Two or three of my honors students have barely skated upward into final grades they probably shouldn't have gotten, due to an extra-credit option I gave everyone early in the semester. I calculate the extra credit as simply another daily work grade, but I don't increase the total number of daily work points when I calculate final grades--so it's possible for 1) a student with a poor daily work score to bring it up a bit; 2) a student with a close-to-perfect or perfect daily work score to have more than the maximum. One student who should have had a D got a C, barely; two who should have had C's got B's, barely.
Several different factors play into the final grades, of course; I maintain one never passes or fails my courses because of one thing only. But I will admit it is possible to hover close to the borderline for the whole semester and have a daily work grade in the form of extra credit bump you over.
So philosophically, I think I'm done with it. It's rather high-schoolish, isn't it? And it probably distorts a student's overall grade profile. I've had the option more often than not in all my teaching semesters, but as the estimable Dean Dad says, it rewards the wrong things. Extra credit may reduce the value of the other grades, too. What does it reward? I would say motivation, mostly; less writing or thinking skills.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Wednesday odds and sods.
Too short to write an essay on, too long to tweet:
--End of the semester is upon us. As always, hoo and ah, in that order. See previous post for my disappointment with my honors class. Haven't graded their finals yet, but I will with much trepidation (and a glass or three of wine).
--Every year I swear I won't watch American Idol again, and every year I give in. A definite feeling of "blah" has crept in, though. The remaining few are rehearsing their perfect moves over and over, and I'm a little tired of it. I actually enjoy reading Entertainment Weekly's next-day snark more than watching, if truth be told. Do I have a prediction for the winner? Why, sure. I say Scotty McCreery will be our first country American Idol. He's rather endearing when he isn't trying to convince us so hard of his endearing-ness.
--I'm having dinner Friday with my fellow colleagues on the search committee I chaired this spring. Loveliness to come, and a few margaritas.
--I have sent five poems to a small press who takes open submissions; no entry fee, though I did stumble-fumble my way through a short proposal letter. I dunno: how do you write a proposal for a book of poetry? If I had a theme or concept, it probably would have been easier--though I did try to concoct one. My real theme, of course, is me me me me.
--My wife and I are going to Virginia wine country and Pennsylvania at the end of the month--an actual car road trip, which we don't do many of. Then my brother-in-law's wedding, followed by a short-ish trip to L.A. Yes, Virginia, there is wine country in Virginia.
--Can't add much to the post-bin Laden fervor, other than: time to move on, folks.
--End of the semester is upon us. As always, hoo and ah, in that order. See previous post for my disappointment with my honors class. Haven't graded their finals yet, but I will with much trepidation (and a glass or three of wine).
--Every year I swear I won't watch American Idol again, and every year I give in. A definite feeling of "blah" has crept in, though. The remaining few are rehearsing their perfect moves over and over, and I'm a little tired of it. I actually enjoy reading Entertainment Weekly's next-day snark more than watching, if truth be told. Do I have a prediction for the winner? Why, sure. I say Scotty McCreery will be our first country American Idol. He's rather endearing when he isn't trying to convince us so hard of his endearing-ness.
--I'm having dinner Friday with my fellow colleagues on the search committee I chaired this spring. Loveliness to come, and a few margaritas.
--I have sent five poems to a small press who takes open submissions; no entry fee, though I did stumble-fumble my way through a short proposal letter. I dunno: how do you write a proposal for a book of poetry? If I had a theme or concept, it probably would have been easier--though I did try to concoct one. My real theme, of course, is me me me me.
--My wife and I are going to Virginia wine country and Pennsylvania at the end of the month--an actual car road trip, which we don't do many of. Then my brother-in-law's wedding, followed by a short-ish trip to L.A. Yes, Virginia, there is wine country in Virginia.
--Can't add much to the post-bin Laden fervor, other than: time to move on, folks.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
I couldn't have lived without you, part 3.
Continuing to plot points on the graph of my likes. No, not likes, but works that have made me who I am, somehow, someway. Ideally, with luck, this will eventually take in other forms: dance, painting, sculpture...
Music:
Allman Brothers: “Jessica,” “Ramblin’ Man”
Bob Dylan: Blood on the Tracks, The Basement Tapes, Bringing it All Back Home, John Wesley Harding, Love and Theft, Planet Waves, other single songs to come later
The Proclaimers: Sunshine on Leith
Go-Gos: "Turn to You"
TV:
SNL (For better and worse. I know so much effluvia about this show, I could ace an SNL trivia night.)
Match Game
MTV, '80s (First video I saw after we got cable: "Sharp Dressed Man.")
NBC Nightly News, '70s and early '80s (I miss David Brinkley and his bemused opinions on the political arena. What would he make of the Tea Party?)
