Those of you who read dark fiction may already be familiar with the work of Lucy Snyder or, more specifically, with her short story collections, the humorous and delightfully twisted Installing Linux on a Dead Badger and Other Oddities and the award-winning Sparks and Shadows . Chimeric Machines, Snyder's recently released collection of poetry, reads like something you'd dip into once you were securely snuggled under an afghan while the October wind claws against your house. These poems have teeth and nails, and they aren't afraid to use them. However, despite the shiveringly delightful edge the poems in Chimeric Machines possess, they never lose touch with common joys and pains and sorrows and dreams, with the forces that shape us and our dreams and desires for better...and for worse.

The collection is arranged in seven sections, each with a distinct focus and tone. The "Crete, Kentucky" section features poems set in the fictional town that unfold into a larger narrative as characters cross over between them, much like Stephen King does in his novels. If the narrators and characters in this section are a bit unrefined, the poems themselves often have more formal structures like the sestina "Flyboy," the villanelle "Terror White," and the sonnet-esque "Cissy Cocalus," which creates lovely tension between the form and content.

While the sections of the collection do tend to group poems thematically, I don't mean to suggest that there aren't overarching themes that bind the whole together. One such thread (which includes poems like "And There in the Machine, Virginia Finally Stood Up," "Dumb," and the "Daughters of Typhon" section) focuses on the quiet brutalities of everyday life that crush or twist our dreams, turning them against us, turning them into potent poisons.

One of my favorite sections of the collection was the one titled "Quiet Places." Many of these poems blend shadows and brightness, the quiet, aching losses and deep loves that are family. Synder's poem "glowfish," is about the loss of a mother, the ties of blood that bind generations, told in language that weaves science and myth, of life and death,

the Moirae weave
a tricky double-helix
genes don't lie
but they can hide
more spiders
than Arachnae's closet

while her "Mute Birth" is about a babe who comes perilously close to dying the day he was born,

his faint cardiac flutter,
oxygen fading in his veins,
skin pasty, then purpling
dark as slate pavestones
slicked with winter rain

Another favorite section is "Dark Dreams," which contains poems that are visceral and monstrous, their horrors the extraordinary counterpoint to the more ordinary ones of "Quiet Places." Standouts in this grouping include "Prometheus,"

Let me be your Adam.
Yank a rib from my trembling flank
and pleasure yourself upon it
until my ears ring with your ecstasy.

and the "The Monster Between the Sparks,"

I am the death you cannot see
when you gaze upon your starry skies.
Your telescopes, they lie to you
when they show a cosmos glittering
with a million firey gems;
.........
And when you come I'll crush you
to my frozen breast and take you to my heart
of darkness, and your pain will keep me warm.

Since we are talking about the extraordinary, one extraordinary thing about Synder's writing is the way that she captures the commonplace and elevates it, reinvents and reinvigorates it, imbues it with a sense of wonder. In the prose poem "Ocean," readers are carried along on the power of images like:

The night tide was thick with phosphorescent plankton that flashed in green alarm at any disturbance. Every crashing wave sent up a spray of ghostly fireworks. Glowing sea foam oozed like lava in the crevices of the jagged black rocks.

while "Searching for Signs of Life at the Bottom of a Cup of Cold Coffee" offers readers lines like:

Maybe living is just a matter of respiration and perspiration:
experiences inhaled, ideas exhaled, decisions sweated out.
Maybe Shakespeare was right all along: it's acting the part
you've accepted for yourself, heartbeat never quite steady,
as you manage to celebrate every scene, even as the last reel
in the camera is slowly rolling onto its cold gray spool.

I've only mentioned a few of the poems that resonated strongly with me in Snyder's collection. I could list at least as many more that drew smiles or shivers or both, but rather than do that, why don't you check out the collection yourself? If you do, you'll find the poems in Chimeric Machines are accessible without being simple, lyrical without being overly ornate, provocative without being lurid, and emotionally powerful and genuine without being sentimental. Those things make it a welcome addition to my library.

