O Muse, where art thou?

I'm officially in panic mode regarding my thesis. I have a ton of revisions to work on, plus new poems to generate in order to hit the magic number (48) required for me to get my degree. Sure, I could churn out some crap, but I'd know it and my thesis adviser would know it and while I might still get the piece of paper that says Master of Fine Arts on it, I'd feel like a schmuck, a charlatan.

So I'm calling on the powers of the blogosphere to help me summon my muse. Problem: I don't know what he/she/it looks like.

Eustache Le Sueur, "Clio, Euterpe and Thalia," ca. 1640

Is that what muses look like? If so, they need to get off their lazy asses and come inspire me.

Seriously though, as anyone who endeavors in the creative arts can attest, there is nothing more difficult than knowing you have to produce something RIGHT NOW. That's just not how the process works for most of us. I work well under pressure generally, but I can't just barf out a poem on command. If I do, it will be just that: barf.

I wish I knew more about my muse. Right now, I'm trying to read a bunch of poetry (as well as essays about poetry). I need to have poetry on the brain 24-7, to live, breathe, eat, sleep poetry. Poetry, poetry, poetry, salmon.

Shit. It's Restaurant Week in Boston, so I've been working a lot at Lineage, serving lots of salmon and explaining over and over again what duck confit rillette is. Unfortunately, the brain energy I use at work is antithetical to poem-writing. I wish I could say I'm scribbling sonnets on the backs of menus and discarded napkins, but in reality I'm probably thinking more about whether the woman at table 34 really has an allergy to garlic or is just a vampire, or if the couple awkwardly chatting at the bar is on a first Match.com date.

See? This post was supposed to be all about poetry and my muse and somehow, it got co-opted by other things. No wonder my muse wants nothing to do with me.

Insight into the mind of a poet

Like many writers, I keep a journal. Several, actually. One for banal observations and whiny ramblings expected for the diary genre and then two others that I use for poetry/teaching/whatever else I need to write down when I'm at my desk (directions to restaurants, confirmation numbers). It's sometimes fun to flip through these hodgepodge notebooks and discover random things that I have no memory of writing. I recently came across this, well, list for lack of a better word. I'm guessing it was from a free writing exercise wherein I was trying to jumpstart my creativity. The "list" is as follows, verbatim:

rosebuds touching
a lonely harmonica
a patch of dead grass
unforgiving mailbox
where the wrist meets the hand
the second to last kiss
a church parking lot
flowers with the dirt still on them
zodiac sign language
selling individual balloons
a ballad, oversung
the worst sunset
a cracked pocket mirror
the Sunday newspaper
pewter souvenirs
not enough drum lessons
forgettable family dinners
steering wheel, too hot to touch
Tabasco sauce on everything
crowded aquariums
renting ice skates
one matinee too many


What does any of it mean? No clue. I really like "not enough drum lessons" and "unforgiving mailbox," though. And maybe I'll use "The Worst Sunset" as the title of my memoir. A lot of these would make great memoir titles (tell me you wouldn't buy A Ballad, Oversung: The Life and Times of Katie Vagnino). I don't think I ever wrote a poem or story incorporating anything from this list and the journal supports this: On the opposite page is a recipe for shrimp tacos that I remember copying from Real Simple.

Blogger's block

As my more devoted readers may have noticed (hi, Mom), my blogging has slowed down lately. And I can't blame school, because the semester is over. But for some reason, I have found myself struggling to come up with things to blog about.

Have I lost my blogging mojo? And if so, how can I get it back?

I hate the idea of blogging about something I don't care about, just for the sake of posting regularly. I started the Vagnino Monologues not because I wanted to be a blogger per se (I still really don't read blogs) but because I thought I had some funny stories to share and to get myself in the habit of writing on an almost daily basis. And usually, I have so many ideas for posts that I have to write them down and parse them out over a few weeks.

But here I am, 8 days since my last post, writing about having nothing to write about.

Which is a cliche.

Let's see what the experts have to say about writing and writer's block:

"Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials. It's a matter of doing everything you can to avoid writing, until it is about four in the morning and you reach the point where you have to write."
(Paul Rudnick)

Hmmm. That makes sense to me. But you know who disagrees?

"Planning to write is not writing. Outlining--researching--talking to people about what you’re doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing." (E.L. Doctorow)

Fine, Debbie Downer Doctorow. Way to rain on Rudnick's parade.

"The writer's duty is to keep on writing."
(William Styron)

Sage words, Styron. Not particularly useful, though. Now I just feel guilty because I'm not fulfilling my duty.