Late Night w/ David Letterman (before the jump to CBS and cranky affability)
Books, stories, poems:
Richard Hugo: Making Certain It Goes On
Robinson Jeffers: “The Purse-Seine,” “To the Stone-Cutters,” “Hurt Hawks”
Frost: “Mending Wall”
Plath: The Colossus
Philip Larkin: The Whitsun Weddings, High Windows, “Aubade,” “Love Again”
Emily Dickinson (I adore her work; however, I can only read a dozen or so of her poems at a time. After reading something on the order of “I felt a Funeral—in my Brain—“, I too feel like the top of my head has been taken off.)
Kay Ryan: The Niagara River, Say Uncle
David Kirby: The House of Blue Light, The Ha-Ha
Music:
Allman Brothers: “Jessica,” “Ramblin’ Man”
Bob Dylan: Blood on the Tracks, The Basement Tapes, Bringing it All Back Home, John Wesley Harding, Love and Theft, Planet Waves, other single songs to come later
The Proclaimers: Sunshine on Leith
Go-Gos: "Turn to You"
TV:
SNL (For better and worse. I know so much effluvia about this show, I could ace an SNL trivia night.)
Match Game
MTV, '80s (First video I saw after we got cable: "Sharp Dressed Man.")
NBC Nightly News, '70s and early '80s (I miss David Brinkley and his bemused opinions on the political arena. What would he make of the Tea Party?)
Late Night w/ David Letterman (before the jump to CBS and cranky affability)
Books, stories, poems:
Richard Hugo: Making Certain It Goes On
Robinson Jeffers: “The Purse-Seine,” “To the Stone-Cutters,” “Hurt Hawks”
Frost: “Mending Wall”
Plath: The Colossus
Philip Larkin: The Whitsun Weddings, High Windows, “Aubade,” “Love Again”
Emily Dickinson (I adore her work; however, I can only read a dozen or so of her poems at a time. After reading something on the order of “I felt a Funeral—in my Brain—“, I too feel like the top of my head has been taken off.)
Kay Ryan: The Niagara River, Say Uncle
David Kirby: The House of Blue Light, The Ha-Ha
To workshop or not to workshop?
I am toying with the idea of abandoning peer workshop altogether in my comp 1 and 2 courses effective this summer. Above many items that have remained constant in my 10-plus years of teaching comp, workshop has been one of the constantest constants. If I do abandon it, understand I am not abandoning the idea of peer workshop. I have seen students profit from peer comments before, and I remain committed to the idea (perhaps in theory only) that if we aspire to do more than write in our journals solely for ourselves, we don't know what effect our words have until someone else takes them in. Abstractly at least, I still believe that's true--for someone who's committed to working with language and honing it to best possible effect.
But.
It's clear that too many of my students don't take their peers' comments seriously and perhaps, in the rush of the last minute, forget what their peers say and don't look at the feedback sheets again before turning in essays. It's also probably true that many of them don't give a fig what their peers have to say (which, perversely, I kinda cheer them for, at least their skepticism). And maybe this has to do with how the review groups work; maybe the problem is not workshop per se but who works with whom.
Trust is so hard to develop among students, but then again, trust is a double-edged sword. One kind of trust ensures that peers will review each other's work honestly and fairly, whereas another kind ensures that a group of friends will work in the same group and offer nothing but praise--if that. I wonder if there's research which attempts to measure the value of workshops in more than theoretical terms, that shows how much a student revises based on peer feedback (or other feedback, say of a writing lab or an instructor) and how much he revises out of his own convictions. And peer feedback can help *clarify* a writer's convictions, I suspect, but again, how to measure this?
Sometimes I pick group membership myself, and sometimes I let them pick--and I'm not sure which method works better. Is a relative stranger's feedback as valuable as a close friend's? I'm also starting to wonder if workshop isn't sometimes just a way of filling class time. Could those three or four days per semester be put to better advantage--more time on the research portion, more time spent on how to construct argument?
I write this and I realize I will start to address the issue this summer in my comp 2 courses. Out of time challenges more than anything else, I have taken out the workshop for all but the last essay, the research assignment. Several years ago, workshop was not part of my comp 2 course for a few semesters; then I put it back in. Now I'm taking it out again. I could foresee doing this for comp 1 as well. Is this throwing out the baby with the bathwater? Part of me also believes I owe it to stduents to at least introduce them to the idea of peer feedback, thus maybe making workshop mandatory for one or two assignments and optional for the others. (Which ones?)
If the overriding goal is improvement in student writing--more facility with language, more ease in revising toward a communicative goal--workshop should (ideally) show some influence on that. I just don't know how to measure that influence.
Obviously, more questions than answers here. Any of y'all teachers reading this who use workshop in some capacity, do you harbor similar doubts? Have you ever removed or reduced or changed the nature of your peer workshop sessions? To what effect?
