Celia Lisset Alvarez's Blog, page 6

Top Ten Things I Am Grateful for This Thanksgiving

In the spirit of David Letterman, and taking full advantage of my new blog mission, I present the top ten reasons I am grateful this Thanksgiving, which has nothing—and everything—to do with writing:



10. Good students. They exist. I know I gripe a lot about the bad ones, but, without the good ones, I'd probably kill myself. It's hard to be an adjunct, to get paid so little, to be so marginal. When on top of that you think sometimes that you might as well have just popped in a movie for all t...

An Unexpected Birthday Present & a New Blog Mission

This blog is dying. This is my first post in almost two months! It's time to make some changes, and what better time than a birthday to start over? Birthdays, like New Year's, are a time for reevaluation, and significant birthdays that much more so—I'm going to be 39! No, it's not the big 4-0, but it's in a weird way even more of a milestone: the last of the birthdays beginning with 3. Goodbye, thirties. I feel that compared to 39, 40 will be some kind of arrival, some kind of welcome

99 Writing Problems, but a Bitch Ain't One

People who don't know me very well are often surprised to hear that I'm one foul-mouthed . . . woman. Perhaps no one expects a 5'4" female poet-professor to have the talent to make Yosemite Sam blush. Whatever. I'm very proud of my ability to drop F-bombs not just between words, but between syllables. It just feels good. However, it makes teaching hard. One must keep things professional. There are two words I do allow myself to use in class: bullshit and bitch.



Listen: I'm a freaking poet...

Goodbye, Summer

Labor Day was yesterday and another summer has curled up at the edges and dissipated into smoke. I didn't write the novel, didn't put together the manuscript, or do much writing at all. I didn't fix up the house or lose the weight. I didn't even do some of the things that used to define summer for me during other years when the hopeful to-do list was gobbled up by mornings laying out in the sun or floating in the water and afternoons reading in bed. Where did the summer go?



Last thing I...

I AM A FEMINIST POET

Wanna make something of it?




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A bestseller. Ever

heard of it?
"America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash–and should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed. What is the mystery of these innumerable editions of the 'Lamplighter,' and other books neither better nor worse?–worse they could not be, and better they need not be, when they sell by the 100,000."

—Nathaniel Hawth...

Are You Writing About It, Celia?

What Judy has

been up to.
On Suffering, Inspiration, and Writer's Block



Despite working together at STU, my pal Judy Bachay and I rarely bump into each other. When we do, it becomes a quick catch-up conversation. What have you been up to, she always asks, and I abbreviate the major events. Whenever these include some kind of trauma, like a death or an illness, or some kind of emotionally laden story, she always asks me the same thing: Are you writing about it, Celia?



Judy's...

Choosing an MFA Program: 10 Ideal Considerations

I'm sure you'll have no trouble finding advice on how to choose an MFA program in creative writing, but it always strikes me as funny (in a sad kind of way!) how people who are in the process of selecting an MFA program often stop at two considerations: Can I afford it? and Can I get in? While these are certainly valid considerations, ideally you should not stop at these. MFA programs vary widely and choosing the right one can make a huge difference in how happy you are with the outcome. Belo...

Publish or Perish? Some Quick Thoughts on Submitting Your Work

I've had a couple of interesting conversations with other writers over the years about publishing. For a while, I felt like I had a great advantage over writers who are obliged to promote an academic career or an established reputation with a big-name publisher: I could choose to publish "wherever I wanted." They, on the other hand, had to make distinctions that seemed to me impossible, among them the always tricky and ever-changing decision between print and online venues.

In just a few...

Poetry Revision 101, Lesson Four: Do I Sound Fat in This Poem?

This post is dedicated to Dinkinish, who writes with an airbrush.



The wild roses are very red,

and the violets are dark blue,

while the sugar is extremely sweet,

as sweet as you.



Eh? Bizarre. Forgive me for using the same old rhyme to elucidate, but the familiarity of the way this is supposed to go should help you see how unnecessary words and phrases can make your poem fat.

We all know fat is the enemy. According to Market Research News, the global weightloss market will be worth 586.3...

Poetry Revision 101, Lesson Three: Arranging the Words on the Page

One of the surest markers of amateur poetry is a series of centered lines. Though I'm sure a clever poet could find a way of making such an arrangement meaningful (perhaps sarcastically?), most likely such poems are written by people whose only experience of poetry is Hallmark cards.



Before you get all cocky because you abandoned the centered lines format in your early teens, consider this: perfect iambic pentameter and/or perfectly symmetrical (not to mention left-justified) quatrains...