Summer time when the writing is easy(-ier)

Every year I do this kind of computation with the same anticipation and longing I used to employ making lists before going on family vacations.

1. Figure out when I will be done grading.
2. Identify date fall semester begins.
3. Count up how many weeks are to be all about writing.
4. Lop one week off at the beginning (dissipating exhaustion).
5. Lop one week off at the end (intense phase of fall semester prep).
6. Count what's left =12 weeks (sounds pretty wonderful).
7. Make a list of books I'd like to read/annotate/buy--poetry, poetics, how-to, serious fiction.
8. List what I'd like to accomplish:

• Book ms. out (should I give it a once-over to make sure there's no horrifying weakness, no creeping gauzy semi-invisible wounds?)
• Poems out (what a wonderful thing summer submissions are)
• Poem ideas I've already had (list)
• Write, write, write.
• Gauge series I'm working on to see how to/if to expand (I'm pretty sure could use at least 2-4 more)
• Cock my eye at the poem-a-days. What do I want to do with them? I recall thinking that some could be put together. Maybe I should think fragment.
• Begin working on a new project. (I recently asked someone what they were working on and they had a wonderful historical person to bounce poems off of.)  I have a note that says "this kind of long dialogue of poems" which sounds like a series to me.
• I'd like to think about myself as a writer apart from what I am actually writing. Maybe thinking about placement or trajectory or brilliance (as if I were some kind of astronomical sign).

I find that writing is a lot like gardening. There's a seasonal quality to it. And when working fiercely (always my goal) there's time spent on the standing work and time on the kneeling.

Fizzy

I feel a little fizzy, but in a good way. I'm going away for 8 days to Lake Tahoe with four writer friends. This is something we've done before, and it is a little piece of heaven (except for the bear part). It is the kind of undirected time that writers long for. My quandary for the next few days before I leave is deciding what is my writing plan (and what clothes to pack since it might snow one day!).

• I really want to write some new poems, especially maybe in the new series I'm thinking about that has to do with jobs, working, the economy.
•  But I also am drawn to completing more of these extremely atypical funny aphoristic poems about men and women that I started when I was a little more bitter. 
• Also, I want to perfect the ms. I think it's the right order, been edited, been concentrated on plenty. But maybe a couple more walk-throughs.
•  And I've printed out an interview by Anne Carson that I think might direct my thinking--maybe not direct, but provoke--to new ways of making a poem.
• I'd also like to make a list of still viable poem ideas, reading through my jottings and notes that get left behind to see what might still be valuable.

Often, I'm an undirected poet working from the things that fly into my head from the world or that rise from my murky creative depths without conscious pre-planning. Note that I did say conscious since even when I'm just writing what occurs to me, there are clusters of themes and similar registers. But I don't want to waste this time.

Other years, I've written two long poems there (you know, numbered sections long). I also put a chapbook together there one year. And I think the link between these tasks and the week is how close to the matter I can remain, untroubled by electricity bills and commutes to work.

But also, other years, I've lain on the stone steps in the sun and just felt. But then I wrote a poem about that.