Thursday was my poetry reading with crazy Gg. We met for an early dinner and I got all liquored up, and we figured out an order for our reading. I tried to fight off the conviction that nobody wanted to hear any of my actual "poetry" at the poetry reading. (Reading poetry scares me.) Three glasses of wine later, and I had talked myself down from that ledge. Once more unto the breach!

The best part of the reading was that so many people were there. I mean, numerically speaking there were not an overwhelming amount of people, but there was a fabulous assortment of supportive friends, random journal readers, and ex-boyfriends. People overcame great obstacles (such as a hatred of poetry or a crazy long drive) to come and be supportive.

I reconnected with a bunch of my old classmates, whom I hadn't seen in a while. (I also got the 411 on this semester's poetry series, except that I work on the nights that the readings are taking place. Damnit.) One of my readers came and brought me Valentine's chocolate (divine) and Buffy stickers. One of my other readers sent an envoy in the form of her sister, who gamely showed up to hear a total stranger read poetry. (Had a great time talking to her at the bar.)

It was such an interesting collision of worlds. I mean, Good Ian met Bad Ian! And Bad Ian had no idea that to several random strangers in the room, he was known as the Useless Shagging Bastard. This struck me as incredibly trippy at the time-- although in retrospect, I am kind of thinking this may have been the fault of the wine. Is it just me?

The reading itself wasn't bad, Gg and I had fun, and for the most part, people had nice things to say. I didn't get anything along the lines of my best compliment ever ("Your poetry makes me feel like someone just peed in the middle of the street. In a good way!"), but I was told that I "drip sex" and that I was beautiful, so I guess I'd have to call it a success.

For those of you who weren't there, I will post one of the poems I read. The witty, sexy, prose-y ones are always the ones that work best aloud, and I got some compliments on this one:

SANTA'S GIFT

I am ten years old. Under the tree, I open the slick pink box, hoping for a Malibu Barbie Dream House. Inside the box is a penis. "Hooray! It's just what I've always wanted!" I put it on. Flash forward and somehow I am trying to convince my third grade teacher to go down on me. She gives me a Catholic schoolgirl or two-- finally I understand the eroticism of the plaid jumper. Having a penis has improved my eyesight. Blink and I am jacking off, looking around for some wet thing. What have I become? A star pupil at the Catholic school. It's my penis that does it-- it solves quadratic equations and diagrams sentences brilliantly. Now we have qualified for the football team! Nobody knows what to do with me. Flash forward. I am permitted to stand next to Lacey-Jane Clark and have my photograph taken. After the prom, she will give my penis a clever nickname and deflower me in a limousine. Someday, I will marry Lacey-Jane. We'll have three little girls and live in a dream house, right on the beach in Malibu.

Speaking of poetry, I never mentioned my Wednesday meeting with the new professor regarding my thesis! Ooh, that was something I wanted to write about-- I'll write about that instead. Valentine's weekend, blah blah. It's not like I have exciting sexcapades to write about. (Maybe if I'd had a little more wine that night...)

So, Wednesday. I love the new professor. I'm sad that I won't be able to take a class with her, especially since she's teaching the Woman Modernist class next semester and she wrote her doctoral thesis on Elizabeth Bishop. (We actually did quite a bit of talking about Bishop; she seemed impressed that I had written a paper on one of her obscure rediscovered poems.)

She is not a poet herself, nor does she have experience as a thesis advisor-- mine was the first MFA manuscript she had ever read. She's a scholar, and what an interesting perspective to have on my manuscript! She read the thesis and commented on it, wrote a detailed, thoughtful critique of it, recommended further reading for me, and talked with me for an hour about my work and where it was going.

It was like she was an honest-to-god professor doing her job. Believe me, this is a first at my school.

Our conversation really gave me new insight into my own themes. For example, we talked about the physicality of religion. Many of the poems in the ms have religious themes, and she asked me what it was about religion that specifically spoke to the theme of the body. I said that when I was a child, "religion" was mostly about my physical body-- go to church, make the sign of the cross, sit in the pew, don't fidget, kneel, stand, sit, kneel some more. I talked about the way that the physical gestures of religion come back so easily whenever I hear a certain phrase or attend a mass. Or all that time I used to spend, every Sunday, staring at a tortured body on a cross.

The thing is, this all sounds great and is surely relevant, but it had never occurred to me before! She asked so many provocative questions like this, and every time I answered, some part of me was thinking, "Wow! Who knew that I was getting so philosophical?" and we always ended up agreeing that I should think about it more, explore it further. The suffering of the body, the way society deals with the body's gender, those physical motions of religion, or so many other things. So much to think about.

I left feeling jazzed about my manuscript, and where it's going. I can't wait to read the books she recommended (one by Adrienne Rich and one by Lucille Clifton) and try to deal with more "external" issues of the body. We also talked about Van Gogh quite a bit (since that is my next project) and she gave me some ideas there.

Later that day, I ran into Professor President. (He and his crazy fiancée eloped last month! Who ever thought that wedding would happen?) I berated him about canceling his Melville class. Then I made him promise to write me a recommendation letter and to let me pick his brain about Moby Dick over drinks some night.

After that, I had to go straight to work, which sucked. Because with every fiber of my being, I wanted to go sit in a dark bar, look out at the drizzle and the clouds, and write and write and write. It was that kind of day.