Summer 2006 Literary Magazine Blowout Special

I have has so many of these come in the mail while I was gone, and no time to account for them.
First of all, a big thank you to The Pebble Lake Review, which accepted two poems. Yay! I’ve had several friends in this journal and it looks beautiful. So I’m excited! One of them is the first prose poem I’ve ever published.

32 Poems – Spring/Summer 2006 – I’ve been a fan of this little saddle-stitched journal from the moment it was born. The short length of the poems demands a gift for the lyric and the short length of the journal demands a reader’s attention for just so much time, and then it’s done. In this issue, I was surprised to see famous (ly evil?) critic William Logan’s name – he has a little nostalgic mood piece poem called “Hometown.” I was most enchanted by Nickole Brown’s “From Sister: A Novel Verse” and Terese Svoboda’s “Hurricane Girl” – “She outlines her eyes with ink/ from a Bic. In war or ardor? / The ferry’s bow light/ / misses her hand’s No.” Fellow blogger Steve Mueske has a poem in here too! So get it, read it, etc.

The American Poetry Journal – Summer/Fall 2006 – This is a journal where I consistently like almost all the poems in it, which is to say, I must have taste very like the editor’s. And how often does that happen? Not very! Another saddle-stitched smaller all-poetry deal, not only do I like the poems in here, I like the people – a friend of mine, Ronda Broatch (“The Boy Becomes Carp), is featured, as is my publisher, Tom C. Hunley, (“At the End of a Long and Varied Career”) and fellow-blogger Steve Schroeder (“Clockwork”) – and rest assured, all their poems are fabulous, and not just because I know them. I also loved Sara Talpos’ “Aisle 8: After Chernobyl.”

Prairie Schooner – All right, I have got to love these guys for the mere fact that they just printed the book of a deserving friend, Kathleen Flenniken’s Famous, and they’re going to publish the book of another deserving friend, Paul Guest’s Notes for a Body Double. So right there you know I think they have some kind of good taste. The summer 2006 issue features four poems by another friend, Dr. Peter Pereira. Check this lines from “Seven Views of the Eclipse:” “When his fevers came they’d sleep/ with a pillow lodged between them -/ their bodies in syzygy,/ solar flares diffused/ by a cloud of white.” Bam! Who doesn’t love that? And former advisor/mentor-type Marvin Bell had a few poems in here, and so does another advisor/mentor-type, Dorianne Laux, as well as an array of famous types and newer voices, and there are stories and reviews as well. I found almost all the poems in this issue fresh and readable.

In other news, a moment of silence for Kelli Russell Agodon’s blog. Lots of people have written in to ask about this. Well, she took down the blog, it may go up again someday, but no guarantees. I miss her too, even though I get to actually see her in person and talk to her on the phone, because her blog had its own very positive spirit, if that’s not too cheesey. We miss you Kells! But I’m wishing you well during your electronic sabbatical.

And, if any of you receive your contributor copies of Silk Road, let me know! I am anxious that these beautiful mags get into the hands of their worthy poetry contributors. I thought the faculty editor would send them out mid-July as she indicated, but you know how the summer is on college campuses, so, hopefully, you all get them soon!

And, I’ve been doing lots of homework – reading volumes and volumes, writing my annotated bibliography, working on my thesis (currently titled “In the Animé Version of My Life”) and editing a children’s poetry book. I’ve been getting lots of editing work lately – mostly through the web site – and I really enjoy doing it.

Oh! The New Superhero Stamps from the Post Office feature Wonder Woman doing something I quote in my poem, “Wonder Woman Dreams of the Amazon.”
“…Inexplicably, snow-feathered doves appear in my hands…”
Check it. I write it, and it becomes a stamp. What does this mean?
Incidentally, the scene where she produces doves is in a comic-book fight with Mars, the God of War.

