The MFA Chronicles

Opportunities for Undergrad Poets on Twitter

2011-12-07T16:31:00.000-08:00

Hi all!

I hope everyone is enjoying their new programs! I'm post-MFA now, currently serving as a Visiting Assistant Prof. at Drake University in Des Moines, IA. Details on that at my personal blog.

I'm tweeting opportunities for undergraduate poets at @UnderPoList on Twitter. Follow for links to publications for undergrads, as well as seminars, fellowships, conferences and retreats.

Email: underpolist at gmail.com if you'd like an opportunity listed.

Contests!

2011-10-02T19:01:00.000-07:00

Hi All! I know we don't generally use this space to solicit submissions, but one of the many things that are keeping me busy and preventing me from updating with solid writerly updates is my work on George Mason's student-run literary magazines, So to Speak (where I am assistant nonfiction editor) and Phoebe. Both of them are now accepting submissions for their annual contests, and I figured you all might be interested in submitting!

Phoebe's Contests are now open for submissions in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. David Means (fiction), Mathea Harvey (poetry), and Mary Roach (nonfiction) are judging. See details here.

So to Speak is now accepting submissions for it's spring Poetry and Nonfiction Contests. Claudia Rankine (poetry) and Joanna Omang (nonfiction) are judges. See details here.

I hope everyone is enjoying their year. If your school years are going anything like mine, you're busy busy busy! I hope to be able to update with all that's going on sometime after October. For now, suffice to say, I'm one busy little writer.

Update (with some things of interest for those of you who write poetry)

2011-09-12T09:36:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone! Katie Darby (now Katie Mullins) here. I started out with this blog back right after being admitted to SIU-Carbondale in the Fiction program. I can't remember how much of the last two years I've shared on this blog, but suffice it to say, things got interesting and I am now firmly off the beaten path of the MFA.

I am, however, currently adjuncting at the University of Evansville in southern Indiana, and even more excitingly, I'm currently the Guest Editor for a special music-poetry crossover edition of the formal poetry magazine Measure. (Some of you guys may remember I had a music blog, Katie Darby Recommends, on the side-- this edition of Measure will combine my passion and love for the artists I work with with the passion and love I have for poetry. We'll be looking for formal poems that are about music or musicians, that explore the connection between music and poetry, and even some lyrics. We're also hoping to get a lot of songwriters on board to share their part of the verse-world. I couldn't be more excited.

So I guess this is a two-pronged post: to say that I'm still here, following in the footsteps I first took in 2009, even though it's been sort of a scattered journey-- and to give you guys a heads-up about the new issue I'll be editing. As always, you can email me at kwdarby@gmail.com if you want more details, and until then, check out the Measure website. And pass this call for submissions along to music loving friends and musicians who write!

MFA Rankings

2011-09-09T14:55:00.000-07:00

I know, I know... I have been MIA. My post-MFA life isn't so glamorous, as I work part-time at Georgia College teaching English composition and am spending my spare time submitting poetry like mad. For more information on me (or my poetry publications), please check out www.rachelm.com .

Now that the self-promotion is over, I wanted to come over here to post this link.

Creative Writing Profs Dispute Their Ranking–No, the Entire Notion of Ranking!

I know that I'm not the only one who has been interested in rankings throughout my whole MFA application process and during the time I spent in an MFA. I thought this might be a good place for us to discuss/debate a little bit!

I hope you are all doing well--whether you're still working on your MFA or you've moved onto the next stage of your life.

The End of Boot Camp and Some Good Advice

2011-08-13T14:06:00.000-07:00

About 6 weeks ago I wrote about starting FSU’s First-Year Composition Summer Boot camp (you can read about it here). I finally finished boot camp and am coming up for air. We have a 3 weeks between boot camp and the first day of classes, so I’m hoping to catch up on my own writing, finish furnishing my apartment, and make it out the beach (I’m in Florida after all).

Boot camp ended up being a really good experience for me. A lot of the theory that we read hasn’t totally sunk in yet, but I know that once I’m in the classroom and have my own experiences that I can use to converse with the pedagogy, it’ll all start to click. On a more practical level it was really great to get experience teaching a few lessons and classes in a summer semester comp class, meet and get to know the other graduate students, and to get time to work on my e-portfolio (you can see the early version of my portfolio here).

Perhaps the most useful part of boot camp, though, was the advice passed on to us from the more experienced TAs. I can’t vouch for it all yet, since I’ve only spent a few lessons in front of a classroom, but I wanted to share what I think will end up being the most useful advice we were given:

· Be honest, but not too honest: It’s ok to say you made a mistake or didn’t know something—it’ll make your students more likely to do the same. But you don’t need to tell them it’s your first time teaching, how young you are, or what you’re doing over the weekend.
· Take your teaching seriously, but remember to put your own studies first: It’s easy for teaching to take up all your time. Don’t let it. You need to set limits and remember you can’t do everything.
· Don’t micro-manage: You can’t fix all the writing problems you see—focus on the big picture not the individual commas. You don’t have time to do it all.
· Not everyone loves writing as much you do: You can’t convert everyone.
· Stay true to who you are: Nothing will lose you respect in the classroom as quickly as being a fraud. Be you. It can be an animated version of you or a stricter version of you. But it should ultimately be you.
· Your students aren’t your friends: They need a teacher far more than they need another friend.
· Know when to refer your students to others: University writing centers and counseling centers are there for the students to use. If something comes up that is out of your expertise tell them where they can go for help.
· Write down everything in your syllabus/course policy sheet: If it’s there on paper in black and white, students can’t get away with claiming they didn’t understand or didn’t know.
· Be confident in your grades: You do know what an A paper looks like (and a B, C, D, etc). But there will always be some students that argue. Have a rubric so you can explain it to them. And remember they won’t lose a scholarship or flunk out of school because of just your class, but you’re probably the only grade they’re arguing. So be confident.
· Always keep a couple of exercise, quick lessons, or activities in your back pocket: You never know when a discussion or activity might fall flat or finish up a lot quicker than you anticipated. It’s good to have some back-ups to fill up class time or pull the energy level back up.
· Think of your students as intelligent young adults: They’re not kids anymore and they’re not your children. Treat them like adults, and keep an appropriate distance.
· Don’t forget to take care of yourself: Grad school is hard. You’ll be busy. But don’t forget to go to the doctor, eat your meals, get sleep, and make time to do the things you enjoy.

Hope this helps some of you. I’d love to hear what kind of advice the rest of you have gotten.

the little writer that could.

2011-07-17T14:55:00.001-07:00

Hey, all. I posted back in March about my visit to Columbia and whether I would choose to go there, since I was waiting on one more (non-MFA) decision. I decided to go to Columbia....and then a week or two later, had a complete breakdown over financial anxiety and told them I wasn't going to go. I already have graduate degrees and I've been paying on them for 2+ years, and got overwhelmed at the thought of the staggering cost of tuition+books+living in NYC. I've paid my own graduate education up to this point, through grants/loans/workstudy and working part-time, and will be paying for my MFA myself - this isn't a case of mommy and daddy footing the bill, so I wasn't taking cost issues lightly. If anything, my family was super concerned about the debt I would incur. Everything I read online pointed me in a direction far, far away from NY.

We've all heard and read the horror stories about Columbia and the other NYC MFA programs, about being "cash cows" and rude admins and no funding, and so on - it could go on for days and multiple Facebook threads, as we're all aware. Maybe some people have even experienced this themselves. My experience, however, has been far from that. Ever since the beginning, with sending in my confirmation deposit, the School of the Arts and the larger institution have been nothing but helpful and accomodating through email and phone conversations. Being a naturally anxious person, I'm sure I drove them crazy, asking a ton of questions "just to make sure," and they always responded promptly, politely and with a note that it was no trouble.

Very long story short, I decided to go because of a funding offer that opened up that eased my financial worries considerably. Am I still taking out some loans, especially to live? Yes - but drastically less than originally thought. Is this the norm? Maybe not. Maybe this experience is the exception and not the rule, but I never would have known if I didn't take that plunge and try to go for it. It is really easy to get caught up in the funding maze and talk of different programs and debt, and make "practical" decisions in lieu of going balls-to-the-wall and taking a flying leap towards your dream. Of course, practical is necessary sometimes - I'm not advocating going 100k in debt for the sake of not being practical - but if a program is perfect for you, and doesn't necessarily offer full funding, you never know what may happen until you try. Apply. Talk with administrators. Meet with students. Get to know the financial aid, housing and student services people. If you get in, you don't have to go. Be honest with the school about your financial concerns, look at other aid sources and ask the financial aid people about other sources of money. As Tim Gunn would say, make it work.

Because what it comes down to, really, is finding the program that is the best fit for you. But if you really want a program that seems out of reach for financial reasons, it might be worth going for it and seeing what happens.

Muzzle Magazine's 1-Year Anniversary Issue - Deadline July 15th

2011-07-12T22:52:00.000-07:00

I generally try not to spam, but I am really excited that Muzzle (my love child/ magazine) is wrapping up a submissions period for our 1-year anniversary issue. I know there are a lot of up-and-coming writers who read this, and we'd love to see your work.

Call for Submissions:

We are currently taking submissions for our 1-Year Anniversary Issue, scheduled to come out in late August 2011. We hope to honor the past year of extraordinary work that's appeared in Muzzle by putting out the most badass and gorgeous issue imaginable. We are enjoining you to submit your work so that we can reach this lofty goal. Submissions for our 1-Year Anniversary issue will close on July 15, 2011 at 11:59 PM (we're flexible on time zone).

We've had quite an exciting first year of publication. Muzzle has the distinct honor of being the only online literary magazine named as one of the ten best new magazines of 2010 by Steve Black at Library Journal in “LJ Best New Magazines of 2010: Ten new periodicals rise to the top.” Additionally, in a starred review published in January 2011, Steve Black called our little magazine "a fine literary journal of creative writing by people of diverse backgrounds that deserves to be linked to from catalogs in libraries everywhere." Our past issues have included stunning work from Roger Bonair-Agard, Marty McConnell, Rachel McKibbens, Marcus Wicker, Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, Jamaal May, Jonterri Gadson, and many many other talented folks.

Muzzle publishes poetry, visual art, interviews, book reviews, and poetry performance reviews. To submit to Muzzle, please use our online submissions manager (and be sure to check out our submission guidelines).

We highly encourage everyone to read past issues of Muzzle prior to submitting. Everybody has aesthetic biases. For more information on what we're about, check out our interviews at Six Questions for... and Duotrope.com.

Summer Boot Camp!

2011-07-03T21:25:00.000-07:00

While most incoming MFA students this year are busy finishing up their jobs, spending time with old friends, and enjoying their summers, I’ve spent the last week in boot camp.

Most other programs either have some teacher training during orientation or train students during their first semester. But Florida State University is one of the few schools, if not the only, that has an extended summer training session for TAs, affectionately known as boot camp.

When I first found out that I would have to leave my job earlier than anticipated and not have any time off between work and school I wasn’t too happy. But the closer and closer I got to starting my training session the more I realized how relieved I was to be getting these 6 weeks of training before being tossed into a Freshman Comp class of my own.

FSU’s boot camp is designed for all English Graduate students with TAships who have less than 1 full year of college teaching experience. This year’s crew includes 30 incoming Masters and PhD students in Literature, Rhetoric and Composition, and Creative Writing: a diverse, intelligent, and quirky bunch.

We’re only a week in, but already things have been very busy. Between two pedagogy classes (one on general theory and one more specific to the classes we’ll be teaching) and an internship in a summer term freshmen comp class, there is a lot of reading, a lot of assignments, and a lot of class time. But there are also been parties, lunches, and faculty readings to attend.

It’s proving to be a really great transition period for me. Getting used to homework and managing my own time without traditional office hours has been a challenge (Homework or nap? Nap or homework?) But I’m glad I’m having a chance to get back into the swing of things now before the semester starts. Another perk has been the assigned reading of the books we’ll be using in the fall. Having lesson plans and readings as a priority now will inevitably make fall term much easier. And though I’m still nervous about teaching, I at least feel like I’ll have the right support, particularly all the current TA’s we’ve been meeting with and learning from.

At FSU all first year TAs teach First Year Composition. We have the option of picking one of several “strands” which come with syllabus outlines and assignment suggestions. The strand system is a great one for first year teachers. It gives us enough of a built in structure to make sure that there is consistency across freshmen comp. But it also gives us a lot of flexibility in picking a strand that works for us and in adapting it in ways that allow us to develop and compliment our own teaching style and interests. I already have my eye on a strand with a creative writing emphasis. We also have the option of designing our own strands and special topics to teach after our first year.

It’s been a whirlwind of a week so far. But despite my struggle to get used to having homework again, boot camp has been a lot more fun than its name implies.

Unfunded in the MFA

2011-04-18T21:04:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in a long, long time. In fact, I haven't written a single post since I've actually been in my MFA program. Why? In the beginning, it was because I was so busy trying to get my footing that I never had a moment to post. The first few months were a dream: I met so many new and enthralling writers (both my peers, professors, and writers from outside the Mason community), I took engaging and wonderful classes, I wrote 79 poems in one semester for my "79 Works" class (no big deal), and I felt like I was in the right place.

Then, winter hit. November, December, the dark months. In the flurry of getting ready for the semester end, I started thinking about what was coming ahead. I had to prepare for another difficult process. Having come to George Mason unfunded, I knew that a long-and-hard battle for funding was coming up.

George Mason invites it's continuing students the chance to apply for a teaching assistantship in their second year. For those of us who are unfunded, we know it's going to be a painful, uphill battle. Dissatisfaction sets in. Fear sets in. We start to panic and wonder whether we'll be able to stay in the program for two more years without funding. Back-up plans are made. I started hoarding all my money, trying not to go out as much. I stopped buying unnecessary books, clothing, food, etc. I started to think about getting a full-time job and going to school part time. This process does terrible things to a person. I started to think about leaving, moving back home, starting over again.

And then the TA officially process began. In a desperate bid for an unknowable number of spots, about a dozen of us applied. We interviewed, we worried, we got ulcers, we had panic attacks. We cried about it, we wrote about it, we drank about it. And now, finally, after weeks of waiting, we know.

I was offered my TA position over two weeks ago, and since that fateful Thursday afternoon, I have existed in a state of sun-drenched relief. Next year, I'll be tutoring in the Writing Center and preparing to teach Composition and Literature in my third year. I am delighted. And for once I am free from the worries that come with finances, the insecurity that comes with not knowing how I'm going to continue on this path. I will no longer have to work roughly thirty hours a week on top of my class load. Starting in the fall, I'll be a fully-funded MFAer. I can't believe it.

In accepting my TA position, I exchanged several emails with the program director. In one, he thanked me for my "great bravery" in coming into the program unfunded. I know that right now there are many students about to enter MFA programs without funding. Some people would call that decision stupidity, but I agree that's it's bravery. We can go on and on about how MFAs should be funded, how this degree should cost nothing. And yes, holding out for funding is an option. But for so many others, accepting an unfunded spot can be the RIGHT CHOICE. If I hadn't taken the spot I did, I'd be miserably unemployed in a state (Michigan) whose education system is failing and whose economy is still degenerating. But instead, I'm in a vibrant place with several jobs I love, and the job I've always wanted starting in the fall. And I'm getting the time and support I need to write. For those of us who decide to take the leap, financial consequences be damned, this is an act of bravery, an act of faith. We are making an investment in our lives, our selves, and our futures. There is value in that.

I'll admit, it's easier to say all this from the position of financial security. It's easier to believe it. But that doesn't mean it's any less true. I felt like someone needs to talk about being unfunded: not about the struggle (although it is one) or the stress (lots of that, too), but about the benefits of taking the leap. You're welcome to disagree with me, many do, but for those of you who are out there and unfunded, know that it can one of the best decisions you've made.

A Night with Tony Hoagland

2011-04-16T13:28:00.000-07:00

Last night, Friday the 15th, was a great way to end a very busy week for me. As depicted in the photo, when given the opportunity to introduce the poet Tony Hoagland before his poetry reading, never turn it down. But, first lets back up. Since this is my first post to The MFA Chronicles, I'll start by saying my name is Jessica Plante and I will be attending UNC Greensboro this fall. I am so excited and the road to making the decision to go back to school was fraught with fear of failure, expense, and the insecurity of not knowing, not believing, that I could completely change the direction of my life at 38. But, it is all happening in a marvelous way. And, as Tony said to me last night, everything is blossoming around me.

This time last year, my husband of almost ten years had moved out, and I was 100% invested in the rat race as a grant writer at a major art museum in Texas. I'd also completed my M.A. in Creative Writing in 2009 and missed my peers, my classes, my professors, and, well, everything about being a student of poetry. My decision to apply to MFA programs was catalyzed by two extremely different influences; a peer from my M.A. program who this time last year had decided on Syracuse for his MFA experience, and a palm reader.

This student peer of mine (let's call him Seth) lobbied, advocated, supported, influenced, cajoled, and helped me get through the process of applying. Much of this he did remotely via chat and text, assuring me that the pain of applying to 14 schools would be very worth it when, 12 months later I'd have my feet kicked up, reading the latest David Baker volume or plumbing my mind for a way to fix the second stanza on that poem for workshop. I am very grateful that Seth was such a loyal resource for me, commenting on everything from my selection of schools to my Personal Statement. But, I know you are probably wondering about this palm reader thing... Imagine, August in Austin, Texas and three women all looking for new beginnings; one is recently divorced, one is struggling with the decision to get a divorce, and me, working through a divorce. We spent the weekend partying on 6th Street, eating out, going to a spa, jogging at Town Lake, watching the largest urban bat colony come out at dusk for dinner, and, you guessed it, visiting a palm reader. Who, as I remember, pronounced that she saw, "classes or education" in my future. So, here was confirmation from a totally random source, and with the support I had from Seth, tally-ho, I was off and running!

After all the application headaches, I began to get word of acceptances and rejections in late January and, by the time I accepted my offer from Greensboro I had turned down three other offers, one waitlist, and had received nine rejections (ouch!). In addition, I've quit my job, finalized my divorce, and am hoping to sell my house very, very soon and move to N.C. where the program, people, place, and the temperament of the whole writers community there mirrors exactly who I am becoming and want to be, a poet, an artist immersed in my craft and exposed to people who are passionate about what they do. I can't wait to begin and be a part of the community at UNC Greensboro!

So, as I am leaving my old life behind, sloughing it all off, the job, the commute, the stress, the excess, some (now former) co-workers asked if I would like to introduce Tony Hoagland who was coming to the museum to do a reading, I gladly accepted. Last night, I started out the evening as Tony's fan, and by the end of the night he had sipped my Merlot (not a double entendre), we'd crashed a 50th birthday party and danced to Al Green, I gave him a fortune I had in my bag ( in reference to his poem 'Fortune'), and he gave me a kiss on the cheek and his cap. If this is any sign of things to come, I'm a very happy woman right now and am eager for more. So, to anyone wondering if they can change their life in their late 30's to pursue a passion, I say, it's never too late. :-)

Ending poems

2011-04-15T15:56:00.000-07:00

First off, congratulations to all the people making decisions now, and especially to the people who have already made their decisions, and joined us on The MFA Chronicles.

I'd like to take advantage of the heightened site traffic to pose a hypothetical question or two about poems. Someone asked me this question that I'd like to pretend I have an answer to, but also find myself asking: When do you end a poem? (By this meaning when do you know a poem is finished, but in the generative sense of it being done on the page more than in the sense that you've made your last revision.) In other words, where do you stop discovering?

I use a couple strategies to tell when a poem is finished. The first is just stopping when it feels done, then taking a break from it and coming back when I can look at it with fresh eyes. Usually when I look at it again, something new needs to happen.

There's also working until discovering what the poem knew that I didn't, and then revising with that discovery in mind.

Another useful strategy is to ask, at the end of a poem, "and then?" If that's a legitimate question, the poem's probably not over yet.

I guess the poem should be understandable in terms of emotional purpose/narrative or meditation making sense/argument being finished/that feeling of being punched in the gut by the end, but what I'm really looking for, above all those other things, is surprising myself.

If I'm being super hard on myself though, I might ask, "Can/should a genuinely potential reader say 'so what?' to these poems?" What I really mean by that is if the poem was in my first book, would I not want the reader (trying to decide whether to buy my book) to open my book to that poem?

What do you all think? How do you know when you've reached the end of the line with the poem on the page?

Malibu Barbie vs. Hawaiian Fun Skipper

2011-04-01T09:22:00.000-07:00

The last few years have been spent with two goals mind: 1) Finish my book, 2) Get into a MFA program. I’ve run through every emotion that I’m sure all of you have. I’ve been at the bottom of the ravine, looking up and thinking: what the eff? I’ve hemmed and I’ve hawed. I’ve retreated, backpedaled, swam through the rivers of self-doubt, charged feebly through the walls of rejection and in the end when the dust settled, I found myself a tiny bit closer to the light at the end of the tunnel. All this to say that I’ve been accepted to several programs and now face the task of making the right choice.

Lately I’ve been rather content to sweat over the change I see in the distance. The MFA application process is so self-involved and so obnoxious in its ability to wrap even the most calm psyche up into fever that I don’t believe many of us are able to comprehend that life goes on after the results are in. I’ve weighed the possibilities of faculty, area and time. I’ve even panicked over funding, which I had never even considered crying over until various blogs commanded I do so. Now I'm waking up from my hibernation in a daze, like wha? Last year I held onto one waitlist that strung me along by nose all the way through July. This year, I’m writing this from the Southwest terminal of LaGuardia airport at 5am, currently on my way to Chicago to visit the School of the Art Institute in Chicago. I’m somewhere between alive and asleep. Not just because it’s 5:08am in the friggin’ morning, but because I've come to realize that if and when I take one of my offers, I will be starting the next phase of my life which for the past two years has been nothing but some semblance of a dream.

The point being, life never turns out the way you planned it. I wish I could give you a bullet point list to illustrate my reasoning, but my mind is a body of water that strains bridges and dams. If you’re as spiritual as I like to believe I am then hopefully you’ve realized that God has one hell of a sick and twisted sense of humor. My remedial understanding of blessings is that the lord will always deliver, but never on your time, and it’s never the exact package you asked for. You want Malibu Barbie? The Lord brings you Hawaiian Fun Skipper. Well gee thanks, God. Hawaiian Fun Skipper is cool and all, but I wanted the pink convertible and you gave me a pink scooter. There’s some deeper meaning in this, right? Some lesson I will come to realize ten years from now that’ll make me go: Ooooooh...well now I've gotta get on my knees and pray.

