I has a cellphone! I never thought I'd see the day (well, not for a few years at least). But it is cute and small and has a barely-annoying-at-all ring. And more importantly, now I can call Buzzy whenever I want! Oh dear, I hope I use this power for good and not procrastination.

Have a poem. I like it.

( Pray for Peace, by Ellen Bass )

I gave blood today! W00t.

Also I rather like my other poem for this week, which was a random "spirit of place" poem I wrote in about half an hour. My classmates seemed to enjoy it too, which was heartening.

( What Is Green? )

Brunch yesterday was... fairly disastrous. Someone filled our baking powder jar with baking soda. Woe to you who think they are the same! If you bake something with soda instead of powder, it will come out dark brown and salty/bitter like a really nasty pretzel. Does anyone know why that happens, chemically speaking? Anyway, we had to throw a ( Read more... )

German test this morning sucked. Meh. But poetry class, amazingly, made me feel better! Greg is still unbelievably nice and encouraging, and my classmates are also kind and constructive, which makes workshopping fun. And I think I'm becoming friends with a girl named Rebecca ( Read more... )

In poetry class yesterday we were talking about Why We Write, who our audience is. Many people said they wrote for themselves, and we were exploring what that means. One of my classmates said she wrote so her future self could read it. I definitely write partly for my future self, not only poetry but this journal. Mostly, I am afraid of ( Read more... )

While we were making macaroni and cheese for lunch, Steph showed me this book called Style: An Anti-Textbook. I must say that it is, well, stylishly written, though I am deeply unsure whether I agree with it. I gobbled my lunch while reading quotes aloud to poor Steph. It's a critique of introductory writing courses, most of all their incessant ( Read more... )

My creative writing teacher called tonight and says she looked at my poems and none of them is good enough to put in a portfolio. She says, among other things, that all of them give a didactic message instead of creating an experience for the reader. "If you have something to say," as she used to say in class, "don't write poems, write a book." ( Read more... )

Says my former poetry teacher:

yes rachel, of course i remember you. and was wondering about you, actually and recently.

give me a time line for poem comments and letter.

i received a lot of positive feedback from real poets regarding your "bread" poem when it appeared in the literary magazine that year.

Well, the good news is, I just took my last test of the term. The bad news is, I have three ten-page papers to write by Monday. Yeesh. Have a poem ( Read more... )

So instead of reading Lucretius's poetry, I wrote my own. Based on a journal entry from when I was about 15, one of those rare times I actually figured something out. Not my favorite thing I ever wrote, but I thought I might as well share ( Read more... )