O November, you are a saucy one, and lovely.

This little gem was a birthday present from my teacher and fellow Cancerian (word?). So bohemian and adorable, really. I re-read it last night, instead of officially conceding defeat. My NaNoWriMo project stands at about 30,000 words and will sit at such until I can swallow my pride and continue work. Twas a valiant effort and all, but I think the topic was a bit close to home to allow me the sort of abandon necessary to churn out 100 pages in 30 days.

But, as I was saying - as I read this little chap again, I realized that it was neither so little nor so simple as I had thought upon receiving it. Really, it was a lovely and unexpected gesture at the time, which I met with not enough gratitude and a withered attempt to dedicate that evening's poem in his honor. It wasn't a very good poem, as I recall. No, it takes a lot of discipline to be a New York Schooler, much more than I have. But its size, the palm of my hand or thereabouts, is fabulous, because it reminds me of the miniature rooms at the Chicago Art Institute, the school of which is, ironically, a long-standing rival of Columbia, but no matter. What matters is that attempting to write a novel in one month and failing gives one a fresh appreciation for the minutiae of poesy, the fact that it's a terribly important thing that the starburst clock is also an Isermann.

Cheers to the wee poets of the world, we are the ones who struggle over five words together!

On my poetry front. I've had a few rejections: promising, but rejections nonetheless, and an acceptance of two of the Lottie poems to 27 rue de fleurs, whose first issue was just brimful of Columbia girls. Suppose I would fit in just fine there. The work seemed just right, and they responded with a good deal more expediency than any of those old paper journals. As one of my virtual poet friends would say, those old paper journals seem to be "going the way of the dodo." I always liked that expression. Because it is so implicitly contradictory in a way - it may even be an backhanded compliment. After all, isn't the dodo just the first creature we think of when we think extinct? How very appropriate. Perhaps you think of God.

I think of God a lot, being the wife of a future pastor. Of course, I feel quite conflicted about it. On one hand, once people (read: other poets - you people, GAWD) know that I am married to a seminarian and write about not just God, but :gasp: religion, I am forever always and only that one trick pony who just can't stop writing about religion and people get their panties in a bunch that, oh Lucifer!--what if she's a damned old fundie? On the other hand, I don't believe I've thought about it enough, in terms of my poetics, and personally. Have any of us really thought about our subject positions enough? And as much as we would like to distance ourselves from the poetic I, we project like mofos, all of us. I don't know many folks who like to distance themselves from the poetic I, that's a bit of an arcane strain of thought, isn't it?

Yet, I often find myself profoundly drawn to the idea of transcending me-ness in my poems. Transcendence, more as a goal of Christian mysticism, perhaps, that if I can get past my own personal hooks, obsessions, I will finally be able to latch onto and really :say: something meaningful about, well, meaning. It should come as no surprise that I hold myself up to such standards. I am an egomaniac, after all.