River of Play

And Now, a Different Flock

A flock of words, that is. For the next, oh, ten days or so Oxford University Press is continuing its celebration of adding back issues of the journal Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment (ISLE), the publication of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE, of which I am a member, though in an effort to conserve paper, we don't carry cards). Not only has Oxford UP taken over the distribution of ISLE, they've digitized the backlist, and the entire thing is available for download--for FREE. The journal publishes academic bits, yes, but also literary nonfiction and poetry. Well worth clicking through. I will admit to shamelessly downloading many, many articles. 

So go. I'll be here. Maybe we'll have a brief chat about the quiverfull movement when you get back. 

Last Word on Geese

As you can plainly see...no photos. Alas. But the photos below are huge. Click on one and find out (while they are of a size and quality that you could use them as your desktop, don't. I tried. A dense black and white pattern with a black and white cursor is not a good combination.). Thus, one of the moments of great poignancy was realizing that while there were many birds, they were snow geese, not, oh, passenger pigeons. Still, living near one of the great migration corridors offers a glimpse into the profound compulsions of nature. It's an awe-inspiring experience, and a chance to see cedar waxwings twice a year. 

The girl was unimpressed. A bit chilly and windy. But she bore the inconvenience like a trouper.

More Geese

I mean it. Geese: 

Wild Things

I know, I know. I need to post the rest of the geese pictures. But did you know that there's a live-action version of Where the Wild Things Are coming?

Check it out!

Visions of Flight

But I'm going to say something quick, first. Working on a project based on where you live is...strange, wonderful, enlightening. Beyond the sudden ability to visualize older versions of this small city, I've had the unsettling experience of learning more about the place than life-long residents. Now, to be sure, the people I work with know more about what it has been like to live here for their entire lives so far, but I can point out new significant details to them. I'll try to remember to explore the implications of that later.

Now, on to birds!

I mentioned house guests and snow geese a week ago. Right, so we didn't get a chance to see many Sandhill cranes, but we did get to see these other birds instead. I'll try to do this so that the image below will blossom into a big ol' picture if you click on it. Let me know if that works. 

Our first clue about the birds came from the highway.

So we pulled off to investigate further. And walk along the lake with the girl, who remained oblivious to the wall of sound. Geese are, you can see, quite social.

After this lovely time looking at calm birds, something set them off. Or at least quite a few of them.

I'll have to continue this little narrative later...

Time's Winged Chariot

I almost wrote "whinging chariot." Fun with fingers, eh? Though nothing compared to the daughter. Her fingers are simply the most amazing thing she sees. 

We've been busy around here in Lincoln. Houseguests and so on. We took our guests--Wendy's godparents--out to look at the last of the Sandhill cranes. Instead, we ran into snow geese. Tens of thousands of snow geese. I have pictures. And I will post them. But right now I have a narrow window for posting, so I wanted to set up a quick link to a fab/scary comic here (it's the 3/13/09 strip). If you're a PhD student, you must be reading this strip. If not...it'll give you some insight, I expect. Oh, but not this particular one. It's more of a theme link. 

Remind me to write about the new poetry project. And think loving thoughts toward Natural Bridge. 

Reading and Linking

We're into a busy season here at chez Team Libros (a sort of answer to Team Pants as well as a fairly accurate description of the contents of our apartment--an apartment which could be fully carpeted with books to a depth of at least two volumes if such a project were our intention. Which it isn't.). We will have a wealth of visitors this coming weekend, including Wendelynne's godparents. 

I have a stack of reading that waits patiently for me. John Price's Not Just Any Land is here to my left, and a stack of other material. At the top I have Agha Shahid Ali's The Veiled Suite, Nance VanWinckel's No Starling, and David Wagoner's A Map of the Night. The first and last are somewhat lengthy, so I have to gear myself up to commit to them for a time, not an attitude that usually goes with the flaky lightness of poetry collections. I hope they bear the weight well.

And if anyone has suggestions on how to keep a disparate variety of online sites wrapped tightly together, give a holler. 

Nativity

I just thought I'd mark another anniversary of the day of my birth. 

This year, I'm in yet another wild, turbulent place. But I've had a chance to read a couple of poetry books--Karen An-Hwei Lee's Ardor and Todd Boss's Yellowrocket. Two very different books, but both of them explore the kinds of ecologies we encounter in the 21st century. Pick up both. At once. Yes, you, you ecopoets.

Back in the Saddle--and Relaxing

AWP was last weekend, and it was...immense. I ran into Matt Buresci who told me that 8,500 people were there for the panels and the 700 tables and booths in the book fair. And this has been a goad for me to think about the Prairie Schooner brand, if you will. The good people at CLMP suggested a book to read, Buying In. So I'm reading the text. Very interesting stuff about the psychology of buying, and it raises intriguing questions about innovation v. novelty. 

The conference is a good place to meet old friends and to remind myself that there's a lot of light and smoke in literary publishing but very little that's all that interesting. I also noticed that our price point was a little steep for current economies. We'll see what the year brings. But the worst thing about the conference was my conveyance: a Jeep Compass. Nice enough on the inside, I suppose (though the cup holders were in terrible locations), but it maxed out at 20 mph on the highway. Oof. And don't get me started on the extensive blind spots. Cars around me would disappear entirely for miles at a time only to reappear when I needed to change lanes. 

Plus, did I mention the mileage? 

Which takes me off the AWP issue and onto the much more meaningful engagements of ecocriticism (oh, before we leave AWP: I did get a chance to meet up with some ASLE and Wofford folk). D handed me a rather appalling little board book when I got home. I Love You, Little One by Nancy Tafuri. In this book--firmly in the tradition of reassurance narratives--a variety of wild animals ask their mothers if their mothers in fact love them. We'll leave the talking animals aside and concentrate on their maternal responses. Yes, the mothers say, I love you like the pond/river/stars love you-- And there's the trouble. I finished each of those sentences while D was reading with "which is to say, not at all." I know for a fact that D loves Wendy more than the stars love her. The stars don't care. At all. Hell, the pond can drown you. And will, no matter how fond of it you are. I understand that we're talking about childhood treacle, but still. Not all the treacly books suggest dangerous attitudes. 

But the illustrations are nice.

The Great Windy Way

Tomorrow (2/11), I'm off to Chicago. This will be my second year as the logistics head of the Schooner contingent. I've dotted every "i" and crossed every "t" I could find. We'll see what happens when we get there. It's usually madness, though in a contained sort of way. 

In the world outside the hothouse of academic writing, it looks like we're in for an interesting struggle between nineteenth century technology and the twenty-first century. Certainly, we're having to consider coal v. alternatives, but I'm also thinking about "shovel ready" projects that simply patch up power grids, transportation infrastructure, and water systems that instead need to be overhauled. So while I'm very interested--thrilled and stunned, actually--in the green jobs and technology the new administration is putting in place, I'm concerned that the money might go to prop up the status quo for another generation instead of doing the difficult work that needs to be done.

Last random blog-jump: Since I've turned in the big drafts of the comps, I've been turning to research on place. Nebraska: It used to be an ocean. I learned yesterday, for example, that the watershed we're part of (Platte River and, more locally, Salt Creek) is shallow and complex. Something like eleven creeks drain 1000 square miles of land right around here. Lincoln, in the middle of this complex, has experienced one hundred floods in one hundred years, thirty-odd of them major. And, in fact, we have posted flood warnings today. We had some heavy downpours yesterday that washed ice into jams at bridges and culverts. So keep your galoshes handy.