But.
It's clear that too many of my students don't take their peers' comments seriously and perhaps, in the rush of the last minute, forget what their peers say and don't look at the feedback sheets again before turning in essays. It's also probably true that many of them don't give a fig what their peers have to say (which, perversely, I kinda cheer them for, at least their skepticism). And maybe this has to do with how the review groups work; maybe the problem is not workshop per se but who works with whom.
Trust is so hard to develop among students, but then again, trust is a double-edged sword. One kind of trust ensures that peers will review each other's work honestly and fairly, whereas another kind ensures that a group of friends will work in the same group and offer nothing but praise--if that. I wonder if there's research which attempts to measure the value of workshops in more than theoretical terms, that shows how much a student revises based on peer feedback (or other feedback, say of a writing lab or an instructor) and how much he revises out of his own convictions. And peer feedback can help *clarify* a writer's convictions, I suspect, but again, how to measure this?
Sometimes I pick group membership myself, and sometimes I let them pick--and I'm not sure which method works better. Is a relative stranger's feedback as valuable as a close friend's? I'm also starting to wonder if workshop isn't sometimes just a way of filling class time. Could those three or four days per semester be put to better advantage--more time on the research portion, more time spent on how to construct argument?
I write this and I realize I will start to address the issue this summer in my comp 2 courses. Out of time challenges more than anything else, I have taken out the workshop for all but the last essay, the research assignment. Several years ago, workshop was not part of my comp 2 course for a few semesters; then I put it back in. Now I'm taking it out again. I could foresee doing this for comp 1 as well. Is this throwing out the baby with the bathwater? Part of me also believes I owe it to stduents to at least introduce them to the idea of peer feedback, thus maybe making workshop mandatory for one or two assignments and optional for the others. (Which ones?)
If the overriding goal is improvement in student writing--more facility with language, more ease in revising toward a communicative goal--workshop should (ideally) show some influence on that. I just don't know how to measure that influence.
Obviously, more questions than answers here. Any of y'all teachers reading this who use workshop in some capacity, do you harbor similar doubts? Have you ever removed or reduced or changed the nature of your peer workshop sessions? To what effect?
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Inexpert ramblings on the crammed summer term.
I'm no scientist, but it doesn't take a scientist (rocket or otherwise) to deduce that TI's upcoming summer schedule is a bear. There's a "full" term of about 7.5 weeks and two shorter terms of about 4 weeks. I'm scheduled to teach two courses in the second short term. Both of the short terms are 15 days of class. Yes, that's 15 days, and that includes the final exam day. So it means slightly more than a week's worth of material every class meeting. It means insane. And it means, I predict, the following as well:
--Hardly any time for sustained discussion.
--Hardly any time for students to work on essays out of class, to test out possibilities and work through the process even semi-organically.
--Hardly any time for revision.
--Not a highly motivated group of students who can focus intensely for 15 days of class but a gaggle of deer in the headlights.
From an admin's standpoint, it's no trouble to make a schedule do anything you want: spin, pirouette, cook an omelet. On paper, it's merely the same schedule in less time. Just stockpile the material, and you're good to go. But we teachers know it doesn't work that way. To quote the great Steely Dan, I foresee terrible trouble.
--Hardly any time for sustained discussion.
--Hardly any time for students to work on essays out of class, to test out possibilities and work through the process even semi-organically.
--Hardly any time for revision.
--Not a highly motivated group of students who can focus intensely for 15 days of class but a gaggle of deer in the headlights.
From an admin's standpoint, it's no trouble to make a schedule do anything you want: spin, pirouette, cook an omelet. On paper, it's merely the same schedule in less time. Just stockpile the material, and you're good to go. But we teachers know it doesn't work that way. To quote the great Steely Dan, I foresee terrible trouble.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Honors, my ass.
At the institution (hereforth known as TI), the word "honors," in my deepening experience, means little more than "I had a great GPA in high school."
Last fall I taught an honors first-semester comp course that was generally a positive experience and was populated with more than the regular allotment of above-average writers and thinkers. I sent three or four of their essays to the editor of our student-essay publication in hopes they might be published. This spring I have an honors second-semester comp course, and with rare exception the writing has been from competent and occasionally insightful to downright awful. The awful has been not just an honors kind of awful, which would be slightly below average in a non-honors section, but truly awful: nonexistent organization, inaccurate wording, sentence structure problems, syntactical nightmares. Writing problems, in other words, one sees consistently in developmental courses and often in non-honors comp (and, let's be honest, in lit courses too).
But it's not a mystery that such students qualify for our honors program, because there are many roads in. A qualifying student can begin the program from her first semester on or can take a few honors courses here and there and doesn't have to be "in" the program. Some of the possible roads in are a high school GPA of 3.5 (not difficult in most public high schools in our campus's immediate service area); composite 1800 on the SAT (very few get this, I imagine); various scores on the ACT, both subject areas and composite (a little more possible); a *current* GPA of 3.5 and at least 9 hours of college credit (probably catches a few more); or instructor recommendation (probably a few more).
