Whew.

Last week, I was on the faculty of one of the most challenging, groundbreaking creative retreats in the country, surrounded by students whose work was so good it made me shudder.

This week, I'm up at midnight in a sweltering dorm room, staring at a scanned version of Robert Frost's "Mending Wall" and wondering if I can spit out a joint mimicking his style before exhaustion pulls me under. This is--I can't believe it either--HOMEWORK.

Welcome to the world of the poet/teacher/student known as me, doggedly pursuing a graduate degree in being creative. With very little turnaround time, I have morphed from respected teacher to the marginal superhero known as MFA Girl. I don't wear a mask, because my eyes are bloodshot anyway. My cape is the scratchy little towel I wear to scoot across the hall to the bathroom. I can't fly. I can barely even walk. Right now, MFA stands for Must Fall Asleep.

How, oh how, did I get here?

That's easy. Rumor has it that you can't teach without an MFA--and since I was already teaching, I thought I should obtain an advanced degree that says I'm imminently qualified and officially capable of doing what I'm already doing.

Got that?

But that's not the only reason I'm here. There's also...

...sweating through substitutions in blank verse, folding a lotta woman into a dorm bed, the unbridled passion of Annie Finch, discovering Thom Gunn's Dahmer poems, peas and pearl onions in the cafeteria, the cafeteria, actually hearing the word "kegger," finding your trochee heartbeat, a trash basket filled with crumpled versions, visiting the bronze moose, seeing the black student population swell to FIVE, spotting dactyls in lines of conversation, showering in the men's room, hearing the stories about Sonia Sanchez and Louise Bogan, doin' it off page in the open mic, seeing half of the room decide to hate you 'cause you're doin' it off page in the open mic, A Formal Feeling Comes, wondering why there's no time to write, watching Jeff Kass rock the room tonight, missing Dennis Nurkse, buying a school t-shirt, cringing at the label "slam poet," finally getting a poem in Poetry and not being able to tell anyone, late-night things with gravy and cheese, reading C.D. Wright perfect and aloud, juggling notebooks, booze-soaked "talent" shows, DJing the grad party, defending Stephen Dobyns, suffering four straight days of rain, followingg Maine's directions for breathing, then there's Boof and Face, Terrance Hayes, Tyehimba Jess, Rita Dove, headless iambs, constant fever, because I'm a good teacher, because I'm a good student, because i'm still writing i'm still writing i'm still writing i'm still--

It's after midnight and I am--there's just no other way to say it--kicking this poem's ass. I'm teaching myself things that even I don't know.

Sometimes schizophrenia is sweeeeet.