Lynn Otto

I haven't lost my keys or forgotten any notebooks this week, but I'm tired.  I'm still learning stuff, just not enjoying it as much these days.  Fatigue sure takes the sparkle off. 

I'm doing what I can to get enough rest and to de-stress, but at this point, I think it's going to take a few weeks of summer break to really recover.  Just five weeks to go until then! 

 

Hey!  I'm now an award-winning poet!  I received PSU's 2012 Shelley Reece Award for Poetry on Monday.  Pulitzer-prize winner Juno Diaz spoke at the awards ceremony in the evening and met with all the various literary award winners in the afternoon.  He said contests and awards mean nothing and that it's a bad idea to create competition among members of the same team (our genre cohorts)--this after congratulating us.  Ah well.  Brief warm feeling.  I don't feel any animosity from my fellow PSU poets, however, and I do feel encouraged, even knowing how arbitrary contest judging can be. 

Tuesday was not so great--as I was driving to school I realized I hadn't even looked in the mirror before I left home--yikes!  Did a little fixing in the rear-view mirror.  When I got to school I realized I left a folder at home that contained stuff I'd need for class that evening.  Rats!  And then when it was time to leave my office and head for class, I realized my keys were missing, and I couldn't find them anywhere.  Called the lost and found--no keys had been turned in.  Emailed Paul to ask him to bring me a spare key (35-minute drive one way).  Then I tried to log in to computer lab computers to re-print the stuff I needed for class and couldn't!  Argh!  Went to class a little frazzled. 

When I got out of class at 9:15, Paul was there with a spare key and a smile.  Great guy.  And someone turned in my keys to the lost and found this morning.   This means I don't have to pay a fine for losing office keys--a very good thing.

I kind of hit the wall last Thursday and Friday--so tired I could hardly work.  I took it easy for a couple days, and thought I had recovered.  But yeah, looks like I'm dropping some balls in this little juggling act. 

Last quarter I wrote 23 poems.  I've heard of people who write a poem a day--their schedules must be a little roomier than mine.  I didn't write any poems over spring break--too much other work to do, and for most of this week (the first in the new quarter), I didn't feel like I had it in me to write another poem.  But last night I got one started.  Yay!

The poem I'm working on is a workshop assignment: write a poem using the syntax Edward Thomas used in "Old Man."   My poem is about a time my dad and I were fishing, and as we returned to shore after dark, we saved a man who had fallen out of his boat.  I told this story for my oral story assignment in my Elements of Story class last term.  Now we'll see how it fares as a poem.  Working on this might help me answer one question that bumps around in my brain: "why this genre?"  Do some subjects/experiences lend themselves more to story or essay and some to poetry? 

I think poetry is particularly well-suited, among the various literary genres, to reflect the way the world is—a beautiful, confusing, exhilarating, and heartbreaking place.  And it can do this in less than a page!  It can do justice even to the (as yet) unexplainable. I think the writers of Genesis had the right inclination when they turned to poetry to describe the inexplicable beginning of all things.  Scientific terminology gives us “Big Bang,” which is nicely alliterative but hardly sufficient. 

More so than in other genres, uncertainty and ambiguity are built-in features of poetry.  Just as a poem tends to leave more white space on a page, it also leaves more room for the reader’s interpretation and experience.  Some readers don’t like this.  Sometimes I don't like it.  But the right poems can stretch us, can help us accept not only ambiguity and uncertainty in the poems themselves, but also in life. 

Learning to read and write poems has made me less distraught and more comfortable with living on this perplexing planet, and it has saved me from reading the Bible as if God had majored in technical writing.  This in turn has removed my fear of science and has allowed me to walk this earth with my eyes open instead of shut.  I'm grateful.  There's a lot to see.

After a ridiculously hectic 1-week spring break, I wasn't quite ready to start the new quarter, but I didn't have much say in the matter.  My body considered getting sick, even ran a low fever Monday night and Tuesday morning, but I stayed in bed Tuesday morning and drank a lot of osha root tea, and so far, I haven't missed any classes. 

