Welcome to MFA Sunday School, a once-a-week, free, online writing workshop. MFA Sunday School posts are uploaded on Sunday mornings, though you can read them or participate any time — the comment section is always open for people to post a link to their work or ask a question. You can subscribe to blog posts via the RSS feed, or look for them under the category heading “MFA Sunday School.” If this is your first time in “class,” you may want to jump back to the first post in the series in order to understand how things work.

Hopefully you’ve now found your groove of 15 minutes a day.  Let me repeat something that was in that last lesson: if it’s going well, stick with it.  Now is not the time to try to bring it up to an hour. (Unless you’re a full-time writer, and then your problem wasn’t finding time; it was using time and forcing yourself to write… and that is a different lesson that we’ll get to in the future: making yourself write when you don’t want to write or getting over writer’s block.)  Stick to 15 minutes a day for a few weeks until not only your groove but other people’s expectations are set.  Then take a hard look at your schedule and see if you can afford to move it to a half hour a day.  If you can’t, stick to 15 minutes (you can write a book in a year working on it in 15 minute increments).  If you can, that’s when you increase your time as long as you can maintain it daily.  I promise you, years of bad writing habits have taught me this lesson well.

So today’s lesson: sestinas.  Some people put down on the form that they wanted to learn about poetry, and I’ve had a crap week and needed to do something fun.  So this lesson is really about playing with words in the form of a collapsing sestina, which is a non-rhyming fixed form poem.  I wrote similarly about it last month for NaBloPoMo, except your homework today will be very very different from the work you did over there.  So give this a chance even if you’re on the fiction or creative non-fiction side of this MFA department.

Fixed form poetry is meant to free the mind by providing a structure much in the same way a house frees the person who lives inside to focus on things other than the elements outside.  Hmmm… interesting concept, right?  Believe me, we’re going to employ it a bit in our fiction writing too because it’s true: when we know we’re not being held against our will, being boxed in sometimes makes humans feel safe and comforted.  Think: hugs, cozy sleeping bags, sleeper cars on trains.

The sestina has six stanza, all six lines long, with a final three-line envoy. Unlike a lot of other fixed forms, sestinas don’t rhyme or have a set meter. Instead, they utilize six end-words in various ways, pointing out sometimes the subtle meaning shifts in those end-words depending on their context.

One of the easiest poems to look at in order to understand the form is Carole Oles “The Magician Suspends the Children” published first in The Loneliness Factor in 1979 which begins,

With this charm I keep the boy at six (A)
and the girl fast at five (B)
almost safe behind the four (C)
walls of family. We three (D)
are a feathery totem I tattoo (E)
against time: I’ll be one (F)

Ignoring those letters in parentheses for a moment, the six end-words are all numbers in this case: six, five, four, three, two, and one. Yet you can already see Oles playing with the form in the first stanza. Instead of the number two, she incorporates it into the word “tattoo.” Later in the poem, she uses “won” in place of “one,” “too” in place of “two,” and “for” in place of “four.” It’s a poetry form with a lot of leeway.

To see other usages of end words, check out Elizabeth Bishop’s “Sestina” or Ezra Pound’s “Altaforte.”

The second stanza takes those end-words and uses them again to end each line, except it mixes up the order. If you look at those six lines above as each pertaining to those letters in parentheses, the order then collapses upon itself — A, B, C, D, E, F becomes F, A, E, B, D, C (or last, first, second to last, second, third to last, third).

In the third stanza, it collapses again: C, F, D, A, B, E. If you look at the end-words in the third stanza, you’ll see that they are fore, wun, three, six, five, onto.

In other words, the full form of a collapsing sestina (since there are also sestinas that utilize the end-words as end-words but play with the order of the lines):

Stanza One: A, B, C, D, E, F
Stanza Two: F, A, E, B, D, C
Stanza Three: C, F, D, A, B, E
Stanza Four: E, C, B, F, A, D
Stanza Five: D, E, A, C, F, B
Stanza Six: B, D, F, E, C, A
Envoy: uses two end-words per line (with three lines total) with one word appearing in the middle of the line and the other word still being utilized as an end word.

Pretty cool, right?

