#2 + #3 + #4

#2 came on a Tuesday. A message on my machine from Goddard, a low-res program in Vermont.

#3 came at noontime today. I spoke with the director on the phone of Vermont College, which is listed on Atlantic Monthly's top five low-res programs list.

#4 came this afternoon, a message from the new director at New England College in New Hampshire.

These last three are all low-res programs, with Emerson (in Boston) being the only full residency thus far. I applied to half low-res and half regular; we shall see what the fates bring us.

Still a good many applications out. Still a good long time for hair-pulling and forum-obsessing. Fingers crossed. At my bookbinding class last week I was able to say, "Next school year I will begin my MFA." It's true. I have options, cards on the table.

news

- Two poems, "Blood Test" and "What I Won't Say" are up on La Fovea

- Several of my photographs have been published on the Poetry Foundation's blog from the Palm Beach Poetry Festival

- This weekend I received an acceptance packet from Emerson, my first response from the MFA programs.

Sixteen programs to hear from:
- UC-Irvine
- Cornell
- U of MN
- U of MI
- U of MT
- U of Iowa
- Emerson (official acceptance)
- Syracuse
- Florida State University

Low-res:
- Bennington
- Warren Wilson
- Vermont College of Fine Arts
- Goddard College
- University of Alaska Anchorage
- University of Southern Maine
- Pacific University
- Antioch
- New England College

And three other programs to which I've applied, non-degree associated:
- spring Writer-to-Writer workshop with Sherry Quan Lee called "Bookingmaking: Writing to Save Your Life"
- Squaw Valley
- BreadLoaf

palm beach poetry festival

Sharon Olds & me

Please see:

Palm Beach Poetry Festival: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6.

The Carol Connolly Reading Series

The Carol Connolly Reading Series Friday, January 11, 2008 7:30 PM at Banfill-Locke Center for the Arts 6666 E River Rd, Fridley Free and open to the public

Hosted by Anna George Meek


Featuring:


Raised in the south, MOLLY SUTTON KIEFER currently teaches English in Red Wing, Minnesota where she lives with her husband. She received her BA in English at the University of Minnesota, where she is also currently studying for her Master's degree. Her poem "Harry Houdini" can be purchased as a poetry postcard broadside through Yes Press (www.yes-press.com). More information can be found at her website, http://www.mollysuttonkiefer.com/.


EMILY K. BRIGHT the author of Glances Back, a chapbook collection of history and storytelling. Originally from Connecticut, she lived in France and Ghana before settling in Minnesota. Her writing is fascinated by the original landscape we carry with us when we move to a new place. Emily will receive her MFA in poetry from the University of Minnesota this spring.
This Carol Connolly Reading is sponsored in part by Banfill-Locke Center for the Arts.

la fovea

What is this strange concept? I love the visceral images included in poetics. Check it out.

Thursday Prompt: I never...

Getting to Know You: Sometimes I have my students play "two truths and a lie." You tell three things about yourself and the class must guess what the lie might be. The key is to tell the lie convincingly enough and select truths so ludicrous that each is disguised as the other.

Drinking Game: I never. I never ate a watermelon whole. I never... The game is to pick things you think everyone else has done. Often this game can get raunchy, such as, "I've never had sex in a public place..." It becomes a confessional game, where others have to take a drink, or a shot, when they themselves have done that never.

Today's prompt: Write your own "I never" or tall tale. See if you can disguise it as the truth.

telling lies

In Nin Andrews' Sleeping With Houdini*, a collection of prose poems, she wrote of an interview with a famous poet, where the poet confesses that he thinks of lies when he writes poems.

"Lie beautifully," she writes. "Lie convincingly. Lie. And then he did tell me his secret. The secret of the beautiful lie."

Writing poetry is a bit like telling lies. Even the confessional poems. We take the truth and bend it a bit, take poetic license, tell lies. It's the only way I can get away with it sometimes.

I've decided to try telling lies here, just for daily practice, for the beauty of art.

* This is my second review. I enjoyed writing the first so much, I thought I would give it another go.