Antler

I defended my thesis on Thursday. Its title is Antler; it was The Window, but I've changed it (both are also titles of poems in the collection). Since it's a creative thesis, basically a manuscript of poetry, lots of people have asked how one "defends" such a piece. The answer is, you really don't "defend" anything. Like writing an abstract, the defense is one of the parts of a Masters degree that doesn't really fit with the Masters of Fine Arts. What really happened was that I sat with my professors for about an hour and talked about my work.

It was great fun. I got terribly nervous right before it happened, and was even mentally imploring the baby to kick or something for moral support. I was afraid that my professors would quote poetry at me and I would stare blankly back at them. But as soon as I went in, I could tell it was not going to be scary. Basically, they asked me questions about my writing process, talked about individual poems they liked, and commented on the thesis as a whole, how it cohered formally and thematically. My adviser spoke a lot about how she was impressed at how everything came together in the end, about how some of my poems had been "baggy" and how I'd in the end been able to do a lot of cutting and refining. Another of my teachers commented on the lyricism in some of my newer poems, and we discussed how I had moved in different directions with my work since I became a student three years ago.

I wanted very badly to write down everything they were saying, but I couldn't really do that AND participate in the conversation. I am sure I've forgotten a lot already, but some of the other highlights were such comments as, "We expect great things from you," "Not all theses are this mature," and just little moments here and there when one of them would read a line or bit from a poem and smile and say what they liked about it. One of the more amusing things, to me, is the way they focused a lot on my use of "idiom," which they discussed as "charming and authentic" while avoiding the "real potential to be cheeseball." This use of "idiom" goes along with my "southernness" and my "impulse to tell stories," especially family-related stories. What's funny to me is that what they pointed out as examples of idiom are just how I would normally talk, but I guess that's the point, and what saves it from coming across as affected or forceful.

Anyway, it was very fun to sit there and hear about my work from my teachers. It was interesting to have all four teachers all together in the same room. I sort of thought they might argue with each other more, with some of them liking certain poems and others disliking them--that's often what happens in individual conferences, one teacher will tell you to cut another teacher's favorite part of your poem. But it was a pretty happy event. At the end, they sent me out of the room, and called me back a few minutes later with a "Congratulations, you passed!"

And another happy event from last week was finding out that I won the yearly student prize. It's a school-wide contest sponsored by the Academy of American Poets. UM students submitted poems, which were then sent off to one of the poets who came to read at UM's "Writers Here and Now" reading series this year (it was Authur Sze). And I won first place! (Thanks, Arthur Sze!) So I get another $100, and I get to read at the last Writers Here and Now with the other winners (the fiction winner, plus two honorable mentions each for poetry and fiction). I am looking forward to that, because I've always wanted to be a Writer Here and Now, and many of my students, both present and past, come to the readings. It will be fun to have them as an audience, since they are often curious about my poems. It's a great end to a great three years of being in school and re-beginning my writing life.