Homework: Let’s have a little fun with this.  You know the Food Network show Chopped where the contestants open their baskets and have to utilize a set of mismatched ingredients and bring them together to form a cohesive dish? (“Contestants, open your baskets.  You have smoked oysters, grape jam, watercress, and corn chips… go!”)  I’m going to give you the six words to play with so everyone has the same end-words.  I’ve chosen words that can be utilized in numerous ways.  Once you’ve used one or two of your 15-minute sessions to play with words this way and write your sestina (since, you know the Chopped contestants only have 15 minutes too), either post your poem in the comment section below or post it on your blog and return with a link to your poem.  We’ll gather them up and have our own verbal episode of Chopped, except instead of chopping the weakest poem, we’ll just honour the most delicious one.

The end-words in your word basket: fair, to, sun, hope, rest, sing (will also accept for this last one, song).

So.

Now I’m really late with this.  But I consider it all Lori’s fault because she’s a distraction.  Watch out if you swing by her blog because she will (1) turn you all healthy and then (2) give you mad coping skills and then (3) teach you something interesting.  And that will use up the hour you intended to write the Roundup.  Oh, though while you’re at her blog, you may want to wish her a happy fifth blogoversary and tell her about your own blogosphere kismet.

And now that I’ve vented that out of my head, I can return to watching this incredible video someone made of all of MCA’s first lines:

The first time I watched it, I was sort of grooving along. (My seat dancing had to keep switching tempo with each new line. It was hard. I feel like I deserve some type of recognition for my seat dancing skills.) And then at the end, when it faded out, it felt like Sirius falling back through the curtain in the fifth Harry Potter book. Where you want to grab the person and drag them back, and know full well that you can’t. Josh had a similar reaction except it was this desire to slow time once it hit Hot Sauce Committee Part Two and he realized that it would soon be over. There would be no future MCA-laden albums.

As much as I love Hot Sauce Committee, my heart is with Ill Communication.  It reminds me of college.  It feels like being in college when I listen to it.  We used to call my friend Ma Bell due to that album, and hearing it in this montage made me wish I had his phone number still; could grab coffee with him while we did our homework.

*******

And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week as well as the week before.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Please Ignore; or Infertility Revisited” (Park Slope Promised Land)
• “Sometimes You Love People Not Because, But Anyway” (Nuts in May)
• “In the Closet” (The Road Less Travelled)
• “Heal” (Searching for Our Silver Lining)
• “My Week of NIAW on FB” (Living Our Life in Cycles)
• “Infertility, Despair, Tarot Cards and Acceptance” (Fertility Doll)
• “The New It Girls” (Silent Sorority)
• “The Oleander & the Groves” (Bloodsigns)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Where Love and Chaos Reign has a post about stopping treatments.  She points out, “The thing is, there’s not much out there that talks about stopping treatments when you already have kids. There are blogs about living child-free, but most of the secondary infertility blogs at some point become pregnancy blogs again.”  Even if it hasn’t happened yet, they are still in an active state of fertility treatments, adoption or third party reproduction; even if they are currently in a pause or wait.  But few who write about making the choice to close the door on family building.  I both love the post and hope that others who are in a similar situation and seeking support will find each other and start to write more about this.

Birch and Maple has a post broken up by musical interludes about moving out of the world of infertility for her own sanity, as well as how she views herself.  Where this view of herself stems.  She admits: “So anyway, this week has been bad. I am drab, growing older. I find myself wanting to wear black all the time, a statement of intent, the declaration of feeling, the ease with which I don’t have to worry about trying to look decent. Alas, I do not have enough of it in my wardrobe.”  She describes her post as emo; I describe it as bittersweet.

And lastly, Single Infertile Female has a post about her friend’s newborn child that… well… let’s just say that it hit really close to home for me.  It probably will for you too.  She is holding him and writes, “I found myself whispering in his little ear ‘I really need to get one just like you…’ I caught Lindsey’s eye directly after saying it, having briefly forgotten she was even there while in my blissed out baby haze. And for the first time since he was born… I found myself fighting back the tears.”  It is the perfect post for explaining how someone can be unbelievably happy for another person while being simultaneously sad for themselves; in case you ever needed to explain this phenomenon to a good friend.

