Abounding in Literary Success

On the heels of my friend Abby, I just learned of my own little piece of success in the literary award. I was notified by email today that I've won an honorable mention for my poem "More Than A Rooster" in the Knoxville Writer's Guild Poetry contest. Here's what judge Marianne Worthington had to say about my poem:

Tim, I chose your poem because I greatly admired the sense of humor conveyed in the symmetrical stanzas, and because, well, I had a grandmother that talked that way! I’m very happy about your winning poem.

That's kind of nice, that my poem about dirty-talking grandmothers resonates with someone other than just me. Below, please find my award-winning piece.

More Than a Rooster


Ecology is a dangerous thing.

To know so much about the world

except why grandmother's golden

rooster flashed his wings, crowed,
Chased me round her circle drive

Dive-bombing my feet.

I eyeballed a toy ball bat,

Orange savior in the primrosed path.

I hit him hard,

Hit him hard again.

Pullet proud, cocksure.

It is hard to know how

Good it feels to hurt something

To make another thing fear,

To hear my grandmother calling from her porch,

"Smack the son of a bitch!"

Tales of an Academic Interloper

Today, in true academic form, I presented a paper at the Nexus Interdisciplinary Conference here at UT entitled "Doing Difference: Embodied Emotion in Composition Pedagogy," complete with big, possibly misused words like academe, performativity, and rhetorics of emotion. Like most of my academic endeavors, I was selected as a panelist completely on accident, as one of the over-worked doctoral students arranging the event kind of jokingly asked me in a moment of exasperation if I would present a paper on composition pedagogy. Unbeknownst to her, I had one rip, roaring, and ready to go. So I presented, and I loved it. I loved feeling like an academic, schmoozing with the other privileged white people like myself over wine from plastic cups and crudite as we discussed important things like embodied texts, collective identities, and the best non-corporate, locally owned place to grab a cheeseburger in our respective cities. I felt I'd toed my way a little bit father through the sacred gates of the academy.

And that scares me. Honestly, one day someone is going to figure out what an imposter I really am. Me an academic? Not in a million years. It ain't in my blood, I swear it. I am perpetually shocked when I reflect on the fact that 1.) I have a college degree and 2.) I'm pursuing another, more advanced degree. I really expect the Gate Keepers of Academe to discover the mistake some registrar or English department secretary has made along the way, descend from the tower, and unceremoniously revoke my admittance into the academic country club then send me to live out the rest of my life making sandwiches at the Subway.

I'm not supposed to be doing what I'm doing. Education, much less graduate work: I have no model of this type of life, at least not in my direct bloodline. My momma and daddy didn't go to college. My brother wasted a few thousand dollars and a couple semesters at the community college back home before he realized he wasn't cut out for the academy. Aunts, uncles, cousins (except for James, who has an art degree and works at Walmart): none of these kinfolks have set foot in a college classroom, much less know what "a performative framework for composition pedagogy" is. Come to think of it, I might not either, though I pretend like I do.

But they're the smartest people I know, and I'll go fisticuffs with anyone who says they aren't. They've got life experiences that make some of the things I get riled up about seem like specks of snot on the salad bar's sneeze guard. Talk to my mother about love and money, and you'll hear the wisdom of a woman who has worked her whole life to get both, has trouble holding onto as much of each as she'd like to be happy, but still laughs through it all, gets her bills paid, and manages to eat out a few times a week. That takes sense you don't learn in the college classroom--to deal with disappointment gracefully and be truly thankful for what you have instead of bitter about what you don't.

I hope I don't sound bitter. I'm exceedingly thankful for my education opportunities. If God exists as a loving creator, she's spent more than the usual amount of love on me. Despite my gratitude, though, I still feel like an academic interloper, like I'm just playing the smarty pants game until I turn around one day and realize that this isn't my environment, this isn't my language, these aren't my people. I'm not from researchers and conference presenters, critical theorists and academic intelligentsia. I'm from men and women who smoke off brand cigarettes because that's what they can afford working 12-hour days laying tile and cleaning up puke. And I love those people. Hell, I long to be like them, to have their wherewithal and wit. They're who make America run.

