A bit under the weather here with a lung infection that I am being dosed up with antibiotics for (OmniCef, this time – doesn’t that sound like a bank? or a hotel?) I keep falling asleep for no reason, even on 24-hour decongestents, which usually kick off an energetic phase. So, not the most productive of times.
On the plus side, instead of doing all the fun social things I was going to do this weekend (like seeing Jenifer Lawrence read from her new book at Elliot Bay, or going to the Comicon where the artists from Buffy’s newest comic and the artist who does the future-telling art from Heroes were going to be, or hanging out with friends at the local jazz place) I am reading. I just finished Charles Jensen’s Living Things chapbook (which reminded me, in its restraint and solemnity, a little of Louise Gluck) and re-read a book of Japanese fairy tales. I finished up a review of Kate Greenstreet’s case sensitive for The Pedestal. And I finally got to read the “season eight” Buffy comic, which has a beautifully drawn cover.
Speaking of beautiful covers, Bookslut is using Michaela’s work to advertise the upcoming reading in Chicago with myself, Ander Monson and Catherynne Valente. I’m excited about the reading – and the people I’m reading with – and hope I get to run into some Chicago friends while I’m there. I love that city!
April, my birthday month, is almost here. Seattle is being sulky and sullen and hanging around the fifty-degree point, even though the cherry blossoms have already started to fall.
- At March 29, 2007
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In Blog
0
Just heard that 2River’s blog is podcasting some poems of mine:
www.2river.org/blog/archives/2007/03/jeannine_hall_g_1.html
Thanks!
Just rolled back in from Portland, after not one, but two semi-sunny days in a row – a miracle in the Northwest in March. The reading with Josh and Marvin Bell went really well – there were about seventy people there, the library was a wonderful venue, and I got to hang out with my cool Portland friends afterwards at the lounge at Pazzo’s (fancy!) I even sold a handful of books – enough to pay for dinner for myself AND Glenn! Now to rest up until the April 4th reading, and then Chicago.
How do we do it? Volume!
Going down to Portland…
Hey Portland-area friends, if you aren’t doing anything Wednesday night, head out to see me read with Marvin Bell and Josh Stuart at the Central Library. Details:
Where: Portland, Oregon
Central Library, 801 SW 10th Avenue, in the US Bank Room (1st floor.)
When: Wednesday night at 6:30 – early – and they’re selling books before the reading, rather than after, since we have to be out of the library by 8 PM
With Who? Jeannine Hall Gailey, Joshua Stuart and big star poet Marvin Bell
Got back last night around 9 PM after a ten-hour round trip to visit my friends and workshop on the island (really, the Kitsap peninsula.) The poetry and hanging out with bar food appetizers afterwards was worth the grueling drive/ferry trip/ferry lines.
Mystery of Hotmail Problems…Solved! It turns out I was involuntarily upgraded to the new “Windows Live Mail Beta” yesterday, and I bet they lost mail or locked out senders or something when they transferred servers. Perfect – thanks Microsoft! If only Gmail’s horrid “threading feature” didn’t make me want to punch a hole in my computer screen. Where have all the good free e-mail providers gone?
Mystery of back problems – Solved! Turns out from an MRI I had a disc bulging against a nerve. Yup, it hurt. But now it’s getting better. No surgery, no steroids. Yay!
Mystery of where to live starting in May – Still unsolved. Stay tuned.
Poetry News Items:
I have tentatively signed on as a co-editor (or possibly some sort of hybrid poetry editor/web editor/jack of all trades) of a little Northwest lit mag called “Crab Creek Review.” I will revamp the web site as soon as I get time. Lots of paperwork to sort out. But the new Crab Creek editorial team seems really great. So, say goodbye to my free time!
Kate Greenstreet and Janet Holmes read from their new books, Case Sensitive and F2F, at Open Books on Tuesday night. They are both really animated, energetic readers. Kate, who comes from New Jersey, has a great voice for radio. That’s just my opinion. Are you listening, NPR? Seriously though, sometimes writers really give you a chance to rethink their work off the page, and the one thing I learned is that Kate’s book, which I had read more than once, actually has a lot of funny bits that I had missed.
Dang it! If you have been sending me e-mails through my web form or to my hotmail address, they have NOT been getting through, so please re-send. I’m so sorry to do this through the blog, but I have missed pretty much all my messages from yesterday and today. I am not ignoring you, I promise.
Endicott Studios blog strikes again – this time, with two poems from Pebble Lake Review, including one of my myterious “fox-wife” poems:
http://endicottstudio.typepad.com/endicott_redux/2007/03/the_sunday_poem_2.html
and “Sibyl” by Kim Young.
Possibly trivial observation – Sarah McLachlan’s song, Building a Mystery, is about a sexualized embodiment of the female’s male muse, in opposition to all those poems and songs about the male’s female muse?
Read Charles Jensen’s take on the lessons of Buffy in the non-profit sector.
Congratulate Eduardo!
And, last, find me a place to live and a decent job.
More mini-review madness
Mary Biddinger’s Prairie Fever:
Don’t expect any mild-mannered nature poetry about prairie wildlife here, although wildlife does appear, torn and bedraggled, birds dead on windowsills, red flowers appearing on throats. Full of dark fragmentary looks at the inner and outer violences of the bored bad girls of the prairie, poking dead bodies with sticks, rinsing their hair with beer, and making out in abandoned barns. Stark, vivid writing illuminating shadows with lightning-sharp imagery and bone-cracking emotion.
