Low-Key Thanksgiving, a Mourning Moon, Closing Out the Year, and the Necessity of Early Holiday Cheer (Plus Cross-Genre Lists)

Thanksgiving wishes, from the new mantel

Low-Key Thanksgiving

Like most people this year, we had a very low-key Thanksgiving this year, and Facetimed and Google Meetinged with family, and made a dinner for two – no leftovers, no overeating – and the only drama that our four-year-old dishwasher sprung a leak today (major appliance fails usually happen on holidays, don’t they? We lost a fridge around this time four years ago, washer/dryer five years ago, I think).

Glenn did several home projects – like taking out the old, poorly fitting mantel and painting and mounting this new one, behind me in the picture – and we got out the Christmas lights and trees. It feels like we need the extra cheer this year. On Black Friday, the only shopping we did was buying prescription glasses from our local indie eyeglass place and optometrist, which we found out is closing for good in December. We’ve been going there for over ten years. Another business casualty of the coronavirus, I guess.

The Mourning Moon, or Frost Moon

A Mourning Moon

This full moon is called the Frost Moon or the Mourning Moon, which makes sense, as my family is still mourning the loss of my grandmother from coronavirus, and so many others are mourning loved ones lost this year. Wishing peace, love, and light to all of us who have lost love ones.

I haven’t been sleeping well since she died, and I haven’t been able to write or send out work at all, which I guess might be normal during a time of mourning. I was lucky, at my age, to still have grandparents left, I think. This year has been so, so hard for so many reasons. As a poet, I feel I should be coming up with better ways to say that. Will next year be any better? With the vaccine on the horizon, and a new President, maybe we have reason for hope.

November Typewriters

Closing Out the Year

It’s almost December, the last month of the year, and I’ve already started thinking about what this year could teach me, and how to start thinking about the future. The circle of life, as shown in typewriters, as my photo to the left shows.

This year has been a little exhausting. I’ve been sick (not with coronavirus, with other things) almost the entire year, on really strong antibiotics from February til now trying to deal with it. Glenn has applied and has been accepted to graduate school, starting classes in January. We’ve missed seeing friends and family, and our normal routines of wondering farmer’s markets in summer and bookstores in the rainy season. I didn’t start baking or doing puzzles – but I did read many books, upped my photography habit, got a guitar, started various writing projects, and got published for the first time in Salon – twice – (a dream of mine) and in Poetry Magazine (another dream). I haven’t yet found a home for either of the poetry book manuscripts I’ve been circulated, which is one of my goals for 2021. I started volunteering again, which felt right, with virtual meetings. I applied for jobs for the first time in years. Despite my health problems, I feel like, especially with flexible work conditions that have been boosted for disabled folks due to the necessity caused by covid-19, I still have enough time and energy to be able to contribute, hopefully to a good place. So I can see, vaguely, a reason for hope for next year.

Glenn and I with Santa cutout at Molbak’s

The Necessity of Early Holiday Cheer

We felt the need, especially this year, to drag up our Christmas lights and tree, to start trying to create a little holiday cheer where we can. This picture was taken outdoors at Molbak’s, where most years, I’d be wondering around looking at decorations and gardening stuff on many of these short, dark, rainy days. These days we only do a drive-by. I looked at the shops on Black Friday as we drove through Woodinville, and many parking lots were empty.

On ‘Shop Small’ Saturday I encouraged people to buy their books of poetry from small publishers and small bookstores (like our own Open Books), and I’ll probably do the same on Monday. I’m surrounded by stacks of unread books but I will probably buy some more myself.

However you can light up these dark days, bring cheer to a damp and weary world, do it. Whatever that means to you – putting up lights and a tree, dyeing your hair a festive red (see picture above,) calling old friends or printing out pictures to remind you of happier times – I encourage you to do it. Watch The Mandalorian or the Charlie Brown Christmas special, drink hot chocolate or spiked coffee, be kind to those around you. Wishing you a gentle December, and hopes for a better new year.