"I carry a notebook with me everywhere. But that's only the first step. Ideas are easy. It's the execution of ideas that really separates the sheep from the goats." (Sue Grafton)

If only I respected Sue Grafton enough to take her advice. Alas, I don't plan on titling my first chapbook "P is for Poetry."

"Lower your standards and keep writing."
(William Stafford)

I feel so inspired! Unsurprisingly, that depressing tidbit comes from the poet responsible for this devastating stanza (from the poem "Ask Me"):

Sometime when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt; ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.


Ready to kill yourself yet?

Faulkner, cocky bastard, had these choice words to say about his process:

"I only write when I am inspired. Fortunately I am inspired at 9 o'clock every morning."

Gee, Faulkner, must be nice. At 9:00 a.m. I can barely string together enough words to buy a coffee.

"To write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write."
(Gertrude Stein)

Ah, of course! Everything is clear now.

Endangered species: the copy editor

Two days ago, it finally arrived: the latest issue of The Raintown Review, featuring my pair of sonnets, "Wunderkind." I was especially excited because of the places where my work has been published, TRR is the most legit. No disrespect to online journals, but there is something very satisfying about holding a book in your hands and seeing your words in print inside.

There my name was, on the glossy back cover, listed among the other contributors. I flipped to the page with my poem and while I think the piece could have used another revision or two, I'm okay with the version they accepted. Then I turned to the page with the contributor bios and saw this:

Katie Vagnino is a 2nd year poetry student in the Creative Writing M.F.A. program at Emerson College in Boston. Her writing has appeared in Time Out New York, The Torch (Smithsonian), and. In the blogosphere, she writes a bi-weekly column for The Sex Appeal and posts regularly on her own blog, The Vagnino Monologues.

and.

and.

and.

Seriously? That is a ludicrous typo. And another reminder that the art of copy editing, in our increasingly digital age, is in danger of becoming a lost art. Look, everyone makes mistakes. Copy editors are not infallible. Errors are going to slip past even the most trained eye. But in the publishing industry, copy editing is taking a hit. Many heavily-trafficked blogs and zines, like Talking Points Memo, do not staff copy editors and rely on their writers to check their own work.

A few things bum me out about the impending extinction of copy editors:

1) Copy editing is how many freelance writers pay their bills in between projects. It can be quite lucrative; major magazines pay in the neighborhood of $35/hour.

2) Copy editing is not just about correcting grammar/spelling/punctuation errors. A good copy editor can substantially improve the writing, making edits that improve transitions, clarity, flow, etc.

3) It's depressing that much of the public doesn't care about or doesn't notice errors, even really obvious ones like the one in my bio. This is sad albeit unsurprising given this country's habit of electing politicians with subpar grammar skills.

In my M.F.A. program, there is a course offered every semester in copy editing; we are told it's a marketable skill, one that will ensure we can get jobs after graduation. But unless you're lucky enough to be one of the New Yorker's infamous legion of copyeditors, well, you might find yourself as screwed as those of us who didn't drop $4K to learn how to spot dangling modifiers and errant commas.

Don't know what a dangling modifier is? Don't worry -- you're in good company.

Look, ma, I'm a published poet!

A month or so ago, I blogged about beginning to send out my poems to literary journals and magazines and I have a happy update. While I have, as expected, received rejections, I've also gotten a number of acceptances, much to my surprise and delight.

A trestina (mini sestina), "Sisters," is in issue #9 of nibble
Twin sonnets, "Wunderkind," will appear in The Raintown Review
An ode, "Ode to Virtues," will appear in nthWORD
A sonnet, "Ineffable," and villanelle, "The Bridegroom," will appear in The Road Not Taken

Just wanted to share the good news....according to Duotrope's Digest, a site which allows you to track submissions and responses, my acceptance rate is 14.29 %. Yee-haw!

The Five People You Meet in Writing Grad School

Since I'm gearing up for Year Two in my MFA program, this post seemed apropos. I actually wrote this for a blogging contest sponsored by Writer's Digest-- I haven't heard anything from them, so I'm assuming I didn't win and can repurpose what I wrote. Admittedly, this is a little snarky and if you're in my MFA program and we're friends, don't worry, I'm sure you don't fall into any of these categories. Because if you did, we wouldn't be friends, right?

Mitch Albom may know about heaven, but let me tell you about some of the folks you’re likely to encounter in an M.F.A. writing program.

1. The Premature Memoirist

Color me old-fashioned, but I thought memoirs were generally supposed to be written at least halfway through one’s life. And yet, the popularity of creative nonfiction as a new track in writing programs around the country has resulted in tons of 24-year-olds working on their David Sedaris-style dysfunctional family memoirs.

2. Little Miss Defensive

In workshop, she rolls her eyes whenever anyone offers constructive criticism and ferociously defends every word. But if everything she writes is already perfect, isn’t graduate school a colossal waste of time and money?