But it's still fun playing the academic game sometimes.

Celebrating Abby's Success

Move over, Virginia. There's a new Wolf embarking on a celebrated career in letters, and she's fierce enough not to lessen her bite with double O's. I'm talking about my dearest friend, Abby Wolf, who found out yesterday her poem "What Mr. Silverstein Forgot to Say" (correct me if I got that wrong, Abby) is forthcoming in the North Central Review.

The poem is quite dazzling, taking the reader beyond the safety of where the sidewalk ends and into the confusion and redemption we find in little things as young adults, like Abby's startling image of a cigarette butt wedged between sidewalk cracks. Strongly evocative, she lets images do most of the talking, and the poem unfurls into a rich landscape of the cultural debris associated with coming of age in the South.

Did I mention this is Abby's first publication? Published the first time she ever sent anything out! And she's just 20-years-old, a junior in Creative Writing at the University of Central Arkansas.

For the Conway folks, hug her neck, give her a pat on the back, buy her a cup of coffee, throw her a coronation ceremony next time you see her. For everyone else, post your congratulations here, and I'll pass them on to her.

Also, I'll get the poem up as soon as I get the poet's permission.

Congratulations, Abby!

Happy Easter, y'all.

I can remember Easter dinners at my grandma's house when I was a kid. It was the one day a year I saw those estranged cousins, aunts, and uncles on the Sisk side of the house, and it never failed that Chris would have a new baby to show off with some atrocious middle name (Wayne, Joyce, and sundry others), and the likelihood that David, Jr. was in jail again and Grandma couldn't know was very high. But my Grandma, bless her heart, probably always knew. She was a hard one to get anything over on, but she played along like a pro. And she always had a Port Wine cheese ball and mayonnaise-y potato salad we'd eat alongside our ham on red plastic plates. And The World's Best Lemon Icebox Pie. I'd give my hind teeth for a slice of that pie.

This Easter I'm in Knoxville, diligently avoiding the work I should have done when I was back home in Arkansas and Mississippi on Spring Break. If it warms up outside, I want to take Flat Stanley around town and photograph him doing interesting-but-first-grade-acceptable things for my cousin Lily, a first-grader who asked if I'd decorate her paper doll and send pictures of him back to her teacher. I'm probably more excited about this project than she is. I've got plans to photograph my blond, blue-eyed Stanley working the photocopier and standing in front of the Sunsphere. I might take him to the Mellow Mushroom for bluegrass night on Thursday, but I'll have to make my friends (who I will require to pose with him, obviously) hide their beer cans. Someone's got to defend the innocence of youth, right?

So if you see me around with a paper doll and a digital camera, don't think I've lost my grip on reality. I'm still barely grasping, at least for another 5 weeks, another 3 research papers.

"I want to break free. I want to break freeee"

I'm just beside myself with joy. Spring Break finally made it! Or, rather, I finally made it to Spring Break without losing my entire mind. It was a close call, though. Yesterday I nearly went fisticuffs (that's a gross exaggeration) with a guy in my Teaching Freshman Comp class about--are y'all ready for this?--teaching literary analysis in English 101. I'm a proponent of no literary analysis is a first-year writing class, especially when the purpose of the class is to teach comp, not lit. But my classmate--who, I should tell you, is the nicest guy, probably one of my favorite people in the world-- raised his voice and ruffled my feathers a little bit when he aggressively argued that since Comp I is listed as an English class, literary analysis should be taught. I see his point, but I also don't see how assignments involving interpreting a literary text AND scholarly criticism on the text--like an example assignment we were reviewing in class--empowers 18-year-old non-English majors as writers. What's wrong with starting out with the personal essay?

Do you see what my life has come to? It's ridiculous, really, the arguments grad students sometimes have.

