(Under the heading of, Poets Who Actually Deserve Big Prizes or, do I know how to pick ’em or what?)
Big congrats to two winners of the $40,000 Whiting Award, Ilya Kaminsky and Dana Levin. Sometime in the last year I loved each of their books to death (Ilya’s Dancing in Odessa and Dana Levin’s Wedding Day) and wrote glowing reviews of them – my review of Ilya’s book review is in The Pedestal and my review of Dana’s book is in the new issue of 88.) Sometimes it is work to try to find something positive to say about books of poetry, but both these reviews were based on real, punch-in-the-gut admiration.
Seriously, if I was going to pick two upcoming poets who deserved a prize like this, based on two books released in the last twelve months or so, it would be these two poets. So hooray.
I am finishing Zadie Smith’s On Beauty (a fabo sendup of politics in academia, race, and American culture – and a real pleasure to read, funny and acid sharp – very anti-poetry, I think, and among the main characters is a thinly veiled parody composite Jorie Graham/Louise Gluck character) and Margaret Atwood’s Lady Oracle. Sometimes I need a little fiction to help me write better poems. I loved the fierce feminism in the fragmented poems of Kristy Bowen’s chapbook Errata, which you can still get for free until Nov 1 – see her blog, here.
In the last two months, sales of Female Comic Book Superheroes have raised a little over $40 for Katrina flood victim relief. Thanks to everyone who bought a copy! I’m sending the funds on Halloween.

And, in case you were wondering, here is a link to the final version of my book cover – many thanks to everyone who responded about the previous draft – now I just have to wait to see it on real live paper!

On my way out of town for a few days of r&r…but check out Suzanne’s blog for some good news and great cover art (PS Buy her chapbook!)

OK, drum roll…
Here’s a link to the draft of the cover art for Becoming the Villainess from Steel Toe Books, on bookshelves everywhere (hopefully) next year…
https://webbish6.com/poetry/images/villainess_full.jpg
The text and author pic on the back are all just placeholders, complete with typos etc. Let me know what you think! The art was created by the multi-talented Michaela Eaves.
And, where is Jim Behrle when you need him? I’m trying to choose a pic for the back and I need him to tell me “what the hell is up with my author photo?”

An interesting article on do-it-yourself book tours on PW.com that could be useful to those planning them – http://www.pw.org/mag/0511/cook.htm. It’s told from the perspective of a fiction writer, though I’m sure much of it applies to poets too.
Interesting especially because I’m planning one right now, as we speak, for next year’s launch of Becoming the Villainess. Readings in Seattle and Portland, of course, and Kentucky (where Steel Toe is located) and Cincinnati (my family lives there) and maybe down to California – San Fran and LA – if I can find some people who want me there 🙂 I’m hoping to do some of these readings with the lovely and talented Martha Silano, who happens to have a book (Blue Positive) coming out from the same press at the same time. Let me know if you want me or us to stop in your town. The other places I’m considering are Richmond/DC, as I lived there for about a year and a half and loved it, Knoxville (my childhood hometown, and one of my brothers lives there,) Boston (because I love Boston) and NYC (same reasoning.) But I worry about expenses (esp. on my freelance writing budget…) and how not to get sick with all the travel. Any tips from those who have been down this path? Please leave comments with wisdom!
Getting close to having the draft of the cover art ready to post…
Now, if I can just stop fiddling with my MS and get the third blurb…I can stop stressing out. Otherwise, still sick, now I got my husband sick too, so we are planning to eat takeout until we are better. Pizza and hot and sour soup with spring rolls are health food, right?

Another Day, Another Doctor…

There I was, getting all better, giving poetry talks and going for power walks in the sunshiney parks and whatnot, then blam! Hit over the head with a new hydra head of this chest/sinus thing I’ve been dealing with since late August…now I officially have tonsillitis and an ear infection on top of the sinus/bronchitis and have been given a double dose of one of the only antibiotics I’m not allergic to. I tell you, some days I just get so frustrated with my body. I’m just like, hey, stay well already! Anyway, mostly this is just annoying, not life-threatening, but this is also the first time in ten years I’ve had to start taking daily inhaled steroids for my asthma, and not just as an emergency thing. Asthma is a tricky beast too – for years I’ve been fine just on Claritin and Singulaire, then suddenly, two dozen attacks in two weeks.

