I love food, but I don't know a lot about cooking techniques, standards, what to look for. I follow my tongue in the same way that I follow my ear. Even after these many years of studying poetry, the language is difficult to pin down; to be precise is always illusive. This goes for food, where I am even less of an expert, but I know my strengths and weaknesses, I think. So in my efforts to understand more about the things I thought I did well, omelets for example. I came across the most beautiful writing I've read in a while. Finding anything that's been written beautifully is so refreshing, and so far dispersed. It's why I began this blog, as an attempt to only promote the most beautiful, moving, transcendent poems and, for the most part, those are all I will post, but they seem to be few and far between, or to be written by the same minority of poets I already post frequently. I know there are others, many, all of whom I have yet to read or have encountered at the wrong time. Today I was reading a poem by Carl Phillips called Passing. I've read it a couple dozen times before, but it really struck me today. That's the problem with trying to find beauty. Sometimes you are the problem, self. And worse, when you've read something that meant the world to you only to return and find emptiness, a dearth of the excellence you were so sure was there, you begin to wonder what has possessed you or what has left. Anyway, it wasn't hard to see the beauty in this Chasing Perfection a blog entry from my new favorite website, Gilt.com.

Postcard 2 by Franz Wright : Poetry Magazine

This poem, I love:
Postcard 2 by Franz Wright : Poetry Magazine

So I already said it, but I keep thinking about privilege and guilt. I won't go into it further, if you have questions I'll direct you to the theory I've been reading. With all of the talk of the war on women and sexism, and these readings for my theory class on the objectification of the female figure and Freud's theory of castration I am utterly exhausted. We do what we can. Things are never equal, they're not going to be equal, when we abolish one type of oppression another surfaces. This is not to say we shouldn't still try to fight it, or to imply that I'm okay with the way things are, but I am tired of hearing these half-formed arguments that stumble around the same asymptote-like logic where we talk about one thing and never get to the heart of the matter. That's politics though, subvert the real issue, talk about shit that makes people's mouths drop in disbelief.
I have my own tautological fallacy: there is one truth. Logically, I know that things are never so flat, but for some reason I keep chasing this pure truth, this thing that might be true without exception-

What I love about graduate school is that I am growing. I am becoming a much stronger writer, and in small ways my efforts are being validated. I was surprised to learn that the Baltimore Sun published my OpEd, which I've posted somewhere below; it's my bitching about the cost of higher education. They published it under the title "How to Become Impoverished 101" which made me angry at first, now I'm just conflicted. In a twisted way I couldn't help but think of it as descriptive of me and my actions. As a result of the publication I was invited to talk to college seniors at Towson University, but I had class. Had I gone to speak with them I don't know if I would've been useful. It's kind of too late once you're graduating, though I think that the recent article:

What They Don't Tell You at Graduation

online.wsj.com

Don't try to be great, marry someone smarter than you, and other real-world tips graduation speakers never share. By Charles Wheelan. author of 10½ Things No Commencement Speaker Has Ever Said.

is probably the best thing in print for impending grads. Really, my undergraduate education was invaluable, maybe even worth the $200,000+ price tag. The thing is, I just tried to find ways to apply my skills outside of the standard: I need a 9-5 job, I need health insurance. But if I'm being honest, my goals are also those of a dreamer. I want to be a poet. I want to write things that matter intellectually and philosophically. Beyond that, I don't want to owe anyone anything. Those are what I want and need from life, and maybe you feel the same. Maybe that's why you're reading my blog.

In the next couple of days The Art Gallery  is going to publish my latest blog entry for them.
As for poems, I reread "Crush" by Richard Siken recently. I'm dying to buy more books of poetry, but I'm also trying to save up for SLS Lithuania and my adventures surrounding my time there. I'm about to lose my job at the end of May and sometimes I'm ultra frugal and other times I just don't care and buy outrageous things, like that food processor...
I keep telling myself everything will be alright, and it will, but it's hard to let myself trust it too.

I'll leave you with a poem I may have posted before, but it's wonderful and I can't read it enough: Poppies by Jennifer Grotz, one of my poetry workshop professors from undergrad. This link includes a review of the poem published by the Paris Review.

I've been meaning to write a lot lately, actually, I keep writing entries in my head and not finding the time to transcribe these things. Anyway, in this moment before class I wanted to share this phenomenal article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304811304577366332400453796.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

I think a lot about American culture, the notion of privileged and guilt, both of which I think are bred into us in alarming and devastating ways. I'll write more later.

The semester is winding down and nearly everyone at UMD is feeling it, probably elsewhere too. The Art Gallery is hosting a reading by MFA students so if you're in the area and want to hear me read, the event starts at 1pm. I'll be reading really recent poems, nothing I've read before.

Otherwise I'm counting down the days until classes are over. Then the count down for Lithuania begins. Then for my (potentially) terminal year in the MFA. A lot of my peers are being published and it's exciting to see. I'm proud of my peers and think that this is perhaps the best program I could've hoped for for me. I can absolutely see the improvement in my work and I think Stan has been invaluable, but I feel like I've only really written two poems. By that I mean two that I feel are good enough to send out and find a balance between emotional resonance, good writing and an accessible dialogue for my reader. What I've been hearing is that it seems like it takes people about 10 years to publish their first book, so for the most part you really just have to figure out a way to weather that storm. I think this may be true of other fields too.
I've been reading a lot lately too. Richard Howard's books "Alone with America" has been invaluable. The latest Poetry publication came in the mail yesterday and has a phenomenal poem by Franz Wright. I don't have it in front of me, but I cannot stress how beautiful and moving the poem is. I felt as though Wright had been describing a feeling that I haven't been able to parse out or deal with, I kept saying that I felt thinned, stretched too far, like this life I am living now is a sick marathon. Once they upload it to the website I'll add a link, but in the meantime check out: Bees of Eleusis by Franz Wright : Poetry Magazine

And the responses are coming...

Response from Op-Ed Editor at local newspaper:
Good points, but I wonder if this is a bit of a straw man argument, since the legislature will assuredly come back into session to avoid the “doomsday” scenario. The fact is, Maryland kept tuition frozen for several years and then raised it by a much smaller amount than most other states. So, although I think you have some good ideas, I’m just not sure about this.

Still missing the point, sir. The point is that no one in the world pays what we pay for higher education and it's not sustainable. This "doomsday budget" isn't the article, it is one moment in which we can take advantage of discussing a problem that is real. Why are we always skirting the issues? Why is one population's problem more pertinent than another? This is not about rights of passage, being a woman, young, poor, or politically frustrated or any other category I might be pigeonholed into. These rising costs are just as precarious as every other issue at hand in the newspapers: the cost of our health care system, the disparity between men and women's wages, the 99% and the 1%. It's not about who raised their tuition and who didn't. It's about the fact that we need to be a community that works together instead of a community of exploitation.

And the Good News...

I won one of those scholarships to spend 2 weeks studying poetry & translation in Vilnius, Lithuania. I also found out my job won't be keeping me for the summer. You win some, you lose more often...