Catching Up

About a month ago I started a new job. I'm now an editorial assistant in the English editorial department at Bedford/St. Martin's. And yes, I'm writing this blog at my desk in my cubicle that I have decorated with 8 pictures of my cats and one picture of my girlfriend and baby nephew. Yes, I love my cats.

So far at my new job I've been coordinating review programs while we decide how to revise current books for future editions, or whether to even have future editions. I hate trying to find professors to take the questionnaires, but I like talking to those who say yes, reading their completed reviews, and keeping track of it all with a color-coded spreadsheet. I also use color-coded maps to insure geographic diversity in my reviews. I love to color-code almost as much as I love my cats.

A few weeks ago, I gave a lecture at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education on the poetic influence of Wordsworth and Coleridge on each other and on poetry in general. The lecture was only an hour long, so I kept it limited mainly to their use of nature as a holy entity and to their reduction of formality. The audience chimed in about imagination, nature as educator, etc. Needless to say, I was impressed by their knowledge and willingness to share. It helped me get through the lecture (I have semi-debilitating stage-fright). I was able to leave the lecture knowing I had done a good job, which in itself is an improvement. Usually after a round of public speaking, I remain agitated for hours and never think I did well. Ever. So, I was proud that I could recognize my own accomplishment.

Yesterday, The National Gallery of Writing went live. Bedford/St. Martin's is involved, so I wrote a short piece about a bookshelf that I used to discuss poetic tradition. I was going to include "Narcissus pseudonarcissus," but the line about masturbation is not terribly appropriate for the high school kids expected to be the main audience. I wanted to use the poem because I thought it was a clear demonstration of my point: taking something old (a myth) and making it new (a vapid punk-rocker). I didn't really have time to find something else, so the write-up went in poem-free.

I never know how to end these things. It feels like a conversation or a letter, but I never know who (if anyone) is reading. Do I say, "Hope all is well with you" or "Better get back to work now"? How's this: Blogging is awkward.