3. I-Feel-Entitled-to-Discuss-the-Assigned-Reading-Even-Though-I-Haven’t-Done-It Guy

You probably encountered this guy in your undergraduate years. He makes seemingly profound, but vague comments, frequently using terms such as “deconstructionist,” “narrative distance,” and “meta-fictional.”

4. The Hunter Thompson Wannabe

He brings a flask to class, wears aviator sunglasses indoors, never shaves, and claims to do his best writing during cocaine-fueled all-nighters. He’s more bozo than gonzo, though.

5. The Pretentious L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E/Flarf Poet

His/her poems don’t make any sense, but that doesn’t make them deep. The titles of said poems are often longer than the poems themselves. Example:

Haiku Written on My Neighbor’s Toilet While Reflecting on Proust and My Mother’s Liposuction Scars

Ketchup packets burst
Like Partridge Family pancakes
Feline clitoris

Sometimes random is just….random.

*Note: You may also encounter these types at writing colonies, conferences, and book launch parties.

My job with rare books explained!

This month, I've been working part-time at my old employer's, Glenn Horowitz Bookseller. My job: cataloging (i.e. writing about) old books and letters for one client's collection. This particular client is building an extensive library of books written by and about American women; she also collects Judaica and cookbooks.

But whenever I try to explain my job to my friends, their eyes kind of glaze over and I know they don't really understand what I'm doing on a daily basis. They know it involves books and writing and research, but that's about it. I used to get the same look on my face when my former roommate Kim would describe what she did at her job at a consulting firm. To this day, I have no idea what consultants do.

So to clarify matters, I'm posting an example of what I write here. It's challenging work, usually enjoyable, and combines a strange and specific set of skills (for instance, knowing the difference between foxed and soiled endpapers, or what deckled edges look like). A good description should stand in for the object itself and explain why it's important and valuable. The description I'm posting below I'm especially fond of because it actually inspired me to write a poem (a bouts-rime, to be exact), which you can read here.

A Manuscript Account of the Burning of Louvain

[Religion] Autograph letter signed, “Sister M. Ignatius O’Kavanaugh,” to Miss Walker, Graymoor, Garrison, N.Y., April 5th, 1915.

Three 8vo. leaves, all sides covered; uneven left margin on first leaf; some small tears.

Together with:

Dosch, Arno. Louvain the Lost. The World’s Work, disbound from the October 1914 issue.

Four 8vo. printed leaves; left margin unevenly torn where it was removed from hinge; some leaves chipped at the top.

The six-page letter by Sister O’Kavanaugh graphically recounts the destruction of Louvain, Belgium at the hands of the Germans, who were occupying the city at the time. It reads in part:

Reverend Mother tells me you would like to hear from me something of what we went through in Louvain, Belgium, before the Germans made us evacuate the city…I must tell you that there was no provocation given by the citizens; they strictly followed the advice given them by the Belgium staff, when the latter held the place; up to the 18th of August, to keep very quiet & offer no resistance. They freely gave up all firearms…even those who had rusty guns, dating from the days of Waterloo…

On the evening of Tuesday the 25th of Aug. at about 7 pm we were suddenly terrified by the deafening noise of firing; it seemed as if all the guns in the country were firing within a few yards of us…Most people fled to their cellars; some who went to the street were shot dead…

The strength of their guns is so great that the bullets go through brick walls 25 inches thick as if they were going through walls made of cheese…After about half an hour they stopped firing and began burning the city. They took about 36 hours to do it. Groups of 5 or 6 soldiers went about, one officer being with each group to see that they did it. Hundreds of our poor neighbors climbed over our walls and gathered round us. When they tried to flee from their houses into the streets, they were driven back into the flames. One poor woman, a Marie de Bekker…was shot through the side because she tried a second time to escape from her house. The bullet passed thro’ her flesh past over the hip bone…

Towards 8 o’clock on Thursday morning (27th Aug) soldiers came into the house crying out, as if they were in a great hurry & in great fear, that we were to flee at once, that the city was going to be bombarded. They were kind & even respectful…We had to go to the big open square in front of the railway station…we had to wait for about ½ hour till the population of that part of the city had been gathered there. Then we had to march to Tirlemont. We numbered about 7,000…

The letter concludes with a discussion of Sister Kavanaugh’s current activities in the United States and her fundraising on behalf of those affected by the war.

“Louvain the Lost” also tells the story of the fall of Louvain, but through the eyes of an American journalist. The piece was inserted into the Oct. 1914 issue as an appendix. The editor’s note, which was published alongside Dosch’s article, explains that Dosch was commissioned by World’s Work magazine to write from the frontlines of battle. Also included is the note Dosch sent with his article, with a post-script that reads: “I have not put a thing in this story that I did not see. It might have been more vivid to give the lurid details told about Louvain, but I send enough to indicate what it must have been.”

