Confession Tuesday

Happy Tuesday, everyone. Carolee will be taking a break from confessions after this week, so I will take the lead and keep a participants list. It's time to fess up! Tell us what's on your mind today.

(FYI, Go visit Carolee's latest post at Read Write Poem!)


YAWP!



It's just one of those days. Had to get that out of the way.

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Today I wished I was independently wealthy. If money wasn't an issue for me or my family, I would be a professional student. I'd study poetry with the upper-echelon poets I've always admired: Lucille Clifton, Mark Strand, and Billy Collins (assuming they still teach). Yep, I had that thought as I imagined myself shouting "… my barbaric YALP over the roofs of the world."

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Last night I was of two minds. While watching the Red Sox game, I was thinking how lucky I am to have the family I have—and how difficult it is to be a parent. I often wonder what lessons we teach our kids indirectly. They watch us so closely I hope we're not making too many mistakes. If we raise our voices or say certain words, do these words become the ones they carry with them all their lives?

Raising kids is such a gift, but parenthood is a lifetime job. There's no home place to cross. It's the only work I know where no one evaluates your progress. In the end, I can only hope for well-adjusted kids who make it through to raise their own children. I guess I'll know the answers when they start their own families—many, many, many years from now!

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Tomorrow the kids go to our former day care provider who has a pool. Nothing makes the work week more satisfying than knowing what I do means that the kids get to do fun things like this.

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It's been a while since I've posted a to-do list—I'll post it tonight. It's geared toward making time for revision and sending out poems for publication. No new acceptances but no rejections, which means my poems are out there working for me!

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Other than The Practical Writer and poetry books, I have not read any fiction/nonfiction books in 2008. Ugh.

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Note to self: start posting confessions on Monday nights again!

Comments

Great post. I'd be a pro-student also.

And with parenting, I think the same thing. It's so hard to know what's right, I always just remember, "I do the best I can, I when I know better, I do that."
January said…
So are there any poet/professors you'd like to study with?


I like your philosophy on parenting. It is about doing things one day at a time.
Off the top of my head, my picks would be

Denise Duhamel
Bob Hicok
Natasha Trethewey
Heather McHugh
Lee Young Lee
Tony Hoagland
Barbara Hamby


Also, as for parenting, someone just recommended this to me:

Under Pressure: Rescuing Our Children from the Culture of Hyper-Parenting by Carl Honore

And it looks pretty interesting. Here's the link on Amazon if you're interested--

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0061128805/ref=ord_cart_shr?%5Fencoding=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&v=glance
January said…
OK. I'm amending my list as follows:

Lucille Clifton
Mark Strand
Billy Collins
Tony Hoagland
Li-Young Lee

And thanks for the book suggestions--I'll check it out.
Deb said…
Me, too, about being a student. I returned to it late and would never stop. If I had money.

Sorry about your grant.

WD and I are still confessing.
How I wish to chuck it all and obnly concentrate on reading and writing!

*Deep sigh*


BTW, I confessed here!

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