But none of that for a week. I want to break free, so I am. Heading home, heading to Conway, heading to Oxford--A true Mississippi man, I'm going visiting in my leisure time. If you're lucky (or tell me your office hours), I might just come see you.

I also plan on taking a walking photo tour of my hometowns (yes, plural) and concocting some kind of photo blogging post wherein I represent the places that have made me Timothy J. Sisk, at your service. It'd also be nice to capture to rural scenery of North Mississippi before it's all plowed under and paved over by developers.

But before I can do any of that, I've got to sling my laundry and my books in the car, get some gas, and make the 6.5 hour trek southwest of here to that little piece of nowhere where I was reared destined for greatness, Horn Lake, Mississippi.

Stoned in a bad way

Some people get stoned passing joints. Some by passing the bong. How do I get stoned? By deposits of calcium passing through my urinary tract. Yep, that's right. Timothy suffered a kidney stone today. Here's what happened.

I was working in the Writing Center this morning when all of a sudden, while tutoring an unassuming ESL student, I felt a stabbing pain in my right flank. I grimaced through the session, but the pain got worse. After several trips to the restroom involving failed attempts to agitate the release of what I assumed to be a trapped pocket of gas, I told my boss I was outta there, mistaking the lower flank pain for stomach cramps indicative of a virus.

When I got home, I doubled over. Kidney stones are the most painful thing I've experienced, y'all. Deep, stabbing pain. Get-right-with-Jesus pain. I called my dad and told him I thought I was dying, and he told me to go to the doctor. It was hard to drive, but I decided to go, because at that point I was afraid my appendix was about to explode, and if I have to die young, it better be from hard living and fast driving, not appendicitis.

At the doctor's office on campus, I was poked and prodded where it hurts, made to pee in a cup and hand it to a technician through a drive-thru-esque window, and told I had kidney stones and must proceed immediately to the ER. So that's what I did, with much pomp and ceremony, in fact.

The folks at Student Health had a UT PD officer drive me over to the UT teaching hospital's ER, where I got the full-on sick treatment: a hospital gown, a ride on a stretcher (even though I was perfectly capable of walking), blood work, another round of cup-peeing, and even a CAT scan. I fear I shall forever be in love with the radiologist who scanned my CAT (is that what they scan?); he was so funny and nice, insisting that he take me for a spin on the stretcher when I told him it was my first ER visit.

My doctor was a resident in the hospital who wore bright orange Crocs, which incidentally didn't look as horrible on her as they do on most people. She was really nice, but kind of embarrassed to say the names of the male sex organs: "Are you experiencing and pain in your *whispers* testicles? Remember to wipe with an antiseptic towelette before you pee in the cup...you know your *whispers* penis." It was quite endearing, actually, and had the situation been different, I'd have made fast friends with her and probably we'd have plans for drinks on Thursday night.

Since the stone was small enough, I was sent home to pass it (no catheterizing today, thankfully), complete with a prescription for high-powered pain pills and an order to drink lots of fluids. As my prescription was being filled at the Walgreens, I ran across the street for a chocolate milkshake, because after the day I had, I think I deserved one. Plus I hadn't eaten all day, having spent the majority of my morning-afternoon on a stretcher in an ass-exposing white gown. Then I came home and zonked out for an hour, which would have lasted longer if my overly-concerned mother would have stopped calling to make sure I was still breathing.

I'm feeling finer than frog hair now, with only minimal guilt for not going to any classes today or working on that paper I wanted to have finished by Wednesday. I'll kick it into gear tomorrow, surely. Besides, I think today warrants a night off, don't you?

Teaching Teen Poets

The UT Creative Writing Program has this event each Spring for area high school students called the Young Writers' Institute. From what I understand, students in the local public and private schools are nominated by their teachers to come take morning and afternoon workshops in different genres, free of charge. Man, where was a program like this when I was in high school?