The roundup to the Roundup: Wish Lori a happy blogoversary and listen to MCA’s first lines.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between May 4th and May 11th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

The Roundup is late again not because I was doing something enormously exciting this time but because decisions that needed to be made  sucked away all my time and pushed everything back.  Working from home without clear boundaries of work time vs. non-work time sometimes feels like dominoes.  When they’re all lined up, it looks beautiful.  But then something gets thrown off and everything comes tiling down.  So X didn’t get done and because X wasn’t done, Y didn’t get done.  And since Y was still on my to-do list, it meant that I never got to Z.  The Roundup, in case you couldn’t guess is Z.  Actually, purchasing a new container of Vitamin D pills for my mushy bones is Z, so the Roundup is more like Y.

Your comments yesterday on the Time magazine post helped me more than I can put into words.  As much as I struggle to keep my need for external validation in check, this was one of those times when I felt the phone buzzing in my pocket and thought, there are people who get me.  And if there are people who get me, then we are all insane together or it’s more a statement that multiple points-of-view can exist simultaneously without any one negating the others unless we let it.

There were three ways I immediately reacted to the cover, which was a trigger for me yesterday because Josh and I had to make a hard decision for the twins as their parents which was not going to be a popular decision. (Meaning, our decision was different from the choice most people around us were making.  The twins didn’t care one way or the other since they saw both options as equally appealing.)  Which is why I discussed that cover in terms of me, and made it about me me me me me.  I truly have no feelings towards the woman in the photo, I do have strong feelings towards Time which I’ll get to in a moment.  But that post was about seeing someone else, making her the every woman standing in place of all people who choose option one and wondering aloud why I choose option two.  What makes one person comfortable choosing option one while other people only feel comfortable choosing option two, and why does choosing option two make people who choose option one so angry and vice versa?

So I had no interest in discussing breastfeeding (either older child or infant).  I had no interest discussing attachment parenting.  And in that vein, I have no interest in discussing the multitude of hot-button topics out there including circumcision, crying-it-out, c-sections, home birth, baby wearing… choose whatever topics people like to argue about.  I’m always happy to talk about what worked for us, just in case you’re gathering ideas for what might work for you, but I don’t believe in any “style” of parenting.  I don’t look at parenting books as Bibles or parenting movements as religion.  Most because I don’t believe anything that is written in a vacuum, written in someone’s home office, takes into account my children.  And that extends to not believing that I know what is best for another person’s child and feel unable to argue coherently in favour or against any of the above.  I only know what resonates with Josh and myself (since, you know, there are more than just mothers making parenting decisions), and then what worked or didn’t work with the twins.  But just because we didn’t opt to try a parenting technique ourselves doesn’t mean that I believe the one we chose was better.  We chose what seemed like it would work vs. not work, with our lives and our children the only thing weighed against that decision.

Which goes back to what I did want to talk about: why do people feel the need to argue about things such as breastfeeding or not breastfeeding when we all know that one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to life decisions.  That both option one and option two can exist, and we don’t need to get upset with people who choose the other option.

The other thing I didn’t really feel like discussing was the media pushing buttons, but I’m having a difficult time keeping my rage in check.  I am angry when the media foments the public rather than educates them.  The term “enough” is a comparative word, and competition should have no place in parenting.  The two subjects in the photograph were posed so they were turned out from each other and facing the reader, not inviting the viewer into an embrace, but creating a challenging stance.  And that’s just it; I don’t want to be challenged, I don’t want to run in this race, I don’t want to hit back, I don’t want to be smacked.  I want to make decisions for my children and have the only people weigh in on them be the people directly responsible for those children.  I’m willing to entertain the thoughts of people close to us — parents, siblings, close friends.  And that’s about it.

When the media pairs competitive terms with emotional issues, they are pushing buttons.  And I don’t enjoy having my buttons pushed.  Of course I worry if I’m mom enough — I also worry if I’m wife enough and daughter enough and writer enough.  And frankly, especially when I look through that infertility lens, am I woman enough?  But it’s one thing for me to internally question myself; it’s quite another for others to judge me.  It is the difference between me believing I’m not a “good enough” writer and having another person tell me I suck.  Plus, the idea of whether I am mom enough or not enough rests with the beholder and is therefore only that person’s truth.  Some of you think I rock as a mother and some of you think I suck as a mother, and both sides let me know loud and clear in emails.  And neither side is very helpful because the only person whose opinion matters in this is mine.  Do I think I’m doing a good job?  It depends on the day you ask me that question.