For me, my Malibu Barbie was Columbia University. Yes, yes, boo and hiss, wah-wah funding and all that jazz, but I felt that program was perfect for me. I have a life here in New York that I never wanted to give up. I would have sacrificed a few lambs and slapped my momma silly to figure out the finances, but it was worth staying here and continuing the life I'm comfortable with. Alas, I found Hawaiian Fun Skipper under my Christmas tree. Believe me, there was no sadness. Just a quick pause then the happy-bunny-hoppity-hop dance commenced. Now the novelty of it all is wearing off and I’m examining Skipper, I’m noticing the differences between her and Barbie and I’m realizing the warm and fuzzy vision I had in my head is not my reality. Is my vision better than my reality? I don't think so, but I think visions allow us to have our cake and eat it too. My reality is asking me to lose some weight. It requires a lot more courage than the comfy dream I had set out for myself.

I’m currently in the midst of visiting schools: Colorado Boulder, The School of the Art Institute in Chicago and the University of New Orleans. I thought all my choices were in, until last week when I received a phone call from Goldsmiths College, University of London. So once again, my situation has changed and every time I think about it, my brain explodes. Do I study at a MFA program or study at a MA program? I’ve been doing my research and have found pros and cons to both. There are plenty of authors doing quite well with a MA (Hello, Kazuo Ishiguro!) But I already had it in my mind that I’d spend two years in a MFA program, teaching undergraduates and finishing up my novel. What can I possibly accomplish in a yearlong MA program? ~~Meet a hot British guy and make him my husband.~~

MA degrees are generally less practice based, although my interview with Professor Stephen Knight claims otherwise. I’ll be subjected to more theory and the study of literature, which I’m always fascinated by. I won’t be able to gather any adequate teaching experience in a year. However, if I chose a MA, I could be out of school in half the time and from there reapply to MFA programs right afterwards.

But do I want to be in various schools for that long? Well, if I’m funded why not? If I go to Colorado Boulder, I’ll be in school for 3 years. If I go to London and attend another program afterwards, I could wrack up twice as many degrees in the same amount of time. Plus I’ll be able to live abroad for at least one of those three years. Then again if I already know that I’ll still covet a MFA even after receiving my MA, am I wasting my time? Maybe I should just accept one of my MFA offers and get it over with already. I mean, Jesus, I’m not getting any younger. My facebook is filled with friends getting married and popping out babies. Even my mother, who is practically the face of women who work on their careers before settling down with a husband to start a family, has reverted into a 1950s nosey neighbor: When you gonna get married and give your poor momma some grandkids?

The point is: great, I’ve got direction so…what do I do now? And the only reply I have for myself is: I love my Hawaiian Fun Skipper, so, so freaking much!

I will blog about adventures in the Windy City soon! :D

Howdy/ On Choosing Cornell

2011-03-29T12:47:00.000-07:00

About a week ago I officially accepted a position in the MFA program at Cornell. I had been pretty torn between Cornell and U Michigan. I also briefly considered NYU (who gave me shit for funding) and Virginia Commonwealth (which is less well ranked, but has an outstanding faculty and Blackbird).

What sold me on Cornell:

I am mildly obsessed with Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon's poetry-- when I think about where I am trying to go with my writing, I think she is very close to the poetry I want to write. There are certainly writers at U Michigan (ie A. Van Jordan) who I am also pretty obsessed with.
I greatly enjoyed sitting in on an MFA workshop with Alice Fulton when I visited there. I really appreciated the advice she gave on student work. I also was really impressed and intrigued by the work of the current students there.
I am excited about the chance to work on another journal next year, especially one as renowned as Epoch. I also am excited to not have to teach until my second year. U Michigan didn't want me to teach my first year, but I was going to have to be a grader for one semester, which sounds like getting stuck with all the worst parts of teaching.
I am very excited about the flexibility Cornell allows in its teaching assignments the second year. I sat in on one of he "Freshmen Writing Seminars," and I was really impressed by the discussions and caliber or writing from the undergrads. I sat in on a FWS on "Crime Literature," where they were discussing a Flannery O'Connor story and workshopped one student's critical essay.
Additionally, during the 2 years of post-grad fellowship, MFAs get to design their own courses and teach creative writing. My head can't stop spinning with ideas for courses I'd like to design and poems I want to assign.
Also, did I mention there's a 2 year post grad fellowship and they provide one of the best yearly MFA stipends I've heard of-- with guaranteed summer funding, it's bout $27k a year. I can actually live and occasionally buy new shoes on that. Also, I know I'm going to get paid to write poetry for the next 4 years of my life. As someone who's been working more than full time since undergrad, I definitely appreciate the privilege of time to write. I should note that U Mich sounds like they are now guaranteeing a 1 year post-grad fellowship, but Cornell's funding package still sounds better and Ithaca is actually cheaper to live in than Ann Arbor.
It's beautiful in Ithaca. I think I will have phenomenal legs after living there and navigating those hills. Also, I have an awesome opportunity to title a chapbook Gorge. Come on-- that is an awesome title.
I have never lived on the east coast and I've spent the majority of my life in Michigan (I'm in Chicago now). Although, it would be convenient to live close to old friends, I think it will be good for me to get away from the Midwest for a bit.
Because Cornell is such a small program in somewhat of an isolated location, it was really important to me that the other MFA students seemed like the kind of people who would help wobble me home drunk from the bar. In all honesty, I think my mind was pretty much made up at a gay bar named Felicia's. They are just good people, and I'm excited to get to spend more time with them.

I currently have a lease for a gorgeous 1-bedroom in Ithaca that's about a 7 minute walk from the building where most of the English courses take place. Also, Nabakov used to live there (in another unit in the building). For some reason that's really cool to me. I'm going to have lots of windows and 2 walk-in closets and room for a queen-sized bed-- all on a grad student salary. It's making my gang-tagged front door and cupboard-sized bedroom and the constant light and rattle of train tracks and 1 1/2 hour commute to work look a little less remarkable.

Jami Nakamura Lin (Penn State, 2013)

2011-03-28T19:18:00.000-07:00

So, this was going to be my Recruitment Weekend, Part Two, post-- but instead, it's my official acceptance post. As of August, I'm going to be a Nittany Lion, and I couldn't be more excited. As my gushing previous post probably proved, I loved everything about my time there.

Now that I'm nearing the end of this MFA journey, I probably should give a little background about me since I skipped over that part last time in my excitement for Penn State's recruitment weekend.

I'm a senior in college and a psychology major. I signed up to take my senior capstone required psychology class in the fall, but instead was assigned to the spring section. Since I had an extra space in my schedule, I thought creative writing might be fun, since I've always loved writing but hadn't had time to take it in school. So I signed up for a nonfiction class. After one of my stories was workshopped, my professor asked me if I had considered an MFA. I hadn't, because my plan was to get my master's in social work. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that writing is my main passion and that I would be happiest doing that. So I thought, why not? And delved in.

If I had realized what an arduous, painful process this was, I probably wouldn't have gone through it, so I'm glad I didn't know! Luckily, online communities provided a lot of support throughout these otherwise tortuous times.

So what am I doing for the next few months? Trying to find a roommate and an apartment, and figure out what I'm doing this summer. I applied for the Tin House summer writing workshop, but I won't be able to attend unless I get a full scholarship, so we'll see how that goes. Otherwise I'll probably just bum around until August, when I'll move to State College. I'll keep y'all updated on the process!

Iowa vs Cornell vs Michigan

2011-03-24T15:53:00.000-07:00

My name is Mary-Alice, and I am a poet heading to Michigan this fall. I am very, very nervous about whether or not I made the right decision, as I was in the unbelievably lucky position of also getting into Iowa and Cornell, and it was impossible for me to visit before committing. I won't focus on the things I didn't like about Iowa or Cornell because I know they're great programs. They just aren't as good a fit for me as Michigan is.

That said, I think Michigan's program is the right choice for me for the following reasons:

Beginning with my cohort, Michigan is a 3-year program for those who choose it. We'll graduate in 2 years and have the option of taking a $25k fellowship to complete a book over the course of a year. This development sealed it for me. It appears that if I want to stay and teach for a 4th year, that may also be possible.
The size of the program (22) seems just about right. Iowa has almost 50 students each year, and Cornell has 8. Both extremes in size turned me off. I've already received a lot of personal attention from the faculty, and I think I will be able to form close relationships here without feeling stifled.
My first year I will have no teaching responsibilities, so I can intern at the University of Michigan Press, Canarium Press (a new poetry press), and the Michigan Quarterly Review for a few hours each.
My second year I will get experience teaching both composition and creative writing. I will be given wide latitude in designing and teaching the creative writing course. Michigan's pedagogical training looks amazing.
I like the academic emphasis of the program. There's a required reading list to ensure everyone has a solid background, and each semester we are to take an academic course along with the workshop. H0wever, there's a lot of latitude in this requirement, with MFA students often being allowed to do creative projects instead of writing term papers. And it's easy enough to substitute writing courses (I plan on taking creative nonfiction this fall).
The University of Michigan has a great reputation around the world, and therefore offers strong classes in every department I might explore, a good alumni network, and world-class facilities.
Even though I hate winter, I could see myself in Ann Arbor for 3 or more years. It's diverse and progressive with a fabulous literary scene, has the most bookstores per capita of any city in the US, and is consistently ranked as one of the best places to live. There's not so much to do that campus life suffers (I wouldn't want to go to school in NYC for this reason), but there is enough to do that I wouldn't ever be bored.
No particular aesthetic is championed or encouraged. There is no homogenizing effect.
This doesn't mean much, but Michigan had one student in poetry win the Stegner, while Iowa had none in poetry. This leads me to believe that going to Iowa would not necessarily give anyone an advantage in winning the Stegner, something I hope to do after my 3 years at Ann Arbor.
Michigan has dedicated advisers who help students navigate the job market after graduation and hosts colloquia on publishing and teaching periodically. Iowa explicitly says it doesn't have the resources to do this.
The students just seem really damn happy, united, and enthusiastic. They're always together socially, and have organized an informal first-year reading series to prepare for the second-year series, which attracts a sizeable audience. I have no doubt that everyone in my cohort will be passionate and talented. I have a lot to learn from them.
Last and perhaps least, there is the amazing funding. In addition to the comfortable stipend, there is money to do internships, to travel and do research, and the opportunity to win tens of thousands of dollars in prizes.

There were lots of other random, tiny perks (I'm actually excited about exploring Detroit when/if I have time), but in the end, I just did my research, talked to lots of current students at each place, and went with my gut. I hope I have made the right decision and I will continue to chronicle my experience at Michigan here.

Penn State's Recruitment Weekend (part one)

2011-03-21T17:35:00.000-07:00

Greetings, current and future MFA-ers! My name is Jami Nakamura Lin (to differentiate myself from this lovely lady, who unfortunately happens to be an author) and I hail from the outskirts of Chicago. I currently am finishing up my undergraduate studies (in psychology!) at a small liberal arts school, and will be headed to an MFA program in the fall for creative nonfiction. I'll write more about me later, but for now I want to talk about Penn State. I just spent the weekend there, and they suckered me in hook, line, and sinker.

I've also been accepted to Portland State and Miami of Ohio (which is an MA creative writing program), and waitlisted at Ohio University (also an MA program). Although I love Portland, they couldn't offer me funding, and since I gots no monies, that isn't really an option. Miami of Ohio and Penn State offered me similarly generous funding offers, so money isn't really an issue in making a decision between the two.

Penn State, however, has been above and beyond helpful through this whole process. The director, Bill Cobb, put me in touch with several current students who very eagerly and thoroughly answered all my nagging, tedious questions. Every time I was confused about something, I got a response right away.

But on to the recruitment weekend! Here is a shortened version of what happened, and I'll post a longer, less-relevant version on my personal blog later (probably tomorrow).

I knew Penn State held a recruitment weekend because I obsessively read this blog through the fall and read all of Emily Anderson's posts, but I still wasn't really sure what to expect. The weekend officially started on Friday, but because I had previous commitments, I wasn't able to attend until Saturday morning. I missed out on a reading and a pizza party. The English Department had us stay at the local Atherton Hotel, right downtown. I walked in late on an info/Q&A session for all the incoming MFA and MA/PhD students. Most of the questions were more relevant for the MA/PhD students than for us MFA-ers, and I was still feeling dislocated. But then there was a special lunch at an Indian restaurant just for the MFA students. There were six of us recruits-- two per genre. Most of the current MFA students were there, and we sat at separate tables by genre, and just got to chat with them and find out more about the program.

What really struck me was the dynamic of all the people in the program. It's very small, but from everyone I've talked to, it's a very open, encouraging community. There's no cutthroat competitiveness, and you know everyone personally. I come from a really small college with a similar sense of community, and felt really comfortable with the MFA students right away. Again, above and beyond helpful.

One of the students then gave us a mini-tour of the campus-- we got to see where readings were held, where the literary magazines were, the TA offices, a typical classroom, basically all the English-related places. A bit later, there was a faculty round table discussion where each member of the English department went around, told us about his or her area of expertise, and whatever else they felt like. That was long, but very informative. Afterwards, I got to talk to Elizabeth Kadetsky, one of the nonfiction professors, and discovered she went to school with both Aimee Bender, my favorite author, and Alice Sebold. I promptly fell over and died. In reality, I probably just gaped unseemingly. She was very gracious and helpful and remembered all these small details from my writing sample and SOP. I was amazed.

After that, there was a wine and appetizers event at the University Club across the street, where all of the incoming students, some current students, and all the faculty mingled for a couple hours (and where I gorged myself on pinot grigio and cheese cubes). I met most of the MFA faculty, and learned a lot more about the program. One thing I'm very excited about is the Writer in the Community class, where you basically go lead workshops in non-academic settings like shelters, nursing homes, etc. Since I want to be a writing therapist, this was right up my alley. I know I'm sounding like a broken record, but everyone was just so nice and genuinely interested in me and my writing. I felt so welcomed. Then two of the other MFA girls and I went downtown with a couple current MFA students who showed us around. It was a great time.

This is super long already so I'm going to stop for now-- I'll write part two later and there will be more inane rambling on my personal blog.

Alana Saltz (Vermont College of Fine Arts, 2013)

2011-03-19T21:42:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone, my name is Alana. I hail from sunny Los Angeles, California. It's very exciting for me to be here as a contributor to this blog.

I started my obsessive MFA research/application process over a year ago and remember stumbling onto this site. At that time, I was finishing up my last semester of college, getting ready to graduate mid-year and move back home until I figured out what to do next. As I came face to face with a frighteningly uncertain future, I started to think about what I wanted to do with my life, and the idea of getting an MFA in Creative Writing came about.

Since the age of 12, it's been a dream of mine to write a memoir (I know, I was a weird kid). Writing has been a passion of mine for as long as I can remember, so a Creative Writing MFA seemed perfect. I only applied to three programs in Creative Nonfiction. I knew it was a long shot, but because I was applying last minute with no GREs, in a less common genre, and was hoping to stay on the West Coast, my options narrowed down very quickly. I received three thin envelopes in the mail a few months later.

After my total MFA rejection, I concentrated on finding work. Since graduating college, I've taught creative writing classes at senior centers, copyedited theses for graduate students, and very briefly had an office job that I had to quit after I was asked to write fraudulent college admissions essays. It's a tough world out there for anyone, and as a little-to-no work experience English major, I was no exception. I couldn't even get hired at a bookstore or cafe. But I tried to make the most of my time of relative unemployment by doing things like starting a local writing group and adopting a dog.

Exactly a year after my initial MFA interest came about, I was having a conversation with a writer friend, and the subject of low residency MFAs came up. The first time around, I had written them off without any research, but this time I had already decided that the traditional MFA was not an option I wanted to pursue again. Low residency presented me the option of staying in L.A. and of keeping me somewhat involved in the working world. As I learned more about low residency and all of its advantages, I got really excited about the idea, and decided to apply.

I got a few acceptances, but I fell in love with Vermont College of Fine Arts' program. I officially start at the end of June with my first 10-day residency in Montpelier. I'll be studying Creative Nonfiction with an incredible faculty including Sue William Silverman, Robin Hemley, and Xu Xi. I think that low residency programs are a hidden gem in the MFA world. However, more and more recent college grads are applying to low res programs not because they have full-time jobs or families, but on the programs' own merits.

I look forward to continue blogging about my MFA experiences here as well as over at my personal blog and to following others along on their own MFA journeys.

Trying to Figure It All Out

2011-03-19T18:21:00.000-07:00

"Bring on the wonder, bring on the song; I pushed you down deep in my soul for too long...." That song by Susan Enan, as innocuous as it may seem, was one of the little things that pushed me to apply to MFA programs last fall. After graduate education in the health sciences, I finally realized that after working in the journalism field for over a year, I was happiest when writing. I'd been trying to deny it for so long, and go with something more "practical", whatever that means. My research was primarily in oncology, and too many times I'd seen how short life is. No one is ever promised tomorrow, and I decided I did not want to live with regrets, so I applied to MFA nonfiction creative writing programs and one PhD in journalism. Even just making that decision changed my life - for the first time in a long time, I felt excited about my life. I felt alive. And just when I was starting to give up all hope and question my abilities and whether I would ever find my way, I got a phone call that I was accepted to Columbia University's nonfiction program. I'd applied to Columbia not because I thought I would get in, but because it was "Columbia" and I figured, why the hell not? I didn't even fill out all the financial aid forms because I was that sure I didn't have a shot. But you can bet I filled those forms out after the phone call!

It is scary, the financial aspects. But I have taken out loans for graduate school before, and know that it is a sacrifice and risk that will pay off. I believe in it. And I was pleasantly surprised to find out that there are a lot more financial aid opportunities available than I originally thought, as well as an Artists' Resource Center that can provide financial resources. So I am gearing up to take that leap of faith.

As of right now, I have not decided what I will be doing in the fall. I currently live in Chapel Hill, NC, and love my life there. The Carolina Way has seeped into my veins and UNC and the surrounding areas have been my home for the past 4 years. I am actually still waiting on their PhD decision, as well as another school's MFA decision. So until I receive all my notifications, my final choice is up in the air. Columbia's final decision date is actually later than April 15th, so I have some breathing room, thankfully.

I went to the city the other day, since I am up North visiting family, and had an excellent visit. The students were on spring break, but I was able to talk to the financial aid guy and some administrators in the Writing department, as well as see the classrooms and get a thesis anthology of last year's students, a student handbook and a course listing packet. As a psychology nerd, it is hard not to get super excited about the fact that the neuropsychiatrist Oliver Sacks is a nonfiction professor in the program. Individual fit is important in a program; for me, if the fit isn't right, I don't care who is teaching the classes, what the program is ranked, what city I'm in or if tuition is dirt cheap or funded. And for whatever reason, I felt like I "fit" there. It was a gut instinct.

This still doesn't even feel real, like this is my life - not just the MFA acceptance, but the fact that I have even been brave enough to finally take my writing seriously, and to trust this process, this journey that life is leading me on. Last summer, when I was talking about deciding to pursue writing, I mentioned that it seemed so "self-indulgent," to pursue writing, an art. And I was met with this reply: If you don't indulge yourself, who will?

Truer words were never spoken.

SIGNS AND DECISIONS

2011-03-18T22:32:00.001-07:00

My name is Mike Mlek* and I believe in miracles. Since I applied to MFA programs almost four months ago, I have been searching for signs that would tell me where I might get accepted or when I might hear back from particular programs.

If Colorado beat my current school, Kansas State University (where I am finishing my M.A. in English and Creative Writing), in basketball, that meant I'd be rejected there. (True.)

If I accidentally stumbled upon a book by a professor at Cornell while browsing at the library, that meant I'd get in there. (Nope.)

If a city that could be my future home popped up in the news, my head would explode in nikhedonia.

I've always been like this, I think. But my search for signs, coincidences, omens, spotlights coming out of nowhere and saying, "Look. Here," has become more intense as I've gotten older (and, maybe ironically, smarter). In my first semester of college, now seven years ago, I wrote a paper for philosophy class defending fatalism by examining the significance of coincidences. When my friends and I competed in the 2009 National Poetry Slam, we kept track of all the negative things that happened to us on the trip, insisting that each bad occurrence was an omen predicting our future success--and we went on to win the tournament. Now, I just have the general sense that my life has worked out so well thus far, whoever is in control of it (me, God, the Architect of the Matrix) must have it all planned out.

For the novelist Milan Kundera, motif and coincidence are governed by the laws of beauty, and they are to be found in real life the same as they are found in novels. “It is wrong, then,” he writes, “to chide the novel for being fascinated by mysterious coincidences, […] but it is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life. For he thereby deprives his life of a dimension of beauty.”

On February 23rd, I got into the MFA program at the University of Pittsburgh, and I was offered a Teaching Assistantship about three weeks later. Now I'm looking for signs that I should go there.

I. I've learned that August Wilson left his native Pittsburgh for St. Paul, Minnesota. Now I've been given the opportunity to leave my native St. Paul for Pittsburgh.

II. The other night, a performance poet named Buddy Wakefield, who was one of my first favorite poets when I was coming up, performed at my school and I opened for him. He said something about a church bartender, which reminded me of a church in Pittsburgh that has been transformed into a brewery and restaurant.

III. Yesterday, there were some college kids playing beer pong in their front yard and listening to music. As I walked by on my way to the bar where I run a poetry reading series, the song "Black and Yellow" came on.

I don't plan on actually basing my decision on coincidences and omens. Actually, I've yet to even receive another offer. I'm waitlisted at Minnesota (6th on the waitlist) and Indiana (no further info), and flat-out rejected at Iowa, Cornell, Colorado, and Missouri's PhD. I am assuming rejection from McNeese State University, and still waiting to hear back from Purdue.

Aesthetically, geographically, and in terms of motif-prophecy, Pitt is the perfect fit for me. I deeply admire the poetry and poets they produce; they have a new focus on genre crossing and hybrid forms, which I love; the city sounds amazing (and similar to my hometown, Minneapolis-St. Paul); they're one of the few MFA cities I applied to that are home to a poetry slam.

