goodcynara

Love it! I requested membership in the MFA Draft '21 group. Seems like another cool community.

Who knew Galactus was going for an MFA?! Drawing + title = *chef's kiss*

Right on, sister. Rejection stings, but does anyone else find it is immediately followed by a bizarre, giddy euphoria -- the kind that makes you feel free? And dare I say, a little relieved? Getting into an MFA program was never the goal. The goal is to write what only we can write. And maybe create the occasional garden paradise. (Boiling water on seed-starting soil is a fresh tip; thanks!)

In the immortal words of Tom Petty, Don't let it kill you baby, don't let it get to you Turn it up to 11 and take heart, comrades. The world is wide.

Oh, cool! I forgot about the Results page. Thanks for hipping me to this.

FWIW, Iowa website says "decisions are made in March or early April."

Agreed. If this were an actual coffee shop, I'd be the one in the corner with my laptop plugged in, hair a hot mess, stack of bang-ed up slim volumes with scribbled on post-it notes sticking out of them and a mug full of ghosts of coffees past. I keep trying to write, but stop to chat up everyone who makes eye contact. Procrastinating like a mo', as they say in the old country. But seriously, thank you all for your generosity and humor. It's nice to be in community.

Down for the poet Zoom. Would love to hear what y'all are working on.

Neem oil often works and is non-toxic, but you have to spray daily for a week, coating both sides of the leaves. Get ready to burn some sage due to the strong smell.

Ah! Merci.

Unrelated, dumb question: how does one add the neat footnote containing a list of programs to which one has applied? And what does the "p" stand for? I might have sworn I knew how to use the Internet, but I tried a couple of methods and appear to have failed. Unless y'all can see my list while I cannot?

Will scour, thanks!

Anyone have a favorite journal that publishes critical essays on poetry? Looking for examples of well-executed, relatively short critical essays (not reviews). Thanks in advance.

I second "Obit." Thank you for hipping me to "Ghost Of" -- I just ordered it.

My pleasure. Respect to U-W Madison for their forthrightness and clarity!

I am terribly sorry to hear of the loss of your partner, especially so young. Dismantling the belief that grief is something we're supposed to move past is crucial. This poem raked a few more dead leaves out of every cell of my body. Thank you.

I am so sorry to hear this. My whole project is about grief resulting from the traumatic, sudden loss of my little sister to suicide. I hope to write the thing I needed when it happened and couldn't find. I still haven't found anything that really nails it for me, but depending on your taste, you might check out Forrest Gander's "Be With," C.S. Lewis' "A Grief Observed," and Max Porter's "Grief is the Thing With Feathers." Allie Brosh's new illustrated book of cartoons, "Solutions and Other Problems" has a chapter on the loss of her sister, who drove her car in front of a train. (Much of the rest of Brosh's book will make you howl with laughter.) Every loss is different. A woman in my writer's group said that when she lost her mother, Mary Oliver's "In Blackwater Woods" kept her sane. I've pasted it below. Love to you and your family in this difficult time. Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment, the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders of the ponds, and every pond, no matter what its name is, is nameless now. Every year everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know. To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go. Mary Oliver In Blackwater Woods

Those of you who are accepted to multiple programs, or who are holding out for an answer from a first choice program, may find this info from the U-W Madison MFA Admissions page useful (sorry for the huge font - couldn't seem to get out of it after cutting and pasting from the site!): Wisconsin Protocol Like most institutions with a graduate program in creative writing, the University of Wisconsin-Madison is a member of the Council of Graduate Schools and as such is bound to the following resolution: "Students are under no obligation to respond to offers of financial support prior to April 15; earlier deadlines for acceptance of such offers violate the intent of this Resolution." You can see the full resolution as well as a list of council members by clicking here. We at Wisconsin advise any applicant who is feeling pressured to accept another MFA program's offer before the April 15th deadline to simply send the program a friendly email that states, "I see that your institution is a member of the Council of Graduate Schools. As such, I believe that I have the right to consider your offer up until the April 15th deadline as established by the council. Thanks so much!" Most universities are big places where one hand doesn’t know what the other hand is doing. Showing them you know your rights will help ensure that your rights are respected. At Wisconsin, our promise is simple: We will make our decisions by March 15th. Should you be placed on our waitlist, we will tell you up front. We won't put off giving you an answer about your status simply so we won't have to tell you you've been waitlisted. While we will tell you if you are on our waitlist, we will not discuss the nature of the waitlist, e.g. how many students are on it, where a particular student’s place is. We will respect the April 15th deadline as established by the Council of Graduate Schools. Out of respect to you, (not lack of interest!) we will not call you repeatedly just to "check in with you" to see if you've made a decision. All our students are fully funded, which means we won't at any time threaten to yank or alter funding to pressure you to say yes before April 15th. Finally, we urge all MFA applicants to know their rights and to ask the schools they're applying to in advance if they are members of the Council of Graduate Schools. If they're not familiar with the CGS's resolution, send them a link to this page. We hope that by spreading the word regarding applicants' rights, all students can begin their graduate studies on the right path.

This is really generous, and no small amount of work. Thank you.

Makes me want to get in an electric VW bus and drive up the coast! I can't believe I've never been to the Cascades -- or Crater Lake. The well-lived road trip strikes me as a fair alternative to grad school. Depending.

Ah yes, novels coming out of the walls in this place. Thanks!

Love Astoria. Might you be willing to share a link to the Airbnb listing for the old Victorian house?