I guess what I suggest is what the stock market shows: past performance is not indicative of future performance. And even if one contributes well in class and/or shows evidence of higher-level thinking, it doesn't automatically translate to writing. And there's the challenge of motivation, too. One of my current honors students is fucking brilliant beyond all measure and is much more widely read than I am; intelligence is pouring forth from this young man. But he's torpedoing his grade with his lax writing and his procrastination.
I know, I know: there are many ways to define intelligence. But there are slightly fewer ways to define motivation, and the majority of my honors students this time don't show it.
Last fall I taught an honors first-semester comp course that was generally a positive experience and was populated with more than the regular allotment of above-average writers and thinkers. I sent three or four of their essays to the editor of our student-essay publication in hopes they might be published. This spring I have an honors second-semester comp course, and with rare exception the writing has been from competent and occasionally insightful to downright awful. The awful has been not just an honors kind of awful, which would be slightly below average in a non-honors section, but truly awful: nonexistent organization, inaccurate wording, sentence structure problems, syntactical nightmares. Writing problems, in other words, one sees consistently in developmental courses and often in non-honors comp (and, let's be honest, in lit courses too).
But it's not a mystery that such students qualify for our honors program, because there are many roads in. A qualifying student can begin the program from her first semester on or can take a few honors courses here and there and doesn't have to be "in" the program. Some of the possible roads in are a high school GPA of 3.5 (not difficult in most public high schools in our campus's immediate service area); composite 1800 on the SAT (very few get this, I imagine); various scores on the ACT, both subject areas and composite (a little more possible); a *current* GPA of 3.5 and at least 9 hours of college credit (probably catches a few more); or instructor recommendation (probably a few more).
I guess what I suggest is what the stock market shows: past performance is not indicative of future performance. And even if one contributes well in class and/or shows evidence of higher-level thinking, it doesn't automatically translate to writing. And there's the challenge of motivation, too. One of my current honors students is fucking brilliant beyond all measure and is much more widely read than I am; intelligence is pouring forth from this young man. But he's torpedoing his grade with his lax writing and his procrastination.
I know, I know: there are many ways to define intelligence. But there are slightly fewer ways to define motivation, and the majority of my honors students this time don't show it.
Blank slate, followed by ghazals.
Gorgeous morning, to be followed doubtless by gorgeous afternoon, and I find myself in one of those rare states of empty mind: no agenda, no guff, nothing to get off my chest. I fear I will devolve into a simple laundry list of what happened, so let me wrack my brain a minute...
I'm messing around with ghazals lately. They're a Persian form with fairly strict rules. It's the first time I've messed with form in a while. Form helps rein me in and, at the same time, helps me find the exact wording I need. Since my downfalls are a tendency to overstatement and a tendency to jokiness, form helps reduce these. Ghazals are challenging because I've got to have a "refrain" in every stanza that can bear being viewed through different lenses. And the refrain must be preceded by a rhyming sound that gets repeated in every stanza. So a rhyming dictionary is a must.
The toughest rule to follow is that each line is supposed to have the same number of syllables. Not necessarily the same stresses, but the same number of syllables. It's usually at this point where I say, "Well, you have to relax the rules sometimes."
Still new to the form, I think of a ghazal right now as a meditation upon a refrain, whatever that repeated phrase or word ends up being. My first one is "on that bridge," the second one just "money." Sometimes you need a phrase, sometimes a single word. I have in mind other refrains: "Atlanta," "son of a bitch," "underwater."
Using forms, it occurs to me, invites more serious play, more testing and discarding than perhaps an open form does.
I'm messing around with ghazals lately. They're a Persian form with fairly strict rules. It's the first time I've messed with form in a while. Form helps rein me in and, at the same time, helps me find the exact wording I need. Since my downfalls are a tendency to overstatement and a tendency to jokiness, form helps reduce these. Ghazals are challenging because I've got to have a "refrain" in every stanza that can bear being viewed through different lenses. And the refrain must be preceded by a rhyming sound that gets repeated in every stanza. So a rhyming dictionary is a must.
The toughest rule to follow is that each line is supposed to have the same number of syllables. Not necessarily the same stresses, but the same number of syllables. It's usually at this point where I say, "Well, you have to relax the rules sometimes."
Still new to the form, I think of a ghazal right now as a meditation upon a refrain, whatever that repeated phrase or word ends up being. My first one is "on that bridge," the second one just "money." Sometimes you need a phrase, sometimes a single word. I have in mind other refrains: "Atlanta," "son of a bitch," "underwater."