Did some more Expedia work today, then combed Craigslist for places to live, which were all too expensive, which made me comb Craigslist for more part-time work. All in all, depressing.
In reading news:
Peter’s new book reading at Open Books was standing room only, and Peter was wonderful. His new book even has a couple of mythology-alluding poems in it! You know I’m a sucker for those. Here’s the first few lines from “Case History: Persephone:”
“The visiting surgery resident
inserts the icy speculum
while the mother stands nearby
clutching her only daughter’s pale hand.
Outside the window – a barren
January day. The long fields lie empty,
their edges stitched with bare trees.”
Isn’t he a great poet?
Today, I’m re-socializing myself by going to Peter Pereira’s new book reading and party, which should be wonderful, and I’m meeting up beforehand for a birthday lunch with a friend (her birthday, not mine) which should be good as well. I always need a little living-in-a-cave-by-myself time after big social weeks, like AWP or the school residencies. I swear I’m an extrovert, I just need breaks in between extroverted events.
So, onto writers and their portrayal in film. I loved the tremendous “Stranger than Fiction,” which features an author obsessing over how to kill her main character, a vulnerable and subtle Will Ferrell. Then I fell into the movie “Music and Lyrics” (Hugh Grant, Drew Barrymore,) a much less tremendous film, which features a foetry nightmare character – a girl who seduces her powerful professor (a la David Lehman) at the New School to get her poems published, (or so the professor says) and when he dumps her and writes a thinly-veiled fictional account of her seduction, she has a nervous breakdown and becomes “charmingly quirky” (except the script allows the quirks to come and go like cats in the scenes. There’s no continuity or integrity about the character.) Then she’s redeemed by writing the lyrics for a pop-tart’s hit single. Nothing like the music business to clean up the dirt left by the poetry biz? LOL.
Post-AWP Reading:
I’m reading Simone Muench’s Lampblack & Ash, which is painfully pretty and powerful, like walking in stilletos over every word, and Brandi Homan’s chap, Two Kinds of Arson, which I read all in one sitting and then promptly wrote a poem afterwards (always the sign of good reading.) I even envisioned a string of poems about Rapunzel. So, my advice: read both books, then get to your writing! I also read the lastest issue of Sentence, which had some wonderful bits by Margaret Atwood and a bunch of fascinating stuff. It’s not just your typical lyrical surreal prose poem kind of writing. A nice diversity.
I may get in trouble for mentioning it (he explicitly asked for no reviews!) but Jim Behrle’s chapbook, She’s My Best Friend, is fun reading, as well as beautifully produced. OK, that’s all I’m saying.
(Music: Reasons to Be Beautiful by Hole)
- At March 08, 2007
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In Blog
- 2
An exploration of two poems from my new Japanese-fairy-tale-anime-themed manuscript is up at Endicott Studios! Thanks to 2River View, who originally published them, and Endicott, which is a great place to find out about folk and fairy tales and mythological explorations in literature.
Wow! Thanks for the heads up (again!) Mary A!
AWP – The Gift That Keeps On Giving
So, apparently I picked up a hell of a stomach bug at AWP, which I have spent two days recovering from. I guess when you fly on an airplane twice, and shake the hands of about five thousand people, you are bound to pick up a germ or two. It was still worth it!
One of the things about AWP that I am always -weirdly – disappointed with is how surface-y everything stays. It’s neccessary because of the short amount of time you interact – the panels at an hour and fifteen can only go into things so deeply, they don’t have time – and if you’re talking to someone for five minutes, it’s unlikely you’re going to get much of their life story. But it makes me sad all the same. It’s like, you just get this glimmer of an interesting person or idea, then you’re onto the next thing. Kind of like speed dating.
But the best thing is coming home with a pile of memories of meeting new poets and new journals and books to read. It will take me a week to get through everything, I’m sure. And I came home to a couple of acceptances, always a nice surprise. And have lots of e-mails to send and respond to. I loved meeting people I only knew by internet before.
I wasn’t crazy about Atlanta – at least most of the parts I tooled around in – although I’m generally a fan of the South, having grown up in Tennessee – it wasn’t like Chicago, the city I fell in love with during AWP a couple of years ago. I’m looking forward to New York City, which I last visited in 2000. I loved it then, even though I only got to spend a couple of days at a time there for work with IBM. When I travel I imagine living in the city, where I’d go grocery shopping, how the women wear their hair, finding the parks with the best views of the city. I have a romantic addiction to moving every so many years, since I grew up doing that (my dad was in the academic career path when I was a kid, moving every couple of years to get a promotion or get tenure or chair.) I didn’t love Seattle when I first visited it, it was cold and grey in a February and the people were rude and the traffic terrible. It wasn’t until I visited the second time in August that I saw what people loved about the city. People in Seattle are much more gracious when the sun in shining, FYI.
I did find a decent, kind of affordable/hipster restaurant called Taurus, which was kind of in Midtown or Buckhead up on Peachtree street. If you get a chance next time you’re in Atlanta, check it out. The Louvre exhibition at the High was disappointing, but the permanent collection there was pretty decent. Didn’t get to the botanical garden, but it didn’t seem like much would have been blooming anyway – the trees, unlike here in Seattle, were still bare and bud-free, and only a few daffodils poking out of the mud let you know it was almost spring.
And last but not least, a little pic that may or may not disappear shortly: Dorianne Laux and me at AWP luring people to Pacific U’s MFA program booth.
