a very Serious Poet

It's a drizzly gray Wednesday. I should be running down the sidewalk, avoiding dying worms and dragging a reluctant dog behind me. Instead, I have spent the last hour holding a photo shoot with the dog and a pair of knock-off Wayfarers in hopes that he'll make it onto Hipster Puppies*. Now I'm going to spend the rest of the night making unnecessarily complicated sweet potato enchiladas. Complicated because it involves roasting sweet potatoes dusted with cumin and lime, which will then be mashed for filling; unnecessary because the taste will probably be overwhelmed by enchi sauce anyway. Hey, Wednesday?

I love you.

Verily I do, Wednesday. You are my last free day until the 29th of April. Tomorrow I will collect 56 persuasive essays and have the weekend to flip them; over the following week and a half I have something like eight hundred freshman Comp conferences scheduled; then we regroup as a class for one period, at the end of which every student will then hand me a folder containing three essays that I then have the weekend to grade. Then I get to the do the same grading-in-three-days things, only with someone else's students. In the meantime I have to keeping walking some other folks through the narrative arc, which involves saying climax eight or nine times a class.

By the time I get to my birthday, you will forgive me if the very mention of the phrase "thesis statement" makes me want to kill something. As it is, I'm excited to have one Rupiper rolling into town around that time. Let's all act surprised if we spend our time together watching me drink my face off.

*

This is such an odd time of the semester. Half of the freshman are worried sick that they're going to fail the class, and I have to reassure them that no, they probably won't--just polish up some parenthetical citations and read through their drafts, and they're in good shape. The other half are (still) convinced that even though they haven't really conducted any research, attended any conferences, visited the Writing Center, figured out how a semicolon works, or written three essays ... even though they haven't done that, they'll be fine.

It wasn't originally my intention to hold conferences for the sole purposes of delivering pep talks/lectures, but after three semesters of this class, I've figured out it's a beneficial side effect. Or, as I told them yesterday: If you are worried that you're going to fail, chances are you won't; if you think you're going to pass but haven't done any work, you're probably going to have an unpleasant surprise when grades are released. Maybe your dad won't beat you to death over the summer with a lawnmower because you failed Freshman Comp!

... okay. Not really. BUT SERIOUSLY HOW AWESOME WOULD THAT BE.

*

I spent the day holed up in the office, getting some final grade sheet and CW lesson plans ready for the coming weeks. It was a perfect office day--gray and rumbly beyond the window, warm and quiet in the room, the light scent of toner. The hallways were decidedly quiet, since most of the CW folks have split for AWP in Denver. I'm not going this year, because it's cheaper to drink at home than it is to drink in Denver, and also because I spent my travel monies on NYC this past January. But I'll miss wandering around a giant hotel playing Is That Your Favorite Poet, Drunk? and Homeless Person or Semi-Famous Writer**? Both of these are excellent games to play, especially because AWP features a) a lot of booze and b) lots of people in ill-fitting clothing.

Only at a writing conference can you find six hundred people who are capable of holding court on the subject of split infinitives and yet cannot navigate the menu for their voice mail.

What I will not miss, however, is the conference attendee I like to call The Serious Poet. This is generally a middle-aged woman in a broomstick skirt, clutching a notebook or steno pad in one hand and lugging a giant [free] tote bag of literary swag. You call tell the Serious Poet is a serious poet because she projects, at all times, an air of Seriousness--behavior that extends to not brushing her hair, or letting a cell phone blow up at alarming volume while she squints at the screen, trying to see who's calling instead of silencing the ringer, or wearing socks with her Teva Itunda sandals.

The Serious Poet's native habitat is a staircase--much like certain sea birds carve out precarious nests on rocks jutting above a churning sea, the Serious Poet arranges herself on a carpeted step in the conference hotel lobby. Some researchers hypothesize that the Serious Poet chooses a step over, say, a hotel lobby Starbucks because she won't shell out $4 for a cup of jasmine tea when the barista can't absolutely certify that the tea is organic***; some think it's because the Serious Poet honestly prefers the flattened and worn carpet to actual, upholstered chairs. Either way, the Serious Poet makes her nest on the steps during the quiet lull when conferences and workshops in session, sometimes going as far as to spread out her notebook and various wrinkled sheets of steno paper laterally along the step.

Prime Serious-Poet watching enthusiasts know the best time to observe the species is during the ten minute breaks that fall between sessions. As the foot traffic begins to increase, the Serious Poet will first puff up, indignant at the intrusion; then she'll sigh loudly and clear her throat in Nature's most perfect display of passive-aggressive behavior. The throat clear says, Excuse me, buddy, but in case you didn't notice, I am a Serious Poet, and the Muse, in her infinite wisdom****, has been so kind to grant me this comfy little step, and I'm currently working on a three-part poem that compares a woman's ova to the coming of spring, except, you know, it's pretty hard to finish this metaphor when you're so presumptuous to try and use the stairs as stairs ifyoudon'tmind.

Only once the crowd of people trying to navigate down the stairs reaches its full swell of tote-bag-toting, artsy-eyeglass-wearing, live-AWP-twittering-on-a-BlackBerry writers does the Serious Poet realize muse or no muse, she is about to be trampled to death. Then--and with great care and great disgust--does the Serious Poet scoop up her things and seek other shelter. In the meantime, the crowd finds its way to other panels and readings, the staircase clears, and another Serious Poet builds a nest. ON THE STAIRS. THE FUCKING STAIRS, THE THINGS THAT PEOPLE WALK ON TO GET FROM POINT A TO POINT B, OFTEN MULTIPLE TIMES IN A DAY.

Imagine this bird trying to roost on a staircase full of people and you'll begin to get the idea.

*

I should be fair. The Serious Poet is not always a poet.

Sometimes she's a nonfiction writer.

[ba da chh!]


* I should mention here that I was wearing a striped scarf and Chucks during our photo shoot. I hate myself so much sometimes.
** no fair using the presence of an NPR tote bag to help you make up your mind!
*** not to mention, those hot water refills aren't free.
**** of COURSE a Serious Poet refers to the Muse like she's a close girlfriend. of COURSE she does.