Back from Port Townsend (where we had record heat waves – in the 90’s – with no breeze and the buildings lack both air conditioning or much ventilation. ) On the plus side, I saw many little fawns and seals and walking in the morning on the beach was still very relaxing. And crashed many readings at the Centrum Writer’s Conference, since I didn’t officially sign up for the conference, just kind of made my way to the events that sounded fun, including Ilya Kaminsky and Joshua Beckman. No internet and no cell phone, just my stack of books, the sand, the local wildlife (including a long-haired blonde woman rolling around in a suburban yard for some reason. Then, she shook herself off, and walked on. And, completely out of touch with the hippy atmosphere of Port Townsend, two young men in three-piece suits and gelled hair who accosted me outside the local grocery store, who looked like they had walked out of the movie Wall Street. )
Back in Seattle, where, again, we lack much in the way of air conditioning, I’m sadly making my way towards colder spaces – the mall (ho hum), the theater, with its rash of misogynist films about evil, vindictive women who want to hurt the unlikeable male leads – I’m thinking of seeing Clerks II just to avoid the Super Ex-Girlfriend or John Tucker movies – or, um, the grocery store? It just looks weird to hang around in a bank, even if it is air-conditioned.
I’ve read another five books on my reading list – including the fabulous Ink Dark Moon – worth the cost of admission just for Jane Hirshfield’s discussion of translating from the Japanese – and the Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, which seemed so contemporary it was uncanny. I actually even used a tip from the book – in summer, in Japan around 900 AD, they put their hands in bowls of ice water to keep cool. Good thinking. She’s a writer who loves showing off how witty and clever she is, seems to be mostly amused by the men who try to seduce her, and generally makes fun of people in misery and the less fortunate. In short, sort of a “Mean Girls” model of the Heian period.
Check out these quotes:
From 62. Annoying Things: “One has sent someone a poem (or a reply to a poem) and, after the messenger has left, thinks of a couple of words that ought to be changed.”
From 14. Hateful Things: “A man with whom one is having an affair keeps singing the praises of some woman he used to know…(Yet sometimes I find it is not as unpleasant as all that.)
From 63. Embarrassing Things: “A man recites his own poems (not especially good ones) and tells one about the praise they received – most embarrassing.”
From 148. Pleasing Things: “Finding a large number of tales that one has not read before. Or acquiring a second volume of a tale whose first volume one has enjoyed. But often it is a disappointment.
Ha – # 148 could have been written about any summer sequel.

Another reading? Yes! This one is tomorrow night, Tuesday, in Redmond, WA, with the fantastic poet (and friend) Annette Spaulding Convy, with her sexy/funny convent poems. (After this, I’m ushering myself off to the beach and a B&B for a few days of R&R.)

SoulFood Poetry Night
Tuesday, July 18, 2006, 7:00 p.m.
SoulFood Books, 15748 Redmond Way, Redmond, Washington
(for directions, visit www.soulfoodbooks.com)
We’re pleased to feature the following poets, plus an open-mic reading:
Jeannine Hall Gailey is a Seattle-area journalist whose first book of poetry, Becoming the Villainess, was recently released by Steel Toe Books. Poems from the book have been featured on Verse Daily and on NPR’s Writer’s Almanac. Her work has also appeared in journals such as The Iowa Review, The Evansville Review, The Columbia Poetry Review, and others. Jeannine is studying for her MFA in poetry at Pacific University where she volunteers as a poetry editor for Silk Road.
Annette Spaulding-Convy’s poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, North American Review, and Crab Orchard Review. Her chapbook, In the Convent We Become Clouds, won the 2006 Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Contest. She is also the recipient of a Washington State Artist Trust GAP Grant.
Reading series curated and hosted by Lana Hechtman Ayers and Michael Dylan Welch.For information, please phone the store at 425-881-5309.

I have the crazy idea that I’d like to hop down to San Francisco around the first week of September and do some readings for Becoming the Villainess there. I found super-cheap airfare and hotel – but I don’t have many connections to the San Fran area. Is there anyone who could help set me up with a reading in the area? Thanks in advance!

