHT result in my being invited to a conference in Fort Worth, but I will of course not count on it. So other than that... I've been busy reading today. I was reading my current poetry hero, Kim Addonizio. I think she will always be my poetic hero from now on :-D Anyway, she has this fairly new book out, Ordinary Gen...

I'm completely psyched at the moment. This week I have had such a negative attitude towards myself. I don't know if it's the oppressive heat, the fact that I'm once again addicted to world of warcraft, or perhaps it's just me feeling a little under the weather for reasons we will not speak of... but I've been a complete and total bitch to myself lately. I haven't been able to write a single word. I was looking for any reason to not write - like "oh I only have 45 minutes that's just enough time to get me warmed up" or "look at all of this busy work that needs doing" or... "a good wife writes but a great wife cleans the kitchen"... that sort of bull. And when I would set aside time to write, I found myself doodling! DOODLING! What a loser. So today, with such a slow day at the office, I thought to set aside at least three hours to my writing. Close the door to my office, turn on my soothing water fountain, tune out boss'...

I haven't been posting much I haven't been doing enough I've been a complete and total poetic FAILURE :( OK so I'm being overly dramatic. LoL. I've actually been writing pretty consistantly. My goal is one decent poem a week and so far... so good! I mean they're by no means publishable at this point. I'm going to save them for the fall workshop coming up. PLUS I desperately need good thesis material. Lately I've been obsessed with shoe writing. Hm... I submitted to Rio Grande Review on Wednesday I believe. News should come rolling in sometime in October. Ahhh I wish more people worked during the snummer. It makes me miss being a teacher :( Really bad. Oh well... back to the pen. My paper is looking rather neglected again.

Wanted to share an image from today's daily writing: The deep wrinkle of river That pulls bodies apart making love To the bridge that mounts Her senora’s body Tired from carrying The blood warm bodies Armed with trembling teethStuffed to the deepest bone. So I'm pretty proud that I've been keeping this writing journal. I add to it I'd say 4 days out of the week, and most days when I do write, it's pretty substantial amounts. Yay me. I'll keep going with it. Maybe it will become a poem, maybe.

I'm so in love with Robinson Jeffers. Check this out: Carmel Point The extraordinary patience of things! This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses- How beautiful when we first beheld it, Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs; No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing, Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rockheads- Now the spoiler has come: does it care? Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide That swells and in time will ebb, and all Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine beauty Lives in the very grain of the granite, Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff.-As for us: We must uncenter our minds from ourselves; We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident As the rock and ocean that we were made from. I want to make fleshy poetic babies with him.