a 10 year revisit
I was recently reading some older blog posts from two decades ago, which are always strange given the immense span of time between then and now. I've only, in the past two years, gotten to a point where I am able to look at old posts. Before 2025, I am relegated to mostly un-navigatable backups taken from my old Xanga, and before that, physical notebook diaries. But now, I can always take a peek back into my own past like visiting an old friend. As we move into fall here, now, in 2026, I can see where my head was at in 2006 or 2016.
In those entries, I am reminded that a decade ago, we were starting to do some really cool things in the library with programming--our first exhibits, workshops, and artist panels that went strong for another few years until covid ended them. We tried in that year or so back afterward, but they were never quite the same when most were virtual. It also kicked off a lot of drama with other departments, and in fact, administrators, who felt threatened by our rush of success, which was its own thing and one of the reasons I was eager to leave. By the end of 2016, I was working on the national library award app that would mostly get them out of our hair and give us some breathing room, when we celebrated winning the following spring.
On my own creative front, I was just coming off the release of SALVAGE, my sixth collection and my second with Black Lawrence. While I was not yet writing as much as I would be in the next couple years, it was still steady enough that I was on my way to finishing what would be become SEX & VIOLENCE the next year. I was still renting the studio and we were still amping up chapbook releases. I was also making some fun art that summer and fall (see photo above), including book sculptures and nature prints. J and I were about one year into dating, but still really weren't getting to see each other all that much, but it was promising (though I did not know how much at the time). The world still seemed to make sense then, though, and I remember being excited about the election and its possibility of the first female pres. Then it all fell apart and would continue to til we wound up here.
10 years before that I was excitedly getting ready to release my first book, THE FEVER ALMANAC. I was still in my MFA program for another year, and had ended a long-ish relationship over the summer. I then plunged into dating a little more widely and then subsequently stumbled into another romantic entanglement that took a while and a lot of drama to get out of (but which generated a lot of poems, so I tell myself I was doing it for the art.) That fall, I was in a seminar to begin putting together my thesis, GIRL SHOW. That fall I also suffered a bout of mono that knocked me on my ass, something I didn't think was possible in your early 30s.
I am guessing were I to go looking for my 1996 physical journal, there would be much about my classes and maybe some poems (that summer was a rush of productivity and submissions.) I remember spending the rest of my time that summer stage managing a student production that debuted right as the semester kicked off, but the rest of that particular fall is a little more blurry. I do remember I would drive everyday to campus in my dad's black station wagon with the tape deck listening to Jewel and Veruca Salt.
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