On invisibility, publishing and gender

On invisibility, publishing and gender.



I'm at the Jefferson county public library where I hope to grade some papers and read.

cat stevens Wild World

Picked up a class at Red Rocks Community College. Feeling better. Very excited about teaching though I'll have 3 separate preps. Feeling free!!!! Free at last

Mad World - Gary Jules

I have to continue working at 7-11 for a time. I need to try to find another part-time job, but it's not easy with teaching two courses beginning on Monday. I'm soooooo relieved to be teaching again. In the meantime, the facade is on; the masks are worn. The children are playing. The children are fighting.

I have to continue working at 7-11 for a time, an unknown amount of time. We are but fixtures and furnishings. Wind in the blowing mad. I have to continue working at 7-11 and writing poems about Brazilian bold, Regular, decaf, listing and listing of products: male enhancement pills, condoms, energy drinks: amp, rock star, Monster, chew: kodiak, copenhagen pouches, straight, blunt wraps: blue juju, melon burst, zig-zag rolling paper.

I'm a nerd or a dork or avoiding reality. Reality: watching the clock, watching the ever slow clock. The products are on the shelf, in the cooler, the beer is locked. The beer cabinet is locked. The bathroom is trashed again and again.

Graffiti is painted over and over, a lock is purchased. Nobody locks the bathroom, the key hangs on a plunger.

You will remember most the silence of your friends, not the enemies' laughter.

The Jeffersons Season 1 Opening

Fast car -Tracy Chapman

I'm wondering if there is such a thing as social mobility anymore or if it is just a myth. I'm wondering if I will ever rise out of the social injustice of adjunct mode or not, but I've come to accept that my education provides me the ability to do more than simply work at 7-11, so maybe in some ways getting an education is worthwhile, but the economy is simply brutal now. This I know to be true. I may have to stay at 7-11 through September, and it is likely to be the case even if I start teaching since adjuncts get paid once a month.

I'd like to write seriously on what's happening re: adjuncts and more importantly the lack of diversity at academic institutions who claim to be concerned about diversity. A diversity of experience for them includes minorities from Ivy league schools. This seems strange, so maybe I do belong at a community college or some high school somewhere helping kids. It's difficult to dream sometimes when we feel boxed in by reality, and yes dear folks there's a reality that many people live. We'll have to see what the future holds, but my whole academic life, throughout graduate school I was told I would have it easy because I was female and "hispanic." Not!!!!!! All the white men I went to school with got tenure track jobs. So it seems mainly female hispanics from non-Ivy league schools are not being hired. I would like to name names and tell their stories.

Beethoven "Pastoral" Symphony - 5th Movement

I may have to work for someone on my day off, but that's okay because I may have classes at Community College of Denver's Auraria campus (which I love!) I very much miss teaching on this urban campus, so I have my fingers crossed. So this may be the end of my 7-11 gig; I'll know more for certain next week.

I didn't want to teach more than two but it's on the downtown campus which I miss a lot. I love the students there!!! Yay!!!

The Flower

Thinking about invisibility and silence and marginalization yet again and wondering if it all doesn't stem from a bad childhood. Yes, the issue of race and or culture is paramount, yet my feelings of invisibility and irrelevance are deeply rooted to an abusive step-parent and feelings of abandonment I think. I can't help but wonder if some outrage we experience is simply our own pain talking.

That said, po-biz seems inherently an avoidance of actual poetry. But my feelings about po-biz may be tied to that early abandonment I experienced in not knowing my real biological father. Therefore, anytime I'm left out or feel left out, it is rooted to past pain rather than current reality. The past pain of more favored siblings etc. is similar to the pain one feels in being seemingly left out of po-bizzz circles.
There's something seriously amiss some days re: poetry world business. I guess it is all about self-promotion rather than poetry? We'll have to wait and see? The whole point is that I need to write.

The Fray - Happiness

Can't sleep. Have to be at work at 6 a.m.. :(

My housing option is still a go, but it may take a week or two before I can move. This is a relief. I am waiting on some funding.

Have a number of poems ready to send out? It's difficult to know if anything's ready to go anymore. One upon a time poems clicked shut for me. I just knew they were ready. Now, these poems seem ready, but I grow concerned the language isn't fancy enough, complex enough for poet/critics. Yet, I have to go with what I've written. Someone said to wait a few months before I send them out, but I've already waited several years. Then again, I'm hypercritical when it comes to my own work. It's simply very different than it once was.

Once someone said that I had a firm grasp of the language, but didn't seem confident in that-- and I think and hope he was right.

I am looking forward to teaching! I will teach 2 sections of comp. I need to teach again. I began one syllabus yesterday. It feels good. I will take a training course in utilizing the online stuff at school and hope to have syllabi and a number of assignment sheets etc. up before classes start on the 23rd. Very relieved to be teaching. I've asked for reduced hours at 7-11 because I just can't take it anymore. I would rather turn my phone off for a month or two than dredge out 35 hours a week. Cutting expenses seems better than being unhappy. I just can't do repetitive work like that and since the shifts are 8 hours long, it seems it will never end. Next week I will have three six hour shifts, and I'm very, very relieved even though it's kind of crazy. I simply can't be miserable there and can and will cut my expenses somehow. I so like it to a degree in terms of meeting people, but it seems representative of a global economy gone crazy. All the unhealthy products and big brother corporation/franchise owner watching over you with a baseball bat in hand. I have a lot of material though, but find it isn't necessarily working out in poems, but maybe it will later. It seems the stuff of fiction/surreal/unreal, but it is actually non-fiction.

I very much hope that some poems are picked up this fall. I called a press yesterday and am feeling more confident in sending my manuscript out and also that a third one is well in progress, slowly. I'm amazed at how often I have wasted time, as if time were something one could waste. No! It's time to get busy. If I suck now, that will bear itself out, but I need to have more confidence. Too many bad poets have excessive levels of confidence, so I think it may be a good thing that I don't. Sometimes I do, but it's been a long time. I've been struggling since 2008 when I had a serious episode in my life.

I need to read someone's manuscript so I can write a blurb. That in itself should give me some confidence. Very happy for her. Well deserved publication.

I have a lot of nervous manic energy, so hopefully that will translate into being alert and productive at work. Very tired of the job but am concerned about teaching more than two classes right now. Especially since they are two different classes. I need to ease back into things I think even though I'm getting pressure to pick up more classes from friends who mean well, yet don't get my situation at all.

I would love to teach a poetry workshop some day and had pretty much given up on that prospect for many, many reasons, but I think the time has come for me to focus on publishing again and possibly just focus on teaching these two courses well. I'm not sure how 7-11 will come into play since every bone in my body wants to quit, but we can't always do what we want. The fact is that I need the income now and it's usually not as bad as I dread it will be.

George Carlin ~ The American Dream