Pitt's big drawback, for me, is that I'd be teaching composition for the first two years (and possibly all three). I want badly to teach creative writing, and I want to be competitive for a tenure track position immediately after my MFA, which means, I think, I need creative writing teaching experience. And, while Indiana is a less attractive program to me in terms of aesthetics and geography, six of the nine courses I would teach there would be creative writing. (Ooh. One of my poetry slam teammates and best friends, Khary Jackson, uses the stage name "6 is 9." A coincidence in favor of Indiana.) Either program would leave me with a good narrative: my fiction professor (not my real genre, by the way) got her MFA at Pittsburgh, and my major professor/mentor got her MFA and PhD at Indiana. If I move off the waitlist at the latter program, I'm in for a difficult decision.

For now, though, I spend my free time Googling Pittsburgh, reading about the city and looking at its skyline, its bridges and rivers, its history rendered in black and white. They call it the Paris of Appalachia, equal parts mountain and midwest and east coast. If it were a text, it would be a hybrid form. I, not knowing why my great grandparents came here from Poland, Pittsburgh, having watched its steel mills close--we both know the breakdown of narrative and tradition; we both still believe in resurrections.

I don't yet know where I'll end up. I might blog some more, here, about the decision-making process, and I'll definitely be back when it comes time to move. Nice to meet you, MFA Chronicles.

*My name isn't really Mike Mlek, but I don't want this to be what pops up when my name is Googled. Here's me and my real name.

a nerve and rainbow sandwich

2011-03-17T15:23:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone out there in MFA-land. My name is Quinn and this fall I'll be attending Virginia Tech for poetry.
***

Before Tech accepted me, I was starting to think that I might suck. I couldn't look at my portfolio for fear that its awfulness would cause my eyes to combust.

***

One morning, however, after hugging my cat and asking him to share his magic with me, I received a call from the assistant director of the CW program. She wanted to schedule an interview. I fell upstairs in a fit of joy, spraining my ankle. The next day I limped around campus with a smile on my face. I couldn't be the worst if they wanted to talk to me.

***

But a new cloud of worry soon gathered: how will I survive this phone interview? Will I forget how to say my name? Will I drop a deadly sentence that causes the poetry committee to draw a thick black "x" over my application?

***

[ ADVICE: prepare for your interviews, future applicants. Study the work of the people who'll be interviewing you. Write down a practice dialogue. Make a list of questions. Think about why you want to attend the school. I woke up early, ate a banana, and meditated before my interview. ]
***

I must not have made a fool of myself because a week later I read an email whose subject was "VT MFA Acceptance." That afternoon I had a ten minute dance party. My cats hid under the bed as I informed them: "I don't suck! I don't suck! They like me!"
***

Now, however, a new, vicious storm gathers. Will I continue being a decent poet? Will I disappoint those who admitted me? Eeep. My cuticles have never looked worse and I'm still deferring to my pre-acceptance stress diet of cupcakes and cheeseburgers. Sometimes, however, like when I listen to the "Funny Girl" soundtrack, or when I'm driving in the Alabama sunshine, I feel like a rainbow machine. I feel like I can conquer all nerves and leave pots of gold in my wake.

***

So, this blog shall cover the dissipation and re-conglomeration of my anxieties as I head into my first semester. I'm getting married in a month. We're moving to Blacksburg. With two cats. There will be drama. And hopefully ice cream! I'll post pictures. Will I fight monsters? Will I forget how to speak English? Will I make fantastic friends? Will workshop melt my face? We'll see!

It's The Final Countdown!

2011-03-16T20:08:00.000-07:00

Cue music.

In 85 days, I will quit my job, pack my car, and move from Cleveland, OH to NYC. Three months ago, I moved out of my two bedroom house and into the spare bedroom of my mother's apartment, which I have to share with my two fat cats because they think my bed is their bed (and I let them because they're cats and cats are all kinds of awesome). In NYC, I will be sharing a bedroom with my 17 year old niece until she goes off to college in the fall. It sounds crazy, doesn't it? Uprooting my spacious and comfortable existence to an entire life contained to one bedroom and then moving 600 miles to share a room with a teenager. But, I'm a writer and this is what I must do.

It took me awhile to figure out what I wanted to do with my life once I graduated high school. I was so not ready the first time I attempted college that I got a D in Choosing a Major. It's exactly what it says on the tin: a the class designed to help undecided folks choose a major. How do you get a D in Choosing a Major? I have no idea, but I did and I will one day find a way to be proud of that. I dropped out of college and it wasn't until 5 years ago that I finally decided I needed to finish college. I went back to school, got my degree in English with a concentration in creative writing, thought about teaching English overseas but realized I don't like teaching or children, toyed with being a librarian, and realized all I want to do is write. And someday get paid for it. But I'll take just writing for now. Writing is the only thing I can do (and do semi-well).

I graduated from college last summer and thought if I had to get a job, I wanted to work where the books are made. The publishing industry was calling me, so I decided that I needed to move to NYC and move in with my older sister who lives in Queens. But then I figured, hey, if I have a once in a lifetime chance to mooch off my sister, shouldn't I take full advantage of this opportunity and get an MFA in creative writing? The answer was undoubtedly, YES I SHOULD.

So I applied to almost every school in NYC that has an MFA program. It was hard and tiring and I'm stressed out waiting on replies from my top choice schools (Come ON already, guys! You're tearing me apart!) but I've received two acceptances to two reputable programs and no rejections (so far). I'm excited about the future and what awaits me in NYC but I'm also a bit nervous about all of the changes coming up. More than anything, I am super pumped for the chance to pursue my dreams and can't wait to start on the next phase of my life which I am positive will be crazy cool.

You know what they say - if you can make it in NYC, you can make it anywhere. I'm counting on that, because I don't know where I will end up after I get my MFA, but for the next two years I'm going to concentrate on my writing and absorbing as much as I can from this experience. I'm glad to be part of a group of people who can share this experience with me and make these next two years even richer just by being a part of this blog. I'm eagerly awaiting the future and I am sending positive thoughts to everyone finishing up an MFA program, contemplating applying to an MFA program, or anxious to begin a program in the fall.

All the best, and keep writing!

I'm an oldie, but a goodie!

2011-03-16T11:23:00.000-07:00

Hello, all you curious MFAers! I may be older than many of you out there, lost in the dredges of MFA applications, wait-lists, scary decisions and binge drinking, but I feel ya.

I sit here today with one admission under my belt and a definite sense of accomplishment. In retrospect, I probably should have taken more time to research and debate my options, but I had some limiting factors like a mortgage, a hubby, and a semi-feral cat that would not have taken kindly to being uprooted from the only backyard he's ever known, so after a lot of thinking and some discussion with my better half, I applied to schools that were: one- in my city, two- 1 hour away, and three- 1- 2 hours away. I can't imagine doing this with kids, but to all of you out there that are, or are planning to do it, I salute you!

It was a tough process and if you've been out of academia for a while, like I have, it can be jarring. It has taken roughly 9 months from the time I decided to apply up until my first notification. The entire process has been one big whirlwind that I'm still dizzy from. Here's how it went:

Internet research. Top 50 MFA Programs. Programs in Florida. Program application requirements. Study for GRE. Take GRE, meh. Hunt down old professors and supervisors for recommendations. Smile at them a lot and offer baked goods. Make final program decisions. Draft a writing sample.Thanksgiving. Revise writing sample. Find another sample. Polish that sample. Get feedback. Christmas. Last minute touch-ups. Submit apps to schools, whew! Keep fingers crossed and wait for responses.

I applied to 3 schools in Florida, and I have been accepted to the 2-year fiction program in my current city. Hopefully with funding, as they are not done with those decisions yet. I was rejected from another school early on, and I'm still waiting to hear back from the third. All in all I am very happy with the way things are turning out. I've researched the professors at my potential program and their strengths play to mine, this is good I think. l am really excited about being a student again and can't wait for August. Even though it seems few people around me understand what I am doing. The phrase,"…writing? what are you going to do with that?" has been uttered enough times that I might self-combust if I hear it again or any of its other variants (i.e.-"writing? that can't be too hard"). Regardless, the last half of 2010 was spent figuring out who I really was, what I wanted to do with myself, and how I was going to make it happen. Now, I'm on my way!

I'll be 31 (I know it's not ancient, but can't help but feel a little out of place) when I enroll in the fall. I was nervous about having classmates that are so much younger, so much more prolific, successful, and impressive, but I've come to realize I'm not much different. We are all committed and determined to be successful. We all want to find our voices and hone our craft. We all have something to say and are trying our hardest to yell it at the top of our lungs. So let us be heard!

Chelsea Biondolillo - to MA or to MFA, that is the question (2013)

2011-03-15T22:39:00.000-07:00

Evening, y'all. I am not from the South, but I've lived in it for several of the last 15 years.

This season was my second round of applications. Last year, I applied to seven MFAs and was rejected by every one of them without so much as a wait-list. I spent the last year writing, revising, and submitting to online and print journals along with literary blog/mag hybrids. It seems to have helped: my feedback this year has been knee-knockingly encouraging. Just when I really needed it.

Much of the last year was also devoted to researching programs, talking to professors, weighing the different programs against my long term goals--I ended up applying to a mix of MAs and MFAs.

Right now, five schools have extended offers, and a couple more have me hanging on the line. I plan on graduating from somewhere in two years, but I am not sure where, yet. I am trying to decide between pursuing an MA in English with a Creative Writing focus, or an MFA in nonfiction. I have become the queen of overthinking, overanalyzing, and compulsive list making.

I like the MA for the additional lit foundation, and marketability it would lend me as a future prospective teacher. (I would apply to an MFA or PhD after graduation.)

I like the MFA for that solid--or nearly solid--year of writing a thesis. I mean writing is why we're all here, right?

Not to mention that each of the schools have their own strengths and weaknesses. Ayiyi.

There's still a month to go, and I am sure there yet remains a course catalog out there I can cross-reference to the Farmer's Almanac. Got any runes I can borrow? Can anyone pitch a lucky number my way? Do you know which colors are most auspicious for Oxen/Geminis?

Next time I drop in I will talk some more about what I see as the pros and cons of each program. Maybe I will have even picked one.

'Til later, CB

The future is here.

2011-02-21T17:28:00.000-08:00

So...those of us who are in two year programs are graduating in May/June! Crazy, huh?

I don't know about you all, but I'm ready to go lol. My thesis is complete. I'm working on making it a first book manuscript and preparing to start sending out to contests in a few months. So basically, I did what I came to an MFA to do. Do yall feel like you got what you wanted to get out of your MFA programs?

There is a huge question mark over Fall of 2011 though. Almost exactly like the question mark that existed during the notification season prior to starting in a program. Who will win the fellowships? Who will get residencies? Who will get jobs? Please post info as soon as you hear about notifications. I, for one, am literally dying to hear something!

On taking advice

2010-12-21T10:02:00.000-08:00

Having studied with just about a small army of excellent teachers, I've been told my poems need to be a lot of different things: less clever, less explain-y, more rhetorically grounded, more out-rushingly imaginative, more direct, more musically cognizant, more traditionally moral, less ambitious, more ambitious, funnier, sadder, etc. etc. and etc. among many, many more pieces of advice. Almost all of them have been useful in some way or another, even if only to knowingly reject.

Teachers have cut apart poems and moved lines around, or simply cut lines, or cut everything but one line and told me to start over.

And the thing is, I generally have taken teachers' advice. Not all of it, and not every time--but often enough that I stopped myself recently and asked about one poem: this is good, but am I the reason for that?

It seems that the MFA is a time specifically designed for learning what advice to take and what advice to reject, but there are few strictures about how much is too much. After all, if one of the young artist's first concerns is finding a voice, and then no one wants to compromise his or her "voice," taking advice might be a matter of trying to understand what that voice is. But most of us are young enough that, even if we already thought we knew or are discovering what the voice is, it's still mutating, even if only a little at a time.

Which leads to my questions. One: how much advice is too much advice? Two: is advice better served focusing on the individual poems/stories or the writer in general?

Grad School Nomads

2010-12-15T06:48:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone! I hope your semesters are wrapping up well!

I just posted an entry on my personal blog about Grad School Nomads. Check it out!

Have safe and happy holidays! And for the grad school nomads out there, drive/fly safely! :)

What is workshop for?

2010-12-07T08:08:00.000-08:00

Here's my dirty little workshop secret: I sometimes workshop poems that may be (*gasp*) mediocre (well, maybe not mediocre--maybe only a little good). My theory is that if I only workshop my best poems, looking at those poems will be a waste of everybody's time, but if I workshop my almost-there poems most of those mediocre or maybe good poems will improve substantially.

It's also easier to make radical changes, I've found, to work that's either really fresh or been around long enough to know it needs improvement (and if it's been around that long, it's probably got more problems than I want to deal with).

This is a great strategy if my goal for workshop is to improve individual poems and identify early stumbling blocks common in my work.

Here's the philosophical conundrum: The best part of workshop is looking at all the awesome things everyone else is doing--so if everyone else is turning in awesome work that is doing awesome things, am I being selfish by not turning in as-awesome work that is not doing as-awesome things? Two caveats:

Sometimes it's boring to workshop already mostly finished really good work.

And sometimes the work we thought was really good and mostly finished it turns out might have still been really good, but still needs a lot of work. Sometimes workshopping really good poems can help you turn them amazing.

Maybe each workshop has different standards and expectations for the kind of work being brought in, but do y'all have any opinions in general on what the workshop is for?

Application season

2010-11-30T18:05:00.000-08:00

Once again it's application season(!)

I wrote a longer post last time, this year I think I'll just hit the major attractions for the University of Houston:

(and hey, maybe some prospective students are already on this blog, considering the PhD...)

Speaking of which, most importantly, there is the dual nature of the PhD/MFA program, where students take classes together.

Houston is also the very rare affordable large city, supporting a wonderful array of reading series, museums, and other weird art events.

Fiction faculty: Robert Boswell, Antonya Nelson, Chitra Divakaruni, Mat Johnson, Alex Parsons.

Poetry faculty: Tony Hoagland, Nick Flynn, Martha Serpas, Ange Mlinko and Kevin Prufer.

Most attractively for some, we do have a history of fellowship success--last year alone including a Ruth Lilly fellow, a Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellow at Wisconsin, a Parks fellow at Rice, and an NEA literature fellow (we just added seven more of those NEA fellowships this year--two current doctoral candidates and five alumni).

There are many, many good MFA programs out there, and certainly a number of good PhD programs as well. If the above at all encourages your interest in Houston, feel free to check us out at www.uh.edu/cwp or send me an e-mail at jsgottliebmiller (at) gmail (dot) com.

PS. Hope everyone had a happy turkey day.

Memorableness

2010-11-18T06:51:00.000-08:00

Here's a hypothetical question that comes up in workshops, talking to professors about who you're going to study with, and occasionally among poets when they've had a little too much to drink (so, always?): Yes, that poet is great, but will anyone be talking about her/him in 100 years? Is that poet a (*gasp*) minor poet?

I think the question has its problems--yes I think most of us write in part to be remembered, but I think most of us want to be remembered only by readers who were uniquely moved by what we have written. Also, historical circumstance seems to be an arbitrary measure of a poet's quality (or critical taste).

And yet, let's say you are a minor poet. You do what you do and you do it quite well. You're always getting better. Would you evolve to reach more people, or would you see that kind of evolution as unnatural, and having nothing to do with your writings' needs or interests?

In other words, would you "try" to be a major poet?

(And I think novelist or short-story writer could be substituted for poet, above...)

Advice for MFA Applicants

2010-10-29T07:04:00.000-07:00

by Jennifer Brown

Hello everyone! I see that MFA application season is heating up once again. I have put together a few "if only I knew then what I know now" thoughts about fiction writing samples on my personal blog HERE.

Good luck everyone!

Halfway through the first quarter.

2010-10-24T19:18:00.000-07:00

Hey fellow MFA students! I haven't posted in a while, so just as a reminder, I'm Lindsay and I'm a first year in nonfiction at Ohio State. I'm about halfway through my first quarter of courses, teaching, etc. and I thought maybe it was time for an update.

I've spent the past few weeks wondering when I'm going to wake up and realize that I completely imagined all of the amazing things that have happened since I've gotten here. I feel so incredibly lucky to be where I am. My courses are amazing -- I'm taking a nonfiction workshop with Lee Martin (!) and I honestly leave every Monday evening feeling like a better writer than when I walked in. I have to take nine credits per quarter as a TA, so I'm also taking a literature course, which is also going really well, although I have to do my first ever annotated bibliography for next Wednesday and I'm kind of starting to freak out.

Writing is going really well. I hit a few road blocks when I first got here -- performance anxiety, I think. I was having a lot of trouble putting words on the page, but I turned in my first essay last week and we're discussing it in class tomorrow. I'm really looking forward to it, but I'm also really anxious about it. (What if everyone hates it? What if it's not good enough? You know, the usual.) I'm going to start sending out to literary magazines soon, I think, and I'm planning to submit to Creative Nonfiction's MFA Program-Off, depending on how revisions go between now and the deadline.

I feel like I'm even learning these amazing things outside the classroom. We have three incredible reading series -- the student/faculty series where second years read with creative writing faculty, Mother Tongue where the MFAs read their current work a few times each year, and our visiting writer series that brings incredibly talented people to campus. It seems like there's something going on almost every Thursday night, and every time, I feel like I learn something valuable. And it's also just a lot of fun.

And then there's teaching. I sometimes feel like I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing, but I really love being in front of a classroom. I'm excited to teach something other than comp sometime in the future -- creative writing, a literature-based composition course, a second year writing course, etc. The multitude of teaching opportunities is one of the things I love most about OSU. And the training we get is honestly unmatched.

Aside from the academic side of things -- teaching, writing, classes -- things are still amazing. The people in this program are some of the best people I've met in my life. I feel like I've known these people forever. They're incredibly talented, kind, funny, and generous; I'm especially blessed to be part of an amazing cohort of first year nonfiction writers who are talented in ways I never would have imagined and yet are not the least bit cutthroat about it. I couldn't ask for better colleagues. And on top of everything, they're fun. We go out for happy hours, pizza, karaoke; today a group of us went to a "Fall Fun Fest," complete with a hayride, a corn maze, and pumpkin picking.

And Columbus? Columbus. I'm a small town girl at heart and always will be -- I miss cornfields and traffic lights that blink after 10pm like you wouldn't believe -- but Columbus has a special place in my heart already. It's an incredible city and I've yet to be disappointed by its offerings. (Even the rumor of its lack of decent Mexican food has been debunked, now that I've discovered the multitude of Taco Trucks stationed around the city.)

So, basically, my fears from this summer were completely unfounded, and I'm so grateful to have this opportunity. Sometimes I really can't believe it's real.

On a semi-unrelated note, is anyone going to NonfictioNow? I'll be there, as well as three of my fellow OSU nonfiction writers. Let me know if you'll be there -- I'd love to meet any and all of you in person!

On ruthlessness

2010-10-07T20:37:00.001-07:00

I don't think about ruthlessness that often. I don't particularly like the idea that the MFA is just time to write (I prefer to think of it as time to hone skills), and yet still, being in an intellectually stimulating environment, surrounded by writers--it's kind of hard not to write a lot. Sometimes even, perhaps, too much.

The problem isn't culling the good work from the bad, it's figuring out which good work is good enough (i.e. worth other people reading).

I didn't realize how lackadaisical I'd become in sorting this out until I got the workshop comment that a piece was uncontrolled. I wondered what that meant. Uncontrolled. Did that mean purpose-less or audience-less or uninteresting, perhaps even unreadable? Would someone look at that poem, read a line and move on? Or even worse, read the whole poem and then think "that was a waste of time."

For the past three days I've been revising new poems maniacally, and also taking a sixteenth look at other work I'd considered finished.

My question, then, is whether other people feel the need to be ruthless with poems otherwise, perhaps for too long, handled with kid gloves? Can you induce ruthlessness? Would you want to? Or prefer to nurture a piece until, naturally, you can't stand it not being good enough anymore--and it either gets there or gets trashed for parts?

Or are you already ruthless?

MFA DAY at Adelphi

2010-10-07T13:43:00.000-07:00

So I don't know how many of you reading this are in the New York area, but Adelphi University is having its 1st Annual MFA DAY. It is being held Friday, Oct. 15th beginning at 9 a.m.

The day consists of an introduction by Program Chair Jacqueline Jones LaMon, followed by workshop sessions by genre. There is a Faculty reading and a Q&A with students in the afternoon.

Registration is FREE!!!

Here is the link if you are interested:
http://academics.adelphi.edu/artsci/creativewriting/news.php

The Journal, Now with Online Submissions

2010-09-24T08:19:00.000-07:00

Hello all,

I am writing this brief post to inform you that the literary journal I edit for, The Journal, has recently switched over to online submissions, joining a growing trend in literary magazines that encourages a greater quantity of submissions and makes the process of submitting more organized and easier for the submitters. Anyway, I invite you guys, and anyone reading this blog, to submit to The Journal electronically!

Find our submission manager here. Good luck to all the returning second years and brand new first years on this blog! Hope it's a great year for us all :-)

A degree in writing

2010-09-18T15:06:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I think that the most immediate benefit of the graduate workshop isn't becoming a better writer, but becoming a better reader.

I believe this is mostly from forcing yourself to understand other people's work, to understand what's working in other people's work. Perhaps the poem isn't even doing something you haven't seen before, you just thought it was uninteresting, or not useful (and you were wrong).

Do other people share this view of the graduate workshop, i.e. becoming an even better reader than you are becoming a writer?

A corollary: a poet I know likes to ask people whether they are readers first or writers first, and he thinks that if you say writer first then you're not going to become as good a writer as you otherwise would. I tend to disagree. Thoughts?

Things I like, and some things I don't.

2010-09-09T19:55:00.001-07:00

I love my MFA program. I am really very happy with my professors, my fellow classmates, and the atmosphere of the program in general. I love doing the work, the readings, the writing--being at UNH has shown me that yes, this is absolutely the right path for me. Even though I didn't really have much to say in workshop this past week, I definitely am going to make up for that next week, because I'll be able to read my classmates' work ahead of time and prepare good, well-thought out responses. I love being immersed in the "writing culture" and getting to know other people who actually love writing as much as I do.

