The ice storm cometh

I had one of those nice, leisurely writing days planned.You know: get up, caffeinate, write and read to your heart's content for as long as you can go, but for at least the whole morning before your brain implodes.

BLAMMO! Totally woke up with a cold. Now I am half-heartedly poking around in poetry land and falling asleep on my notebook. Forget that I wandered around all hours of the night on the New York subway system. Forget that I spent yesterday clearing my car off in freezing rain. How on earth did I get sick before the semester even started?

Amidst my grumbling I googled "Julianna Swaney," this month's cover artist for Tin House. I'm completely beguiled by her ethereal drawings and watercolors--straight out of a fairy tale with all the right, weird, humorous notes. Swaney seems to keep track of everything that inspires her online--her drawing blog, Oh My Cavalier!, is chock full with her latest work, while she keeps track of a burgeoning vintage paper scrap collection over at Ephemeratopia, which is definitely worth a visit.

I've been working on some fairy tale poems that are taking their sweet old time to figure themselves out--Swaney's art makes me feel like trying to suck it up, eat some soup, and get cracking.