My Rumpus Review of Beth Ann Fennelly’s Heating & Cooling, the Arrival of the Big Dark, and Poetry Angst

New Rumpus Review of Beth Ann Fennelly’s Heating & Cooling by Me
http://therumpus.net/2017/10/heating-cooling-by-beth-ann-fennelly/First of all, check out my review of Beth Ann Fennelly’s book of micro-memoirs, Heating & Cooling, up on The Rumpus. And here is a picture of my lovely kitten Sylvia posing with the book! Beth Ann Fennelly has been a favorite poet of mine for a long time – I taught her books when I taught – and I very much looked forward to seeing what she was doing in her new book!

Poetry Angst

I have been hearing a lot of Poetry Angst on the social medias these last weeks. People who can’t write poems anymore, who don’t want to send out their work as it seems under-rewarding, who are just tired, who published a book of poetry and found the experience disheartening. I was thinking of when I started a poetry blog back in in the early 2000s, you would hear from lots of different poets from lots of stages in their careers about their poetry anxieties regularly, but things like Twitter (too short) and Facebook (encourages people to post only the happy stuff) have decreased the amount we writers hear from each other about the struggles we might have. I realized yesterday as I made a mental list that a lot – a LOT – of my old poetry blogging buddies have dropped out of the poetry game altogether – they’re writing in other genres, or they’re working too hard/had kids/other things that just got in the way. Or poetry just didn’t reward them as much as other genres (see above, Beth Ann Fennelly’s book of micro-memoir essays – which is probably having an easier time selling than a book of poetry would.)  It’s too bad, because a lot of the poets who aren’t publishing or writing much poetry were really good writers who I admired as people and as poets. And I love reading good poetry.

It made me think about quitting poetry, especially with the MS stuff going on. I mean, no one is holding us hostage and forcing us to write poems. No one would probably even notice if I stopped writing new poems or sending out work for, say, a year, to literary magazines – and no one would cry if I never published another book of poetry. I definitely do not not make enough money from poetry to make it a huge priority. These are just facts. With my new neurological problems, of course I’ve been thinking harder about exactly what I put my energy into, now that showering is a major feat and energy is not renewable, so to speak – if I do a lot one day, I’ve got to rest the next. How can I decide if poetry is still worth doing, especially now that so many of my friends have fallen by the wayside? I am still writing pretty regularly – and when I write, it’s usually poems – so the urge to write has not disappeared. Maybe the urgency to publish has waned a bit? I really appreciate the folks who write to say they liked a certain poem and I’m certainly appreciative of those who buy one of my five books – but who would really complain if I just…didn’t publish any more? Yes, every writer, not just poets, has doubts and concerns, times when trying to do stuff seems tougher and less rewarding. If you feel like this, you are not alone.  Days grow gloomier at the end of the year, and boy, this has been one challenging year – not just for me, but for a lot of us. Don’t beat yourself up if you need some downtime.

The Big Dark Arrives, and Some Pictures of the Last Sunshine

Yes, October 15 arrived along with its usual companion, what we in the Northwest call “The Big Dark.” It starts getting dark much earlier, and each day is punctuated not by the arrival of rain or not, but by how much rain. It’s a gloomy time, which is why we Northwesterners like to run around like maniacs and take pictures in the few days of sunshine fall affords us. You can’t see it here in the pictures, but these are taken since I transitioned from a wheelchair to a cane, which affords me a lot more independence and cheers me up. Every little bit helps! Here are a few of Glenn and I enjoying our last remnants of sunshine: