Mary Biddinger's Blog, page 12

Gratitude.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. 

First snow (of many).

New review of A Sunny Place with Adequate Water.

November arrives, and the countdown to winter (and winter break) begins. Next Wednesday I'll be reading from A Sunny Place with Adequate Water at the Shaker Heights public library, along with Sarah Marcus and Christine Howey. Details are here. It's free and open to the public. 
In other news, I was thrilled to discover yesterday that A Sunny Place with Adequate Water is reviewed by Daniel Heffner in the new issue of American Microreviews and Reviews. Here's a tidbit:
Mary Biddinger’s collection, A Sunny Place with Adequate Water, reads like stream of consciousness with a fever: her couplets and tercets spring from image to image with a restless longing. “I” and “you” and “we” run through her poems; the speaker and others wandering through a landscape of abandoned fruit stalls, miniature models, and a remarkable number of coin-operated apparatus.

The speaker struggles to manage and make sense of a variety of relationships. In “A Coin-Operated City of the Past,” the speaker first says “We did not know each other,” then asks “You made / me, didn’t you?” The contradiction is a powerful one, an example of what Biddinger does so well in this book. The book presents a speaker moving through a community, testing connections and values and people, sensing underlying violence, and speaking it all in a beautifully complex, surreal, and vigorous voice.
Thank you, Daniel and AMRI.
I keep reminding myself that I'm going to get to be a writer again soon. How many days?

Akron postcard: the last of the warm days

I know they've said this before, but apparently today is the last of the warm days, and in addition to that, we also got another knockout sunrise here in Akron, OH, so I felt obligated to share it with you. 

Two items of business.

My favorite spot in Akron. I'm trying to visit it in all seasons. As of right now, winter break has been reserved for poems and more poems. But at least I can take some pictures now.


I have a poem in the new Denver Quarterly. Read more about the issue here!
This has been my dream journal to publish a poem in for, like, a trillion years.

A foggy place with excessive precipitation.

Super excited to have a poem from A Sunny Place with Adequate Water featured at Verse Daily yesterday. Here it is! 

Akron postcard: mid-September

Sometimes you have a really long day, and then Ohio gives you one of these. 

Cold snap, September edition.

We're chilly here in Akron, OH. The kitchen is getting painted, which is the last step before the project is done, and I have to unpack all those boxes I've been trying to forget about in the basement. But finished kitchen! Done project! Hooray. 
Speaking of basements, we had a tornado warning on Wednesday and everyone on campus had to seek shelter. I'd left minutes before the warning, and made it home safely with the kids to hunker down. No damage, thankfully. 
Fall 2014 semester is delightful so far. I love my classes. The students have such amazing comments regarding poems. Sometimes I feel like my job is to be an ambassador for poetry. I am so lucky. 
Turned in the final draft of Small Enterprise on 9/1, Now: on with the new.  

Back to school, with long shadow.

Here we go, Fall 2014 semester. I am glad to be back, even if feeling a bit behind and overwhelmed. I love my two classes this semester, and it feels good to be checking things off the to-do list, rather than finding new ways to stack them.

I've been making final revisions to Small Enterprise, which somehow helps open up space for thinking about the new prose poem project. 
Sending gratitude to Robert Beveridge for his review of A Sunny Place with Adequate Water. 
Sage advice from Jeannine Hall Gailey on book promotion over at her blog. 
My poem "The Most and the Best" appears in The Book of Scented Things , an anthology from the Rose O'Neill Literary House that paired poets and perfume samples, with rather amazing results. This might be the most innovative premise for a collection, ever. My fragrance was this. So lucky! 
I would like to write a new poem soon. Pretty please, universe?

Welcome, chill.

I just finished closing most of the windows in the house, because Fall is creeping in today. We're in the later stages of our home renovations, and I am writing my syllabi with the wail of a saw in the background. For several weeks now, I've been making my list of "how I will do things differently next summer." I'm ready for the semester to begin in a week and a half. Maybe more than ready.