Stranded in Albuquerque

Salus Populi Romani. She is the Protectress or the Salvation of the Roman people. I find myself looking at her image once in a while. I feel comforted by this beautiful Madonna. Hiding from the world around me, I have forgiven myself for not writing a 400-page poetry manuscript during this time.

For a long time, I just kept saying "I can't . . ." I had planned to travel to Italy in May, to visit the Santuario di La Madonna di Montevergine in Mercogliano. I had also planned to spend time in Naples and visit the Santuario Madonna dell'Arco and its Ex-Votos Musem.  That plan disappeared by mid-February. No traveling anywhere. By March it was clear all I needed to do was protect myself and my child. I convinced myself that in a month or two, everything would be safe.

But I did not know that so many people don't care about people over the age of 50. That for me and so many others, we are left isolated, alone, on the margins. Who cares if we are suffering from depression, anxiety, despair?

But recently in the heat wave of mid-July, where every day it felt like we were burning alive--extreme heat and smoke from the nearby forest fires, I opened up a notebook. In the heat and the smoke,  I wrote a poem about Medea, the Poison Queen, and from her point of view, I was able to speak. The poem is rough, but I will work on it.

After that I began to look at my book project that I started during my sabbatical. I try to have daily contact. I listen for the voices. Have they abandoned me? I don't have all my books. But why do I need them? I left them in my office, in a space where I felt safe. Now I am listening to the dry wind late in the day in Albuquerque, New Mexico. No rain. Just wind drying all the plants. My sad, little garden looks half-dead, not dead but not really alive.

Every morning I wake up and try to remember what it felt like to wake up and to not be living in a pandemic.

Finding A Way Through the Fallow Months: Madonna Dell'Arco Hear My Prayer

It has been a while. I am finishing with a semester of teaching and am facing my semester long sabbatical. I have already started research on my creative project. Yes, for my sabbatical I am dedicating myself to my creative writing, but it will involve quite a bit of scholarly research.

I am also facing another round of rejections from my poetry submissions to journals and rejections of my poetry manuscript. Back to the idea of self-publishing. Why not? It may be the way to get more of my work out there into the world.

I did receive Honorable Mention for the 2019 Lauria/Frasca Poetry Prize from Bordighere Press. In addition a selection of my poems from the manuscript will be published in Voices in Italian Americana, 31.1 to be published in spring 2020. I am really looking forward to that. I will also be reading a selection of my Dawson, New Mexico poems at the 2020 NeMLA conference in Boston, MA. My plan is to add a few more poems to that series--I have a few in draft form--narrative voices from the dead.

Madonna dell/Arco has been haunting me these days. Since I learned about her I have been watching Youtube videos and staring at images of her on vintage prayer cards. The story resonates for me and in addition, she is considered one of the Black Madonnas. Perhaps because I see myself as an outcast in some ways, living in the borderlands literally and metaphorically, marginalized, and at times voiceless, La Madonna dell/Arco speaks to me.

This time of year is always difficult to get through. So many memories and so much energy spent on nostalgia and what has passed. I don't usually write a lot during the winter--it is usually my time for hiding from whatever is going on in the world. But with this sabbatical, I must start my process of creating despite the cold, and the longing to just hide under a blanket for a few months.

So I have surrounded myself with books about WW II and Italy. I am now reading Naples '44 and finding it horrifying for so many reasons--the racisim, the insensitivity to the women who were forced into prostitution because they and their families were starving to death. I have been thinking about my mother who was a young woman during that time, living in San Giorgio del Sannio. What did she and her sisters experience? It weighs on me.

My mother did not share those stories with me or any of her children. So with the cold weather settling here in Gallup, New Mexico, I am reading about the bombings, the rapes, the diseases, the death that all went on. But none of that was discussed in my childhood Long Island home. It was as if it had never happened. But it did. And now my eyes are opening up to it. This is where my creative work comes in. To bring a voice to the voiceless. Even if the sky is gray this cold, unforgiving December afternoon.

Considering My Embodied, Emotionally Full Poet's Voice

Sometimes I wonder if I missed out not becoming a fan of opera. And now it all seems too late for me. I wonder if graduate school contributed more to the wounding of my poet's voice. After all I cannot say that I have tried to create this kind of ironic, detached, disembodied voice in my writing.  I began to realize that somehow I was not exactly fitting in when I was in graduate school. I was in New Mexico and surrounded by people from all over the country. But I did not belong with any of the ethnic and cultural groups at my university. In fact I did not meet one other Italian American student the entire time I was working on my master's degree and my Ph.D. I did take a few classes with the only Italian professor at University of New Mexico. She was my only connection back to Italy. And when I visited her I would hear my mother language again for a short time.

In addition to the isolation I felt being away from the east coast, away from Italian American neighborhoods and bakeries, and festivals, I was also starting to wonder if I just did not belong in this country of serious, graduate students who were writing, publishing, editing, and networking with all the right people. I felt lost. A single mother in a program where there was only one other single mother (and she was my office-mate). And I was not from middle-class, white America; my parents were not college graduates. I had nothing to say when other people mentioned their fathers were lawyers or engineers. I started to doubt my teaching and wondered if I really had any right to stand in a classroom and teach college students. And yet my colleagues were confident that someday they would be able to teach graduate students.