As much as I love the program, the atmosphere, and everything with my MFA program, I am definitely having a really hard time adjusting to the area of the country I've chosen to move to. Somersworth, NH is really in the middle of nowhere and totally rural. It takes a lot of adjustment to get used to a small town after living two years in a small city. I miss the diverse foods, the option to go out somewhere after midnight and that something will be open. I miss people walking around on functioning sidewalks, and I really miss falling asleep to the constant whirr of highway traffic. I think I feel more free, more open, and more confident when I am in a city. The rural life has left me feeling restricted, trapped and kind of sad. What kills me the most is that I knew I would hate it before I moved here. I keep trying to find the good: there's a beach a half-hour away, the mountains are an hour away, Boston is an hour and a half away, but these things never seem like enough.

Which brings me to another thing I'm having trouble with: I'm really poor. I noticed this when I arrived in workshop and I didn't have my pages stapled. I don't know where I put my stapler in the move, and I've looked for it everywhere. The stapler may have fallen onto the highway during the move, but I cannot find it. Also, I showed up in my novel-writing class with an assignment printed in blue ink because I'd forgotten to put black printer ink on the list of back-to-school items. People might have to get used to it for a while, because I can't afford more black ink.

But, I am really happy with my work, my classmates' work, and I am totally dedicated to the UNH program. I am willing to suffer through the awful rural aspects of the small-town for three years because I think the MFA program at UNH is pretty awesome. I think that says something about the program and how happy and lucky I feel to be a part of something that, in my opinion, totally rocks dude. I'm just curious though: how do you feel about the place that you moved to for the MFA? Does it really matter, and should it matter?

These Are the Gators in My Neighborhood

2010-09-09T11:15:00.000-07:00

from Rebecca Bauman, University of Florida

I'm ridiculously impressed by my peers -- not just their talent, mind you, but their intelligence and maturity and wit and brilliant, glowing skin. This is the first time I've been in a writing community and not wanted to kill someone right out of the gate. Maybe kill isn't the right word. I think punch in the feckin' face might work. But not these chicas (which we mostly are -- only two guys in the class of 2013). Classy bunch, here. Likable and warm and dry. Thank God. I mean, THANK GOD. This sense of camaraderie is priceless.
Campus is gorgeous. I'm very familiar with Northern Florida, and being around all this green and all these critters and all this water is exactly what I wanted. My apartment is pretty much in the woods -- I'm like Ted Kaczynski now. And there are gators in a nearby pond and all kinds of big birds and bugs and armadillos and I swear I saw a bear last night, but my boyfriend said that it was just a really fat raccoon.
Classes can be frustrating. I'm only taking two -- a seminar in Jane Austen and a poetry workshop that features nothing but crazy-ass, crack-dealer-whacko prompts that ask each poet to produce Sestina-level frustrate-work. It's a challenge and few of us produce anything we can be proud of ... they're all just exercises, and the products of these exercises are similar to the products of crossword puzzles; one might feel satisfaction, but do we really need to workshop this stuff? Still, I admit: The training is really helpful. Suck it up, Bauman. (NOTE: We have only one faculty poet on campus right now. One is on sabbatical and the other is stuck in Germany with major visa issues that endanger his work at this very American university. Anxiety all around.)
Teaching brings nothing but utmost ambivalence. When I'm helpful and feel competent, I'm over the moon. When it's clear I'm lost and bored even with myself, I feel like I might as well be playing handball against a shower curtain. I don't want these students to feel like they've been dicked out of a hard-earned education. Honestly, the moments I find most frustrating aren't in those lessons that ask me to teach ideas and concepts and techniques I'm totally unfamiliar with, but in those lessons that ask me to teach things that have been totally self-evident to me for years. Teaching this level of writing is like teaching a bowel movement; I don't know how to explain what you're supposed to do, because I've always just kinda done it. And, again, I worry about letting my students down, I worry about scamming them. I want this to be useful, I want to make them feel capable and excited ... but I'm just a one-trick-pony in many ways. I can do my one little dance really well, but the rest is just me flopping around on the floor, drooling and grunting. And it must be terrifying to watch.

I really miss working with animals. I feel like something is missing from my life. There's an amazing horse shelter/retirement farm in town, but it's only open 4 hours a week, Saturday mornings. I need my medicine -- someone bring me a wounded 'possum to heal, a squirrel to foster, a goat to feed! I need a sense of purpose beyond light verse and screwing up my students' understanding of active and passive voice.
I still feel ridiculously fortunate to be here. Every day. And it is about luck, though people will argue: "You deserve this; you've earned this." Truth is, if I hadn't been born a relatively healthy, white, middle-class American, I might not have had the chance to reach my "potential." I have no delusions; I am lucky to be here. It's less of a meritocracy than we'd like to believe. But I'm beyond grateful, and I hope to suck every last bit of marrow from this crapshoot opportunity.

Can we call it Autumn yet?

2010-09-08T08:00:00.000-07:00

Are we really into the third week of classes?! (For some at least).

That's a lot to wrap my head around. A week ago I probably would've said it's felt like I've been here months already. Now, well, the time seems to be flying.

I've settled into the routine I need to be most productive. Second year students have given me all sorts of great advice--including, the value of time spent away from your writing. How you should never feel guilty for watching a movie or walking around town or anything like that because sometimes, to get the clarity you need for a poem, you need to let your mind go elsewhere for a time. I'm sure most students on here can relate to the anxiety of a program's pressure. More often than not, I write drafts of poems in my head. I may jot down a phrase or image in a notebook, but when I sit down to write I feel like the first draft of my poem is partially written. Here, with workshops every Thursday and new poems due at least biweekly, I don't feel like I can have that creative ease as much anymore. Though, this pressure isn't all bad. Like I said, my routine is certainly more productive.

In my verse class yesterday, we talked about writing and habit. It seemed the consensus was that prosers respond more to routine (ie: writing at 11am every day for at least two hours) versus poets who seem to write more when "inspiration strikes," (oh, cliches). For right now, I'd consider myself somewhere in the middle. If I'm going to write, I need to carve out time to do so. But I also don't use that time the same way everyday. As long as I'm writing, editing, or at the very least reading everyday--I'm doing what I came here to do.

For those of you who have already had workshop--what did you think? How are the workshop structured? First years only? Upper classmen with lower? What kind of pieces are you submitting--anything new written over the summer or something you've had tucked away for a time?

Glad to hear everyone had relatively uneventful move-ins! Sorry my posts have been sans exciting photos thus far. For now, a picture of the German Shepherd puppies that live next door. Holy adorable!! I'll be volunteering at the Bookmarks Book Festival in Winston-Salem this Saturday. Should have some pics to share after that. Billy Collins will be in attendance, too. Always a treat to hear poetry read aloud [:

Happy Hump Day, all! I'm going out to pick up some Pumpkin Spice coffee at the grocers today. I don't care if it's 89 degrees outside, I'm from New England and September = candy apples, pumpkin spice and foliage.

Starting the MFA

2010-09-03T09:41:00.000-07:00

by Laura

This is a picture of my little writing corner in my new apartment. I love it. I don't even care that it is actually in a storage room and there is an oh-so-glamorous assortment of stacked boxes, bags, bins, and random stuff a few feet away from my desk. I like the view out the window: the roof of the elementary school across the street, and beyond that, the tree-filled hills with white houses and chimneys peeking through. I like the art that I put up (and by art, I mean greeting-card versions of artworks that I like), the two little stuffed-animal birds on my desk, and the lamp that my mom got for me from the Christmas Tree Shop. And because I share the apartment with my boyfriend and three roommates, I like that this corner is private and mine.

So far my new MFA life is going well. I had orientation at Emerson yesterday and I'm starting classes on Tuesday. The best thing that's happened so far is that I have managed to find two part-time jobs that I think I'm going to like a lot (I'll be working as a writing tutor and editorial assistant, both on-campus). I'm very excited that I will actually be able to pay my rent, and will maybe even have some money left over for saving/adventures/buying lots of pumpkin spice lattes at the Starbucks down the street from the building where I have class...

I am nervous and excited about starting classes. I'm taking a poetry workshop and a literature seminar on modern poetry. I have all the usual worries about everyone else being a better writer and reader than me. Also, I regret to say that I chickened out of volunteering to be one of the first people to submit a poem for workshop. Hopefully I can make up for that by being braver after the first class.

Overall, though, I'm feeling really happy to be where I am, starting something new and exciting. Tonight there is a lovely almost-autumn breeze coming in through my writing room window. My boyfriend and I are about to drink apple cider and watch a movie, then I'll probably continue pre-reading one of my school books that I bought the other day. I'll spend the next couple of days relaxing and getting mentally ready to start classes, and hopefully I will begin this whole MFA adventure with more excitement than nervousness. Judging by how awesomely things have been going so far in my new life in (well, near) Boston, I think that all will be well.

Published!!!

2010-09-02T09:32:00.000-07:00

By Chrissy Widmayer

Today, two of my poems went live on flashquake. It's my first publication, and I'm super jazzed. I sent out these two poems in a simultaneous submission to a number of places, and I never thought they'd get in anywhere. Now, of course, they're up on flashquake, and I have to go through the weird experience of removing them for consideration from all the other places. Anyone have suggestions on the most polite wording for that email? It's such a crazy situation to be in.

Also, the editors of flashquake are announcing that this is their last issue with the current staff. The lit mag might pass to others (and if anyone here wants it, I can get you in touch with the current staff), but this is the last issue of flashquake as we know it. I don't know how to feel about that as someone featured in this issue, but it's pretty sad overall. flashquake is a great little online mag for flash works.

Getting published right at the beginning of my MFA program is an extremely exciting thing for me. I feel like it sets the tone for this whole experience. I'm really pleased that this came through, and I can only hope that this bodes well for future success! I literally started crying when I found out, and then cried on the phone when I told my mother. She, of course, thought something terrible had happened as I choked out the sentence. But this is beyond exciting. I just had to share it with you all as soon as the link was live!

First Week: Complete

2010-09-02T08:36:00.000-07:00

Well, I did it. I made it through my first week of classes at UNH. Of course, my first week consisted of MTW classes, but I'm really happy with myself, with the classes I've chosen to take, and also with my classmates.

My first workshop class was on Tuesday, and I'm really excited about it. Our first assignment was to write a three-page, mostly complete short, that had to somehow involve death and two geographical locations. I have started this assignment five times now, but I can't seem to find anything with which I am satisfied. Some pieces I don't like because I don't think they fit appropriately with the assignment, some I don't like because I'm having a hard time truly seeing the characters, and one I don't like because it's boring and I don't want to keep working on it. So that's how my workshop class is going so far.

Yesterday, I had my first "Writing the Novel," class, which I'm really looking forward to. Every two weeks, we have to produce an outline of the major events of the novel. After that, we have to take that outline and plug our own events into the outline, and outline our own ideas for a similar novel. Then, we write the first few pages of our own novel that we just outlined. It is supposed to get us used to thinking about causality in the novel, like, "this event on page 3 caused this event on page 6," and it is going to really help me get focused as a writer.

But enough about classes. I am living in Somersworth, NH--about 15 minutes away from the UNH campus in Durham. I quickly found a full-time job as a Starbucks Barista in a town 30 minutes away from Somersworth, but 10 minutes away from the beach in Hampton, NH. I'm surprised at how much I enjoy shlepping expensive coffee to rich New Englanders. My husband started work just yesterday, much to my dismay and chagrin, and we're really, really poor. I am getting used to eating Ramen again.

So that's been my MFA experience so far. I am looking forward to the rest of the semester, I am happy to finally be studying what I want, and I finally feel like I belong somewhere. Yay yay for the MFA!

I'm in love...

2010-09-01T11:15:00.000-07:00

...with teaching poetry. And I'm afraid it's going to break my heart.

Right now, we're obviously in the honeymoon phase of our relationship. I'm excited to show up for class twice a week. I lay in bed replaying the class discussions and the students' reactions to the poems, especially those lightbulb moments. Or when they speak passionately about a particular image or sound in a poem from the reading.

But, my insecurities are starting to creep in. Instead of being able to completely enjoy this time that I've been given to lead a poetry class, I catch myself, at times, fearing having to graduate and having to start the climb back to teaching poetry all over again. I'm trying not to consider it a breakup. More like a long distance relationship that I've got 2 semesters to prepare for before I have to go off on my own and work on myself via book publications before we can be together again. I might have to see other classes (comp), may have to teach free community workshops in the mean time. All with the hopes of one day being reunited with what I realize now is my true love...teaching poetry.

I knew when I started typing this post that I would go too far with this analogy lol. But that doesn't make this any less true; doesn't make it hurt any less that the competition for creative writing professorships is so fierce. I didn't expect to love teaching this much.

*sigh*

How's teaching going for all of you?

Hello again!

2010-08-30T08:10:00.001-07:00

Just wanted to pop in really quick to say hi. I hope you all had a great summer and are all doing well, whether you've already started the semester or are starting in the next few weeks.

I've got a brief two-weeks into the semester kind of update over at rachelmarsom.com. Enjoy!

Click here!

Back to School

2010-08-28T04:11:00.000-07:00

By Jennifer Brown

Hi all. How was your summer? Did you get a lot of writing done? Here it is, back to school time, and I haven’t accomplished even near what I intended to this summer. Did do some work though. I’ve posted about it on my personal blog HERE.

Have a good fall semester, everyone! And keep us all posted!

Pre-MFA thoughts, fears, excitement, etc.

2010-08-25T20:49:00.002-07:00

Lindsay Hansen, The Ohio State University '13 (Nonfiction)

I moved into my apartment in Columbus a little over a week ago and I am very quickly falling in love with this city. It's the biggest city in which I've spent any significant length of time. So it's definitely taking some getting used to. I'm not at all prepared to read bus schedules, or to drive in rush hour traffic, or to take almost half an hour to drive three miles. Still, I love it. Despite being in the middle of Ohio, I've already seen more queer culture here than I ever saw in western New York -- my friends and I stumbled upon a drag show in the middle of the street in the Short North last weekend, for example. It was definitely cool, and made me feel a lot better about Columbus -- just the fact that things like that happen here. That's a good thing.

Unfortunately, I have another month of worrying/impatiently waiting before school officially starts. We're on a quarter system, so I don't start classes until September 22nd, and I don't actually teach a class until the 23rd. So it's going to be another really long foru weeks. That said, Ohio State is great about training the Graduate Teaching Associates, so we start a two-week long training on Monday morning. I'm terrified about teaching -- I do not feel qualified, at all -- but I feel a lot better about it when I realize I have so much time to prepare. (But then, also, is it that much time? It feels like forever, but those two weeks are going to fly...)

But anyway, that brings me to my first goal of my first quarter as an MFA student: Don't make a fool out of myself in the classroom, especially when I'm teaching. I'll be sure to let you all know how that works out.

And, although the teaching is really what I'm most worried about, the thought of my classes is filling me with a semi-healthy level of anxiety, too. As a GTA I'm only obligated to take two classes per quarter (which I am SO happy about...), so I'm taking a creative nonfiction workshop with Lee Martin (!), who seems like one of the nicest people I've ever met, and yet, I am still intimidated, and Introduction to Graduate Study in U.S. Ethnic Literature and Culture, which has an emphasis on Asian-American literature this quarter. I'm really excited about that class, too, but also a little apprehensive, because while I'm unsure about my abilities in graduate level creative writing classes, I'm relatively confident that I'm not at all prepared for a graduate-level literature course. Still, I can't wait to start. Three years of writing, reading, and talking about writing and reading. This is exactly what I've wanted, and I can't believe I'm actually doing it.

Blah blah blah rankings blah blah blah

2010-08-25T06:35:00.000-07:00

The new MFA rankings are up: http://www.pw.org/files/2011rankings_0.pdf

The methodology for these rankings has been argued here (and elsewhere) exhaustively. There are applicants this ranking will help. Great.

My own thoughts (not attacks on or defenses of the methodology, just thoughts), with my major caveat at the end:

To me, the overall ranking is less useful than the genre ranking, since you do all of the work that you care about (and in some programs, all of your work) within your genre. Separate rankings for poetry, fiction and non-fiction (not just listings, but actually separating these out) makes sense to me--but that would be less confrontational/awesome (in the full sense of that word), and P and W probably prefers the monolithic listing.

Many of these programs have singular attributes that make them super-interesting and are hard(er) to graph. For Iowa, it's the brand name, for Wisconsin, it's the single-genre cohorts, for UT Austin, it's the second-genre focus. Mind you, these aren't the only interesting things about these from everything I've heard wonderful programs. At University of Houston, it's the joint MFA-PhD mix (possibly one of only two in the country--I don't know if UNLV has their MFAs and creative writing PhDs take classes together, as we do), which is awesome.

Look, applicants (for the most part) are probably doing the work they should be doing to figure out where they want to apply to schools. And whatever, they're going to be fine, anyway. But I don't bring up the PhDs just to cheer-lead Houston, I bring them up because they help demonstrate the one funny thing about the rankings that has nothing to do with the applicants, and everything to do with the programs. That is, programs don't care so much about where their students are applying. Programs care, generally, about one thing: the writing sample.

Let me put it another way: 50 people apply to Iowa and 50 to University of Illinois in Urbana (picked at random--from everything I've heard, a good school). Those schools might accept entirely different cohorts. I bring up the PhDs because we have a number at UH who are graduates of prestigious programs (Iowa, UT-Austin, NYU) who get accepted to Houston just the same as the MFAs (and we use a blind approach, by going through manuscripts without attention to previous degrees--which just sorts out where you are on the degree track once you're here). There are also new PhDs who went to less-prestigious programs, and ended up in the same place. The teachers just picked who they want to work with.

I guess it's a small point to make, to say there are damn fine students in every MFA program, but I think it's worth reminding...

MFA starting line / Moving induced exhaustion

2010-08-23T20:02:00.000-07:00

Day 01 out of ...well, many more.

I've been down in Greensboro now for a week and some change. Moving and organizing took 100% of my time and energy until this afternoon. There were moments when I forgot that I was actually starting graduate school this week. It became so much about moving that I nearly forgot what the heck I'm doing here. Phew, glad that's over.

Dropped the beau off at the airport today. Felt like a fool crying in public but everyone does it. Part of a new adventure, yes? It definitely helped that I had plenty of errands to run on campus so I couldn't come home and bury myself under the covers (though I was tempted). I will say one thing: long distance relationships aren't what they used to be. Between cell phones, e-mails, texts, skype, AIM and letter writing, feeling close and connected with my boyfriend won't be as tough as I convinced myself in some ways. Certainly won't make up for living together but.. we can't win 'em all.

Also, today was my first day of classes. Hurrah! Kicked off at 6pm. Not too shabby for a Monday, eh? haha It was sorta fun glancing around the room, seeing such new faces and trying to figure each person out. Just a little bit anyway. The class runs for 3 hours usually. Thankfully the professor was merciful and let us go early. Yay, perks of the first day! I'm eager to get into my poetry classes, one of which is tomorrow. I'm also getting tossed headlong into my assistantship this week. Lots of changes but with so much going on I'm hoping I don't notice a) how big my apartment is for one person and b) start missing loved ones as a result. Not gunna happen but I can try.

I'm gunna check in later this week once I've got more classes and assignments under my belt. I think it'll be fun to share any pertinent or just plain entertaining articles I read from class with ya'll smart people! Wishing everyone who has started, or is gearing up for the semester, the very best! Hope the sun is shining where you are and your hands are ready to get dirtied with some serious writing.

Cheers,
Chelsea

And It Begins All Over Again

2010-08-23T13:59:00.000-07:00

Year Two of my MFA program at Penn State started today. Poetry workshop bright and early at 9:05 Monday morning. A lovely group of seven MFAs, one PhD lit student, and one MA lit student. And the talented, smart, and helpful Julia Kasdorf at the helm. Julia was the MFA director when I applied to the program, she called me with my acceptance, I met her at recruitment weekend, etc; then she was on sabbatical last year. The older students had talked about how great she was in workshop, and after one day, I think they’re right. We didn’t actually workshop today, but we discussed our ideas and goals in terms of “voice” (the general theme of the workshop this semester), we each read a poem we’d written over the summer, and we discussed the reading we’d done for today (selections from Frank Bidart’s collected poems). It’s a nice group of people, and the vibe is very positive. ‘Twas a perfect way to begin the semester!

I’m undecided right now on the other class I’ll be taking this semester. Since this is a two year program now, and I’ll be working on my thesis, I’m registered for thesis credits which means I only need two “real” classes. Right now I’m registered for both a lit seminar on Shakespearean tragedies and a lit course on the 1930s which promises to be heavily political/cultural studies-ish. I’m masochistically considering staying in both of them, but I think I’ll end up dropping one.

I’m teaching an Intro to Creative Writing class, which I’m thrilled about. We meet for the first time tomorrow at 8:00am. I posted an overview of how the course is set up in a comment to JayTee’s post on teaching so I won’t reiterate it all here, but it’s basically a mixture of instruction and practice in fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction (i.e. lecture/discussion, lots of writing exercises, one workshop per genre).

What else? Oh yeah, that whole thesis thing…. It is so strange to me that a year ago I hadn’t even begun my MFA program, and now I am halfway finished. While it would be nice to have a third year, I think the two year program is for the best (I don’t think I could take another year in Central Pennsylvania without serious detriment to my sanity). It’s crazy to think about having a book manuscript done by May, but it’s exciting as well. I turned in about 35 pages of poems to my thesis advisor at the end of spring semester, got her comments back over the summer, and then proceeded to not write very much at all…. In my defense, I did a lot of reading, and I did do some writing; but I traveled a fair amount (spent two wonderful weeks in California – half in San Francisco, where my new picture was taken, and half in Berkeley – and also spent a couple of long weekends back in Columbus), I also taught a summer class, and I took an intensive Spanish class, so for six weeks I was on campus eight hours a day, five days a week. Not too conducive to getting a lot of writing done.

However, I feel like I have a solid idea for my manuscript and good direction for the revisions on what I’ve already given my advisor so I only need another 15 pages or so. Totally doable, right?