Field Guide to the End of the World On a Cross-Genre List

A late addendum to the post: Goodreads alerted me that Tor.com was kind enough to write an article about cross-genre reading, and including my book Field Guide to the End of the World on the list! https://www.tor.com/2020/11/24/combatting-book-shame-and-reading-outside-your-comfort-zone/

 

My Poem, “The Wildness,” Up on Verse Daily Today

Hairy Woodpecker

A Poem, “The Wildness,” Up on Verse Daily Today

Thanks to Verse Daily who featured my poem, “The Wildness,” originally published in Cherry Tree, up at Verse Daily today.

http://www.versedaily.org/2020/thewildness.shtml

Here’s a sneak peek. Wishing you all a safe and peaceful holiday week. Stay home and give your loved ones a call to tell them you love them.

November Doldrums, Grieving a Loss and Moments of Light

Typewriter with red maple leaves

November Doldrums

It’s been a rough week. It started with me staying up all night with kitten Sylvia that required the emergency vet (okay now, but gave us quite a scare), continued with me being too sick (not covid, but a stomach and sinus infection) to get much work reading or writing done, and ended with the news that my maternal grandmother, after surviving covid-19 for two weeks, passed away today, just a few days short of her 96th birthday. This was my last surviving grandparent, and one who shared with me a love of literature – Poe, Hemingway and Faulkner were a few of her favorites, and in her youth she read voraciously. She lived in Missouri, which has some of the highest covid rates, and no one was able to visit her the last weeks of her life, because of covid.

I know people are chafing under travel restrictions during Thanksgiving, but remember that people like me – and my grandmother – are the people that need protection. Wear a mask, stay six feet apart, and stay home. Having to miss a Thanksgiving with family is much better than having to mourn a family member you can’t even have a funeral for, which is what I’m doing this week. No amount of pumpkin pie is worth that.

Sunshine in November, Seattle View from Kerry Park

Moments of Light

Even in the darkest times, there are moments of light. Most of the week has been cold – in the low forties – and rainy, but yesterday the temperature was above 50 and the sun was shining, and suddenly everything was beautiful – the last remaining leaves on the trees, the snow-capped mountains, the neighbor walking his dog.

Besides the emergency-levels of “real life” stress of this week, I also got a rejection from the NEA grant, two book rejections (though my manuscripts were semi-finalists, sigh) and several regular poetry rejections. When you don’t feel good and you’re wondering what the point of all your hard work is, it’s important to remember the sun will shine again, figuratively and metaphorically.

This coronavirus has made 2020 a very tough year for everyone. My grandmother is just one casualty of a pandemic that has killed a million people world-wide. Travel plans and curfews and shutdowns have impacted the economy, our quality of life, almost every part of it. So I’m hoping you have a safe, happy-as-possible Thanksgiving week, and remember it won’t always be the way it is right now. Light a light. Get outside in every moment of sunshine. Grieve the things that are lost, and hope that 2021 will be a better year for all of us.

 

A Poem Up at Verse Daily, Rough Week, And On Poets And Prizes

Red maple leaves

A Poem Up At Verse Daily Today – “They Are Waiting”

It’s been a rough week, so I’ll start with the good news. A poem of mine published in the latest issue of Boulevard, “They Are Waiting,” which I wrote when I was waiting for cancer scan news a few years ago, is featured today on Verse Daily. Thank you to Boulevard and Verse Daily!

Here’s a sneak peek:

Sunrise in November, Woodinville

A Rough Week in November

It’s been a bit of a rough week for us here in November. My 96-year-old maternal grandmother, Opal, tested positive for Covid and is in isolation at her nursing home. She lost her husband in January, so this has been a hard year for her (and for my mom) already. We are praying she makes it to her birthday at the end of the month. I’ve already sent her birthday card, and I’m just hoping it makes it in time. Even if we were in the same city, I could not see her. It’s a cruel time to be ill.