We would be horrified if Time magazine came out next week with a cover that said, “Are You Woman Enough?” and had an image of two people having sex, their gaze not on each other but on the reader, and it accompanied an article about the benefits of sex over fertility treatments.  And I don’t see this cover as different from that.  We have emotional attachments to our choices.  We also have our personal stories as well as our personal limitations which don’t always match up with what we want.  But we also need to be balanced: I would be equally horrified if the cover said “Are You Woman Enough?” and had a woman coolly looking into the camera while she injected Follistim into her stomach, even if I can admit that I personally felt powerful giving myself injections.  Still, I would hate for people to receive the message that they’re not powerful if they can’t administer injections in order to do fertility treatments, because that wouldn’t be true at all.  My power isn’t your lack of power.  We are each powerful if we believe we’re powerful.

So, no, I don’t want to discuss the merits of that cover because it was demeaning by pitting mothers against mothers.  It was judgmental without even knowing the reader it was judging.  So that didn’t really interest me either.

Which goes back to the only thing I did want to discuss, and I thank all the people who stuck to that idea in their comment: why do some people choose option one and why do some people choose option two — what makes our comfort zones a certain size.

And that’s why the Roundup is late.  But I’m going to go finish it up now that I have that off my chest.

I had a really difficult time writing a title for this post because I don’t really want to talk about attachment parenting or older child breastfeeding.  I think it’s a big world, and people should find what works for them.  And having not been able to breastfeed, I don’t know enough about nutrition and older child breastfeeding to form any judgment. (And that is a hint that I also don’t want to hear since I will never have a use for this information.)

I do judge Time for having their cover quote be “Are You Mom Enough.”  Why don’t they just have their cover quote be more direct, something like: “hey, people, please bully each other so we can sell magazines!”  You may have noticed that I don’t like to waste time.  I’m a big fan of people just saying what they want to say.  So… consider that for next time, Time magazine.

I am not going to embed the cover because I feel squeamish featuring an image that may fall under the terms of fair use but in which a minor is featured.  Yet in order to understand what I’m about to ask about, you’ll need to go over and see it.  It is a mother breastfeeding her almost four-year-old son.

We’ve had to make some hard decisions this year to keep the twins out of some activities and opportunities because participation was contingent on allowing them to be photographed and signing a wide release form.  The ideology that guides how Josh and I write or feature the twins remains the same despite the medium*.  I don’t post their photograph online — not on Facebook, not on my blog — and ask that friends and family not post pictures of them either.  We never sign photo release forms or give control of our child’s image to another person.  I do this not because I believe that if I post the Wolvog’s picture that it will end up on a child porn site nor do I believe that if I post the ChickieNob’s picture, she’ll end up on a billboard in Prague selling fruit juice.

I don’t use the twins’ image because I don’t know how they’ll feel about their image being used, and they’re not at an age where I can ask and receive a thoughtful answer.  They may be totally fine with it, or they may be upset to read what someone writes about their image.  And without knowing, I don’t feel comfortable proceeding.  It’s the same ideology I bring to writing about them: I don’t write about anything I wouldn’t say in front of their friends in this moment.  Therefore, you will never hear about medical issues or milestones not met or anything they may not want the world to know.  You will hear about how they process the idea of evolution or the ChickieNob’s love of the Beastie Boys because that is what they are talking about with their friends right now.  Low stakes stuff; that’s what you’re going to find in regards to parenting since I don’t always feel like it’s my story to tell.

And I want to pause to shout this so you’ll hear it: I not only do not judge parents who have a different comfort zone, but I have a great deal of respect because you have created those bridges of understanding between people by placing your story out there.  I love it when our friends post pictures of their kids on Facebook — I enjoy being connected in that manner.  I have benefited greatly because people write about personal matters on their blog, which not only gives me information but often times makes me feel less alone.

I am truly only writing this post because I have noticed — especially this year — that I have a very different comfort zone from most people around me.