So, for those of you who are starting, or preparing to start Year Two, how do you feel? I’m a lot more comfortable than I was a year ago, but also feeling an increased pressure to “perform”, i.e. publish, get into a PhD program, get a job, or something.

Good luck to everyone this fall, at whatever stage you currently find yourselves!

Putting on My Teaching Face

2010-08-22T23:07:00.000-07:00

(not just a teaching face, but a myspace appropriate bathroom shot as well! 2 birds, one stone.)

Hey all!

Yay for us being 2nd years and for the new 1st years on the blog! And also to the post-mfa'ers and mfa'ers to be in the comments! Now that I've exceeded my exclamation point quota...

I just finished writing my first syllabus ever. It ended up being 6 pages long. It's for the intro to poetry creative writing course I start teaching on Tuesday. At UVA, we teach the 2nd year so I was watching anxiously while others took the lead in their first classes last year and now it's my turn. Here's my textbooks:

In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet's Portable Workshop by Steve Kowit
Late Wife by Claudia Emerson
Poetry: A Pocket Anthology (Penguin Academics) (6th Edition) by R. S. Gwynn Paperback

My approach to preparing this class was to basically try to mimick the way I was taught. My students will be required to memorize 2 lines of poetry from the readings each week, they'll turn in a poem a week (but only workshop four poems), there will be in-class writing exercises each week, and tons of exposure to poets and poems.

So what's your approach to class prep?

Moving (in more ways than one)

2010-08-22T20:17:00.000-07:00

By Chrissy Widmayer

I made the drive out to Fairfax today. I arrived mid-evening just before the sun went down. It's a ten hour drive from Michigan, and I was bedraggled. I somehow missed the exciting moment when I crossed over into Virginia, but nothing will match the feeling of relief I felt the moment I saw the "Welcome to the City of Fairfax" sign. The sun was low in the sky and filtering through the trees, casting it in (no kidding) a halo of light. A mixture of relief and excitement crashed through me, along with a feeling of purpose and sureness. This was the moment I've been hurling towards for the past year.

Now, I lie on an air mattress on the floor of my dark bedroom in my new, mostly empty, townhouse. It's not dark because it's night (though it is) or because I'm getting ready for bed (though I am), but because our power is not on. Due to the flurry of moving, and a number of other circumstances out of our control, we couldn't get our electricity turned on until tomorrow. Luckily, I have a friend who lives next door who let me steal his internet, use his microwave, and hang out in his air conditioning until I decided it was time for bed. We then, rather humorously, inflated my air mattress using his electricity and carried it over to my house. I felt it was important I get to know this little plot of land that will be mine for the next year, even in it's most barren, empty state.

And now, of course, in the darkness and the emptiness, there is more than enough room for thoughts. Thoughts about moving, the strangeness of making a home in a new place. Thoughts of moving forward. And, lying here on my stomach, listening to the crickets out the open window, I realized that I'm ready. I'm ready for this change. I'm ready to be here, take this step, and do this thing right. For the past year, I've been unemployed, unhappy, in a stagnant state. But today, I feel in motion. Physically moving has made me feel like I'm moving intellectually, emotionally, creatively. I feel better than I have in a long time.

For the past few months, I've been full of anxiety, stress, nerves, worry. And yes, all of that is still lingering at the edge of my mind, but, for a while now, I've been waiting for the excitement to set in. Yes, I've said I was excited. I've even felt some excitement for abstract things related to my MFA experience. But today, right now, sitting in the dark and living by the light of my computer and my cell phone, I feel excited. I feel ready. All the negative emotions I've been feeling have completely dissipated. The darkness is gone. Tomorrow I'll wake up to the sun rising outside my window. There will be light (and hopefully electricity) and everything will feel new. And I, for the first time in over a year, will be happy to blink awake with the sun, get up, and start afresh. For the first time, I'm ready. I'm moving. And I can tell: I'm headed somewhere good.

Pre-MFA Thoughts

2010-08-16T11:29:00.001-07:00

by Laura

The summer is steadily coming to an end and I am about to begin my MFA program, taking with me a huge jumble of excitement and nervousness. One moment I think that it will be the most wonderful thing ever, picturing myself strolling across Boston Common with autumn leaves crinkling underfoot and my head filled with ideas and inspiration. The next moment, this idyllic image suddenly turns into a nightmarish one in which I can't think of a single thing to write, can't find a job and have to leave school, and retreat in shame to my parents' basement. I figured that it would be helpful to get all of my mixed feelings out of my head and onto the internet, in convenient bulleted lists...

First up, we have Pre-MFA Fears:
- The issue of needing good employment immediately. A variety of factors led me to accept an unfunded offer, but sometimes I wonder if this was the right decision. Don't get me wrong -- I want to work and am applying to jobs that I'm really excited about. I just hope those jobs will be equally excited about hiring me.
- My worry that everyone in the program will be smarter than me, more well-read than me, and just far more fabulous in general.
- The question of genre, more specifically, the need to choose one. Yes, I love to write poetry. I also love to write creative nonfiction, and I sometimes cautiously venture into fiction. Did I pick the right one to spend the next three years focusing on?

Ack, now I feel even more anxious. To counteract the anxiety, a more positive list:

Pre-MFA Things to be Excited About:
- Hey, I'm in an MFA program! If I could go back in time and talk to Laura circa-September 2009, then she would be ecstatic that her future self would actually be accepted to a program.
- I'm enrolled in two classes with professors who seem very awesome, and I know that I will learn a lot.
- I'm moving to Boston! (Well, near Boston.) I get to live with my lovely boyfriend, write away in my tiny corner of our tiny apartment, and explore all the beautiful places that the city has to offer (that is, after I take the train out of our rather non-stunning neighborhood).
- I actually do love to meet and talk to new people, and I'm looking forward to making friends from a wide variety of places and backgrounds.
- There are many opportunities out there for me; I just have to be willing to work for them.

I guess that what it comes down to is this: I get to start a new life and can choose whether I want to view that life as an exciting place of opportunity and growth, or a place of abject terror. I struggle with the whole positive-thinking thing, but I want to get better at it. Here's to exciting things ahead!

Keeping the muse guessing

2010-08-15T18:38:00.000-07:00

I'm someone who prepares to be motivated. I compile notes. I read weird, hopefully illuminating books, and when I go strange places I make myself stay up late/wake up early to write poem after poem. This is a lucrative process, and I often come back from trips/vacations with four or five newly-written pieces that are better than the twenty or thirty I wrote in the months before I left. Admittedly, I probably pillaged an old draft or two, but these are often substantively new works in their finished states.

I don't think this is uncommon--most people seem to be inspired by new stimuli/information/etc. If you've had this invigorating experience, you probably also know the desperate after-effects, when you come back: there are still more poems that you are inspired to write, but you never know when this special energy is going to run out. You might even try to fake it with similar subject matter or syntax or whatever your trick is, but at some point you just can't fool the muse.

So here's what I'm wondering: how do you keep the muse going longer than it should? Any particularly effective tricks? Or is it blasphemy to even try to inspire yourself, having been so inspired?

How a Second Year (in a Three Year Program) Spends His Summer

2010-08-11T01:06:00.000-07:00

Hello friends, Romans, countrymen! It's been a while, a good long while, since I posted here. Naturally it is because of my endless cavalcade of celebrity shindigs, film premieres and promiscuous cavorting that has caused my absence. Just kidding folks. Well, mostly. Right now I am writing this from my mother's favorite recliner in my parents' house, a house they will soon be moving out of, but probably not until after I return to Ohio. I find myself in an interesting place, not physically on this chair, but personally, professionally and emotionally. Basically I am eager to get back to Columbus and start living again.

As some of you know, my transition from West Coast rockstar to Sockeye Salmon out of water in the midwest has been occasionally rough, sometimes even depressing. This is not because of the program or even the location so much as it is rooted in the fact that, before now, I never really lived anywhere else than California (and even then I've always lived within 100 miles of where I grew up). Though there is a lot of diversity in my home state, it doesn't represent the vastness of this country, because nowhere can, so Ohio, unsurprisingly, is much different from here. Different in some ways I like, and some ways I don't like. Again, nothing earth shattering about this revelation. It simply is what it is.

Anyway when my summer began I had two main goals: 1) travel around/bask in the glory that is the Golden State and 2) write poems that were better than what I wrote last summer.

The first was important because after finding myself somewhat lost and adrift in Ohio I realized that my upbringing, heck, the specificity of the time and place and circumstances of where I grew up and lived almost all of my life, was important, nay, essential to who I am and why I do this crazy poetry thing. With that in mind, I endeavored to gain a greater understanding and appreciation for my home (generally and specifically) in order to attempt to tackle it like my new hero, Robert Hass, has for decades. Simply put, I wanted to cultivate a certain kind of California-ness in my writing, a sensibility I hope to incorporate with my other writerly interests (the male body, homoeroticism, mythology, history, perspective etc.) and I want to do it both in terms of the nature, of course, but also the people. To this end I spent some time in Northern California, essentially touring the bay area, rarely sleeping in the same place twice. I walked the rocky Santa Cruz coast at night, throbbed to the helter-skelter sounds of a gay discotheque in San Francisco, and lazed in the shade of coastal redwoods looming high in Berkeley. I drove a lot, as a passenger anyway, and as such had a lot of time to observe people and places. I met vivid characters who left marks on my memory like fingerprints. I even flirted with a hot guy across a dark room, full of mostly naked men. After my sojourn was over, I headed back down to familiar territory--Los Angeles, where I dined in Ktown, skipped along the beach in Santa Monica, brought baked goods back from Canters, saw a few good movies in single-show theaters and lost myself in the beautiful Getty center (an exhibit on Social Issues Photojournalism was particularly arresting)--before finally coming home the Mojave desert. Since I've been home I've barely ventured outside and even then only long enough to get sunburned. You need to live here to realize how little time that takes. Still, it could be worse; it could be Nevada or Arizona. Even being home, even house hunting with my mother in 110 degree heat, has opened my eyes to the sparse and simple beauty of chaparral and Joshua trees. There's a lot more to love about home than I realized.

So have I written "California poems"? Some, but not many, and they're not really that good. I once heard Bret Anthony Johnston read his fiction at UCLA and he said that he found he couldn't write about a place until he left it, until he moved on. I feel the same way. I think that the physical distance enables a certain kind of emotional objectivity, not unlike how photographing something banal tends to yield intriguing details about the thing. Those details (the way light spills into a parking garage, the way macaroni and cheese can resemble human brains in a bowl) are present, but it takes the objectivity of the camera lens to yield it clearly. So too does distance in relation to our perceptions of the thing we're distanced from, be it a loved one, a pet, a favorite sweater, a car, or even a home state. I hope that I will write more about home when I return to Ohio.

I've written a lot though, a lot of non-"California" (or is it) poetry. I've drafted about fifty poems, but the number shouldn't shock anyone. I write a lot of initial drafts and typically end up with a handful of fine poems...I don't know that any of them are great except for the two being published. As we all know, published = greatest (well not really, but it sort of feels that way, doesn't it?) At any rate, I've been sporadically productive, as I'm want to, and I've started exchanging drafts with a fellow second year via these series of tubes we all hold so near and dear to our postmodern (post to the third power?) existence. I for one welcome our future robot overlords. Let them be merry and fertile. I think I've accomplished my second mission of writing better poems than I wrote last summer because I feel I am a much better and more grounded writer. I have a sense of what is important to me, what I do well, and what I need work on. This is exactly what I was hoping the program would do for me. OSU has three amazing poet-teachers and I am so humbled to have received their encouragement, criticism, praise and often humorous scorn. It's heartening to see my own progression. It gives me a sense of direction, as in I am going somewhere even if it zigzagged, spiraling down, or randomly jabbing.

I'm excited to return to Columbus because I feel like I'm going to really run as soon as I hit the ground. I am taking an Asian-American lit class (a pet hobby/potential parallel career interest of mine) and I have half a dozen novels to (hopefully) read before class starts in September. I have lessons to plan for my poetry writing class (which I am super jazzed about teaching! Those kids are going to have a lot of fun with me! Fun and LEARNING!) I have new MFAs to non-romantically romance! New Ph.D's to form an uneasy though gradually more comfortable and enriching playfully combative relationship with! I have a GradQueer organization to co-run! Poems to send out to journals (that have actually expressed interest to see such things from me!) New apartments to move into (well, just one)! So much to do! And it all starts when I head back to the home of Jeni's Ice Cream and the most unthreatening gaybars in the country (probably). I'm so glad (and fortunate really) to be in a three year program because with the introductory year behind me and the thesis year looming ahead, the second year should be a party...a writing party! Full of seriousness and purpose and personalized rejection letters and late night coffee jaunts and new recipes and pledges to go to the gym that may or may not hold and...and...and...well I'm glad to be at OSU.

Here are some recommendations on poetry: Robert Hass's The Apple Trees at Olema, Carolyn Forche's The Country Between Us, Larry Levis's Winter Stars, Alan Shapiro's The Dead Are Alive and Busy, Rae Armantrout's Versed, Timothy Liu's Say Goodnight and Ralph Angel's Anxious Latitudes. All are quite good in my estimation.

And for the applicants...don't let the process harangue you this early in the game. Be sure to be writing now since most applications won't go live for another couple of months. It's time to draft, draft, and redraft everything. A year from now if you're in a program you'll realize the humor of this since you, like me, will probably be doing the exact same thing though (hopefully) with better results.

Preparing

2010-08-09T14:42:00.000-07:00

by Ali Haider

I am leaving in six days. It is slowly beginning to register for me exactly what that means. Several things. Boxes must be filled with books, notebooks, stray pens, pieces of paper with a number or a name that I'm too afraid to throw out, and all the rest of my junk that doesn't stack neatly on top of each other. Some of my boxes are bloated because I crammed a pan or a plate that doesn't quite fit in there. I'm not incredibly organized. There will be about 25 boxes in the garage that most likely could be repacked into 10.

Even though it's just three hours away, the reality of a long-distance relationship is beginning to set in. I can't wait to get out of this town/I don't want to leave her. It is possible to want two opposites at the same time. I hate driving away from people I love. My dog has no idea that in 6 days he'll be moving to Texas Hill Country. But he has always had this incredible fortitude and free-wheeling spirit that I'm starting to envy.

At 23, I think I'm on the younger end of the MFA spectrum. I have this vision of showing up to class, short story in hand, and taking a seat between two men that look like lumberjacks who introduce themselves as authors to adoring women at bars. Their stories will have themes and motifs. Mine is about some guy who's obsessed with light and may, or may not, be a moth. Their stories will uncover some truth of the human condition. On mine, someone will leave a comment calling it 'cute' or something. Is anyone starting to rethink their options? Will I be ready by the 25th to go back to class? Class. That word always brings me back from the edge of the cliff situated in the rear of my mind. This is just school. And that means I'm there to learn. I don't have to have it all figured out when I get there. I am reassured.

Have any of you started to get in touch with your incoming class? Do you guys e-mail, facebook, myspace, call, or maybe friendster? A couple of people starting at TSU in the fall have added me on Facebook. They seem like a fun bunch. But, I'm wary that I've turned a few of them off with status updates like "Their Boueuf Bourguuignon is the tits" (I Love You Man, anyone?).

I'd love to hear about everyone else's preparation. What is everyone reading this summer? I picked up a book by Cory Doctorow that I'm halfway through. It's weird, and I like that. Oh , and I read that book about the girl with the dragon tattoo. Not bad.

Intro: Chrissy Widmayer, George Mason University (Class of 2013)

2010-08-09T13:01:00.000-07:00

Hello! My name is Chrissy Widmayer (not to be confused with the original Chrissy here on MFA Chronicles) and I'll be studying nonfiction in George Mason University's MFA program starting this fall.

I'm a 23-year-old from the beautiful state of Michigan where I've lived my entire life, except for the six months I spent studying Spanish and international relations in Quito, Ecuador during undergrad. Like many people, I left undergrad with a degree and a passion. Though I majored in political science at Kalamazoo College, I came away with a need to tell stories. Having studied documentary filmmaking as well as poetry, playwriting, screenwriting and creative nonfiction, it was merely a choice of which direction to take. Luckily, George Mason's program requires cross-genre studies, which suits me just fine.

I was thrust into the MFA online community during my extremely anxious application season. I applied ten places in two genres (poetry and nonfiction), and was horribly impatient to find out where I'd end up. After a summer spent in Chicago interning for PBS, I was forced to move back in with my parents. Southeast Michigan is known for it's unbearably high unemployment rate, and I remained unemployed and unhappy until I applied for my MFA. This community kept me breathing and positive as rejections rolled in. They cheered me on as I got accepted at California College of the Arts and Emerson, and got wait-listed at George Mason. I made friends online who became friends in real life (like fellow MFA Chronicler, Laura). Everyone in the MFA online community supported me, rejoiced with me, cried with me, watched the Olympics with me, and helped me get through it all. It was on April 15th, when I had to accept or decline my spot at Emerson, that I got off the wait-list with similar funding at George Mason. The decision was gruesome and difficult, but with the help and support of my MFA friends, I am completely certain I ended up choosing the right place for me. After a year of unemployment and odd jobs (I've worked as a substitute teacher, a video editor, and a standardized test scorer), I'm looking forward to starting school again just a couple of weeks.

My writing focuses mostly on womanhood and living life as a fat woman. I write a blog about body and size acceptance, and talk about everything from politics and feminism, to fashion and Harry Potter. I am avid Harry Potter fan (superfan, you might say), and I love movies, music and board games. My favorite place in the world to be is on the shores of Lake Michigan. I hate mushrooms and love peppermint ice cream. I adore elephants, ducks, and cutesy-sounding words that have double letters in them (i.e. bubbles, giggle, fluffy). I'm always laughing, and often have a hard time explaining why I'm laughing to my friends and family. In October, I'll be an aunt for the first time, when my older sister has a baby. Both she and my older brother live within twenty minutes from my parents, so it will be extremely difficult for me to move away.

I'm looking forward to posting here and getting to know all of you. I can't believe the beginning of my MFA life is drawing so near! I'm certain I'll have much more to post in the coming weeks as the start of the program looms. I can't wait to start posting!

Revving up for my thesis year

2010-08-08T10:38:00.000-07:00

By Casey Tolfree

I feel like the worst blogger ever. I had so much fun blogging both here on MFA Chronicles and on my own blog last spring and then summer happened and my blogging days went on vacation. Sadder still is that there was plenty to write about.

For all the newcomers to this blog, I am about to start my second and final year of my MFA program at Adelphi University.

I spent the summer writing my thesis and reading a lot of books I'd never heard of, but really enjoyed (for the most part).

I was concerned at first that I had only the three and a half months of summer to write my thesis. Writing for me is a long process and sometimes it will be days before I can find my characters again. Fortunately, the story I'm writing has captured me and I have been pretty much writing it or thinking about writing it every day.

When I met with my advisor Vince Passaro at the end of the semester, my goal was to be at page 100 by August. It's August 8th I'm on page 112. I made a goal with myself that to reach page 100 I would simply write one page a day... and I did for the next few months. It worked. Page 100 hit right at the end of the beginning of my novel. The part I had actually outlined in detail in my head. Of course the next 12 pages were much harder to come by, they are less planned and as I try to send my narrator further on her journey I need to make sure I cover all my bases. Andi's life is complicated, even for me the person who knows her best.

Aside from writing like I said I've been reading. I was assigned to read John Updike, Couples and The Maples Stories. Both books just amazed me. Updike's writing was something I could only hope to one day even get close to.

I wound up reading a total of 11 books this summer and will hopefully increase that to 12 by September 1. The authors I read, Updike, Ann Patchett, Anne Tyler, Edith Wharton, Colsen Whitehead just to name a few that I really enjoyed. I didn't think I could successfully read that many books and get my novel over 100 pages and yet somehow I did. I give all the credit to the train rides.

I interned in Manhattan this summer at a literary agency. It was so much fun. I am going to miss going once school starts. I met a good group of people and found something I'd really like to do with my life.
The train ride into the city is 47 minutes each way, so I brought my library books and I read twice a week on the train. I think I finished a book a week that way. Couples came on vacation with me, 10 hour car ride, both ways.

Overall, I guess the point of this blog is that even though in an MFA program you are supposed to immerse yourself in the writing. It was stepping outside the writing and doing other things that allowed me to write. If I'm forced to sit and stare all day at screen, nothing of merit will come. Knowing I had to write only a page a day that helped me be successful. Learning how the publishing world worked, made me see things in my own work that needed to change to be published.

I'm excited to go back to school, to see my friends and classmates. I've grown this summer as has my writing; I want to see where their summers led them.

For Your Consideration ...

2010-08-04T11:59:00.000-07:00

Hello. My name is Rebecca Bauman and I’d like to introduce myself by way of a popular Internet meme.

REBECCA BAUMAN:

15 POINTS OF PERSONAL INTEREST

1. I’m a first-year MFA student at the University of Florida and carry an emphasis in poetry-writing.

2. I recently graduated from Pittsburg State University (Kansas) with a B.A. in English and a minor certificate in Women's Studies (the latter being the product of an absolutely rewarding and, in turn, ultimately frustrating academic and sociological experience).

3a. I was born in Texas, but my parents' divorce and respective occupations (she was a social worker, he a journalist) kept me moving around the country during childhood and adolescence.

3b. I've lived most of my life in St. Louis (MO), St. Augustine (FL) and Tallahassee (FL). After high school I spent the bulk of my time drifting between flophouses and hostels in New York City and hanging out in the backs of comedy clubs. I could also often be found at the walrus exhibit at the New York Aquarium.

4. I ultimately wound up in Southeast Kansas at the age of 21 after falling in love with and following home an 18-year-old pot-dealer whom I believed to be a dead-ringer for a young Nicolas Cage.

5a. While attending school in Kansas, I worked as an animal caretaker at a wildlife education and outreach facility, specializing in the care of the program's mammals (prairie dogs, hedgehogs, opossums, etc.) and large birds (hawks, owls, vultures and even a Catalina macaw).

5b. I also volunteered at the local Humane Society -- work which tainted my faith in humanity and left me sobbing in the bathtub at the end of most days.

5c. I now keep three dogs of varying sizes, all rescues from the pools of strays I encountered, fostered and (for the most part) re-homed while living in Kansas. (When leaving Pittsburg, I felt very much like I was rowing away from a sinking Titanic and had but those three berths in my lifeboat.)