For the longest time, I couldn't sleep in public places no matter how tired I was. In college, I'd see people sacked out in the lounge at the dorm or on a couch at the student union. I needed to be somewhere dark and quiet and alone, somewhere I could lie down and stretch out and just let go.

Today, I slept for about an hour on the flight to Atlanta. I was dead tired this morning, stayed up way too late the night before, and so I slept with my iPhone playing loud enough to drown out the sound of the engines. It wasn't enough sleep, but I felt better afterwards, a little perk to my mood and energy.

However, now, I think I'm really winding down and need more than a cat nap.

The week got out to a stressful start, as all finals weeks manage to do. Managing the flood of emails and essays felt like a Herculean labor today, especially after work drained me so dry that I am helpless in the face of mix metaphors. I am yearning for my retail therapy from Blooddrop to arrive (even though I just placed the order last night). I am yearning for a good night's sleep.

However, Monday wasn't all stress and strain. I received a reviewer's copy of Lucy Snyder's new poetry collection Chimeric Machines. I haven't had the chance to do much more than crack the cover, but I read enough to be enthralled by "glowfish," "Prometheus," and "The Monster Between the Sparks." A proper review will follow in a few days after a proper savoring.

Today, I did my best not to think about my trip this week or my move next month. I went to see X-Men Origins: Wolverine. I watched the weekly Sunday night Law and Order: Criminal Intent marathon on Bravo. I did last-minute student consulting and a huge load of laundry.

What I want, among other things, is a vacation.

Why is it that the times when I am least able to sit back, relax, and indulge the muse are precisely those times he's (Sorry, but my muse isn't a chick.) most willing to throw all sorts of sparkly bits out in front of me?

Why is it that the more ideas I write down, the less productive I feel in terms of committing to and following through on one of them? Or why is muse enthusiasm more like a lightning strike than a fire?

I realize that the week before finals and the month I will be starting a move are not ideal times to try to get into the swing of daily posting. Like most writing, if you wait for the right time, you'll be waiting and waiting and waiting.

I've been waiting too much for too long.

My plans to journal more often in 2009 didn't last long, at least in this particular space. That's mostly because the year got of to a rocky start for me. First, my nearly eighteen-year-old dachshund had an abscessed tooth. Since he's so old, they can't knock him out and pull it, so he was on heavy antibiotics (the first of which he was allergic to) for two weeks. He was horribly sick, but thankfully, all seems to be in order now.

Right as he was getting better, I started having a toothache. Turns out, it was a horrible (like really brewing for over a month) abscess that formed under an old root canal that had been botched when it was done. Basically, the dentist left one root in the tooth and didn't fill the canals properly. The new dentist saved the tooth, but I was horribly sick from the infection.

Just as I was recovering from that, I was gearing up for my annual trip to the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. Welcome to those of you I met this year who are new to my LJ space. I look forward to the conference every year, and I was on schedule to actually be done with my paper and packing early. However, the best laid plans....

On March 2, my company laid off 11% of its workforce, including my boss (director-level) and our unit assistant. They offered me and the other supervisor in the group the opportunity to relocate to our Atlanta headquarters (they would pay and give us raises), stay in our Cleveland office but in a call center position with a huge cut in pay, or accept a severance package. Given the state of the economy, the job market in Northeast Ohio, and the fact I have ten years invested in this company, didn't leave me much of a choice.

However, I've been in my apartment now for fourteen years, and I know and am comfortable wit this area. I have roots, and I don't like change. Moreover, I'm not keen about moving to the South. The stress of deciding what to do had me at wits end, put me behind schedule, and made me less focused, engaged, and engaging at times at ICFA. Hopefully, those of you I met this year didn't notice it too much.

Right now, I'm in this weird bubble. The move is coming but not imminent. I'm still doing my job and teaching, and life goes on much as it has been. However, I know there is big change and much stress coming, so I have this feeling of restless, jittery stress that sort of waxes and wanes.

The year hasn't been entirely horrible. My mom's health, while still fragile, is more stable than it has been in a long time. Also, I got my contributors copies of the encyclopedia set I wrote for and of the 30th anniversary commemorative book for ICFA. I had two essays and three entries in the first and an essay in the second.