Today is Glenn’s birthday, which means cake! and presents! And possibly going to that pirate movie, finally! A banner day all around.

Three acceptances this week from online literary magazines: Perigee, The Boxcar Poetry Review, and Poetry Southeast. All of them got back to me in less than a month! This cheered me up considerably, especially after I heard that in a response to a withdrawn poem, Many Mountains Moving thought they had lost my submission (they couldn’t be sure?) – after 14 months! Not to complain, but, really! That kind of thing just sucks the life out of me and my desire to lick envelopes.

I have a reading this Saturday, if you’re in the Kent/Auburn/Tacoma Washington area (my understanding is that these Cornucopia Days festivals involve tasty snack opportunities. I’m just saying.)

POETS AT KENT CORNUCOPIA DAYS
2-4 p.m. Saturday, July 15

The Northwest Renaissance this year celebrates its 20th consecutive summer poetry reading and conversation event a month early and in a new venue. The reading will take place 2-4 p.m. THIS COMING SATURDAY, JULY 15, in the Fine Art Exhibit, upstairs in the Green River Community College facility at Kent Station, 417 Ramsay Way in downtown Kent during Cornucopia Days. NWR program director Marjorie Rommel said “We’re delighted to find ourselves so much in the thick of things as part of the city’s historic Cornucopia Days in downtown Kent.”

This year’s readers include well-known Bellingham poets Malcolm Kenyon and rising slam star Dustin Ryler; Linda Malnack, Des Moines; Auburn poet and performance artist Stephanie Skura; Sherry Reniker, who teaches at Highline Community College; Seattle poet Jeannine Hall Gailey, whose new book Becoming the Villainess is just out from Steel Toe Books; and popular Tacoma poet and poetry host Michael Magee. Colorful (and highly dramatic) Kent poet R.D. Shadowbyrd will emcee.

The event, free and open to all, is supported by the Kent Arts Commission. For more information, contact Marjorie Rommel, 253/939-0571, mrommel@qwest.net, or visit the Kent Cornucopia Days website, http://www.ci.kent.wa.us/arts/news/2006_cornucopiadays.asp.

Greetings from the land of the slowly recovering poet…
I’ve had bronchitis for two weeks and unfortunately this made my asthma act up so badly I had to go back on twice-a-day inhaled steroids. This is a bummer because they have yucky side-effects. It is also a bummer because the asthma attacks tend to happen mostly at night, and therefore I have been sleeping like nobody’s business. On Saturday, I went to bed at midnight, woke up at 4:30 AM with a bad attack, then slept til 4:30 in the afternoon. This was the day of my 12th Anniversary, which I was supposed to spend in romantic entanglement and various out-to-nice-restaurant-and-movie-type celebrations, but instead husband G brought me flowers and presents and dinner in bed. I’m so lame! Then I missed seeing poet friends on Bainbridge Island because Sunday all I wanted to do was sleep – again, this time til 2:30 in the afternoon. Today, I woke up at 9 AM to take my several dosages of various medicines, then slept til 11:30. I’m turning into such a sloth I am not getting anything done! Plus, even in my dreams, I’m apologizing to people for sleeping so much! So I’m hoping the bronchitis/acute asthma thing GOES away soon.
In the meantime, I’ve been haunted by a California quail that sits on a fence post outside my office window every morning for the last four days going “er-er-EEERRR” for about two hours. When I walk on my trail in the evenings, he follows me. Just one fat little male quail. Is this a message from the universe, and if so, what does it mean?
In other news, I’ve been reading interesting books – particularly Ink Dark Moon and Amy Uyetmatsu’s Stone Bow Prayer and Kimiko Hahn’s Ant and Mosquito. The organization of Uyetatsu’s book is extremely interesting – it is divided into sections based on the lunar calendar, and each section is focused in mood or subject related to the name of that month – for instance, section 2 is “Kisaragi – Month of Putting On More Clothes” which contains poems which discuss adolescence, modesty and the awareness of the male gaze. Brilliant, right? And Kimiko Hahn does these odd little riffs on Sei Shonagon’s Pillow Book, in the same style of seemingly random prose observations that seem to really work.
I’m behind on my freelance assignments and reviewing, but until I get better, my mind is shrouded in that weird fever-fog – which may be good for reading and writing poetry (and reading blogs) but bad for those practical critical thinking kinds of exercises. Thanks to everyone who wrote in with kind wishes about the Writer’s Almanac thing et al and those who bought my book 🙂 Grosses bises, as my French class friends and I used to say to each other when we were trying to sound cool.