5d. I carry a lot of white/American/middle class/Homo sapien guilt.

6. I held a number of creative content positions at PSU's campus newspaper -- work which eventually yielded an editorial fellowship with Esquire magazine in 2007.

7. Seeking my MFA (in poetry of all things) was a last minute decision -- one I didn’t and in all likelihood don’t consider the least bit practical. But, by the end of my undergraduate work, I had all these poems written and I was practically thinking in verse.

8. My background is rooted in journalism and non fiction, and I'd always assumed that if I were to pursue writing as a vocation, it would be along those lines.

9. In my mind, poetry is one of the most effective and affective forms of writing … and one of the most unwieldy (thus my insistence that I take further training). I see it very much like stand-up comedy: When poetry is good, it’s just Absolutely Amazing, Powerful-Powerful Stuff. And when it’s bad, it’s nothing less than painful -- pathetic, physically uncomfortable to experience. And so I’m terrified of producing terrible work.

10. I have never successfully maintained a blog. Lord knows I've tried ... but I'm extremely self-conscious and suffer an awful kind of impostor syndrome that leaves me ready and rarin' to bolt from public view (and, as I imagine, public critique) at the drop of a hat. It's a neurosis that certainly threatens my ability to meet the demands of a writer's existence.

11. Now that I’m in Florida, I visit the local freshwater springs and skin dive as often as I can. I also head back to St. Augustine for a look at the ocean and to wander the old streets whenever time allows.

12. DELETED

13. I regret having wasted so much of my youth without direction, though I'm told it's quite normal. I'll be 27 next month and have never travelled abroad (though I long to see the UK and Germany and France). I feel a sense of urgency, not only as a 20-something, but as a woman; I fear I'm losing time when it comes to "cashing in" on my best years.

14. DELETED, too

15a. I have a much cheerier disposition than it might seem here and now. The truth is, I could not be more grateful to have this opportunity at this program at this time. I can only hope that the overly-anxious shades of my character can scuff away in this warm, green climate … and I can come out on the other end of my time here in Florida as a generally satisfied, well-rounded, globe-trotting woman with a phenomenal butt.

15b. I am not copy-editing this post for fear I'll never bring myself to publish it.

BONUS FACTS

The scent of spearmint chewing gum makes me sick.
I'm obsessed with solid, well-written true crime.
Every year, I am more and more incensed by politically conservative and spiritually fundamentalist thinking. I fear becoming abrasive, overconfident and obnoxious.
My face looks straight in the mirror, crooked in photos.
I don't care what you say: I saw Hugh Laurie first, damnit.

Tin House Summer Writers Workshop

2010-07-26T04:44:00.000-07:00

by Jennifer Brown

Hi everyone. I got back from Tin House Summer Writers Workshop on Monday. It was a great experience. A whole week devoted to learning the craft of writing spent with like-minded souls. I have a long post about it on my personal blog HERE in case you are interested.

Hope everyone is having a great summer and that the writing is going well.

Summer Writing: Cave Canem

2010-07-25T06:56:00.000-07:00

I should change the title. It's more than that. Cave Canem provides a safe space, a home, for fellowship and poetry amongst black poets. After multiple applications, I was accepted to attend their yearly retreat at the University of Pittsburgh at the end of June this year. The format is pretty intense. The 54 poets comprised of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd year poets are split into about 8 workshop groups. We were each responsible for turning in a new poem by 10 am every day to be workshopped that afternoon with a different member of the faculty which included: Cornelius Eady, Toi Dericotte, Carl Phillips, Claudia Rankine, Ed Roberson, and Colleen McElroy.

The biggest surprise for me was the amount of personal revelation/lution that would take place. Cave Canem was not just a summer writing retreat for me, it was life changing. Really. There is something magical about stepping outside of the minority experience and into an instant family. Not any old family, but a family of poets. It was like being dipped in everything I was most passionate about. I think every poet of color should get that experience. Luckily, other organizations are following the trail blazed by Cave Canem:

Kundiman: for Asian American poets.

CantoMundo: for Latina/o poets.

Get some!

Free stuff/exciting stuff!

2010-06-18T09:44:00.001-07:00

Hey guys! First of all, hello! I've enjoyed reading everyone's summer entries. It's cool to see what your interests are and lives are outside of the MFA world.

I've been having a lot of "non-MFA" stuff happen lately-- I got engaged, and I'm getting married in August. I've been writing music reviews and interviews for my college hometown's paper, the Evansville Courier & Press, and some of that has translated to my other blog-- I got to talk to Art Alexakis from Everclear (a favorite band from my teenage years-- I still think Songs from an American Movie is my favorite narrative album of all time), and more recently, Mary Gauthier.

Mary's latest album is autobiographical-- The Foundling is about her own adoption, her search for (and later, rejection by) her birth mother, and processing all of that. It's really good, and if you listen to any kind of folk or indie music, you ought to get a copy. I've got one for free up at my website right now (which is the reason I mention any of this)-- if you want to win, just go to Katie Darby Recommends.

I've also been in contact with a lot of my favorite writers, which is partially because: I've decided to defer from the MFA program for a year. Right now, I need to get things settled in my personal life: I want to focus on building the strongest marriage I can and on figuring out what I want out of writing (since lately, I seem to be doing almost all music writing). I'm still technically enrolled at SIU, and I'll actually be teaching a comp and lit class at a local university in Indiana in the fall. I'm still part of the MFA community, but now I'm the fringe guy.

This summer has already been the most exciting one of my life, though. I wish the same to all of you. Hope your lives are going well!

Summer writing projects

2010-06-08T12:33:00.000-07:00

Hey y'all,

I hope everyone is enjoying some kind of summer break, if not from employment, at least from academia. And writing! (But not in any kind of a hurried way, necessarily...)

Today I was working on two old poems, glad now that I could get a new perspective on them; they were retail poems originally (I used to work in a grocery store), and now they still are, but with a little more differentiated view of working in the service industry (waiting tables).

What struck me in working on these poems was the question of what is salvageable as an idea or a spark for new work, that may no longer be salvageable as a poem. Both of the old poems were almost two years old. Both hadn't been touched in as much time. Both I felt pretty good about when I wrote them, but soon seemed not as good as my new work.

In revising the poems, one seemed to spring to new life, and the other seems still to cling stubbornly to its origins. What's worse, I worry that my own habits atrophy in the act of revising that latter poem as is (I.E. using revising practices I have since abandoned). So I thought I'd put this question out to the blog:

At what point should a poem be given up on?

Norman Mailer Writers Colony

2010-06-03T20:42:00.000-07:00

I've been at the Norman Mailer's Writers Colony for the past few days taking a poetry workshop with Dean Young. It's amazing. Mailer's house is right on the water in Provincetown, MA. Beautiful. Everyone is kind and smart and Dean Young is super cool. We're writing a poem a day.

Consider applying. They offer scholarships for housing and tuition.

http://www.nmwcolony.org/

Mailer's House

View from the back deck.

Intro: Chelsea Querner, UNC-Greensboro (class of 2012)

2010-06-01T19:18:00.000-07:00

Woo! New faces. And their accompanying (awkward) introductions.

Hello, all! Just taking a quick minute to scoot on over and introduce myself. My name is Chelsea Querner and I will be attending UNC-Greensboro's MFA in poetry this fall. I graduated from Roger Williams U in Rhode Island last May and earned a BA in creative writing. One year in the "real world" was enough to convince me I needed to be back in school, haha. Among other reasons.

It's hard consciously trying to be interesting but here's my best effort:
- I love the power of free verse. Big fan of manipulating line breaks and the relationship between blank space and stanzas via isolating words, repetition, narrative, punctuation (lack thereof). Two thumbs up.
- My work definitely has an emphasis on the human body; its abilities to communicate without language, its inherent metaphors, and its value/threat for different speakers.
- I cannot write metered or rhyming poetry. Sincerely, when attempting it, it's as if my fingers go into temporary paralysis and I'm forced to look at a blank screen. No good. It's on my to do list for grad school.
- I'm from New England and I'm thoroughly looking forward to having a break from grueling winters, frozen car doors and potholes. The worst.
- In certain areas, some might accuse me of being a Masshole, only while driving!

I'm truly looking forward to getting to know all the incoming and of course, the established bloggers on here. Thank you for sharing your wisdom, wit and adventures. Good luck to all and enjoy your respective summers!

Cheers!

End o' year thoughts

2010-05-29T13:45:00.000-07:00

by: Raina Lauren Fields

Whew! What a semester! If you’re interested in reading about wrapping up: my first year of graduate school, my first semester of teaching, getting engaged, and what I think is in store in fall 2010, then read on!

CLASSES:
This semester, I took:

Poetry Workshop – Erika Meitner
Editing a Literary Magazine – Bob Hicok
Practicum – Matthew Vollmer
Modern African American Fiction – Virginia Fowler

Classes were stressful this semester. I took my first graduate literature course and felt in the dark, a lot of the class. It was a lesson into what I need to do to step my game up in these literature classes in the future. We read a lot of great literature – some of which I read before, but with a much more refined eye to the texts: Gwendolyn Brooks’ Maud Martha, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, were just a few of the books we read during the semester.

Poetry workshop went smoothly and I felt like this semester was a breakthrough in my level of writing. Unfortunately, none of the pieces I produced this year were published in any literary magazines or journals, but I hope with some work and some love that I can place them somewhere in the future.

The literary magazine course I took involved reviving The Minnesota Review, a leading critical magazine’s work and bringing up the status of the literary work that is presented in the magazine. I read slush for the poetry section, along with several of my classmates. I also was involved in researching marketing and advertising opportunities. Next semester, I will act as the General Editor, providing support and guidance to the publication. In addition, my classmates and I have started an online literary magazine under the guidance of Bob Hicok. While it’s not formally affiliated with the MFA program (in that it’s not being funded by the university), it’s a great learning experience in the inner workings of a magazine.

TEACHING:

Teaching…is hard. For the spring semester, I taught one section of Virginia Tech’s ENGL 1106: Writing with Research. Side effects included student drama, continued feelings of overwhelm and fatigue, and dear God, what did I sign up for! Next semester, I will be teaching two sections of ENGL 1105: Introduction to College English. This summer, I’m spending some time to get together my syllabus, lesson plans, and researching different exercises and activities that are not only intellectual but fun.

PROFESSIONAL STUFF:

I went to AWP in Denver! I was a blast! Met a ton of great folks, including some of my poetry idols, Rita Dove, Allison Joseph, and Patricia Smith. I spent way too much money at the book fair, but the only consequence of that is being smarter! (Oh and a smaller wallet, but you win some and you lose some). I also was on a panel entitled “The 21st Century MFA student.”

I am back in VA after two weeks of the Callaloo Writer’s Workshop, which took place in College Station, TX – also known as Aggieland, also known as the town of Texas A&M. I’ve never experienced workshops like that ever before. Every day was emotional, every day was learning something new not only about your poetry but yourself. I am so thankful from that experience and am still decompressing and still writing.

Nest semester, I hope to get more involved in and out of the department by volunteering, tutoring, etc. I've also started the ground work for a professional certificate that I could complete by Spring 2012, but am playing with the idea of trying to design my own certificate in education. Not sure if the graduate school will buy it, but there's always trying!

Oh, there's that pesky thing called a thesis I'm starting to think about. And always mapping out what will happen in the future, once I've finished this darn MFA. But I'm trying this new thing called "living in the moment," so let's see how that goes.

PERSONAL LIFE:

For Spring Break, my boyfriend and I visited Paris and London. It was a great, romantic trip. We also got engaged in Paris! My fiancé, Ross, and I had been dealing the effects of a long distance relationship since I started my MFA program in the fall. (He’s in NJ, I’m in VA – an 8-hour distance). He also works full time, so seeing each other more than once a month, just isn’t an option. Methinks we will be getting married Summer 2012, though no date is set yet.

Ross recently got into the MFA program in poetry at Virginia Commonwealth University with full funding! We are now going to be 3.5 hours apart, which is much better!

Hopefully, I’ll be spending the summer in NJ with Ross, though finding any semblance of a summer job is so difficult. I do need to keep up with my apartment and my car payments, so I’m praying something goes well. I have a few internship offers in NY, which I’m really grateful for, but they would be unpaid and it may not be practical to do something like that now.

So, we shall see!

Congrats to everyone who finished their first year! We did it!

I finished undergrad!

2010-05-25T11:16:00.000-07:00

By Laura

On Sunday I graduated from the University of Rhode Island with my BA in English. Yay! So I wanted to write a post about how my undergrad career has led up to the decision to go to an MFA program.

My first couple years of college, I really had no idea what I would do when I graduated. I loved my major, loved working hard in my classes, but whenever I thought about the future... panic! It didn't help that I was bombarded from every angle with the English Major Question that I'm sure many of you are familiar with: "What are you going to do with that?" (Said with that certain disdainful tone, as though English were the most impractical thing ever to major in and I might as well get a degree in making daisy-chains, for all the good it would do me in the "real world.") I knew that writing was my favorite thing to do, along with reading everything I could get my hands on, but didn't know if it would be possible for me to pursue writing as a real career.

Then, in my junior year, I took a poetry workshop. Right from the first day of class, I was smitten. I had an amazing professor (Peter Covino), whose book was the first book of poetry I ever bought (and loved). I'd been writing poetry since high school (as a teenager I would scribble sestinas on the back of my math homework during class), but that poetry workshop really taught me to take poetry seriously as something I could do, to believe in the integrity of the work. I'll always be grateful to Peter for that. I took another poetry class with him the second semester that year, and he encouraged me to apply to MFA programs. Once I found out what an MFA program entailed, it pretty much sounded like the best thing ever and I decided that was what I had to do! I decided to go for the MFA because of all the opportunities it will open up -- meeting and working with more amazing mentors, being part of a close community of writers, teaching (hopefully!!), just immersing myself in the whole experience of starting out as a writer. I know the MFA itself doesn't guarantee me success as a writer, but I know it will be a great experience.

This past year, I continued to write poetry, taking two excellent poetry classes with Talvikki Ansel (another wonderful poet & professor at URI), in which I was further encouraged to move my work out of my comfort zone and try new things. I also discovered nonfiction by taking a workshop with Mary Cappello last fall. I loved exploring and practicing the strange and indefinable genre that is creative nonfiction. I was so happy that I was able, in my second semester senior year, to take Prof. Cappello's graduate seminar in experimental nonfiction while still an undergrad, which was an amazing learning experience and which moved my writing in more unexpected and daring directions.

I feel very fortunate to have had such a wonderful experience as an undergrad, and to have found so many incredible creative writing mentors already. I'm looking forward to grad school so much -- all the new things I will learn, the as-yet-unknown directions that my writing will move toward, the professors and students with whom I will get to work closely -- but I'll also never stop being grateful to those at my undergrad school who have helped me so much! Because of the excellent professors with whom I worked at URI, I've been inspired to devote myself to my writing, believe in it, take risks and stretch it in new directions. I know it's only the beginning and I've still got the MFA and (probably) PhD to go, but I hope that someday I can inspire and encourage students in the same way my professors have inspired and encouraged me!

First Year Wrap Up!! (UVA)

2010-05-24T19:34:00.000-07:00

I, too, made it through the first year of my MFA program. Let's get straight to the highlights:

Fall Semester

-getting to work with Greg Orr. The weekly one-on-one's were like therapy. I was able to comfortably explore topics in my poetry that I wasn't ready to share with the workshop yet in these meetings.

-MFA Reading Series. I loved hearing my cohort's work and I loved getting the opportunity to share my work. I got such great feedback from everyone. I discovered how much I actually like reading.

-started developing close friendships with two people in my program in particular. Our weekly coffee dates live on!

-the first two poems I workshopped were accepted and published!

-taking a literary journal editing class and getting a behind the scenes look at how Best New Poets is put together at the printing press.

Spring Semester

-workshop at Rita Dove's house. Weekly one-on-one's with Rita. Rita's thorough feedback. In the last meeting she kicked her feet up on her desk and kept saying, "This is so fun!" lol I mention this because people might assume that celebrity poets can't teach and won't be accessible. She is not that poet. I believe we actually formed relationships with her that will last.

-The Virginia Festival of the Book. Falling in love with Kevin Young and Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon's poetry after their readings was a welcome surprise. I can already see the effects on my own writing.

-wrote and revised the longest paper I've ever written for a graduate level lit class.

-decided for sure that I'm not going to pursue a CW PhD at this time. Now I can execute my post-mfa plan of attack on my future with more focus.

I know I'm leaving a ton of stuff out. I'm happy to be here. Happy to be in an MFA program. I promise to do a post on tips for surviving grad school as a single parent. There are a few of us out there! I can't believe the plan I had when I went back for my undergrad degree at 29 yrs old came together more perfectly than I dreamed it.

Submissions and Successes!

2010-05-17T18:03:00.001-07:00

I know via Facebook and Twitter that many contributors have had publication successes over this past year. So let's get a good list going in the comments. This will be a good way for us to not only share our successes, but for others to get some ideas, inspiration, and places to submit.

Also, C.D. Smith, the editor of Fire Point: A Journal of MFA Prose and Poetry wants everyone to check them out. Submit!

Raina tweeted that the deadline for Best New Poets is approaching on 5/20. The reading fee is only $3.50 per two poems. You can't beat that for possible publication in a book.

I'll be doing my first year wrap-up soon! And fixing up the contributor's list. I don't have an update on my progress on world peace.

Post your pubs in the comments!

First Year Wrap-Up (GMU)

2010-05-08T13:56:00.000-07:00

by Jennifer Brown

With the exception of one workshop—and I’m not “up”—I’ve completed year one of my MFA program. And what springs to mind is this: Thank god it is a three-year program! If it were two years, I’d be moving on to my thesis and thinking about graduating, and I’m not even close to ready for that. I feel like I’ve just now become adjusted, just now learned how to read closely enough to participate fully in class, just now learned some of the basics of writing decent fiction. I still feel very much like a beginner and I am glad I’ll have an extra year to work on technique before I move on to the novel that will be my thesis.

The most important thing that has happened this year is that I’ve realized how bad I am. You can’t spend large amounts of time every week devoted to reading the likes of Hemingway and Faulkner and come away thinking you are a “good” writer. You just can’t. But the great thing about the realization that you aren’t any good yet is that you can move on from there—you can get your bearings and learn and improve and even reach for the stars. Knowing how far you have to go is knowledge—and that is a great thing.

As far as my writing is concerned, it has improved 100 percent, and I’ve learned more in one year than I had hoped to learn over the course of the whole program. I’m still struggling terribly with the idea of story, but I’m finding my “voice,” and liking it. I’m enjoying the creation of elegant sentences and working with the great art of description as much as I’ve ever enjoyed anything. I’m confident that getting a handle on how to tell a story will come with practice and lots of reading. I am to write a novella this summer and I’m both excited about it and terrified. But at least I feel I have the tools to do it.

The decision to go through an MFA program was probably one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

Finishing my first year of MFA

2010-05-07T14:00:00.000-07:00

You don't want to look at a picture of me. You want to start celebrating, as I know many of you are in the same boat as me! HALFWAY THROUGH THE MFA! WOOT!

I wrote up a reflection on the past year over at rachelmarsom.com. You can click HERE! I still feel like there's a lot of stuff I didn't even get a chance to address, so I hope to write a couple more of these in the next few weeks as I continue to process everything.

If you're not done with the semester yet, good luck with all your final projects!

Who do you write for?

2010-05-07T08:32:00.000-07:00

By Casey Tolfree

Sorry I've been absent for much of the semester. It's been pretty hectic. Truthfully though, there hasn't really been much to say. I've just been working and writing for the past few weeks. AWP was awesome. I got my thesis advisor this week. Everything suddenly became real. I have a hard deadline. It's actually inspired me to spend a lot more time at my computer.

When I woke up this morning I had a bunch of my classmates, who are just posting their final blogs for our practicum class. We had to review writing blogs/author blogs and then do peer reviews of each other's blog. One of my classmates reviewed my blog, Lifex2. I can't really tell how he felt about it, but either way one thing he said really made me start thinking about just who we are writing for as bloggers, novelists, poets, anything.

He said, I write as if I already have an audience. (Look at my followers list... I don't lol). It got me thinking How else would I write? If I write like I am trying to convince people to read my blog or as if no one else is reading I think the writing, insights, everything would be much worse. Similar to how I view my fiction, I write my blog for that one person. I don't know who she is, but I write for the one person who will find my blog or read my novel and whose life will be effected by my words. That's it. Success would be great, but I'm not writing to be a superstar. I write because I have to. It's an inherent part of me. It's that simple.

As for my blog, I try to keep it fun. It grows with me. My practicum brought back a lot of journalism I thought I had to leave at the door when I joined the MFA program. It was fun. I enjoyed transitioning my blog from a forum of work to antidotes and reviews. It let me use a skill set I have a lot of expertise in.

I posted reviews of my blog one day. It was a riot trying to create the fanfare you see on the back of a book. I had fun. Writing is supposed to be fun. Sometimes I think we forget that. We get so wrapped up in grades and what's right and what works that we forget to just sit back and have fun.

Who do you write for? How do you write? And why do you write? I have this assignment for next week where we have to observe how we write as we are writing. It's like meta-squared. Try it... see what you come up with. You might surprise yourself.

Intro: Katie Bell, University of New Hampshire (Class of 2013)

2010-04-27T08:55:00.000-07:00

Hello! My name is Katie Bell and I will be attending the University of New Hampshire's fiction MFA in the fall. I will receive my BA from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville over the summer, and I am very excited to start the MFA program.

A little bit about me: I am 21 years old, married (to a great guy whose support I cherish), finishing up my bachelor's degree and working pretty much full time at an Auntie Anne's Pretzels in a local mall. When I have free time, I work on my writing, and I have about seven different story ideas bouncing around in my head right now.

I will be in the same boat in New Hampshire, because I am willingly attending a program without funding. Why? Am I crazy? (Maybe, but that's beside the point). After antagonizing over a decision, I chose to attend the University of New Hampshire without funding because I think that the program is worth it. I have received countless emails from professors and current students extolling the virtues of the program and I feel like the University of New Hampshire will be able to give me the advice I need to improve my writing without feeling as though I'm only attending a school for the money. I am looking forward to attending classes with students who are attending UNH because they are passionate about their writing as much as I am about mine. I want to be surrounded by a group of hardworking writers, which professors and current students have assured me is what I will find at the University of New Hampshire.