One thing that this whole stressful spring has brought to the fore is how much I hate not being in control of my life. It's helping me refocus on writing and on re-establishing goals for getting projects done and on the market. If I can work for myself, then I ever have to let someone else's perceived "business need" dictate where I have to live ever again.

So...what's going on in everyone else's worlds? Have your winters/early springs been restful or restless?

School starts on Monday. I'm teaching online this semester, since ICFA is the week after Spring Break. I prefer face-to-face teaching, and when I'm not in the classroom, I miss the performative aspects of teaching. I miss the social exchange that is more immediate. I miss being able to gauge my audience more accurately. Ah, well, at least my classes are smaller. Class size for online courses is capped at 20 instead of 25 in face-to-face classes.

I'm going to be refining the course I taught online last spring. This is nice, because I'll be adding content but not building something from the ground up. After this go around, I should have a pretty solid course I can recycle if I'm online again in the fall.

I'm not sure where the winter break went, but I think someone cheated me out of a chunk of mine because I'm so not ready to go back. Not just yet.

This weekend, I received the check for my contributions to Greenwood's two-volume Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy. This means that the volumes themselves are probably making their way slowly to my doorstep. Is it horrible to confess that I've photocopied the check so I can keep a record of the first significant (over $10) money I've made from being published (That's excluding contributor's copies.). While the cash itself is nice, what is symbolizes is as important as the economic capital.

I write and get stalled on projects. I send finished things out, and they come back with polite rejections. I loose faith. Sometimes, I do. Most everyone does. If I keep a copy of the check where I can see it all the time, if I have the books sitting on shelf near where I'm writing, I have reminders that I can write, edit, and sell.

I've gotten a little bit behind on Early Reviewer reviews over on LibraryThing, so tonight was the night to get caught up. I wrote three mini-reviews (mini compared to what they would look like in LJ form), and thanked my SantaThing for her thoughtful gift. She gave me a copy of Prince of Stories: The Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman, a book I've been wanting for some weeks now.

I gave my SantaThing recipient Emma Bull's War for the Oaks and Melissa Marr's Wicked Lovely. She liked urban fantasy and romance, and so I figured those would work. My recipient seemed thrilled, so a Happy LibraryThing Holiday was had by all.

Happy 2009, all!!! I hope everyone has a year that is full of health and happiness. While I can't vouch for your 2008's, mine was not great, but good or bad, I hope we all have a year that was better than the last.

I have to confess that I did not watch any of the Democratic National Convention. Yes, I am a bitter Hillary supporter. While Obama is a moving and stirring speech maker, I don't feel the same excitement about his presidency. Why then, am I watching the Sarah Palin speech at the Republican National Convention? Well, I think it's the same impulse that compels me to watch anything guaranteed to horrify.

And no, I'm not just talking about her hairdo or choice of outfit. Though a case could be made that both of them clearly fit the bill. I'm not just talking about her talking about her talking up "her guy" or watching her knocked up, underage, unmarried daughter holding hands with and beaming at the father of her child and supposed husband to be. Now that the cat is out of the bag with that one, Bristol no longer has to appear with a bulky blanket draped over her front and holding her baby brother, both things a way to hide her own bump.

Honestly, can we seriously want a woman who would be an old man's feeble heartbeat from the Oval Office who chose to name her children: Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper, and Trig. Hey, I liked Buffy and Charmed, but I wouldn't name my kids after characters from the shows.

As I sit here watching her, I have to wonder if McCain or his advisors honestly thought (and think) that my bitter Hillary support self would go, "Ooo! Another woman candidate! Gimme!" The differences between Palin and Hillary are painfully clear in every about each woman's physical presence and presentation, and those differences continue under the surface to the important things.

Hillary would not be talking up her "hockey mom" status and her entry into community activity via her participation in the PTA. Hillary would not want to take books off public library shelves because of bad language or questionable morality or threatened the librarian who refused with her job. Hillary would not want to restrict my right to choice. Hillary would not demand that creationism be taught in science classes. Hillary would not find hunting polar bears a nice weekend outing.