Along with all that, for the first time I was being told to consider myself a poet--a professional, serious poet. This was not about having a hobby and writing a poem about my grandmother. It was about sitting in a room and hearing someone go on about language poetry, and I had no idea what that was all about. And I did not feel I could raise my hand and ask. We were all supposed to know what post-modernism was, who Michele Foucault was, and all that. And I did not. I knew that telling a story in a poem was not enough. So I dragged my working-class life into my life as a graduate student and poet--dramatic relationships, personal issues that interfered with my work, focusing on wanting a child and not on writing a book. And when all was finally over--my dissertation accepted, and I was finally graduating with a Ph.D. I settled for high school teaching. What happened? I am not even sure I understand what I did to myself. I guess it was self-sabotage--a girl from Long Island who should have been a secretary ended up with a Ph.D. but ended up being a high school teacher for over ten years. And with that kind of work, I did not spend the time to think about my voice as a poet.

Now I am reading Tony Hoagland's book, The Art of Voice: Poetic Principles and Practice, and I think I am starting to think about my poetic voice finally. I have no idea where this will all lead me, and it might be too late (it should have happened over twenty years ago). But here I am . . .

I Read Only Some Chapters of Jane Friedman’s Book, The Business of Being A Writer:

 

I was sort of reading Friedman's book and wondering if there was anything helpful for poets? And the answer is "not much." I found myself skipping over most of the chapters, and I started wondering why I was not taught about the "business of writing" in my graduate program. We didn't even discuss how to get published. on agents. There was a lot of crying and compliments and hugging and perhaps some posing, but no practical information about the business of being a poet.

I do like how Friedman criticizes literary publishers. In response to the concern that the demand for literature is disappearing, Friedman asserts that demand is still there but publishers need to realize the "distribution and discovery" is no longer dependent on publishers--due to social media we can all find that great writer. But what poets are being published and awarded with prizes and those elitist jobs in academia where you can teach one or two classes and spend time writing and traveling?

It feels like a popularity contest where the good-looking and funny ones get it all.

For a brief time I was motivated to build a platform, to draw in readers (fans), but I lost interest. I am now grading essays (yes, I am teaching two composition classes this summer--in addition to the five writing classes I teach every semester), reading John Warner's book, Why They Can't Write, and working here and there on a memoir I have been trying to write for about three years now.

After Spending Time Revising A Poem Today, I Receive A Rejection:

I just received one of those "form letter" rejections from a small, independent press. I was a semi-finalist along with twenty or so other poets. Again. I have been sending this poetry manuscript out for over a year now. It has some poems in it there were published in journals so I am not a novice to all of this. I have been writing and publishing for years. There are two chapbooks of my poetry out there in the world (one is out of print so I guess it is now considered "rare").

And I studied. I was in an M.A. writing program at University of New Mexico (in fact Joy Harjo was my thesis director). I have spent a good amount of time with other writers, working on my craft. I thought this time I had a really good shot of getting my manuscript accepted for publication. But it did not happen. One of the editors did send an encouraging handwritten note, and that was it.

So what am I doing wrong? Am I doing anything wrong? Is it time to self-publish?

A little voice reminds me, "Self-publishing will not help you advance with your academic career. It has no value at all in academia." Oh yes, there certainly would be some investigation into that checking to see if my publication is legitimate.

Today I don't feel legitimate. I feel again like that girl sitting in the back of the classroom being told my lines are too long and the poem just goes on and on.

Earning Tenure After 25 years: Looking for Other Unicorns

 

My travels in the world of academia has not been a simple, straight line from one destination to the other. There have been a lot of detours along the way. Some of it had to do with being a single parent and raising my two children in New Mexico. I was away from family and so had little to no support really. My primary concern after earning my Ph.D. was to simply get a job and keep that job. I did not want to leave New Mexico to take a college position anywhere; I had children who were rooted in New Mexico. So I detoured into high school teaching. That went on for so many years. Too many years.

Finally after my son graduated from high school, I was ready to accept a tenure track position at a university. I left high school teaching and have not regretted it. I do miss the younger students who seem to make an emotional connection to you in the classroom or with the subject matter, but I don't miss the lack of respect from some administrators, parents, students, and even other teachers. I don't miss the emotional drain and stress of having to be responsible for approximately 120 students a year, and the feeling that at the end of the day you still have piles of work to get through before tomorrow. I don't miss going a year or two without writing a poem. I was just so tired all the time.

It was never enough--never enough time, never enough support, never enough money, etc. My hours were long--working seven days a week. And no one cared if I published another word anywhere. I needed to be in that classroom at 7:30 in the morning or else.

This summer during a time of eclipses (solar and lunar) I received the letter I have been waiting for. The provost sent it stating how they (the people who evaluated me every step of the way) were impressed with my accomplishments as an educator, scholar, and poet. Suddenly and finally it was enough.

I just read a poem, "Astronomers Added The Unicorn to the Orion Constellation Family for Completeness," by the poet Jennifer Martelli. In the poem a character, Olivia, claims, "We're unicorns, you know, Italian women who write, we're rare." I held my breath for a second when I read that. Yes, that is true. Wandering through the woods, trying to find other unicorns can be a difficult business, but I am ready to walk into that darkness and ask "Where are you?"