I'm Back

Where did I go? Nowhere, I just wasn't blogging. I got tired of saying, "What I'm really going to write this week is this" and then not doing it and having to say so the next week. I think I will just blog as the mood strikes or if I have something to say.


Last night I went to Denison University, my alma mater, for a reading by a novelist and a poet. I graduated five and a half years ago, and I thought being on campus again and seeing all the students would make me sad and yearn for those days. But instead, I just felt grateful that I wasn't a student, feeling anxious about my writing career and worried about what the heck I would do after college. The only thing I really miss about college is the open schedule, but getting paid decently to sit in an office for eight hours a day isn't so bad.

Anyway, the readers last night were Nancy Zafris and Jill Bialosky. I had never heard of them before, but I'd always enjoyed the readers Denison brought in while I was there. Nancy read from her work in progress, a novel about a car crash that divides a small town in Ohio, and I really liked her prose. She had some wonderful sentences which made me smile, and I liked the flow of the book and could easily picture the events as I sat there and listened. Then Jill read several poems, most of them out of her new collection, Intruder. I have to admit I've never been much into poetry--I guess I don't get it, but her poems had a narrative feel, and two of them I really loved. I think if I knew more about poetry, I would've appreciated more of her work.

One thing, though, that I've noticed every time I've heard a poetry reading, is the poet reads in this kind of monotone, but every few words the inflection goes up just slightly, not as much as you'd have when asking a question, but I guess just enough to let the listener know the poem isn't over. Most poets seem to do this, so I guess that's how it's supposed to be read, but to me it sounds distracting, and I start to lose the moment. I just wish they would read them more as a story, if possible, and just follow their punctuation. But then again, I'm no poet.

After the reading I bought Nancy's The Metal Shredders and Lucky Strike. The Metal Shredders was out-of-print, but they had new, hardback copies for $5! And I'd read good reviews about Lucky Strike before the reading. She signed both books. I didn't tell her I was a writer because I figured most of the students attending were in the creative writing program, and she'd just be like, "Oh."

I'm glad I went and discovered a new author, but mostly I was happy to not feel the anxiety and panic I used to feel around visiting writers. I know what it is to have a full-time job and write. I know that I'm not dead because I haven't published anything yet. And best of all, I know I've found a wonderful writing community online, and my reading and writing life didn't end when I left the classroom.