Dosch breaks up his narrative into sections with dramatic headings such as “The Hush of an Invaded City” and “Soldiers With Drawn Pistols.” He describes the days leading up to the fire, when the citizens of Louvain waited hopefully for either French or English troops to arrive and drive out the Germans. Dosch and the other American journalists in his party were in Brussels when Louvain began to burn and he describes how the town looked when he arrived a day later: “…it was not until we came in sight of Louvain that we realized the extent of the destruction…I was prepared to find one or two of the troublesome quarters destroyed, but the first thing that caught my eye was the roofless church of St. Pierre. Across the Grand Place the Hotel de Ville still stood, but everything in between, a distance of half a mile, and everything for a mile beyond to the farthest rampart, was burnt…I wondered what had become of the little Flemish woman of the restaurant with childbirth approaching, and the many lone women whose husbands and brothers were in the Belgian army.”

World’s Work was a monthly magazine founded in 1900 by W.H. Page which covered American politics and cultural trends. The magazine published its final issue in 1932. Neither Dosch nor Sister Kavanaugh look up in biographic resources.

Let the rejection commence!

Yesterday marked a minor milestone in my creative writing career: I sent out my first submissions to literary journals and magazines. Which means in about three months, I should be receiving my first wave of rejections.

I'm not afraid of rejection -- it's part of the artistic process. Since joining the editorial staff of Redivider, Emerson's graduate literary journal, I have gained some insight into the process of getting published. And I'm not gonna lie; it's a little bit of a crapshoot. I mean, my job is to screen the slush, i.e. the unsolicited submissions. So I know that someone just like me is reading my stuff and making a judgment call which may or may not have to do with the quality of the work. I try to be objective, but at the end of the day, it's just my opinion. One person's opinion. And what do I know? I'm just a wannabe published poet myself.

The most amusing part of the process of submitting is researching which publications would be a good fit for my style/voice. Some of the guidelines are pretty narrow--consider, for instance, what kind of poetry a journal called The Bathyspheric Review is seeking:

The Bathyspheric Review is an electronic journal carrying fine poetry devoted to oceanic themes and imagery. Founded on a deep desire to celebrate the world's oceans, waves and beaches through poetry, we do not restrict our content to naturalism, but only request that it explores the imagery of the shore, the tidal zone, the impact zone, the surface, the mid-water, the deep.

Sadly, none of my poems really grapple with the tidal zone. I do have a couple of poems that deal with the ocean, but on more of a metaphorical level. I don't know if that counts.

Most lit mag guidelines can be summarized thus: Send us stuff that doesn't suck and hasn't been published already.

Sounds simple, right? We'll see.

Under the influence

Since moving to Boston and starting graduate school has correlated with drinking copious amounts of beer (it's all anybody drinks in this town, seriously), I more than ever wish I could master the art of drunk writing. Not drunk texting or e-mailing; people who know me are well aware of my demonstrated mastery in those fields. In college, I actually had to put Post-Its all over my laptop before going out to remind myself not to send e-mails when I came home drunk. I've matured a little bit since those days.

I'm always envious when I talk to people who say they do some of their best work when drunk and/or high. Coleridge and Poe had their opium; Bukowski, whiskey; Aaron Sorkin, cocaine. A med student once told me that if Sorkin were her patient, she'd feel torn between her responsibility as a doctor to tell him about the myriad medical risks of cocaine abuse and her impulse as a West Wing fan to tell him to stick with the blow.

The truth is, my writing is terrible when I'm not sober. The other night, after some enjoying a few beers with some fellow students at the Tam, I came home tipsy and decided to write a poem. The best thing about this poem is the title: "Wherein I contemplate the possibilty [sic] that I have a drinking problem." The poem itself is completely incoherent, though I did devote an entire stanza to the glories of brunch cocktails. (I have yet to find a solid Bloody Mary in Beantown.)

I often come home from a night of drinking with the best intentions to write and be productive, but I inevitably end up sprawled on my bed watching, for the 1,000,000th time, that episode of Law and Order:SVU where Det. Stabler goes undercover as a pedophile ex-con.

Mmmm, yes.

I have only tried to write stoned once, in college. The poem was about spiders. Correction: "arachnids." I remember thinking that was an amazing word when I was writing the poem.

I keep thinking I might be able to tap into a secret reservoir of creativity if I could just compose sentences while not fully in control of my faculties. I certainly become an amazing dancer when I'm drunk. Check out my hot moves:


Fierce, no?