Using forms, it occurs to me, invites more serious play, more testing and discarding than perhaps an open form does.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
I couldn't have lived without you, part 2.
More randomness. These lists are an attempt to plot my point on the grid, wherever these disparate points might converge.
CDs:
Dusty Springfield: just about anything, but esp. Dusty in London
Get Down Tonight: The Best of T.K. Records.
ELO: "Don't Bring Me Down"
Labelle: Nightbirds
Foreigner: "Double Vision," "Feels Like the First Time," "Urgent"
Led Zeppelin: Led Zeppelin III
Spinners: Mighty Love, Pick of the Litter
Buddy Holly: all
Books:
Lisa Shea, Hula
Gregory Orr, Concerning the Book That is the Body of the Beloved
Jim Bouton, Ball Four
Frank McCourt, Angela's Ashes (The man has essentially written one book, though he's written two after this one. 'Tis gets cranky, and I haven't read Teacher Man. But man, if you have a book to write, make it Angela's Ashes.)
Saw Hanna last night at our local drive-in; I'm not sure I can tell you what I saw, exactly. I thought we were getting some kind of survivalist fairy tale, but then the plane zoomed over and we got a shoot-em-up, of a sort. Still, it has an aesthetic.
CDs:
Dusty Springfield: just about anything, but esp. Dusty in London
Get Down Tonight: The Best of T.K. Records.
ELO: "Don't Bring Me Down"
Labelle: Nightbirds
Foreigner: "Double Vision," "Feels Like the First Time," "Urgent"
Led Zeppelin: Led Zeppelin III
Spinners: Mighty Love, Pick of the Litter
Buddy Holly: all
Books:
Lisa Shea, Hula
Gregory Orr, Concerning the Book That is the Body of the Beloved
Jim Bouton, Ball Four
Frank McCourt, Angela's Ashes (The man has essentially written one book, though he's written two after this one. 'Tis gets cranky, and I haven't read Teacher Man. But man, if you have a book to write, make it Angela's Ashes.)
Saw Hanna last night at our local drive-in; I'm not sure I can tell you what I saw, exactly. I thought we were getting some kind of survivalist fairy tale, but then the plane zoomed over and we got a shoot-em-up, of a sort. Still, it has an aesthetic.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
I couldn't have lived without you, part 1.
I love and mistrust "best" lists. They're 95% a way into a listmaker's mind and 5% an objective taste-making guide. So rather than an "essential" or "desert island" list, I shall (oo, he said shall!) begin here a compendium (oo, he said compendium!) of books, CDs, movies, TV shows, other things that, when I think about them, make me realize I would have been improverished without them. The better name for this list may be "important" titles. Occasionally I may justify an entry, but for now this will be a messy unwieldy list.
I don't think of these as necessarily "favorite" or "best" but more as, well, stuff that's stuck with me. And this is just a start. Also, yes, I am aware that I am looking over my shoulder at you, theoretical reader, and trying to make myself cool by what I include.
I think I'll break this up over multiple entries.
Music:
George Harrison, All Things Must Pass
The Proclaimers, Sunshine on Leith
Gnarls Barkley, "Crazy"
Amy Winehouse, "Rehab"
KC and the Sunshine Band, "Please Don't Go"
The Clash, London Calling
Bob Seger, "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man"
Rupert Holmes, 85% of Partners in Crime
Nick Lowe, Labour of Lust
Elton John, Rock of the Westies
Beatles, The Beatles and Abbey Road
Stones, Beggar's Banquet and Let it Bleed (yes, I love Exile too but don't feel it always delivers)
Neil Young, Tonight's the Night; "Ordinary People" (perhaps my favorite 18-minute rock song)
TV:
Six Feet Under
The Office (US)
American Idol (for better and worse)
Books, stories, poems:
James Wright, Above the River
Jonathan Harr, A Civil Action
Mark Halliday, Keep This Forever
John Berryman, The Dream Songs
Mary Beth Fennelly's Berryman sequence in Unmentionables
Robert Frost, "After Apple-Picking"; "The Death of the Hired Man"; "Design"
Abraham Verghese, My Own Country
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (no, I haven't read it all)
Alice Walker, "Nineteen Fifty-Five"
I don't think of these as necessarily "favorite" or "best" but more as, well, stuff that's stuck with me. And this is just a start. Also, yes, I am aware that I am looking over my shoulder at you, theoretical reader, and trying to make myself cool by what I include.
I think I'll break this up over multiple entries.