My excitement about Hillary wasn't just because she is a woman. It's because she is a formidable woman, a smart woman, a woman whose own political ideals align with my own. Not this utter travesty. I might feel sorry for her for parroting the speech someone put in her mouth if what she was saying wasn't so repulsive to me.

I am not excited about Obama or Biden. Truly, I'm not. However, what I'm watching right now, a speech that tramples on civil liberties and environmental concerns, a speech preceded by the whole audience chanting, "Drill, baby, drill" (this when talking about off-shore drilling), certainly makes it clear that conscience needs to trump excitement in November.

This year marks the 30th meeting of the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (ICFA). The organization is doing a memory book for the occasion and asked attendees to contribute an essay talking about the conference and what it means to them. Here is my essay.

( Thoughs on ICFA's Past )

Someone on my flist in my other journal recently wrote about her recent experience of attending her first convention. Like me, she is involved in fan studies, but while she watches the shows and listens to the bands that all the other fangirls are gushing about so she can go and zip through the fics and vids being produced, she doesn't strike me as a fan in terms of how she participates in fandom. She's like the anthropologist who is charmed and seduced by the primitive culture he is studying but who inevitably remains apart from that culture. This person always used to take pains to point out that she was, first and foremost, "a fan of fandom," as opposed to a fan of the source texts (stories and films and video games and actors/singers/athletes) that fandoms crystallize around. That remove from what fandom is about nags at me a little.

The journal post in question, which I will not quote from since her whole journal is flocked, expressed ambivalent reactions to the convention. On one hand, she enjoyed interacting in person with people she had known for some time online. On the other, that same dynamic was rather fraught for her. She felt a distinct disconnect between "Persona X" (her LJ username/identity) and "Person Y" (her RL name/identity). She talked about how she liked "Persona X" better than "Person Y" in a lot of ways and how that con space brought all that home.

Identity formation and fluidity in online spaces is fascinating to me. In my research paper classes, I teach a section on cyberspace, a lot of which deals with the formation of and play with identity that can occur in virtual spaces. Certainly, when blogging, I am representing myself in a deeply textual medium. It's a world where I live and die by the words on the screen, and as a writer, I am editing those words to a certain extent just as I edit any other sort of writing. I accept the fact that other people may be doing the same.

Because of this, I expect that real-life interactions with online friends could be a little hesitant, especially at the beginning. It's harder to edit in a face-to-face conversation, and the expectations and assumptions made about me by my audience (and vice versa) may not mesh perfectly with the reality of me. After all, as readers, we fill in the blanks when we are presented with incomplete information. We do this with people we know in RL. We do it even more with people we know online.

However, despite all this, I have never felt a strong disconnect between my online personas and me. They don't have different agendas or beliefs or interests. They don't speak differently than I do. They aren't more meek or more assertive. They don't have the sly, darkish sense of humor that I would never cop to. Heh. They are a stone skip from my core identity rather than an ocean away. I don't feel the need to perform "barbedwriting" or my other LJ when I meet people on my flist. I'm pretty much Barb no matter how you slice me. (Just use a really sharp knife because the initial cut hurts less.)

I know this is not the case for everyone, that some people experience a freedom of expression in online discourse that they don't feel in real life. Some people see the virtual space as a place play and to experiment.

And some people, like the person who made the original post, are less than aware of how much their virtual and real-life identities overlap.

Every day, I have "Blog" written down in my to-do list in my planner. That was supposed to be for an added push on days when I the last thing I wanted to do after getting home in the evening was to fire up the laptop and write. I figured my goal-oriented self would push through tired and reluctant and just plain resistant in order to cross the item off my list. My figuring failed me, and I think I know why.

If I consider work reports, meetings, and projects; class prep and grading; and personal chores and errands, I have a fairly substantial list most every day. At the end of the day, if I have crossed out the vast majority of the items on the list (I rarely get through all of them on any given day), I could the day a success.

Writing tends to be the one of the things that I don't manage to get to as often as I need to, and while I do walk around with a low-grade nagging guilt for not getting more done, I can look at my daily lists for the last month and feel some contentment in everything that did, in fact, get done. Sure, they are all things that needed to be done for one reason or another, but they are the treading-water tasks, the ones that I need to keep me and my house running. They are not the soul-stirring tasks that keep my creative streams clean and flowing. They are not the things that allow me to tumble into bed content instead of just tired.

