Lesley Jenike's Blog, page 3

HERE'S a link to the brand-spanking new Waccamaw and HERE...

HERE'S a link to the brand-spanking new Waccamaw and HERE'S a link to KELCEY PARKER'S Blog series, How I Became a Writer. Many thanks to both Dan Albergotti and Kelcey Parker for helping to promote my work.

At last! One of my beloved Monhegan poems has been taken-...

At last! One of my beloved Monhegan poems has been taken--by Waccamaw, an excellent online journal published by Coastal Carolina University. Thanks to Dan Albergotti, who took a risk on a long-winded, winding poem.

And Biophilia, the groundbreaking new album by Bjork, is out today. Yay.

Blogger, it's been over a month since my last confession ...

Blogger, it's been over a month since my last confession and this confession will be random, rambling, and unfocused so bear with me:

I have an incredibly talented student in my poetry workshop this semester (actually I have lots of them, but this one is a bit of a l'enfant terrible) who reminded me Friday that blogs are just opportunities to wallow in self-adoration. I agree, so let me wallow--not in self-adoration, but in my own brand of self-effacement that looks like adoration that looks like effacement.

We're so happy to be in Clintonville. It feels like a happy place and ultimately there's nothing wrong with that--choosing to live in a place that feels comfortable. We dealt with not feeling comfortable for so long, it seeped into our bones. Today I plan on comfortably (after a run through the wetlands) working on a review on my front porch in the October sun to warm my Olde Towne East-chilled bones.

It's been a long and rowdy week/end. Two long classes a week (my two screenwriting classes) really exhaust me. I love them, but there's something about them that takes my breath away. Kids, know that your teachers who are teaching four or more classes a semester are really working their tails off, so be patient and give them lots of hugs (metaphorical). This was a community service announcement. Thank you.

We drove up to Akron Friday to read poems in The Big Big Mess Reading Series (thanks, Nick Sturm!) and got to meet/read with the fabulous David Dodd Lee and chat with Catherine Wing (fellow Sewanee Martin/Salter workshop alum). It was a blast.

And here's something else: I've been reading the Bishop/Lowell letters every night before I go to sleep. Their friendship was something to be envied. Love like that is rare, I think, and really quite beautiful. Maybe you should read them too.

Finally, there's lots of good new music out this fall. Here's a taste, then two Hail Marys and call me in the morning:

We can walk to the grocery store! We can walk to awesome ...

We can walk to the grocery store! We can walk to awesome restaurants and the post office and the Goodwill! We can be on the beautiful bike/running trail in about five minutes! We can drive five minutes to a very good Japanese place! We can walk to and shop at various independently owned used clothing and home goods stores! I can walk to get a haircut! Which I need!

School is back in session! What a glorious time of renewa...

School is back in session! What a glorious time of renewal! Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Josh and I--embattled tenants--are struggling to extract ourselves from Olde Towne East so we can head north to Clintonville, home to hippies and the Giant Eagle. I think I may have more to say about our time in Olde Towne East, how young people like us attempt to make a life in long-suffering neighborhoods we admire for romantic and foolish reasons. I wrote a lot of poems about OTE I hope someday will be published, and there were some good times. Some.



Still, the academic year marches on, with its rash of submission dates in early fall: the OAC, writers' colonies for next summer, book contests, and journals that just today started accepting unsolicited poems again. The longer I spend in academia, the more its rhythms start to lull me to sleep, as in: fall-submissions; winter/spring-conferences; summer-retreats, escapes, frolics, diversions, writings--which fall off in fall, or at least become shorter, smaller, worked-on between other things. In other words, let the winter of the sonnet begin.



or maybe it's time I reassert myself back into my own, long-lined life. Onward, to Clintonville!

I have a brand-new professional website hosted through CC...

I have a brand-new professional website hosted through CCAD. Check it out!

Happy Anniversary, Us!

Happy Anniversary, Us!

Check THIS out! The sting of not winning (twice) is eased...

Check THIS out! The sting of not winning (twice) is eased by the super-awesome Modernist cover and the fact that I share its pages with many of my poetic heroes: Dawson, Shankar, Donovan, Karaptova, Malech, and on.

Plus:

I'm getting up the gumption to send the lady in the video...

I'm getting up the gumption to send the lady in the video below a fan letter. My diss. advisor just came home from a stint at Queens and I'm waiting to hear if she'd be amendable to it. Isn't she just the best?

Deadlines are coming on fast and furious this year for making plans for next year. We're moving in less than a month, and school starts again the 29th. Phew.

I flew down to Sarasota on Tuesday for a quick two-day g...

I flew down to Sarasota on Tuesday for a quick two-day get-away with my mom and sister. I just got back this afternoon. We stayed with our step-grandmother (my mom's husband's mother) and celebrated my step-grandfather's 90th birthday, the man who married my mother's mother after my mother's birth parents divorced--gosh--in the fifties. He adopted my mother officially a short time after that. His own mother escaped the Armenian genocide in the early part of the twentieth century. I have a vague memory of her: fantastic--and to my mind exotic--cooking, flowered house dresses in green and orange, rubies (she liked rubies) and a deep, warm, throaty laugh. I only knew one actual grandparent, I mean one with whom I shared blood. The rest have been a patchwork of blended families and others who have come into our lives through strange and miraculous circumstances--like the woman who helped around the house when my mother's mother was dying. After Shirley was gone, she stayed with us and became our connection to an older generation and a rich tradition of storytelling we as children never knew because our own grandparents had been snuffed out so early. Her name is Amanda. My step-grandmother's name is Rosa Lee. My step-grandfather's name is Ed.

Family is the greatest mystery.