Plan for 11/12-11/18

I have to admit that my Gipson time for today has been eaten alive by grad school prep. I feel emotionally exhausted right now; in the past week my grandfather died and I broke up with my girlfriend, so I really just want to crawl under the covers and hibernate until winter break. Alas, most of my graduate school applications are due before then, so I think it would be best if I spend the bulk of this week plowing through major graduate school goals.

Without further ado, goals!:

Gipson-related goal: finish AT LEAST the first chapter of Peraino.

Also, import notes about two other Queering the Pitch sources from LiveJournal.

Acquire a Gipson binder!! This was a goal from last week. Still...I will only print out all of those documents if I have time. This can wait until next week.

Find out how to send GRE scores to graduate schools-- I don't remember which schools I sent scores to at the GRE...

Get packets to letter-writers. I am almost done with this; I just need to recompile school information, such as which ones need covers and which ones must be submitted online.

Request a transcript for University of Washington and another for UMass Boston, since the registrar sent me two for UMass Amherst.

For (at least) an hour every night, finish up applications/adjust application materials for the 7 applications due before January 5. These are: Cornell, Brown, NYU, U Michigan, U Arizona, U Washington, and Emerson.

Find a usable critical writing sample for U Washington

Pick out five additional poems for Brown-- send 11 or 12 to the other schools asking for up to fifteen.

I also need to be reading more Gipson-related poetry. As much as I love the diversity of what I have been reading in journals and on the LiveJournal greatpoets community, they haven't necessarily launched me into a tizzy of critical thinking. However, I'm afraid if I read too much Anne Sexton or Sylvia Plath right now, I might suffocate under my blanket-nest...

So on a happier note, here's a villanelle by Marilyn Hacker that struck a chord with me yesterday:

Villanelle for D.G.B.

Every day our bodies separate,
exploded torn and dazed.
Not understanding what we celebrate

we grope through languages and hesitate
and touch each other, speechless and amazed;
and every day our bodies separate

us farther from our planned, deliberate
ironic lives. I am afraid, disphased,
not understanding what we celebrate

when our fused limbs and lips communicate
the unlettered power we have raised.
Every day our bodies' separate

routines are harder to perpetuate.
In wordless darkness we learn wordless praise,
not understanding what we celebrate;

wake to ourselves, exhausted, in the late
morning as the wind tears off the haze,
not understanding how we celebrate
our bodies. Every day we separate.

-- Marilyn Hacker