I taught a free-verse poetry workshop to ten 14- and 15-year-old girls yesterday morning. I'm not lying y'all--it was the most fun I had all last week. These young writers were fantastic: motivated, interested (and interesting, which is always a plus), and really eager to learn something about writing. I opened up the workshop with a warm-up Write-Around-The-Room activity, which was a hit (it's always a hit). We got a great group poem about machine gods torturing pink rhinos. I explained to the writers that maybe these things could be metaphors--the machine gods might be wars or capitalism, the pink rhinos might be soliders or children. Or a team from Legends of the Hidden Temple.

After that we talked about Plath's "Metaphors," Brautigan's "All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace," and Marge Piercy's "Barbie Doll." I wanted them to see how poets take deeply personal, and even embodied experiences, like pregnancy in Plath's case, and attach the meaning to concrete objects outside of themselves to create specific images in their poems that are loaded with different levels of meaning. Then I did love-candy (Thanks, Monda!) and brought out my bag of tricks: a bag full of random things from around my house, including a blue bandanna, a miniature print of "American Gothic," a Barbie doll in a jar, a Jesus action figure, my Honors College medallion--just whatever. I had the writers draw objects and see how they could work together as images that form metaphors for the internal. One of the most interesting poems was by a girl who drew a can opener and a postcard that says "Free Love." She wrote about the mechanization of human emotion. An interesting line from her poem: "Red is vodka and sex." I love it, but I'm a bit concerned. She's 15. Sweet Jesus, please don't let her have any experience with "red."

I was so impressed by how eager they were to share their writing, and how friendly they were with each other. Without much prompting from me at all, these writers commented on their peers' work in very complimentary and helpful ways. By the end of the workshop, I had them all read at least one thing they'd written, laughing up a storm at my funny stories about New York subways and the awkward turtle hand gesture, and many of them asked me to read and comment on some of their earlier poems. I felt like a real teacher.

So I did get some angsty teenage poems about disillusionment and the "enormity of my hatred." But whatever. They're 9th and 10th graders. If they aren't surly teen poets now, God save them when they're writing howlers at 23. As long as they are writing and they are interested, I'm proud. I'm happy. These girls are writers.

On an interesting side note--Monda, this is particularly for you--at the open mic event at the end of the day, the students volunteered to read their work. Like I said before, we had all the different schools represented, and thus students from an array of socio-economic backgrounds. While I'm a dork and really get enthusiastic about any student writing, I'll be honest: The girls from Austin-East, Knoxville's poor, under-performing, inner-city school, were the most talented poets in the room. Phenomenal young talent--probably because they have real stuff to write about.

P.S.--My apologies to Josh and Charlotte for blathering on and on about my workshop yesterday afternoon. If I was rude, it was unintentional. I was just so damn excited. Next time just tell me to shut up, and I am excited to hear about yours.

Gender Defender!; or, why I'm well on my way to becoming a gender studies scholar.

For an outside-of-class mid-term exam (for which I wrote 13 pages!), I wrote on the topic of constructions of masculine identity in four early- to mid-American plays--Royall Tyler's The Contrast, Langston Hughes's Mulatto, Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape, and Clifford Odets's Waiting For Lefty. As usual with anything I write, but particularly with literary analysis, I thought it was the most horrible text ever written and that I'd surely make a B--grad school's equivalent of a "go work at Wal-Mart" admonition--and my academic life would be over in the profoundest sense. I blame No Child Left Behind for my irrational fear of failing tests.

Anyway, I got my exam back today, and I did much better than I thought. I wasn't unceremoniously slung from the halls of academe, and my professor--who is the nicest man you ever will meet--had this to say about my exam:

Excellent exam, Tim, really excellent. You have a nuanced sense of how gender definition and dynamics play out within the broader social sphere. Great job!

Did you catch that--nuanced sense of gender? My God, I've been waiting my whole life for a man to tell me that.

Please forgive the blatant self-promotion, and join with me in celebration of an exam well-done, a good semester chugging right along!

How are your semesters going?