Anywho, for those of you wondering about the whole POETRY thing, well, the group I met with in Auburn, WA was very endearing – the group was mostly men, mostly older than me – hey, just like when I was working at Microsoft/IBM/At&T – so I was right at home. They were incredibly supportive, generous folks, and I really enjoyed hearing their work. Also, as an audience, they were very supportive of the reading, bought chapbooks, etc. I gave a short talk on persona poems, defining what they were and talking about why I thought they were a useful exercise for a beginning poet – one, they force you to exercise a little empathy, and two, they get you out of your own head. Then I read a bunch of persona poems from the upcoming book – half from sympathetic characters, and half from unsympathetic, and we talked about why writing from the perspective of someone we might initially judge as a “bad” person might be good for us. One guy, in response, read an incredibly powerful persona poem about an angry soldier. The host for the evening, who brought me to the group, was Lana Ayers, is both a wonderful poet and a very gracious person to be around. I was sad I didn’t get to meet Paul (sorry Tom!) but excited to see fellow blogger Lisa Jarnot was going to be reading in the SPLAB series. I hope I’m well enough to go!
I’m also STILL making changes to Becoming the Villainess, despite being so close to the cut-off date…I’m also stressing that I haven’t thanked all the people who need to be thanked…anyway, if I miss you in this one, let me know and I’ll be sure to get you in the next 🙂 assuming there will be a next, of course. I wanted to make the ending a little less depressing, so I added back in a poem I had pulled from the first MS and put into the second (as yet untitled) MS, and mixed up the order a bit. I also threw in a new poem I just wrote. I HAVE to stop writing poems for this MS. Bad me! Tell me I’m not the only person who has done this!
I was also interested in the conversation at Laurel and Mayhew’s blogs about how to determine if one belongs to the school of quietude or to the post-avant. It’s not so easy, I think, for we up-and-comers I think to wholly subscribe to one or the other. It seems kind of quaint. I like an awful lot of “traditional” verse – but I’m bored by a lot of poets described as SOQ too. I like a lot of people out there on the edge of weird experimental verse too – but some of them just seem shallow and show-offy, which can be equally boring. (No one reading this, of course 😉
I don’t think what I write could be described as SOQ – not enough nature? not enough epiphany? – but I don’t think I could classify myself as post-avant either, too much regular syntax, too many narrative poems mixed in with the lyric. I mean, theory wise I would say I lean towards the deconstructionalist, particularly feminist-type examinations of the constructs surrounding the expectations for women etc. But how much of that gets into my writing? Talking about new sincerity too – I have to say I’m attracted to verse that has something to say, and says it with emotional power. But is that what I write? Maybe sometimes. Am I sincere? Anywho, I do like reading in blogs and lit mags about different schools, but I sometimes feel they are more theoretical than applicable, meant to slice poets apart from each other – you can’t like that person, they’re not in your “school.”
So a few of my new favorite poets are folks like Dana Levin, Ilya Kaminsky, Rachel Zucker, Brigit Pegeen Kelly (okay I cheated, she’s really not that new.) What do these writers share in common? My fave lit mags tend to be those described as “eclectic.” Maybe I’m just an eclectic kind of gal.

Hey everyone…I’m doing a short talk tomorrow on persona poems and would love to hear what your favorite persona poem is…

SPLAB: Auburn Transit Center, 110 Second St. S.W., No. 100. “Living Room” hours are 7-9 p.m. * The “Living Room” writers critique circle will be hosted by Lana Hechtman Ayers with guest Jeannine Hall Gailey Oct. 11. * “Living Room” will be hosted by David Rizzi Oct. 18. Visit http://www.splab.org.

Reports from a reading:

Went to the reading on Oct 1 to celebrate Cranky’s new issue in the middle of a raging lightning/hailstorm (very unusual for Seattle,) which featured Matthew Zapruder and Olena Kalytiak Davis (one of my fave up and coming writers,) and many local writers, including Martha Silano, who was wonderful, although I missed the promised reading by Rebecca Loudon, who couldn’t make it. Matthew Zapruder was all shambling, self-deprecating charm (I liked his poetry much better when he read it than I had liked it previously on the page) and humor, and Olena…well, let’s just say afterwards I wanted to give her a hug, feed her some chocolate chip cookies and tell her life just wasn’t all that bad. She talked a lot about trangression, read poems about oral sex, said the f-word a lot, and was a little incoherent in general. I couldn’t tell if the incoherent part was due to nerves or whether she was always like that.

Reports from finishing up the first MS – Becoming the Villainess

Got another acceptance yesterday of a poem in the book, so had to update the ack pages, and had to (eek!) write an author’s note, and I could think of nothing charming or witty to write about myself, just the same old boring stuff. And I got a first draft of part of the cover art, which looked really cool. I finally finished the dedication/thank you notes/ end notes on poems, which I am still struggling with (end notes for poems share a certain something with author notes. Hey, I like to write poems, not notes!) It’s so weird that I’m still changing stuff this far along. Everything (blurbs, art, the works) must be in by November 7th. The clock is ticking away.
Meanwhile, I’m working on MS #2, still untitled, 40 pages as of now, which is vastly different, much more personal, and I’m worried about the subject matter being toooo personal, too autobiographical, which I pretty much shied away from in the first MS. I just sent a copy to a friend to read, I’ll be interested to hear her reactions. I haven’t “workshopped” many of the poems, or even shown them to anyone else.