Music:
George Harrison, All Things Must Pass
The Proclaimers, Sunshine on Leith
Gnarls Barkley, "Crazy"
Amy Winehouse, "Rehab"
KC and the Sunshine Band, "Please Don't Go"
The Clash, London Calling
Bob Seger, "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man"
Rupert Holmes, 85% of Partners in Crime
Nick Lowe, Labour of Lust
Elton John, Rock of the Westies
Beatles, The Beatles and Abbey Road
Stones, Beggar's Banquet and Let it Bleed (yes, I love Exile too but don't feel it always delivers)
Neil Young, Tonight's the Night; "Ordinary People" (perhaps my favorite 18-minute rock song)
TV:
Six Feet Under
The Office (US)
American Idol (for better and worse)
Books, stories, poems:
James Wright, Above the River
Jonathan Harr, A Civil Action
Mark Halliday, Keep This Forever
John Berryman, The Dream Songs
Mary Beth Fennelly's Berryman sequence in Unmentionables
Robert Frost, "After Apple-Picking"; "The Death of the Hired Man"; "Design"
Abraham Verghese, My Own Country
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (no, I haven't read it all)
Alice Walker, "Nineteen Fifty-Five"
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Life of an editor, partial.
I have been poetry editor for a once-revered and hopefully-to-be-revered-again literary journal at my home institution, and it's been a full-immersion baptism. Our editor, and by proxy the genre editors, have been saddled with cleaning up a big stinking rotten mess left by the previous editor. This mess has taken many forms.
1. Previous contributors have emailed us to say they haven't been paid (it's a paying mag).
2. Previous contributors haven't been notified their work was accepted; in some cases the issue went to press and got sent to subscribers before contributors knew anything.
3. Unresponded-to manuscripts have been found on shelves, in desk drawers, on tops of desks--some going back two years.
4. The previous editor didn't put out issues on the regular four-a-year schedule. The last two years he served as editor, exactly two issues went to press. Of those issues, it's not really known how many were mailed to subscribers, or if they were mailed at all. This also creates havoc for library subscription services who are paying for four issues a year; they've had a litany of unkind words for us.
5. Average response times went way way up (see #3). Our current standing in Duotrope's Digest is as one of the most "slothful" mags out there.
6. Sixty-some uncashed checks were found in a desk upon the new editorship's assuming of the office suite. These were entry fee checks sent in by entrants for our nonfiction contest, left in an envelope to rot. Not only were checks not cashed, no winners were announced for the contest that year. This constitutes fraud and is criminally punishable.
7. For at least two months, the previous editor went on a book tour/extended vacation and took no vacation leave and did no work for the mag. (I should mention he is staff and not faculty.)
8. The last 4-5 issues are rife with typos--just shameful, embarrassing, developmental-level typos.
The previous editor is currently working at the home institution in a PR position. Rumor is he will be let go soon because of the discovery of all of the above. By all accounts he is a friendly and outgoing guy; I only met him once years ago at a restaurant, and only tangentially as others were in our party. But I believe our new editor when she says he is a conniving scoundrel.
My theory? When the mag lost its managing editor in '08 or '09, no one was hired in her place. Lacking savvy or interest in the business end, the previous editor just let that part go and ran the mag the way he wanted to--i.e. a party of one. Previous contributing editors have said he was erratic at best and neglectful at worst when it came to circulating mss's and deciding content.
We are working to correct all of the above. In many ways, we are burning the old and building again, which may be the best way to look at the whole mess. Granted, I haven't seen the mess that up close; but I know it's hard to do the job you were hired to do when you're covering for a neglectful predecessor.
1. Previous contributors have emailed us to say they haven't been paid (it's a paying mag).
2. Previous contributors haven't been notified their work was accepted; in some cases the issue went to press and got sent to subscribers before contributors knew anything.
3. Unresponded-to manuscripts have been found on shelves, in desk drawers, on tops of desks--some going back two years.
4. The previous editor didn't put out issues on the regular four-a-year schedule. The last two years he served as editor, exactly two issues went to press. Of those issues, it's not really known how many were mailed to subscribers, or if they were mailed at all. This also creates havoc for library subscription services who are paying for four issues a year; they've had a litany of unkind words for us.
5. Average response times went way way up (see #3). Our current standing in Duotrope's Digest is as one of the most "slothful" mags out there.
6. Sixty-some uncashed checks were found in a desk upon the new editorship's assuming of the office suite. These were entry fee checks sent in by entrants for our nonfiction contest, left in an envelope to rot. Not only were checks not cashed, no winners were announced for the contest that year. This constitutes fraud and is criminally punishable.
7. For at least two months, the previous editor went on a book tour/extended vacation and took no vacation leave and did no work for the mag. (I should mention he is staff and not faculty.)
8. The last 4-5 issues are rife with typos--just shameful, embarrassing, developmental-level typos.
The previous editor is currently working at the home institution in a PR position. Rumor is he will be let go soon because of the discovery of all of the above. By all accounts he is a friendly and outgoing guy; I only met him once years ago at a restaurant, and only tangentially as others were in our party. But I believe our new editor when she says he is a conniving scoundrel.
