I’m teaching persona poetry this week in my class and am happy to see that my students are really enjoying it. The power of persona 🙂
I went to a wonderful reading last night at the Casa Romantica reading series. It was a beautiful venue – I got there late, so it was dark and foggy, but during the day the venue has glass walls that look over the ocean. Sandra Alcosser gave a wonderful reading (despite a broken back – talk about a tough poet!) as did Joy Manesiotis, who read Sappho-esque fragments.
Back for some more tests this afternoon, an ultrasound, nothing painful or involving needles, thank goodness. Think good thoughts for me.
And wait for the Great Pumpkin. I’m pretty sure this is the most sincere pumpkin patch, I mean blog…Do you think the Great Pumpkin gives out poetry prizes too?
You never really know a town til you’ve been to its ER, I say. I got to visit this weekend. A new town, a new set of health challenges, this time, stomach trouble, sigh. More blood to draw, more scans to schedule. The hospital also confirmed that I had had pneumonia while I was in Port Townsend, probably for a long time, without knowing it. My lungs still have blockages! I have been breathing easier since I’ve been here, but apparently I’m not all the way better from that year-long trip to lung-trouble land.
On the plus side, I’ll be joining the reading for Poetry International on Nov 1, where Li-Young Lee will be reading as the feature! Fun stuff. As long as I can walk and talk, I’ll be there, baby!
So, yesterday I was discouraged because of the cancellation of a project I was really excited about and invested in. It was a surprise cancellation, the worst kind.
But then other things happened that put it in perspective. I literally took a day off from everything, reminding myself that not only had I just finished the difficult project (that got cancelled after months of hard work,) I’d moved into a new apartment in a new city in a new state, started a new job, and have been working very hard to stay, well, fundamentally healthy and also able to pay our power bill (higher in CA than WA, surprise surprise.) Everyone, in poetry, in life, experiences rejections, set-backs, money-crunches, health challenges. If we all just closed up shop every time a door was shut in our face, well, there would be a lot fewer successful writers. You can’t succeed if you stop trying. Right? Right. So it’s back into the saddle for me. Also, bad things happen to everyone, all the time, without warning. Rebecca Loudon had a really good interview online and talked about the nature of life and suffering. Her poetry is all about a kind of defiance. One of the powerful things about poetry is the ability to share with another human being and say “Hey, you’re not the only one who has ever gone through something like this. Hey, those dark nights of the soul may not be endless.”
And also thank you to all the kind folks who sent me encouraging e-mails and comments. More than a few of you brought tears to my eyes. No joke. So, thanks.
In an unrelated note: No Half Price Books stores in southern California. Not one! How do people survive without Half Price Books? Ohio, Virginia, and Seattle were crawling with them. This is the first hard evidence that there really is very little reading going on here in SoCal compared to other places.
- At October 23, 2008
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In discouraged
7
Do you ever have one of those really discouraging days where you just feel like quitting poetry altogether? I’m having one of those days. I’m thinking of giving up poetry and maybe taking up something useful, like restaurant hostessing.
Things you can learn from Billy Collins and the power of gold platform sandals…
Last night I went to a BC reading in La Jolla. When it came time to sign my book, he sang me a song called “Jeannine,” which is apparently an old jazz standard. (“Last time, last time I saw Jeannine…she looked like a movie queen.”) Had Billy Collins done this before? I don’t remember him singing last time I saw him, but I do remember finding out that his collie was named “Jeannine” as well. I found versions of the song on itunes. See what you can learn at poetry readings? Then I found another song on itunes by David Bowie called “Jeanine” that I really liked (“So take your glasses off, stop acting so sincere.” Hee!) Apparently all the Jeanine characters in songs (any spelling) are troublesome women. That makes sense.
I also got to meet Steve Kowit, who was very charming and friendly. The reading itself was so crowded Glenn and I had to temporarily retreat to the next door coffee shop, Pannikin, where the young coffee shop workers were talking about how Eliot’s work was good only because of Ezra Pound’s editing, and there were German surfer girls warming their sandaled feet by the fire. (It was about 60 degrees outside, chilly for here.) They invited me to join them because I was also wearing sandals, which I thought was very friendly.
In fact, I was wearing three-inch gold platform strappy sandals, which is very unlike me. However, the waiter AND the maitre’d at the restaurant we stopped at for dinner chatted us up and talked about the local food scene and then sent us a free dessert, a melting chocolate something with salted caramel and buttermilk sorbet. Plus, the whole Billy Collins singing to me thing…the mysterious power of strappy three-inch gold sandals? Or maybe people are just friendlier here in San Diego. I never ever wore heels in Seattle, so it must be the creeping influence of SoCal on an easily-influenced soul.
Here’s a pic of the shoes for Rebecca Loudon:
http://img.nextag.com/image/Guess-by-Marciano-Women/1/000/006/006/733/600673341.jpg
PS They were fairly comfortable.
Also, check this out: a poem by my Steel Toe Books publisher, Tom Hunley, from his new book, will be on Writer’s Almanac this week:
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2008/10/26
I’m convinced that though Garrison Keillor always calls “Steel Toe Books” “Steel Toe Boots” on this radio program, that he actually really likes Tom Hunley.