A few years ago, I was featured in a New York Times article.  I never wrote about it here because… well… there was a reason why I only used my first name for the article.  After we had done the interview and such, the author of the article told me that they were sending a photographer to my house to take a picture of myself with the twins.  Uh… no.  I emailed with the photographer explaining that while I was fine being photographed in a public spot because I knew the repercussions of putting myself out there, I couldn’t make that decision for the twins, not knowing how they’d feel in the future about having been featured.  I don’t think the photographer could fathom my stance on this because she kept emailing me about needing the twins in the photo, and I finally had to say that I was very comfortable not being part of the article at all, but not comfortable putting the twins in there.  The story ultimately was run with the image of a different person interviewed for the same article.

And I totally respect that woman for acting within her comfort zone; I just always wonder why my comfort zone is so different from other people.

When I saw the Time magazine cover, I didn’t give a lot of thought to older child breastfeeding nor the fact that Time is continuously trying to foment women into fighting each other, much like a bunch of fraternity guys chanting “cat fight, cat fight, cat fight” at two women struggling to understand each other and keep their emotions in check.

What struck me as I looked at the cover was how this mother knew that her child wouldn’t be bothered ten years down the road for being featured on the cover of a national magazine with her breast in his mouth.  Because I don’t know my children in that way; I can’t predict how they’ll feel.  I can only guess, and that guess is based on pretty much no concrete evidence.  In fact, most of that guess is based on my own discomfort: for instance, I would never be on a reality show.  Other people say they would be thrilled to be on one.  I guess that I judge myself then; wonder why I’m not up for being on a reality show.  Where other people see a thrill, I see something nerve-wracking.  So I use my own comfort zone to make decisions for the twins.  Because I have to make decisions, and what else can I base it on?

I am fiercely protective of the twins, and it’s the only way I know how to parent where I can put my head on the pillow at night and know I did my best.  That I stayed in my comfort zone.  That I didn’t allow anyone else to pressure me to do something that makes me uncomfortable.  I also know that some people think my comfort zone limits are ridiculous, but I can’t really live my life making other people happy while making myself anxious.  I parent like this because it’s easier; though I don’t know if it’s really better (though who can really define the term “better.”).

All I know is that I often wonder why my comfort zone is here and other people’s comfort zones are there, and what that says about me.  Sometimes I second-guess myself when I’m the only person making a decision, even if it feels like the best decision in my heart.  Especially when our decision causes the twins to miss out on something because we won’t sign the release form or allow them to be photographed.**

* This is what works for me, and everyone needs to work within their comfort zone.  I seriously can’t say this enough.

** This magazine cover triggered something for me only because the topic was already in the forefront of my mind.  My apologies to the mother on the cover if she feels singled out.  I actually thought her Q & A in the magazine was intelligent and thoughtfully-constructed in order to invite conversation rather than shut down conversation.

You know how in 50 Shades of Grey, Christian is soooooooooooooo rich that Ana really struggles with the gift buying.  Yes, of course she found that perfect glider model plane, but there is still his birthday to contend with and Christmas and Valentine’s Day.  I have four words for Ana:

Whiskey Flavoured Sex Lube.

For a brief amount of time, bacon lube held the spot of my favourite PR pitch ever.

[Company name removed] is pleased to announce the launch of Whiskey Dick, the world’s first bourbon-flavored personal lubricant. You’re welcome.

[Company name removed] Whiskey Dick™ is water based, hand crafted and proudly Made in America. Whiskey Dick is the gold standard of booze-flavored massage oils, it’s aged 4 years in white oak casks and guarantees a velvety-smooth finish. But don’t delay, the first batch only yielded 5,000 bottles and it’s available starting Thursday May 10th for $11.99.

Whiskey Dick’s distinct Tennessee taste won it a Triple Gold Medal Award at the 10th Annual Great American Sex & Drinking Festival in Bean Station, TN (we also placed in the BBQ competition). So remember, the next time you get Jacked, Whiskey Dick will be there to help you rise to the occasion.

5000 bottles, Ana.  You better get a move on.  It’s totally affordable, but just unusual enough that the man who has everything might not yet have his own bottle.

P.S. Feel free, when you are struggling through Mother’s Day this weekend, to repeat the mantra “whiskey dick, whiskey dick, whiskey dick” inside your head as a distraction.  It has so many purposes beyond being an excellent personal lubricant.