This quarter, I'm again taking a core poetry workshop, this time with Michele Glazer, and also a lit class: Contemporary American Poetry with Tom Fisher.  It's a combined undergraduate/graduate class--and the undergraduates far outnumber the graduates, but so far it's been interesting enough.  Hope it stays that way.  I'll have to write two hefty papers for that class. 

I have some material collecting for future blog posts, but I'm too tired to tackle it right now.  Another day . . .

It was an honor to be asked to judge the "New Poets" category of the Oregon Poetry Association's Spring Poetry Contest.  I received a large envelope of poems in the mail, without names, and spent a few evenings reading, taking them in.  I could only choose 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place and three honorable mentions, but I applaud everyone who sent in a poem.  It takes courage to put your words on paper and submit them to the scrutiny of others.  I hope everyone who entered the contest keeps exploring the vast potential of language by reading and writing poetry. 

Yeah, that doesn't quite make mathematical sense.  But I'm talking about my MFA program.  Winter quarter is over, and that means I'm 1/3 of the way through the program.  It's going fast!

Next quarter starts April 2.  I'll be taking a contemporary poetry lit class with Thomas Fisher and another MFA core poetry workshop, this time with Michele Glazer.  I've already had to turn in a poem for the workshop and must write a 3-4 page personal statement before the class begins. 

I didn't really need more to do during spring break--I've got a pile of work to do for my paying jobs and I need to complete some scholarship and award applications, and do stuff like get a haircut and go to the dentist.  But hey, I'll write the statement.  I'll probably even squeeze in a poem or two.  The haircut can wait.  Ever wonder why some poets look a bit unkempt?  Well, now you know. 

Sometimes, some of my friends get concerned about something I've written.  I write poems about my experiences with Traditional Chinese Medicine, and they worry I'm becoming a Taoist.  I write poems about my frustrations with prayer and the mess of a world around me, and they worry I'm misrepresenting God.  We have little arguments, but no one threatens to put me in jail.  They don't really consider my poems dangerous.

But apparently, the governments of China and Saudi Arabia believe a poem can be quite a dangerous thing.  Read "Terrifying Sentences," a Capital Commentary article by poet Aaron Belz, to find out what happens to poets who write (or tweet) lines such as "It's time, people of China, it's time" or "On your birthday, I shall not bow to you." 

Maybe we should all try to write a dangerous poem today.

I'm very thankful for my assistantship--it pays my tuition, and I'm thankful for my part-time jobs--they help pay the bills, but I could sure use more time!  Writing just requires a lot of it--not only sit-down-at-the-computer time, but putz-around-and-let-your-mind-wander time. 

Lately I've been putzing around a bit and getting behind on my work hours.  My psyche seems to demand this, especially after a stretch of time that's been too full.  But niggling thoughts of my job responsibilities intrude now and then, and with increasing frequency the longer I neglect them.  When the tension becomes too great, I know it's time to buckle down and do the work, at least enough of it to ease my conscience. 

And yes, it's time. It's really time.  The sun is shining, the trees are leafing out, and I am going to sit here and look at numbers on my computer screen.  Sigh.

Wednesday afternoon I listened to Romanian poet Liliana Ursu read at Portland State U.  What a delightful hour.  Ursu has a beautiful voice, and her rolling Rs reminded me of listening to my Frisian grandparents.  Her poems were lovely, reverent things.  She read mostly in English, a few in Romanian.  I don't understand Romanian, but the poems were music.  If you ever have a chance to hear her, go!

You can find a few of her poems online if you search her name.  If you want to hear her read, check out this youtube video.   It takes some patience--there's a lot of introduction, and she doesn't start reading until 12 minutes into it (in Romanian).  At 16 minutes, Sean Cotter, one of her translators, reads the same poem in English.  Eventually, Ursu also reads in English.

Some of her books are available on Amazon.  The most recent is A Path to the Sea, translated by Ursu, Tess Gallagher, and Adam Sorkin.

On February 1, people all over campus picked up a camera and filmed some segment of life at Portland State University.  This film was created with those many contributions. If you're interested in seeing where I go to school, take a look.