Standing at the Trailhead of Winter

My bum has been planted in this darn chair all day. And I wonder why my clothes are getting tighter! But, I'm nearly finished with putting my entire summer online classes in place, and once class begins on Monday, all I'll have to do is read the papers and blog posts once they start coming in. Fingers crossed the classes I've created are easy to navigate and clear about what is expected (who am I trying to kid? There'll be students who'll have issues -- there always is). Good news: one of my haiku was accepted by Haiku Journal . If you go to the journal online, Issue 58, you'll see my name listed with the other authors. Then just scroll down until you find my haiku. This particular haiku is my favorite of the group I created to submit to the contest sponsored at the site where I post my work for critique. This was also the favorite for my writer friend who offered feedback when my haiku went days without a critique on the very site that is designed to offer...

Each day this week the heat has closed in around 90 degrees. I have a stack of paperback books on my desk, and the humidity curls back the cover of the top book. I shift it to go underneath the second book so the cover will flatten out. I end up shifting each top book every so often throughout the day. They all end up taking a turn at having their cover curl. I finished reading The Road  by Cormac McCarthy and The Last Coyote  by Michael Connelly this week. The first is quite a fast read, and I'm not sure why I've not read it before now. I've seen the movie, but I just never thought about reading the book until a colleague brought it up recently. I truly enjoyed it -- well, not the subject matter so much, or the ending -- but rather the way McCarthy fashions phrases, offers an objective viewpoint. I found myself rereading paragraphs, sentences, phrases as I was taken by the image, the metaphor, the feel created through the words. The second book is a Harry Bosch crime n...

So I'm still waiting for a critique on my haiku. Three days. The contest closes May 31st, so several weeks remain for someone to take pity on me and offer up some feedback. I wonder what will happen if my haiku go the rest of the month without being critiqued. All it says in the rules is the entry must be submitted publicly for the duration of the contest. It doesn't say the submission must receive critiques. Honestly, though, I really don't know why of the 25 different entries, mine is the only one without any critique or comment. The snarky side of me is saying, they're just that good! What could possibly be said about them to make them better than they already are? The paranoid critic side of me is saying, they're so bad no one wants to be the first one to say so.  This has been the back and forth in my head for the last three days, and this exchange has been particularly bad today. I finally copied off the haiku and gave them to a poet friend to read and giv...

Instead of grading the last of the papers I have waiting for me, I've been tinkering with some haiku. Writing my own and critiquing that of others. A contest opened up on the site where I submit my work for critique, so I thought, humph, I might as well give it a whirl. During March and April I turned my attention away from the poetry to work on another project, so the contest seemed like an opportunity to churn something out and practice a particular form. I've found many ideas hit me quite hard during my long walks with Ado, so I snapped the leash onto his collar and we set off. During that walk, three ideas for haiku took shape. As soon as I got home, I started working on them. By the time I finished later that evening, I had six haiku I was happy with. I submitted them to the site for critique, which is required for the contest, and went back to my other project. Usually it takes all of a couple hours to get multiple critiques on the work submitted to the site. With the...