Sure, I will have to work two jobs and take three classes in the fall to make ends meet financially, but I would rather work hard now to make my future the best it can be.

And I leave you with something unique about me: There's this pair of pants that I've had since I was seventeen years old. They're frayed, full of holes, and stained to the point where I no longer think of them as an acceptable pair of pants. But I still wear them because I like to think of them as a symbol of me: over-worn and torn apart, but still functional. So I am a pair of pants, still hugging the ass of life.

First Look at Texas State

2010-04-26T10:37:00.000-07:00

by Ali Haider

Just a quick reminder since it has been awhile since I last posted - I'm Ali, 23, and will be starting at Texas State in the Fall after graduating with a BA in English from a tiny island university in Corpus Christi.

I recently had the chance to go up and visit the campus in San Marcos and came away with a profound feeling of belonging. I feel like I found the right place for me. The town is small and absolutely gorgeous with plenty of little shops and cafes. There is a wonderful town square that mirrors the one in Denton (near Dallas). Texas hill country is stunning. The campus is built onto a hill, so there's lots of climbing and built-in cardio workouts. 10 minutes on campus was enough of a reminder of how out of shape I am. A friend of mine going the poetry route there told me that she has already dropped 2 pant sizes, and by the summer it will be 3. Yay for being fit and gettin some learnins at the same time!

I never really got the chance to visit any of my schools during the application process, but I have always been a firm believer that life will find me in the best possible situation. So when I left San Marcos glowing, everything about the process that I had just completed felt right, you know? I hope everyone else is starting to get this feeling as well. Sound off, blog! What say you?

In other news, I am wrapping up the last week of my classes as an undergrad. I have a few papers that are begging for my attention but have been ignored. Obviously, senioritis has set in. I thought I was going to be able to avoid falling into that cliche. Nope. Now, I am embracing it with open arms. Come on, graduation!

Geting Ready?

2010-04-24T13:29:00.000-07:00

So, I'm about two months away from my move and three from starting class again after a five year hiatus. I've been so focused on the details of the move (finding a place, figuring out how and where to register my car, expense calculations, student loan apps, etc.), I haven't thought much about school (finding an advisor, registering, getting books, filling out forms, etc.). And in general, I haven't done much to prepare for the MFA experience at all. I write somewhat regularly, but I mean in terms of what goes on in the classroom.

Next Wednesday I'm speaking at an Advanced Poetry class at BSU; I think it's sort of a guest speaker, reading/Q & A type thing, but I'm not really sure, honestly. I guess that's kind of prep for classroom discussions, but not entirely.

Anyways, I'm curious what anyone else is doing to prepare themselves for reentry into the academic rigamarole. Or if anyone else has things they'd suggest.

Recruitment

2010-04-22T06:25:00.000-07:00

Application season is finally over. *breathes sigh of relief*

It's good to see so many fresh faces on this blog--congratulations new MFA students (and MFA Chronicles bloggers)!

One thing I had wondered about, but wanted to wait until after application season ended to post: recruitment.

Specifically, I found myself trying to dazzle people who asked me about UH with the things I most love about my program, and I could find myself jabbering a little too much. I didn't want to just drown new recruits with information.

So I wondered, is it better to tell recruits all the things they don't/can't know about the program/location, or did y'all try just asking the recruits questions about what they were interested in, and letting them talk?

I also wondered this same thing when we were trying to hire teachers (and would have lunches with them or go to their craft talks): is it best to try to dazzle the teachers by jabbering at them, or should we be quiet and let them tell us what they are interested in? (A big shout-out to the two new poetry teachers at UH: Kevin Prufer and Ange Mlinko!)

I'm sure it's different for each person, but any general rules y'all follow in recruitment?

*CLARIFICATION* By dazzle and jabber, I don't mean being dishonest. I just mean talking too much.

I believe incoming students need to know exactly what they are getting into, only sometimes there's so much to tell them about the great pros (and the few inevitable cons), that it's a little hard for them to get a word in, edge-wise...

Sorry for any confusion!

Intro: Laura, Emerson (Class of 2013)

2010-04-21T12:00:00.000-07:00

Hello! I'm Laura and I will be beginning Emerson's MFA program in poetry in the fall.

About me: I'm from the tiny state of Rhode Island, full of beaches, old buildings, unemployment, and unpronounceable town names. I am finishing up my BA in English at the University of Rhode Island, which has a little-known but amazing creative writing department. I have a habit of taking too many classes and working too many jobs at once.

I was first encouraged to apply to MFA programs my junior year in college by a wonderful poetry professor. After I did more research, I decided that going for my MFA was really what I wanted. Application season was pretty much a seven-month-long panic attack -- I wanted to get in so badly and freaked out daily about whether I would. I had plans B through E drafted in my head and ready to implement at a moment's notice. I was lucky enough to get accepted to multiple programs, and it was a really difficult decision. I chose Emerson because of the many different opportunities it offers: teaching; taking classes in publishing, literature, and from other departments; working in multiple genres (I also write creative nonfiction). I also love Boston and am really excited to move there.

A little bit about my writing: If it's true that every writer has some kind of central fascination or obsession that drives his or her work, then mine is the fact that I am endlessly fascinated by the strangeness of life. I love the odd, the quirky, the offbeat; how strange this world already is, and how many strange things humans have added to it. I'm especially interested right now in working along the line between realism and fabulism.

I'm looking forward to posting on this blog, getting to know the other bloggers, and writing about my MFA experience. I'm so excited!

Intro: Chrissy Friedlander, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities (class of 2013)

2010-04-19T16:53:00.000-07:00

Hi folks. My name is Chrissy, I’m twenty-three, and I am thrilled to say that I will be attending the University of Minnesota’s MFA program in poetry this fall. Although I have to admit that I was more an MFA Chronicle Lurker than an MFA Chronicle Participant during this application season, I did find that just reading the posts of the current class affirmed my decision to pursue MFA work in the first place. Simply stated, seeing cool kids write about their cool adventures in their respective MFA programs made me want to drop everything and just live a writerly life, too. Whether I end up cool or not is still to be determined.

I guess a little about me: my real name is Christine, but I usually go by Chrissy because I hate Stephen King. Actually, I don’t hate him, per say; I just don’t appreciate sharing a name with his Christine, a Christine who just so happens a vengeful car that gruesomely murders a slew of people in Pennsylvania. Speaking of PA, I graduated from Bucknell University in 2009 with a BA in English-Creative Writing, and am still suffering from Stadler Center for Poetry and West Branch Intern withdrawal. I’m also an alumnus of the 2007 Bucknell June Seminar for Younger Poets (what up, other Junies on this blog!), the SUISS Creative Writing Program (‘08), and the University of Denver’s Publishing Institute (‘09). Since graduating, I’ve worked primarily as a writing consultant, computer literacy tutor, and web designer at home in New Jersey, but I’ve also made time to cross some things off of my to-do list. Currently, I am training for a half-marathon in May and learning how to play the harmonica. So far, I can play parts of “Danny Boy.” Well, kind of.

Although I have certainly enjoyed post-graduate life thus far, I am pumped to start my next adventure in academia at the University of Minnesota. Minneapolis is such a sweet city (can’t wait to start exploring more of it!), and after visiting the campus and program this past March for recruitment events, I am convinced that U of M is the right place for me. As much as I am looking forward to taking a break from the Dirty Jerz, however, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous about moving westward. This whole apartment-search-thing, for one, is a bit nerve-wracking, since I’ve never actually searched for an apartment before. Any advice?

Well, I guess that’s all for now. I’m so excited to be a part of this awesome online community, and I can’t wait to hear more about our joint ventures in the MFA world. Keep it real.

Cool assignment

2010-04-18T15:46:00.000-07:00

Hey guys,

My professor, Pinckney Benedict, gave us a really neat assignment this week-- along with our normal writing, he asked us to think about what our theme song is. This became a huge existential crisis for me, because I know way too much music for my own good, and every song seemed either way too simple or too complicated. (I also have a pretty healthy fear of the people around me understanding me too well, so I didn't want to give anything away.) You can see my freaking out about it here at my blog.

But it made me think in other ways, too-- our workshop is pretty intense. Each writer has a story due every other week, and Pinckney requests that it be new, and whatever you're working on when your turn comes up. As a result, I've written seven full length stories this semester (they are certainly not all good).

So an assignment like this, even if it's just something quick and fun, was a breath of fresh air. It kind of helped me get energized about writing again, this week, too, because I had a "theme song" (both the one I sent to him and the one that is my SECRET theme song, like my superhero theme). Do your professors have cool exercises that they use to change things up? And do you guys even think it's beneficial to use music in writing classes?

And what the hey-- what's your theme song? Do you have a writing theme song and a personal theme song, or are they one and the same?

Conferences? Summer Plans?

2010-04-17T12:09:00.000-07:00

by Jennifer Brown

My semester is wrapping up and I’m thinking about plans for the summer. For the past several years I’ve done workshops at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. It was always a great experience—especially the year I had the pleasure of working with Bret Anthony Johnston, who is an amazing writing teacher. But Bret doesn’t teach there anymore, and I feel like I’ve outgrown the festival a bit. So this year I decided to try and get in somewhere a little more competitive. I’ve applied to three places—Bread Loaf, Sewanee, and Tin House—with my preference being in that order (I’m already on the east coast). I got an acceptance letter from Tin House today, but I don’t expect to hear back from Sewanee for another couple of weeks, and I don’t expect to hear back from Bread Loaf until the end of May. Damn, waiting is hard! I think GMU has funds available to grad students who attend summer conferences, but I don’t know the details—I’ve put in an email to the grad programs manager for more information.

I've put up a video about Tin House on my personal blog--you can find it HERE.

Anyone else going to a summer conference? Does your school help you out with the cost of attendance? Maybe some of us will end up in the same place and can meet up?

Summer plans everyone?

Intro: Ashley Harrington, Florida Atlantic University (class of 2013)

2010-04-16T22:20:00.000-07:00

Hi!

Intro: Lindsay Hansen, Ohio State (class of 2013)

2010-04-15T20:11:00.001-07:00

Hey everyone! I just wanted to stop by and introduce myself before I forget. My name is Lindsay, I'll be 23 in fifteen days, and I'm a nonfiction writer living in western New York. I'll be starting at Ohio State in the fall and couldn't be happier to be headed to Columbus in four months!

I'm currently finishing my fifth year of undergrad at SUNY Brockport, about twenty miles west of Rochester, NY. My degree will be in English (creative writing concentration), Political Science, and Women and Gender Studies. I decided pretty late -- my third year -- to declare English as a major, so I decided to stay an extra year so I could get the full experience. I've been lucky and have found an incredible community of writers here. I'm currently the editor-in-chief of our undergraduate literary magazine, Jigsaw, and the president of English Club. Last year, I did an internship with the Brockport Writers Forum, our reading series, which brings in 10 writers every year. Aside from school and my involvement in literary things, I work in our Women's Center as a program coordinator and just recently "retired" after four and a half years in student government. We had our annual end of the year student/faculty reading last night and the whole thing made me realize how close I am to graduation. It's actually pretty terrifying.

I've lived in small towns in western New York my whole life -- near Keuka Lake until I was 18, and then here in Brockport for the past five years -- so location was huge for me in terms of picking a school. I wanted a change, but I also wanted to be close enough that I could drive home if necessary. Columbus, about seven hours from my parents' house, is exactly what I wanted. It's a big city (to me, at least, though I'm sure others would disagree), but the program is relatively small (about 50 people over three years) and incredibly welcoming, so it feels more like what I'm used to. Funding was also a huge concern for me, as well as teaching experience. So honestly, Ohio State offers everything I'm looking for in a program.

I was lucky and heard from OSU in late January, was rejected by Minnesota in early February, and was accepted at my final school, Minnesota State - Mankato, in early March. I officially committed a few days later, so I've been pretty relaxed about where I'm going for over a month now. I even found an apartment when I visited for open house on April 2nd. It's been a nice change, since I've spent the past year worried that I'd be unemployed and living with my parents after graduation.

I look forward to getting to know all of you and can't wait to read about your experiences with the MFA. You can e-mail me at lindsaay [dot] hansen [at] gmail [dot] com, add me on Facebook, or follow my personal blog. I also have a twitter, but rarely update.

New Contributors Welcome!

2010-04-15T16:51:00.000-07:00

Happy Final Decision Day, New MFA'ers!

I have to say that I am very excited that the upcoming class of new MFA students has taken the initiative to see about becoming contributors on the blog. I look forward to your introductory posts and getting to know more about you and your program!

To be honest, when the blog started I hadn't imagined it as something that we'd continue to add contributors to each year. I thought it would be interesting to look at the experiences of people who all started their MFAs at the same time and where it would lead for all of us and that's as far as my vision went. Thankfully, the nature of this blog does not limit it to one person's vision! So I'm really thankful and excited about how things are turning out and that people have found what we've done here useful and now want to contribute.

We are totally open for new contributers! You can contact me at jkgadson at hotmail.com for access to start posting on this blog if you are interested. The only requirement is that you be an MFA student of poetry, fiction, or nonfiction. It doesn't matter if you are low-residency or whatever the opposite of low-residency is since full-time doesn't sound right to my seminar paper fried mind. Onsite? Anyone, anyone? Buehler?

I'm planning on changing the way contributors are displayed so it will be a few weeks before that's accurate. But it would be great for the next class to keep the blog going with introductory posts and other prepping-for-the-program type posts while a lot of us who are already in programs labor under end of semester demands, which I plan to post about next week after I've finally completed this 20 page lit paper.

Introduction: Ali Haider, Texas State University (Class of 2013)

2010-04-13T19:47:00.000-07:00

Hey! My name is Ali, I'm 23, and I will be starting at Texas State in the Fall (Fiction). I have been a traveler my entire life from being born in Pakistan and uprooted to Florida at the age of 1, returning to the fatherland when I was 13, beginning my undergraduate career at the University of Minnesota, and finally transferring to Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi. Being ricocheted back and forth between homes like a ping-pong ball wasn't always fun, but I think all the experiences and perspectives it has given me has certainly informed my writing in beautiful and profound ways. In my writing, I like to explore that feeling of disconnection and confusion, and the ways that we attempt to reconcile our identities in the midst of that alienation. If that makes any sense.

Benefiting from the British styled, science-intensive education that I received in Pakistan, I was already about 60 credit hours away from graduating with a B.A. in Microbiology when I got to college. Realizing my love of literature and writing, I switched my major to English and transferred to A&M-CC for the in-state tuition. Under the tutelage of two incredible professors, Robb and Vanessa Jackson, I found my voice as a storyteller. Their belief in my abilities and unwavering support put me on the path to the MFA. Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried was one of those books that I had read when I was younger that made me say to myself, "I want to do that." When I found out that he taught a couple workshops at Texas State, my application practically filled itself.

I'll be relocating in August with my pup, Charlie, who I will turn to whenever things get tough. I got an Instructional Assistantship position, which means that I won't be teaching right away but instead will be assisting a professor in a large literature lecture. This gives me a year before teaching first-year English, a chance to slowly wade into the ocean of graduate academia before plunging headlong into the cold cold waters of teaching reluctant Freshman.

Until then, I am wrapping up my final semester and trying to remain sane while working at the Writing Center. I look forward to following everyone this coming year and detailing my experiences at an up and coming MFA program in South Texas.

Bringing the reader and the poem together

2010-03-31T12:15:00.000-07:00

There’s a concept made up by some old guy(!) that’s popular in translation studies: all translation decisions either bring the reader closer to the text, or the text closer to the reader.

I think this is a fascinating statement, and one that I sometimes apply to my own poetry: am I trying to make my idea or perception or description closer to my reader, or how hard am I willing to make the reader work to get at, perhaps, my purest understanding of that concept.

I think another danger is that in grad school there’s a pressure to over-perform, that the piece has to “do something” or “bring something new to what it is.”

Is it important to make these considerations? Or are you trying to learn how to more purely express something (an idea, or maybe a scene) and craft is just a vehicle for that expression?

Are you worried about going too far, and losing the thread of what the poem is? Or not going far enough, and not discovering what the poem is?

This is pretty similar to my last post (well, the one before the AWP post--which, by the way, if you're going, feel free to comment on) about good and bad poems, which got some really interesting responses—I hope y’all have cool thoughts to share for this question (bring the reader closer to the poem, or bring the poem closer to the reader?), too!

AWP

2010-03-31T12:13:00.000-07:00

We're about a week away from AWP. I'm going to be there. Are you?

If y'all want to start up an e-mail chain or something (in the comments below), I'll start it off: my e-mail is jsgottliebmiller at gmail dot com. I'll be in Denver Wednesday afternoon through Sunday afternoon.

Hope to see you there!

Rabbits

2010-03-29T09:23:00.000-07:00

Just a quick little post from me today. I’m reading Alice Fulton’s Feeling as a Foreign Language: The Good Strangeness of Poetry for class, and I came across this chunk that really made me happy and sad all at the same time. It seemed timely too, with Easter coming up… and I think it says something special about grad students.

Here it is: CLICK ME!

Enjoy!

Hello All

2010-03-28T21:51:00.001-07:00

Hi everyone,

I was accepted into the Colorado State University MFA (poetry emphasis) a month or so ago, and into this blog/community a few weeks later. Yey for all that. I won't spend much time going into my decision or application process, because that was pretty simple. I applied to CSU (only) and was accepted there. I was very fortunate.

But, I thought I'd pass along a little background information about myself. Graduated from BSU with an English Degree with a Writing Emphasis in 2003, picked up an MA out of indecision and partially boredom in 2005, and then spent 5 years away from the university. During that time I quit most all 'poery' writing and focused on making (short) films.

It's been a long, awkward road back to writing poems, and one I'm sure I'll get into at some point. While theres no doubt poetry is important to me, I've learned I have to seek other creative outlets besides just poetry--and that will be the challenge for me, during my MFA. Sure I'm excited to be studying poetry and to have all that time to write, don't get me wrong. But, my sanity is going to be dependent on finding and pursuing those other outlets. I think.

Of course, that's the way I feel today, and could change in a few months, when I show up to campus and meet everyone. For now, I'm finishing up a short film, shooting one more before I leave, writing a (gasp) 'novel' (?), and hoping I've made the right choice to pursue the MFA.

I don't have a blog, but I have a website I haven't updated in like 3 months: www.timothydavidorme.com.

Nice to 'meet' you all.

Good and bad poems

2010-03-28T11:07:00.000-07:00

I recently "finished" a poem that I've been working on for about two and a half years. The poem was one of the best things I had ever written, when I started it, and now that it's finished, I consider it up there again. Indeed, when I came back to it I found that it worked in ways I didn't even realize at the time. It wasn't ever a bad poem, it was just the ending/second half of the poem that took so long to make right.

A lot of poems go nowhere, but lead to other poems that do. Or there's one or two super-fine lines that need to find a different home. But I wonder if, as a whole, a good or bad poem's nature is inherent: can a good poem only be good, and a bad poem only be bad?

By that I mean, are there poems you can come back to, and even though the craft was far inferior, less trusting and more insular perhaps, or the rhythm was off or the tension slack--is it possible that poem had some spark of life that another, far craftier but less felt (felt right as in accurate, not felt as in merely emoted) poem will almost never have?

I'm not sure what the implications of this question are. I still think people should write a ton, since it's easier to sift through the garbage, and I don't think poems should be given up on, since they do often lead to other poems, or a better understanding of personal craft.

I don't think bad or good needs to be that loaded a labeling, either. I just mean a poem (you have written) that you are compelled by as opposed to or more than a poem that you aren't.

Is it liking the poem what leads to the poem being good? Or do you like a poem because it is already (or really could be) good and you just don't know how yet?

A Busy Few Weeks in NYC

2010-03-25T20:49:00.000-07:00

By Casey Tolfree

I've been meaning to post but I've just been ridiculously busy with work and school. I wrote about some of the things I've been doing for school on my personal blog and I thought I'd post it here so you guys can get a glimpse. Anyway, March 11-March 14 was quite a weekend.

Who says just because there is a hurricane storming outside that you can’t have a great weekend? Not me. I had quite an eventful weekend despite the craziness outside. It’s hard to say what was the most entertaining or interesting part of the weekend so; I’ll just start at the beginning.

Let me preface this post with the fact that I am not a city person – or I wasn’t until this semester. I’ve lived just a short train-ride outside New York City my whole life. Twenty miles by car. Unlike many of my classmates and college acquaintances, going to the city was never particularly appealing. I hated having to run around a train schedule (I still do) or wait for the never showing up late night subway. Now that I have class in the city, all bets are off. I spent three of the last four days going into the city, to the Public Theater, to Brooklyn, to the KGB Bar. It’s tiring.

I had the unique opportunity on Thursday evening to see Suzan-Lori Parks’ new play, The Book of Grace at the Public Theater. Having read two of her plays, I was interested in just how her new play would be written and performed. Book of Grace seems to be a standard written play, though I haven’t seen the script. It is separated by different chapters in the Book of Grace.

Grace is one of the three characters in this play. Grace is a woman tries to see the good in everything. She is trying to reunite Vet and his estranged son, Buddy (Snake). Set along the Mexican border much of the plays actions are dependent upon Vet’s border patrol job. He is receiving a medal. This brings Buddy home.

Vet is unforgiving and relentless. He has made plenty of mistakes, but he will never own them. He will never change. Buddy is a lot like his father, though he doesn’t want to admit it. He returns home to give his father a second chance but winds up just wanting to kill him, and attempting to.

Vet was played by John Doman. Doman is a pretty popular television star. He’s been in “NCIS”, “Law & Order” and “ER” just to name a few. To be honest, as much as I was enthralled by the play I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how I knew this actor.

The play was great. The Public Theater was pretty and I added yet another city location I am now comfortable navigating.

So after seeing the play I traveled back to Westchester just to come back to the Varick street campus of Adelphi about 12 hours later.

Then the rain came.

My Friday class in the city was probably the highlight of the weekend. We had the opportunity to have Susan Henderson and Marie Mockett come and speak to the class about their writing lives. I felt inspired after class. I felt that I learned a lot. They both had great advice for how to get an agent and just about writing in general.

