anamcara

Thank you for the data point!! At least we're in it together either way P.S. I love your avatar!

I love Matthew Zapruder's "Why Poetry"! "Meander Spiral Explode" by Jane Alison is also wonderful, and though it isn't specifically about poetry (it's about the shapes of stories in general), I found it inspiring and instructive.

:pointedly ignores sage advice from earlier in the thread to not put any stock in the portals: Anyone else able to see a course catalog on the Courses/Registration section of their UIowa portal? I can, and I can't remember if I could before, and I have a deathgrip on the smallest scraps of hope. There's a note above the catalog search that says I don't yet have an admissions profile and can't register, but I can see and search for everything now ?

It often happens to me that I'll try to write a short story, get a bit stuck on it, and then try to work out some of the kinks in the ideas as poems, or vice versa (I tend to write narrative poems). I've gotten to some of my strongest pieces in both genres by pendulumming that way. They definitely feel like they serve each other, though once I get to a happy place with a piece I would usually rather burn the other version of it than ever share it ? (Also, congrats to you on your acceptance, and to everyone else with acceptances today!!)

Same!! I'm betting Boston will be on the later side, too, given its later deadline... I don't know how many times I've tried to scry the response dates from 2018 and 2019 and 2020 to try and predict when I'll hear, but it's too many.

Thank you, and yes to Woolf! I'd never read her before this year (terrible). Recently someone shared an earlier short story Woolf wrote about Mrs. Dalloway bustling around London before a bomb goes off (maybe?!) with me, and it was one of those stories that was like a completely new window onto what writing can be. Shook me up! Excited to spend more time with her -- will check out To the Lighthouse!

I've been lurking for months, but the pressure of waiting and the lovely conversation about books has drawn me in! I'm reading Elizabeth Kolbert's new book Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future. It's fantastic so far -- slightly less anxiety inducing than The Sixth Extinction, but only slightly. Next up is Mrs. Dalloway. I haven't yet heard back from anywhere I applied to, and I went for all big boys (Michener, Iowa, Syracuse, and Boston). Can't do it without full funding; hopefully that doesn't mean I can't do it at all. Solidarity to everyone who's waiting!