I haven't been sleeping well for awhile now. I'm restless, wake up during the night. This past week was especially trying, although I blame that on the usual beginning of the semester jitters. I'd like to do something to remedy that, so I'm going to push priorities instead of mass production. A day isn't going to be successful now unless I've been able to mark off a majority of my blue-chip items, the "A" priority ones.

At month end, I'll report back on how that is working.

Yesterday, well, technically it was very late on Sunday, so late that it was nearly Monday, I sent "Small and Grimm: Pocket Fairy Tales" off to Goblin Fruit. While I'm not always enamored of the sound of my own voice, I really like this little poem, which is a series of five decidedly twisted haikus based of some classic fairy stories.

I now shall wait the anxious wait of all those who have submissions waiting for the thumbs up or thumbs down from editors.

While I do, I'm also recommending Goblin Fruit to those of you who enjoy fantasy poetry that is steeped in myth, folklore, and legend. It's a webzine and has lovely, quirky artwork and very good poetry.

Last weekend, I went to see Get Smart. Reviews of the film were generally positive, so that was a plus. However, remakes of classic shows can go very, very right or very, very wrong. I'm happy to say that in this case, it went right.

( Get Smart )

If you're looking for a light, summer action romp, you could do worse than checking out Get Smart. It's popcorn movie fun wrapped up in a sleek, shiny package.

Wanted has been getting buzz in trailers, on the Web, and on my flist. It looked like it was going to be violent and pretty, and hey, those are two key elements for popcorn movie happiness. While I generally liked the movie, it's an uncomfortable sort of liking.

( Wanted )

If you are not one for bloody mayhem, Wanted is definitely not for you. However, if you're looking for a balls-to-the wall, pulse-pounding rush of gunfire and combat and destruction, Wanted is what you want to see.

I've gotten used to M. Night Shyamalan's movies garnering less than enthusiastic buzz. After the honeymoon that was The Sixth Sense, his films have gotten more philosophical and less commercial. That has not made them any less appealing to me. I might be one of the few people who enjoyed The Village, and I loved Lady in the Water. Neither film was a darling with critics, and when The Happening had less-than-stellar reviews, I wasn't worried. Shyamalan tells the sorts of stories that appeal to me, so I'm willing to trust him to deliver. While he did deliver a film with some lovely moments and a chilling idea, ultimately, the story failed in The Happening.

( The Happening )

While The Happening had great potential and some truly powerful and striking moments, ultimately, the movie didn't execute when it came to the overall story.

June, June, June. For some it might be all bright days bedecked with brides and blossoms, but it always strikes me as gloomy. Maybe I'm one of those people who have seasonal affective disorder in reverse: I'm sad when it's hot and sunny out. Honestly, waking to bright sunlight is almost physically painful for me. I like my transistions from Dreamland to the Waking World to be gentler.

Mom is still in the hospital. She was admitted last week with a bad emphysema attack, and she's still very weak and disoriented. She has a lot of interrelated problems, and when one thing gets out of whack, stabilizing her can be challenging. At least my sister with her so there is someone running interference with the doctor and nurses. It's a shame that you need that when you or someone you love is in the hospital, but you do.

I need to carve out some time to go in sometime soon, though I'm trying to wait until she's actually home from the hospital. The idea of my sister's evil, egomaniacal Bishon Frise and my poor old dachshund locked in the same apartment without supervision for hours at a time fills me with dread.

In other good news, my intestinal ailment of last week seems to be blossoming into something more full body this week. I'm warm and tired, listless. My throat/sinuses are dry and scratchy. I keep drinking and drinking, but it feels like I'm parched all the time. Tonight, I shall go to bed early and overly hydrated and hope that my immune system goes all badass!ninja on my germiness.

Being sick in the summertime also sucks more than the same in other seasons, because it's almost like the world is mocking your misery by tossing sunshine at you. However, it did give me some brief but lovely electrical storms today as well, so I can't complain too much.