My theory? When the mag lost its managing editor in '08 or '09, no one was hired in her place. Lacking savvy or interest in the business end, the previous editor just let that part go and ran the mag the way he wanted to--i.e. a party of one. Previous contributing editors have said he was erratic at best and neglectful at worst when it came to circulating mss's and deciding content.
We are working to correct all of the above. In many ways, we are burning the old and building again, which may be the best way to look at the whole mess. Granted, I haven't seen the mess that up close; but I know it's hard to do the job you were hired to do when you're covering for a neglectful predecessor.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
On writing every day.
Poet William Stafford reputedly sat down every morning before sunrise and wrote a poem--if not a whole poem, then some lines toward a poem. In Writing the Australian Crawl, he says, "I get pen and paper, take a glance out of the window...and wait. It is like fishing. But I do not wait very long, for there is always a nibble--and this is where receptivity comes in. To get started I will accept anything that occurs to me. Something always occurs, of course, to any of us. We can't keep from thinking...If I put down something, that thing will help the next thing come, and I'm off."
The biggest word in this quote, for me, is receptivity, the idea of being absolutely open and ready, free of "monkey mind." When I sit down to write, I find myself more often initially thinking of a phrase or line or idea; I also often start with titles. I can't say I have the same receptivity Stafford has, but I'm getting better about not getting frustrated too early. I imagine Stafford went many many lines before he declared the readiness of a piece; I probably try for 20-25 lines before I pass judgment.
Perhaps the practice of writing every day opens one up more, but I am not compelled to write every day. I simply don't feel the need to push if there's no give at the other end. But if we mean writing in its broadest sense, I probably am writing something every day: email, blog post, acceptance letters for poems. I don't write lines every day, put it that way. I can't even blame schedule or activities, because I don't have a crammed calendar. I always think, when my load lightens, "Ahh, just think of all that time to write." And it rarely works out so. Taking the longer view of the past year, though, I've written (and gotten published) a hell of a lot more than in the 4 or 5 years prior. That's progress.
So this means I can't be a full-time poet, and I think I'm okay with that notion--I think. I always feel I should be writing more, but that's a neverending nag. Think of Elizabeth Bishop, who published, let's see, four books in her life.
The biggest word in this quote, for me, is receptivity, the idea of being absolutely open and ready, free of "monkey mind." When I sit down to write, I find myself more often initially thinking of a phrase or line or idea; I also often start with titles. I can't say I have the same receptivity Stafford has, but I'm getting better about not getting frustrated too early. I imagine Stafford went many many lines before he declared the readiness of a piece; I probably try for 20-25 lines before I pass judgment.
Perhaps the practice of writing every day opens one up more, but I am not compelled to write every day. I simply don't feel the need to push if there's no give at the other end. But if we mean writing in its broadest sense, I probably am writing something every day: email, blog post, acceptance letters for poems. I don't write lines every day, put it that way. I can't even blame schedule or activities, because I don't have a crammed calendar. I always think, when my load lightens, "Ahh, just think of all that time to write." And it rarely works out so. Taking the longer view of the past year, though, I've written (and gotten published) a hell of a lot more than in the 4 or 5 years prior. That's progress.
So this means I can't be a full-time poet, and I think I'm okay with that notion--I think. I always feel I should be writing more, but that's a neverending nag. Think of Elizabeth Bishop, who published, let's see, four books in her life.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
What's up with all these prose poems?
I feel about prose poems rather like Bob Wrigley felt about them in a workshop last summer: "Well...they're prose." I just think I don't get them or that I'm not the proper audience. Or maybe my preference for prose poems is limited to a select few writers and no one else can touch them. I seem to go for the loopiness of a Russell Edson or the plain (though not simple) beauty of a James Wright. Too many of them get stuck in surreality or, like regularly lineated poems, strain too hard to be significant. I'm all for surreality, but only the kind which has a toenail in reality. Anyway, one of the two mags I read for is running a book contest now, and we're all reading various mss's. And there's a shit-ton of prose poems coming in. It's neither good nor bad; I wonder what the appeal is.
In any case, I find myself glossing over the great majority of them, which is of course not fair. Doubtless another sign of getting stuck in my ways. The one bona fide prose poem I have ever written later became lineated the old fashioned way, because I read it aloud and heard a regular old poem. I just ask myself, with such beasts, is there some musical or artistic reason for making it look like a paragraph? A lot of so-called prose poems are actually flash fiction or (see above) disguises for pretty conventional moves.
The good ones, like Wright's, still concern themselves with highly charged moments of time. I read a good one and still feel I'm reading something like a poem but where perhaps the sentence is the carrier of the poetic moment, not the line. Maybe I'm really saying they're difficult for me to write.