Rites of passage

An assignment for my poetry workshop this week is that each student bring in her worst poem ever. This is a difficult assignment for me since most of my poems are just awful, especially the four full-of-angst journals I've kept from those trying (but oh-so-fun!) undergrad years. I'm still not sure which poem I'm going to take to class tomorrow night--most of my older ones are a bit too personal and much too surly to share in decent company. I might go with something safe. Or I might say what the hell and take the ones with these stunning lines:

"Give me a fucking reason to love myself/ Because I can't if you don't" (2.08.06)
or

"I like boys and shoes/ though I've yet to find/ my perfect match in either" (2.10.06) '06 was a trying time in the love department, as you can see.
or

"I feel like an amalgamation/ of decisions others have made/ I'm no longer an autonomous self/ but a construct of contrived identities" (4.11.06) Can you tell I wrote this the semester I took intro to literary theory?
or

"I am a thinker and a writer/ A lover and a fighter" (6.26.07) For about a week after we discussed them in the NWPCA summer institute, I couldn't stop writing "I am from" poems.

Oh dear. How I have grown, both in my writing and in my emotional maturity. I think.

Got any awesomely bad lines to share?

"I needed history of fox"; or "State vs memory"

For my 686 poetry class, I've been given this assignment: 6-8 page paper on the state of the contemporary American lyric, as demonstrated in work by Robert Hass, Lucille Clifton, Galway Kinnell, Barbara Hamby, or Adrienne Rich. I decided I'd work with poems by Adrienne Rich, primarily because I remember enjoying "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" and "Planetarium" in the Women's lit courses I took at UCA. I figured Rich's poetry would be easy enough to write on, and I expected I'd talk about the contemporary lyric being used as a means of exploring sexual politics, or something like that. What I've found, though, from reading Rich's last two collections, Fox and The School Among the Ruins is that Rich is doing something more than exploring sexual and identity politics in her work: her lyrics are essentially writing history.

Take the title poem in Fox, for example. I interpret this poem as not only an exploration of the speaker's sexual identity--her desire to find a sexual history in order to buttress an invisible identity--but also a place where the lyric creates the very history the poet needs--the history of fox. Look at that last stanza. Rich is going back to to the primordial, back to a time before identity politics. In fact, this lyric rips (or, to use Rich's terms, "it means tearing and torn") proscribed identity from the female body and writes a new history for what it means to be a woman, what it means to be a gay body, and how these identities reinforce definitions of what it means to be human. You can hear Rich read this stunning poem here.

Fox

I needed fox Badly I needed
a vixen for the long time none had come near me
I needed recognition from a triangulated face burnt-yellow eyes
fronting the long body the fierce and sacrificial tail
I needed history of fox briars of legend it was said she had run through
I was in want of fox

And the truth of briars she had to have run through
I craved to feel on her pelt if my hands could even slide
past or her body slide between them sharp truth distressing surfaces of fur
lacerated skin calling legend to account
a vixen's courage in vixen terms

For a human animal to call for help
on another animal
is the most riven the most revolted cry on earth
come a long way down
Go back far enough it means tearing and torn endless and sudden
back far enough it blurts
into the birth-yell of the yet-to-be human child
pushed out of a female the yet-to-be woman

This simultaneous exploration and creation of history is as work in another poem from the same collection, "Veterans Day." I'll just share with you the second movement of the poem (note the exquisite use of pauses):

2.

Trying to think about
something else--what?---when

the store broke
the scissor fingered prestidigitators

snipped the links of concentration
State vs memory

State vs unarmed citizen
wounded by no foreign blast or shell

forced into the sick-field
brains-out coughing downwind

backing into the alley hands shielding eyes
under glare-lit choppers coming through low

State vs memory. That's the key. That's the role of Rich's lyric. She's navigating the space between what institutionalized history wants us to know and the truths present in our cultural memory. The role of the contemporary American lyric is to hold history accountable, then, to give a voice to the stories of queerness and other victims of America's other wars on difference. The role of the contemporary American lyric is insult the dominant paradigm with the difference it wishes to suppress and villianize. My God, poetry can change everything.

And, Houston, we have a thesis statement.