So, I’ve been accumulating a mental list, as one does when they move from one city to a new one, a list of differences between cities, in this case, the burbs of Seattle versus the burbs of San Diego.
San Diego Versus Seattle: Let’s Rumble!!!
–The burbs of San Diego have big, expensive libraries, which have no books on display, and the librarians seem unfriendly-to-hostile. The librarians do not know about advertised readings nor can they help you find a particular book. (This is my experience thus far with North County libraries. If you are a San Diego librarian, please do not be offended.) In Seattle, even the smallest towns have expensive, well-stocked libraries, friendly, helpful librarians, book displays for librarian-recommended fiction, non-fiction, young adult, and “topic-of-the-week.”
–The new doctor I went to for my b12 shots, who must have been at least in her mid-forties, had nary a line on her face, was a size two, had a deep fake tan and long bleach-blond hair. There was an ad for botox in the exam room. Does this inspire confidence? No. In Seattle, my doctor was mid-fifties, had many wrinkles, like a normal fifty-year-old doctor, was a size two, and had dark hair and no fake tan. The ads in her exam room were for diabetes check-lists and domestic abuse awareness.
–The burbs of Seattle have better shopping options than the burbs of San Diego, though San Diego proper has better shopping than Seattle proper. Many women here dress like Hooters girls all the time. Without being paid. My all-black wardrobe is definitely out-of-place. On the plus side, I’m not the only woman here who walks around with an umbrella up when the sun in shining.
–Independent bookstores? Seattle wins this one hands-down. Same with coffee shops. And so far, the burbs of Seattle win the restaurant contest too. I’ve only tried a handful of places here, yet, so maybe I’m shortchanging San Diego. Maybe this is why all the women here are so thin.
–San Diego has sunshine every day. Seattle has rain every day. Despite the occasional giant fire, it is much more pleasant to wake up and go outside in the morning here, go check the mail, run errands, etc. The walking trails here have “Beware of Snakes!” signs everywhere, though, which is a little unnerving. I’m told the warning signs are for rattlesnakes. Hmmm. I don’t remember encountering any rattlesnakes in the Seattle environs…
Conclusion: I miss my poet-friends, my poetry-only bookstore, my coffee shops, and the many wonderful libraries. Also my doctors. However, San Diego does have meerkats, palm trees, new hummingbird species, and an abundance of blooming flowers year round. Plus, I have met a few poets here (Hi Lorraine!) so it’s not totally poet-unfriendly. And it has way more universities and teaching opportunities than Seattle did. I guess we’ll call it a draw…
- At October 14, 2008
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In apocalypse, Oak Ridge, Qarrtsiluni
- 2
A poem, “Oak Ridge, Tennessee,” with a little recording of me reading it, went up at Qarrtsiluni today. It’s the “Journaling the Apocalypse” issue, so check it out.
Well, after living here for exactly two weeks, and spending most of that time hunched over a computer working or unpacking, Glenn and I decided to take advantage of a cloudless, cooler day (around 70) to finally visit the San Diego Zoo. The hummingbird house was closed, sadly, but the meerkat exhibit was terrific, like Meerkat Manor without the annoying melodramatic narrator, and the baby koala bears were so cute I thought maybe I’d just move in to the zoo right then and there. I did take a whole year of training at the Cincinnati Zoo while I was a biology-major undergrad, after all. I could be a koala handler!
Here are the pics. Cuteness overload, indeed!
PS I forget. Do poets benefit from an economic downturn? People do seem to return to higher education in greater numbers during recessions…how about showing up at poetry readings? What do you think?
Friend and fellow Pacific MFA alum Michelle Bitting has a poem from her new book, Good Friday Kiss, up on Verse Daily today. Go take a look!
Aimee Nezhukumatathil has an essay on scary Halloween-appropriate poems up at Poetry Foundation.com!
And I received Suzanne Frischkorn’s lovely Lit Windowpane and my publisher Tom Hunley’s Octopus in the mail this week. Octopus is full of funny and thoughtful meditations on culture, poetry and fatherhood.
Of course my favorite poem in Lit Windowpane, a group of poems about a disintegrating relationship and nature poems that echo that mood, is the first one, “The Mermaid Takes Issue with the Fable.” You can see that poem here.
As a young teenager, one of the only things I liked about living in Ohio were the beautiful November sunsets. The baleful orange glow on the horizon…
Yesterday there was a beautiful sunset, but the baleful orange glow on the horizon wasn’t from a big ball of flame in the sky, but a wildfire on Camp Pendleton, a Marine base a few miles from our house. It put out a plume of smoke that could be seen from fifty miles away at least. Welcome to California! It is a land of natural disasters.
On the plus side, the watermelons are $1.50 a piece at the local market and avocadoes $2 for a sack full. With the economy the way it is, well, at least we’ll be able to afford to eat!
I’ve been a little discouraged about my two book manuscripts lately. I feel like the checks just keep going out and nothing comes back in. Not good economics. I’ve also has a string of rejections lately, then a punctuation mark of two acceptances in two days. Sometimes I feel like the poetry world takes so much (volunteer work, subscribing, writing reviews, checks to contests and open submissions, rejection slips) and gives back…well, not so much.
The Santa Ana winds are approaching.