In any case, I find myself glossing over the great majority of them, which is of course not fair. Doubtless another sign of getting stuck in my ways. The one bona fide prose poem I have ever written later became lineated the old fashioned way, because I read it aloud and heard a regular old poem. I just ask myself, with such beasts, is there some musical or artistic reason for making it look like a paragraph? A lot of so-called prose poems are actually flash fiction or (see above) disguises for pretty conventional moves.
The good ones, like Wright's, still concern themselves with highly charged moments of time. I read a good one and still feel I'm reading something like a poem but where perhaps the sentence is the carrier of the poetic moment, not the line. Maybe I'm really saying they're difficult for me to write.
Friday, April 8, 2011
On teaching less.
My teaching-related stress and anxiety are way way down this spring, for multiple reasons. The biggest reason is doubtless that I'm now teaching only one course, and this is my unheard call to cc admins everywhere to lighten the load for all your full-timers. I was teaching three, but two of them were half-semester courses and are now done. And as poetry editor of our in-house litmag, I get another courseload reduction. (Our editor is gunning for one reduction per semester for us, rather than per year.) The result? My one class, an honors class, has 10 students. Shhh! Don't spill it! Summer and fall won't be this leisurely, so I'm trying to savor it.
I'm also taking a break from teaching learning support. Initially I told myself a year off and then a re-assessment. Now I'm re-assessing and believe I'll probably take another year off from it. The kind of b.s. one can encounter in a LS course happens in other courses, too, but generally to a lesser extent. Plus, I think I'm weary of teaching grammar and mechanics.
More to the point, simply teaching less has enabled me to focus on what I'd rather be doing. This has largely encompassed poetry, of course.
I'm also taking a break from teaching learning support. Initially I told myself a year off and then a re-assessment. Now I'm re-assessing and believe I'll probably take another year off from it. The kind of b.s. one can encounter in a LS course happens in other courses, too, but generally to a lesser extent. Plus, I think I'm weary of teaching grammar and mechanics.
More to the point, simply teaching less has enabled me to focus on what I'd rather be doing. This has largely encompassed poetry, of course.
Contest fees and impostor syndrome.
So, one of my major activities of the past two years has been (again) whipping my poetry manuscript into shape. It was chapbook length; then at some point I decided to push on through to book length. As of this moment, it's 61 pages of poems. Considering it contains poems from as far back as 1999, I'm a little embarrassed that 61 pages is it. But I've been living along the way, you see.
Last fall I entered a book contest that I thought I had a pretty good shot of placing in, if not winning. Neither happened, and I was off kilter for at least a week. Then I remembered what the contest runner had asked me prior, which was simply if I had a completed manuscript. He simply encouraged me to enter because he'd seen my work in workshops and was impressed. That's all.
Anyway. These contests, after a certain point, are about taste and preference. It says nothing (or very little) about my poetic ability that I didn't place. Being a poetry editor for two different publications now, I understand the dilemma. After a time, the mss's that rise to the top just have that inescapable something, that buzz or unifying vision, perhaps. Perhaps a compelling perspective, or a fresh take on language use or poetic form. And how is this defined? Largely through the tastes of the one reading.
With this in mind, I don't need (and can't afford) to enter every good-looking contest willy-nilly. The writing's the thing, and the submitting. I'm eager but not desperate to get a book published. Good thing I don't teach at a four-year.
Last fall I entered a book contest that I thought I had a pretty good shot of placing in, if not winning. Neither happened, and I was off kilter for at least a week. Then I remembered what the contest runner had asked me prior, which was simply if I had a completed manuscript. He simply encouraged me to enter because he'd seen my work in workshops and was impressed. That's all.
Anyway. These contests, after a certain point, are about taste and preference. It says nothing (or very little) about my poetic ability that I didn't place. Being a poetry editor for two different publications now, I understand the dilemma. After a time, the mss's that rise to the top just have that inescapable something, that buzz or unifying vision, perhaps. Perhaps a compelling perspective, or a fresh take on language use or poetic form. And how is this defined? Largely through the tastes of the one reading.
With this in mind, I don't need (and can't afford) to enter every good-looking contest willy-nilly. The writing's the thing, and the submitting. I'm eager but not desperate to get a book published. Good thing I don't teach at a four-year.
A new start, with luck.
I am back after almost two years in the land of the living.
No guarantees how often I'll check in, but I'm back.
I go hot and cold on maintaining a blog. Part of me believes it's wanky solipsism, part of me believes it's another space to work things out. Another part of me simply feels it's writing activity.
I'll be back as soon as I work it out.
No guarantees how often I'll check in, but I'm back.
I go hot and cold on maintaining a blog. Part of me believes it's wanky solipsism, part of me believes it's another space to work things out. Another part of me simply feels it's writing activity.
I'll be back as soon as I work it out.
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