As someone who has been trying to write a synopsis for about a year, this class period really put things in perspective. I was able to write my one-sentence pitch and narrow a 380-page novel into a concise thought. I even queried an agent for said novel.

Then I went to Brooklyn. I’ve never been to Brooklyn and now I know why – it’s far away.

Henderson told us we should go to the KGB Bar and talk to people and to make sure we had our pitch ready. I’d already been planning on visiting KGB Sunday for an Electric Literature reading.

I have to say, I’m surprised. KGB is a room, literally. It was so crowded and I can’t believe we found seats. It was a great experience. Rick Moody was the headliner so to speak. He read his “Twitter” story, “Some Contemporary Characters.” He’s a great reader and the story was funny. It spoke volumes about the differences between men and women, between young and old. It was a telling piece that made you laugh.

Just for a quick example, after the older man and the young co-ed have sex, they realize they have lost the stuffed rabbit from the carnival. The man says philosophically thinking about where it could have gone, “Did I slay the rabbit?” It’s hard to catch the humor without Moody standing in front of you reading this piece but let’s just say it was funny.

Before Moody hit the stand, Jenny Orfill read part of her story from Electric Literature 3. Most inventive and inspiring were two lesser known writers, Cristina Moracho, a recent Brooklyn MFA graduate and Wythe Marschall.

Moracho read a non-fiction piece about a neighbor who only referred to as “The Flasher.” The story itself was witty, funny, lively, but even more so was Moracho’s voice in reading it. Her ability to read the story with the right amount of grace, humor and irony made the piece everything it needed to be.

Marschall’s piece, a story from his collection The Pale Weed Bender, was called “I Heard the Bells of Graveyard Walk.” Wythe premised his story by explaining that they are set in the 1860-1899 period. He read a little too fast but his accent added to the already original narrator, Jake. The story had honest humor, the type of humor that makes you laugh because it’s true. As a reader, Wythe was perfect. He would skip descriptions in his story for time, but summarize in a comical way.

“Then he worried some more but you don’t need to hear about it.” Or something along those lines.

The night ended in typical Metro North fashion. The 9:56 train I planned to take – missing in action. The 10:05 that arrives – doesn’t go to Dobbs Ferry. So, I miss the 9:20 by four minutes and have to wait an hour to catch a train home. Needless to say, after I got off the train, drove my boyfriend home and drove back to my own apartment… midnight. I work at 5 a.m.

Yeah…exhaustion but it was totally worth it.

The next Friday I went to the NYC Teen Author Festival at the NYPL - amazing.

It was fate really. I logged on to Twitter one day and there it was. One of my favorite authors was not going to the NYC Teen Author Festival. The what, I said. I followed her link and found a Facebook page for a weeklong festival throughout the city’s public libraries. It just happened to be on our Spring Break. And I just happened to have Friday off.

Friday was the Teen Author Symposium. A day of panels filled with some of the top young adult fiction authors in the country, including my favorite, Sarah Dessen.

Dessen, along with Jessica Blank, Eireann Corrigan, Jenny Han, Terra Elan McVoy, Siobhan Vivian, Adrienne Maria Vrettos and Jacqueline Woodson, sat with host David Levithan during the capstone panel Friday evening to talk about Writing in a Teen Girl’s Voice.

Each of the eight authors read a selection from one of their books. Dessen read from her newest release, Along for the Ride.

She mentioned in her discussion that she had originally wanted to title the book “The World of Girls” definitely not as good a title and not as in tune with Dessen’s other titles.

One of the biggest things the panel talked about was the importance of appearance when having a teen girl as the narrator.

Dessen said she does not like to use too much description of her characters.

“I want the reader to be able to see themselves in the story,” she said. “The more specific you get…there are not a lot of people who can relate to that.”

The most exciting panel of the day however was the Boy You Can’t Have Panel featuring Susane Colasanti, Elizabeth Eulberg, Robin Palmer, Elizabeth Scott, Melissa Walker and Maryrose Wood.

Wood was hilarious. She brought a life to the panel. She admitted that after her divorce at 40; dating brought back all the memories of being a teenager. The fears, the wonder, everything it was to be sixteen. She uses that feeling to create her teenage characters in her books like My Life the Musical.

But it was Susane Colasanti who really seemed to capture for me just exactly what it means to be a teen author. She said her internal age is sixteen.

“People a lot of the time ask me how I write for teens,” she said. “I look at them and I’m like how don’t I write for teens.”

Levithan didn’t share any of his work but he was a great host. He just really brought the authors to life. It was easy to see the small world of writing that Susan Henderson spoke about on the stage Friday. In between panels, he Nicholas Sparks bashed, which is always amusing. He even read samples from the lastest book-turned-movie The Last Song. There was some Miley bashing too, but then again, can you blame them?

The New School

2010-03-24T16:08:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone!

First, apologies: I've been AWOL since break. The good news is that I've spent that time writing, reading, and revising. (Also playing with my son). Read Push, Wide Sargasso Sea, and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao all recently. Amazing books in my opinion, though I find it hard to "recommend" Push just because of how painful the imagery can be.

I got a comment on my blog today from Winston, asking about The New School. That reminded me of two things:
1) It's March and people are getting accepted to MFA programs (yeah!) and
2) Seth Abramson's blog is no more.

For anyone thinking about The New School, I want to say this:

I love it. This is the perfect program for me, and that's really the most important factor. Full disclosure here: I didn't apply anywhere else because The New School's schedule was exactly what I needed and the only way I could do something full-time, full-residency.

That said, if my experience here ended up sucking I would tell you. But it's been fantastic. I'm quite sure it all depends on classes and teachers, and I've had great ones in this first year. Even more important than that is probably peers, and again, even though that all depends, I've found great, great, great ones. Great peers is one thing, but I'm also making great friends. I love the atmosphere, the program, the overall philosophy and the people I'm working with. Do I hear people with complaints about this class or this workload or what have you? Of course. Have I ever regretted choosing The New School? No.

Something else to really think about: The way we're structured is that we have 3 semesters (Fall, Spring, Fall) of courses, one workshop and one lit seminar per semester. The fourth and final semester is your thesis semester where, if I understand it correctly (and I'm pretty sure I do), we focus on on creative and critical theses and meet with a peer group and our adviser. (We don't have classes).

I forgot to mention readings: each semester you're required to go to eight readings, and I've been to some really, really good ones.

As you know, your choice depends on a lot of things. What can you afford to do? What can you not afford not to do? You will read and write (and, unless you get a full ride, work another job) a lot, but that's the same anywhere. The New School only meets at night (from 8-10:30, with readings often at 6:30) so it makes a day job doable.

My gut says to go with the school that you think fits you best. Ask LOTS of questions. Ask students, ask professors in the department. Read the work of people on the respective faculties of the places you're looking. All of that. I know you know all of this by intuition, but I think it's good to say.

hit my blog if you want to connect about The New School in more specific depth. Reply to this post with your email and specific questions and I will do my best, amidst writing and fathering and paying bills, to be thorough and prompt. I'll also try to remember to check back here as often as I can for comments.

Thanks, Winston, for asking for my thoughts! Thanks, as always, to Jonterri for this venue.

Defining the workshop

2010-03-23T11:15:00.000-07:00

There was article by Jason Schneiderman about what the workshop is and what it can be for in the latest American Poetry Review. It's a pretty neat article, and it got me thinking.

I've had some pretty cool and different workshops in my time--everything from drawing my poem to having it diagrammed in time and space, to regular old criticism from my peers.

Right now I'm in the thesis manuscript workshop, by a fluke of scheduling and an experiment in how the class is run. The only reason I was able to stay in the class is because we weren't only focusing on the manuscript as a book, but also what such a large selection of poems says about the person writing them (or the myth the poet is making of herself). Suffice it to say, it's been phenomenal to read everyone else's thesis manuscripts, and though I don't have an MS I did get to have a large sample of my work discussed.

I learned some things about my writing: how I view the body as grotesque; the way I collage, or work almost in the mode of an action painting; that I was cultivating a voice of ironic asides that I hadn't even planned on, or particularly liked; that I over-rely on "to be" verbs, etc. Mostly I got my butt kicked, but in the best possible way (which is, I suppose, the goal of all workshops). My myth seemed to be Atlas or Midas, one of those classical figures who believes himself (or is) cursed by his own strengths.

So now I have absolutely no idea what to do. Do I embrace my habits and preoccupations? Do I try to be aware of them but not work in their modes? Do I try to do something completely new? Right now I just want to write good poems, but I don't want to write the same good poems as before.

So there are two questions really:

First, what is the workshop good for? Nurturing skills? Vision? Talent? How you communicate your vision to your audience? Finding out what kind of poet you are (or have been lately)?

And if you did find out what kind of poet you (currently/recently) are, what would you do with that information?

Visiting Writers and New Recruits

2010-03-20T18:12:00.000-07:00

by Emily May Anderson

This past week, George Saunders was our Writer-in-Residence here at Penn State. He gave a public reading on Thursday night (well-attended, and very entertaining), and met with various classes and groups of students, as well as having individual conferences with all of our fiction MFAs. I’m a poet so I only got to interact with him at the poets breakfast yesterday morning, the general MFA lunch, and the final party that Bill, our program director, hosted last night. In all of those situations, he was friendly, down to earth, and much less cynical than I had expected based on his work. He runs the MFA program at Syracuse, so he was very interested in our feelings about how our program is run, and at breakfast yesterday, we were discussing ways to approach workshop outside the normal format, and ended up generating the idea of multi-program workshops (i.e. either through email or video conferencing, allowing Penn State students and Syracuse students to workshop together). I have no idea if that will ever happen, or what the necessary logistics would be, but it was just so cool to hear another perspective and to see someone else who really wants to think outside the box and find ways of doing things that will give the students good feedback; his attitude toward the whole MFA thing was really really great, and the whole writer-in-residence thing was excellent.

The program also announced a partial list of readings for next year, including Jane Hirshfield, Jonathon Lethem, and the 2011 Writer-in-Residence Susan Orlean. I’m a little disappointed that we won’t have a poet in residence next year either, but it’s just the timing of a two year program with three genres – someone’s going to miss out.

The other interesting thing going on, which overlapped slightly with the Saunders visit, was Recruitment. I think I posted a little bit about my experience as a recruit last year (in a post about how I chose my program) and I posted more about it on my blog last March, but the short version is all the admitted MFA and MA students in English are invited to campus for a sort of group visit. It was so interesting and fun to be on the other side of it this year! The MFA recruits got to come to the party for George Saunders last night, so we all met them there, then we took them to an MFA reading, where all the MA recruits also ended up. They had a breakfast with the graduate director and some other folks this morning, then I don’t know what the MAs did, but the MFA recruits went to lunch with six of us current MFA students, then we gave them a brief campus tour, then they got to go meet with faculty and do other things. They all seem cool, and I’d be happy to have all of them come join us next year (Hello, Denise, and any of the others who read this!!!!) It was a lot of fun to meet them, and it was cool to reflect that a year ago, I was in their shoes - getting shepherded around campus, meeting a ton of people, telling the same introductory story to everyone, answering the same questions (name, genre, where are you from?), till my brain was full of names and faces and there was no amount of coffee that could help me concentrate.

I actually felt that way a bit myself today. Thursday and Friday had both been long, full days, what with my regular schedule plus all the extra stuff, then this morning I had training for my summer teaching assignment before our lunch. But I’ve managed to be pretty productive in the time I’ve had today, and I look forward to an even more productive day tomorrow. Six more weeks of the semester! Yikes!

Virginia Festival of the Book

2010-03-18T20:49:00.000-07:00

I'd never been to the Virginia Festival of the Book so I didn't really know what to expect. It's about a half a week of readings all over Charlottesville. I went to the UVA MFA Alumni reading, a Fady Joudah reading (2007 Yale Series of Younger Poets), and a presentation about the blues by William Ferris. Tomorrow night is a BIG NIGHT: Major Jackson (the highlight for me), Nikki Giovanni (nothing needs to be said), Kevin Young (I've been wanting to get into his stuff so I'm excited about him too) and more.

Question: If I saw someone 2 years ago and they haven't come out with a new book yet and I own all of their books and they've signed them all for me...is it crazy to have them sign them again? LOL I ask because the only time I really get to chat with them is usually while they're signing a book. How am I going to get a convo without getting a book signed? Anybody done something like this before?

OH! Kim Addonizio is reading tomorrow and she is taking time out to speak to the MFA students prior to her reading. So I won't have to do any shady book signings to chat with her lol.

This totally makes up for the fact that due to a lack of funding at UVA, we really didn't have anybody come read outside of our visiting writers. And it also helps to make up for the fact that I won't be going to AWP until next year when it's in DC (a two hour drive from here).

Who's reading around your way this spring?

Midterms, AWP, Thesis Thoughts

2010-03-10T10:16:00.000-08:00

By Casey Tolfree

First off, I cannot believe that I am halfway through my second semester. Time is going so quick this semester. Maybe it's because I'm having more fun and I feel happier. I officially count my MFA classmates among my friends, we go out on weekends, they came out for my birthday, we talk outside of class. It's a great feeling. All I wanted for the longest time was a group of friends who understood what it was like to really be a writer. I hadn't had a group like that since to be honest middle school. I tried to fill the void with expansive novels and a college newspaper, but it just wasn't the same. This is the first time I feel (not to be cheesy or cliche) complete. That doesn't mean it's all figured out or anything but it does mean that I am happy and writing, which is all I ever wanted.

Secondly, I have a midterm today. I honestly thought midterms were done. I mean, why have a midterm in a writing class? Okay, so it's a literature class but it's an open book short essay exam. I would rather write a 5-page essay at home but that's just me. So, I've been studying, a skill I really don't usually have to do, and it's just so tedious. I have like six books I have to bring to class just in case I need them for the essay topics. My back hurts just thinking about it. I'm also getting critiqued today. I submitted the first chapter of my new novel. SCARY!

This brings me to the topic of my thesis. Adelphi is a really new program, I'll be part of the fourth graduating class. I like that. I like that I can be part of building something that is clearly going to be great but it also means there are kinks. The thesis project tends to be expected to be a compilation of short stories but I'm a novelist and I want to be working on my novel. I don't want to stop working on my novel so I can prepare separate things for my thesis. I want my thesis to be an organic part of my program experience. I have one short story I just wrote that was the basis for the novel I'm writing but nothing else in the short story genre has really spoken to me. I'd like to include that story and have the rest of the thesis be parts of my novel. They don't have to be consecutive parts just chapters I think show my best work. I don't know if this is possible. I'm afraid of losing my characters voice and not being able to continue the novel because it's going to be great. I think it could be one of those books that really helps a lot of people dealing with absentee or dead beat or just horrible fathers.

I'm officially going to Wilmington, NC this summer. It's the place that inspires me the most. It's peaceful and beautiful, not to mention the nearby college has a great writing program. I'd love to live there, maybe teach and UNCW one day, who knows. I'm going for a week with friends and though we're going to be busy hunting down the filming locations for One Tree Hill and trying to stalk Hilary Burton and more importantly James Lafferty, I know I'm going to be able to sit at the Riverwalk or at Port City Java and just write my heart out. I think the best part of me comes out in Wilmington. The best ideas now, those come from my many drives up Route 17 in New York. I planned my whole novel out this weekend while I was driving. It's a great feeling.

Last semester was hard. This semester I've found my footing and I can see that I am growing into a writer. I didn't want to be a person of letters when I started. I just wanted to improve my skills and go edit someone else's book. Now, I'm embracing a life I've tried hard not to want. It's scary to make your passion your work. I don't want to resent it. I'm trying to let that fear go though and embrace writing as a lifestyle and not just a job choice. I don't mean I need to be a starving artist, I just mean I enjoy readings, I enjoy forums on writing and for once I am just doing all those things. I am making time in my life for being a writer and not just letting it be a side project. And it doesn't feel forced. It feels natural.

I actually have to go get ready for that midterm so, I'll just leave with this last bit.

I can't wait for AWP!! I'd love to meet up with anyone. I know there's like a dance party or something every night. So let's talk and find each other.

When something horrible happens...

2010-03-09T09:30:00.000-08:00

When something horrible happens, I feel obligated to talk to my students about it. For one thing, they're freshman and easily jarred by bad things. I feel like since freshmen comp students do spend so much time with me compared to their other instructors, I have that sort of duty in my job description. For example, earlier this semester we got texts at 5 AM that a gunman was on campus, and I took the next class period to spend time talking about how safety plays into our campus lives.

Now I'm dealing with something much bigger...If you have been keeping up with the news, you have probably heard that a well-known athlete supposedly sexually assaulted a Georgia College student this weekend. I came into class yesterday ready to discuss this issue with my students. You just can't ignore a giant drooling gorilla in the middle of a room...just like we all couldn't ignore the reporters around campus or big traffic problem yesterday/this weekend... Unfortunately, my students failed to see the gravity of the situation. I heard a lot of things that disturbed me, like "she asked for it". I know that there's not a lot of information out right now, but these kinds of snap judgments from both male and female students alike are really disappointing. I told myself that maybe it doesn't matter what my students believe what they do, so long as I help them think about WHY they believe that.

Thoughts? I'd appreciate hearing from you guys! Hope you're having a good day!

Nick McRae (The Ohio State University, 2013)

2010-03-07T23:19:00.000-08:00

Decision Time, at least for this exiled poet, is over. Last night, I very happily accepted a poetry spot at The Ohio State University. I cannot even express how satisfied I am in my decision, and how ridiculously glad I am that this thing is finally, FINALLY over. I hadn't expected to make the decision so early, but I did a lot of hard thinking this weekend, and I discovered that I already knew what I wanted. I can't say how grateful I am to have this opportunity. I look forward to joining the good Mr. Adkisson and the other fine people of Ohio State in Columbus this Fall. Thank you all for your support. It is truly appreciated.

Spring Break!!....& Thesis Process Comparison

2010-03-05T04:56:00.000-08:00

What's everyone doing for it? Mine is happening now! I'm doing submittals and I'm also committing myself to writing for at least 2 hours every morning this week. Also, I need to work on my abstract & bibliography for my 20 page lit paper. I know if I don't make some sort of a commitment, I'll just chill on the couch all day.

I know I mentioned toward the beginning of our first semesters that I was finding meeting with professors for one-on-ones to be one of the most fulfilling experiences of being in an MFA. Now, I'm in this new semester with a different professor and I've only met with her once because I'm intimidated. So I vow after Spring Break to fully take advantage of the opportunity to meet with her. How about you guys? Are you all taking advantage of the opportunity to work more closely with professors? How's that going?

OH! A few of my classmates and I met with the program director to talk about the thesis process and what we hope to get out of it. It was a great meeting! He asked what the process was like at other schools, so I'm curious how you all go about thesis preparation. When do you select an advisor? How often do you meet with that advisor? How do they judge it? I know some people are in 3 year programs and aren't even thinking about this, but please share if you know what the process is going to be like for you.

I was surprised to find out that the minimum requirement for our thesis is 15 pages (or is it poems?). Personally, if I ended the program and 15 pages is what I turned in, I would fail myself. My goal is that full-length manuscript!

AWP

2010-03-03T21:05:00.000-08:00

So who's going?

And for anyone who's interested in meeting up (I mean as a group, like at a bar or something)--where and when should we?

Post-MFA plans?

2010-03-02T19:50:00.000-08:00

by Emily May Anderson

I'm curious what you all are planning after the MFA.

I know that I want to teach, but I'm still undecided as to whether I'll apply to PhD programs, and, if so, whether I'll apply in Lit or only to programs that have a Creative dissertation option. I'm also still sort of waiting to see how this lit seminar goes this semester before I can really know if I even have any hope of tackling a Lit PhD. I had a meeting with the MFA director today, and while he gave me good info regarding degree requirements and thesis stuff, I'm still just as undecided about what I should do next as I was before.

I wish someone would give me a straight answer about what my chances of landing a teaching job (anywhere - community college, private college, branch campus, etc - I'm not picky and not hung up on getting a job at a prestigious university) with just an MFA and some good teaching experience. I know there are lots of variables and it's impossible to predict these things, but just in general - what are the chances of getting a job with just an MFA?

So, those of you who want to teach, are you going to take the "terminal" MFA and go on the job market? Or are you going to apply to PhD programs, and in what?

Turning to the Dark Side

2010-02-25T11:38:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, my thesis advisor Marty sat me down. He said something along the lines of "You're a very pleasant person, but in order for these poems to get really great, you're going to have to go somewhere dark".

I guess I've always written about dark things, but especially since I've begun to work on my MFA. Some of that might be natural, because of what's been going on in my personal life (adjusting to life in Middle Georgia, the unexpected death of my uncle, etc.), but really I am the happiest I've ever been. And the idea that I can't just be dark, but I need to take it even darker..into that uncomfortable, horrifying place that no one really wants to go to... was advice that I think I needed to hear, but I never expected to hear.

Has anyone else gotten this unexpected but needed advice? Are there any other dark souls out there? ;)

Decision Time: Discussion Question No. 3

2010-02-24T14:01:00.000-08:00

I've always believed that, as an aspiring college professor, gaining college teaching experience would be one of the most important and valuable aspects of an MFA program. Very recently (as in, as of this morning), though, I have had reason to consider the possible benefits (and drawbacks) of funding packages that do not include teaching as a requirement. My thought process:

On the one hand, being funded but not required to teach would free up a lot of extra writing time, and would be a truly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity (because, I mean, how often does one get paid to write without anything asked for in return?). And if one were to plan on going to a PhD program anyway (as I am), one would inevitably gain teaching experience as part of the PhD study. Therefore, it might be a good idea to accept the non-teaching funding offer.

On the other hand, though, teaching experience is a lot more important for the aspiring professor than it is for people not interested in education as a profession, and perhaps one should take advantage of as many opportunities to get that experience as possible. Also, teaching is often said to energize the mind in ways conducive to writing, and so perhaps the extra time constraints dictated by a teaching position would not hinder writing very much if at all.

So, assuming the teaching and non-teaching offers are roughly comparable in monetary value, which would you recommend? Are there other factors not considered here that one should consider should one find him- or herself in this position? Thoughts?