Since

Got my Passages North contributor copies in the mail on Saturday. Not surprisingly, the issue's already impressed me. I've been trying to get into an issue since I first started sending out, so I'm lucky to be in their 30th Anniversary Issue.

Lots of good writers, including: Emma Bolden, Jesse Lee Kercheval, David Dodd Lee, Jonathan Rice (my friend and seemingly endless journal friend also, as this is maybe the sixth issue of a journal we've been in together), Chad Sweeney, and many others.

And since it's the Anniversary Issue, it's over 250 pages, so there's plenty to keep you busy for a while. It's going to take me a while to get through it.

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Also received the specifics from Nebraska on Saturday. The official acceptance letter was a weird one for many reasons. Needless to say, however, after seemingly getting in with a TA, they basically let me know that the better and more worthy candidates got theirs first, and that they'd love me to attend without funding.

Then at the end of the letter they said something about how competitive the job market is, and that basically a degree doesn't mean shit at this point.

Again, a very weird letter.

So I'm on the waitlist, and we'll see if I ever get an offer. If not, though, Nebraska's certainly out.

Binghamton's yet to get back to me about how much tuition I would have to pay if I accepted their TA offer, so hopefully soon I'll get an idea of how seriously I need to consider them. They're certainly in the running with Oklahoma State now, but without specifics I can't say how much in the running they actually are.

As a disclaimer, though, I don't want to sound like I'm not grateful to Nebraska for granting me admission. Because I am. Especially after hearing about so many others who were granted admission without funding.

But I don't know if anyone who isn't affluent enough to throw money around would actually pay for tuition at this level, especially for a degree that tends to be blood in the water full of sharks.

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Saw two movies worth noting over the last week: The Secret Life of Bees and Fireflies in the Garden.

And when I say worth noting I mean because they were both pretty terrible. The Secret Life of Bees, which I did not read before seeing the movie, has to be one of the most boring movies I've ever seen. Hardly anything actually happened. At all. The race issues were glossed over except for about ten minutes near the end, and the story didn't seem unbelievable, just not very interesting. It was a chore to get through.

David Gordon Green was slated to direct it years ago, and I wonder what he could've done with the look, the feel, the pace, the script, and everything else, not to mention casting essentially not a whole cast of professional singers.

Fireflies in the Garden is what MFA screenwriters should watch, mostly for what-not-to-do-when-you're-writing-and-making-a-movie. There was a ton of potential there, and again, speaking of David Gordon Green, I think he could've done wonders with the script. Ryan Reynolds was actually decent, but there was some miscasting, especially Willem Dafoe, whose character I completely didn't believe. And Julia Roberts, who I never really liked anyway. Plus the emotional crux of the movie seemed vacuous and anything but believable, which perpetuated the rest of the 120 minute downward spiral.

I'm not sure who Dennis Lee is, but he has some things to learn. Or he didn't have enough people saying, "You need a ton of re-writes before you can actually shoot this thing." The film's pretty striking visually, but that's about all it has going for it. Skip it when it's finally released.

Jump in the Pool

I got an acceptance in the mail today from The Cincinnati Review, which I was thrilled about until I read that they wanted the poem Passages North previously accepted. I had emailed them, but this isn't the first time something like this has happened; sometimes emails get lost or deleted. I do keep good records, which is something on which I pride myself. None of the other poems in the batch have been accepted yet, so hopefully the editor will be willing to take a second look, since he did say he liked the rest of the poems too. If not, though, I'll keep sending. I like The Cincinnati Review a lot.

The thing is: the aforementioned poem I was thinking about ditching and not even putting in the batch I sent to those journals and others. It's a really weird and bizarre poem, and I thought maybe it didn't have a place to even be considered for submission. It clearly goes to show how much I know about my own work. Then again, I have a feeling the folks I trust with seeing drafts would've said, "What the hell is this?"

Then I got home from the store to a Hollins Critic e-mail acceptance, which was funny and welcomed considering the former events. It's also a newer Nocturne, if you can call it that, because I think most of the time I really don't know what a Nocturne is. But a semblance or seedling of a new manuscript I think keeps growing slowly, because I'm starting to recognize some similarities, and though the poems seem to be linked, they certainly don't belong in the first manuscript that's currently out all over the place at contests. I think that's a good sign. At least new poems are being written, and that's always a good thing.

At the store I was also greeted by a bigger guy who smiled at me and said hello. At first I was confused, but then I realized it was a guy who used to live mostly in the street near my old apartment a few years ago. He had these two vans and a car, and would always be working on them, and his car would be filled with empty Natural Light packages, and he'd usually be sitting in the front seat of the car if he wasn't working on the vans: batteries and wires and tools strewn all over the place. I always said hello to him when I was walking somewhere, and I can't believe he recognized me, but then again I end up recognizing people I don't even know and have never met at places like AWP, just from a photo on the back cover a book sometimes. I remember faces. Apparently he does too.

Night Diamond

I was thrilled yesterday to receive an email that Passages North wants a poem from the batch I sent out about a month ago. I love Passages North and have sent poems to them from the first batch I ever sent out until now.

Also got an email from another journal that said they lost some poems I sent about a year ago, but it's fine since all of them have since been picked up. The poetry editor said he liked the work, though, and invited me to submit again via email, which I appreciate. And of course I said, "If you don't like any of them, that's fine too." To have that opportunity to send work as an attachment instead of packing up the enveloped for the post office is something I'm grateful for. Not to mention I've sent work to this journal a lot too in the past with no luck. So we'll see.

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This is kind of a random thought, but has anyone seen those commercials for the Yoplait Save Lids to Save Lives campaign? It's a great idea for a great cause, and Jess and I have been saving our lids and putting them in a plastic bag attached to the fridge. But here's what I don't get: all of the postage that's wasted by sending the lids could've been used to save more lives. Meaning I would imagine that putting some electronic code on the yogurt contained would've been a better idea. I'd be all about a 15-digit code with numbers and letters -- typing numbers and letters into a website ain't that hard. But to send the lids we have to spend money, which is fine, but it seems like all of the money for postage could've been used more for the cause of the campaign. Maybe I'm crazy. And I should probably be spending time thinking about other things, but alas.

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Some of the schools I'm applying to for Ph.D don't even require the GRE General Test. I was kind of taken aback. Some schools want the GRE General Test and the Lit Subject Test. Some just require the General. Some just want a sample of work. I'm excited now to get everything going now that I pretty much have all the information gathered, and the eight schools I'm applying to are locked in place and won't change. Once the applications are actually out into the world, though, is when I'll be legitimately excited, and probably pretty nervous.