Well, some bookish news…

Here’s Garrison Keillor reading my poem “Female Comic Book Superheroes” on the Friday June 7th The Writer’s Almanac…

and I found a review of my book in Midwest Book Review’s July 2006 issue:

Becoming the Villainess
Jeannine Hall Gailey
Steel Toe Books
Western Kennedy University, 1 Big Red Way, Bowling Green, KY 42101-35760974326437 $12.00 www.steeltoebooks.com
Becoming the Villainess is the debut collection of free-verse poetry by journalist Jeannine Hall Gailey. Addressing the archetypes of myth, from modern pop culture to Ovid to Grimm’s fairy tales, Gailey weaves words expressing the hearts of shunned, reviled, justly and unjustly treated villainesses and female victims of fable. A dramatic, moving collection; each poem has a gripping personal story to tell. “Daphne, Older”: Peel back my skin: / reveal hard fibers, bite marks, // scars from wind and rain. / Life is pain – I won’t tell you // any different. Just that sometimes, / avoiding what you fear // isn’t the answer. See? All these years / my branches sang with birds // and my leaves drank sunlight- / I haven’t missed much. // My heartwood hardens slowly / over time – first, to the music, then, to the light.”

This review, among others, can be found at http://www.midwestbookreview.com/sbw/jul_06.htm under Poetry.

Hope you all had a good 4th of July weekend.
On Saturday I got a chance to read with Kelli Russell Agodon in Poulsbo, Washington, at a little coffee shop called the Poulsbohemian. It was so hot – I think I read less than ten minutes because I literally thought I might pass out from the heat – but we had fun and a friendly crowd, so it was worth it!
Most of the holiday I spent resting, trying to get over bronchitis (I know, I know, who gets bronchitis in July?) I did get a chance to stop by Open Books, the local poetry bookstore, and acquired a big book of Gary Snyder’s poetry and prose, Kathleen Ossip’s Search Engine, and Kimiko Hahn’s Ant and Mosquito (which includes contemporary takes on Sei Shonagon’s Pillow Book) which I loved. And went to the Kirkland fireworks, which involved sitting by Lake Washington, watching three sets of fireworks – Kirkland, Lake Union, and another display that appeared to come from Bill Gates’ compound – and their lights glowing in the water. We did have some thunderstorms right before the fireworks, but Glenn and I managed to grill out while it was still sunny – grilled corn on the cob, grilled asparagus, and this year, we tried a spice-rubbed whole turkey breast – which was pretty good, and even better later as sandwiches. So much fruit this time of year you can’t eat it all – cherries, plums, doughnut peaches, figs. We made a gallon of watermelon-limeade which is the perfect respite from hot, muggy weather.
Also, the space shuttle launched – despite the fact that protective foam had fallen off of crucial areas – the same problem that caused the explosion of the space shuttle on re-entry all those years ago. And, North Korea launched several missiles, near Japan, Russia, and a long-range missile (that some think is capable of reaching the Western US, including Washington state and California) that exploded after a few minutes. This seems very disturbing and a return of the threat of nuclear war that I think most of us had assumed had been overshadowed by other threats. The phrase “Sabre rattling” appeared in the news frequently in conjunction to these test missiles.
PS – Check out Rachel Zucker’s blog at the poetry foundation web site.