"The sun bares row after row of serrated teeth"

I'll be Chicago bound for AWP on Wednesday! I can't wait. I'll be staying with a couple of friends I haven't seen in a while and miss dearly. I have a ridiculously detailed schedule of things I plan on doing (it'll be a hectic but exciting week). Then I'll be on spring break when I get back! I plan on getting in some much needed time with nature.

(My camera gives my lips a weird glow)

Polka dot shirt: hand-me-down

Blazer: JCPenney

Necklace: gift from Dennis from Poland 

(if I hold it under the sun, it's supposed to tell me the time but I haven't quite figured it out yet)

Lipstick: Meijer

Everything to come

New outfit:

"Dang" shirt- local coffee shop in Kent

Blazer- JCPenney

Striped pants- gift from a friend

Shoes- H&M

Jewelry- Wal Mart, Target, Meijer, H&M

Feeling nostalgic

I miss Kent, Hot Knees, picnics and lying out in the sun on campus fields, Drunk Poet's Night at Professor's, dancing in the rain, running around the backyard with Penny, poetry readings at the downtown gallery, Maj Ragain, Ted Lyons, the Wick reading room, Scribbles, The Zephyr, sitting in front of fans in the heat, the writing community, Taco Tontos, dinner parties, walking along the river at night.

Can it be summer now?

I don't want to set the world on fire

I had a much needed relaxing weekend with Dennis. :) Photo evidence:

My hair is getting long.

I finally got my Yehuda Amichai tattoo!

We like to drink (the Southern Tier choklat stout was fantastic).

Thumbs up for chili! This time, we incorporated choklat stout and dark chocolate into it. It was amazing.

Stud.

Delicious dinner!

Bein' cheeseballs.

Feb. 15th

Sometimes I wonder what all of this is for. Perhaps that sounds dismal but it's something I think of often. The more I try to educate myself, the more jaded I become about academia, the poetry canon, human nature. And during times when I take a hiatus from academia, I feel restless, useless, as if I should be consuming knowledge, writing always. I wonder if I'll ever be satisfied. Maybe there's something I haven't discovered yet, something that will make all of this more clear. Or maybe I just need to put things into perspective.

I worry that I want too much.

Between the lines

New dress from Target, new haircut by my friend Jessica:

"A red bone in the throat, a red nail on the tongue"

Inspiration:

Photos taken from Forever 21, Ruche, YesStyle, and Lookbook.

"You are to me like a very, very wild thing"

My reading actually went really well! It was nice sharing my work in a room full of attentive writers. And Jason's story was fantastic (there were lots of mention of vulvas--hilarious). He has this really impressive way of writing about something absurd and imbuing it with really confident language and social/historical contexts. I really admire his work.

Me and Stephenie out for drinks after the reading :)

This is the easiest hairdo EVER. I accidentally discovered it while playing with my hair.

My dry winter skin makes me look an old lady :-x

The sky suddenly would fall in love with you

Today has been stagnant in personal productivity. Ohhhhhhh man. It's like breaking my own arm to grade student essays and lesson plan and revise poems. So instead of catching up, I'm writing this entry. My poetry reading is this Thursday and I'm a lot more nervous than I thought I'd be. Before any other reading in my undergraduate career, I was happy and excited, but now I'm just nervous and anxious. I feel like my poems have to be perfect so I'm putting unnecessary weight on revisions this week. I can't figure out why this reading is different. Perhaps because I'm going to school for poetry so I feel as if there's a heightened expectation? Regardless, I'm one big knot right now.

A little while ago, I went to a potluck at a friend's house and made some pasta salad. It actually turned out really well for just throwing a bunch of stuff in a bowl.

Cavatappi noodles, red onion, green pepper, kalamata olives, black olives, almond slices, Gardein chicken, pepper, basil, parsley, cilantro, oregano, balsamic vinaigrette

Also, I've been obsessed with turban hats/head wraps lately.

Turban head wrap- ASOS

"A terrific noise invented her"

If you've never read any poetry by Laura Kasischke, do it. She's fantastic. Her language is normally rather simple (but she has such a command for language that it doesn't appear superficial), and then she has these intense lines that alter your entire view on humanity. I've been reading her latest book, Space, in Chains and I'm smitten.


After a couple weeks of feeling rather discouraged about my writing, I completely revamped a couple of old poems (one from about a year ago and the other from two years ago), and I'm feeling a lot more pleased with them. During poetry workshop, Larissa quoted Albert Camus--"Always go too far, because that's where you'll find the truth"--and it stuck with me. I think I captured a lot more in both of the poems than I'd originally even hoped to accomplish (and I hope I found "the truth," whatever that means).


Feeling good.