At the same time, I got hit with another pretty serious stomach infection, requiring massive antibiotics (and sometimes hospitalization and surgery,) so I’ll ask for your good thoughts for healing there as well. I definitely am trying to stay out of the hospital. Stressing about the election and rising covid rates, too. The November sunrise picture is to remind us, even on bad days, the rainy cold months, there is always a little beauty.

White Peacock, Zoo Lanterns

On Poets and Prizes

There was a very interesting article this week, “On Poets and Prizes,” by Juliana Spahr and Stephanie Young, at the ASAP journal. It talked about the fact that, though some of us might prefer to think of the poetry world as a meritocracy, it is mostly a function of a small “in-crowd” of Ivy League types giving prizes to their friends, and only their friends. The charts and graphs alone are worth a look. Data-driven poetry information. Since poetry receives so little attention in America – and so few sales – the poetry prize decides whether a writer is read – or ignored. And most of this is nepotistic – highly nepotistic. More than you thought, if you already thought it was.

It is hard, as I have posted the last two weeks on the blog, to make a living as a poet. If you did not come from a family with money, didn’t go to the “right” schools, never ran with the “right” poetry in-crowds, it’s going to be even tougher. I mourn having to say this, especially to younger poets with more enthusiasm and optimism than I had (I was always a little cynical.) If you don’t go to Iowa for your MFA, you don’t go to New York City and the right parties, you are probably never going to get the big prizes or the big fellowships. Which means, you probably won’t be read. The data presented in the article is fairly convincing.

But…it does happen – and I know people who it has happened for, who were lucky, who just on the merit of their work and their hustle, did make it. I am so happy to know that such poets exist.  Publishers, from time to time, present terrific work by people from “nowhere,” who don’t have money or go to prestigious schools, and their work finds not only an audience, but good reviews and accolades and yes, prizes. Am I likely to be one of the lucky ones? Are you? The odds, as the article makes clear, may not be in our favor. But there is something honorable about writing, publishing, continuing to offer the work to the world, isn’t there?

If we are Katniss Everdeen and the Poetry World is the Hunger Games, how do we start to break the game, the in-crowd, nepotistic, odd-are-never-in-our-favour  system? Do we want to? How do you choose which poetry books to read, or decide which book is good and worthy of your time? How do you choose which book to review?

I want to be hopeful. What is the message of hope I can find here? I admit to feeling a bit discouraged, poetry-wise, this week. I’m still waiting, for a publisher to pick up one of the two book manuscripts I’m circulating. A lot of living the life of poetry is waiting, isn’t it? I am wishing you the best this week.  Some good news. Some luck.

Waking Up to a New President and Vice President, A Cold Week with Zoo Visit, More About How to Earn a Living as a Poet

Baby red panda cub at Woodland Park Zoom makes eye contact with me.

Waking Up to a New President and Vice President

This week was really stressful for me, like a lot of people, as the vote counts moved back and forth for what seemed like an interminable amount of time. So we took a (masked) trip to the Woodland Park Zoo to raise our spirits. Getting to see these beautiful red panda cubs (two of them!) made me feel better. Also, I researched possibly moving to Ireland. So that’s how the week was. I had trouble sleeping. I’m sure I’m not the only one who tried to limit the amount of news as they were counting the votes. I tried to distract myself by trying to learn to play the electric guitar (I’ll post a hilarious pic later) and reading a book on mystery writing and another on creativity, and even trying to write a bit of my would-be mystery novels. But it was a rough week nonetheless. My husband got the news that he was accepted into the graduate program at Pepperdine, so that was some good news.

Peacock with Autumn Leaves. The National Bird of India!

Yesterday, I woke up to cold rain, and went back to sleep. Then like magic, when I woke up a second time, like Dorothy, I was in a beautiful technicolor world where Kamala Harris is the first woman Vice-President and Biden had beaten Trump by a lot in multiple states, not just a little bit in one state. Watching their acceptance speeches, I was moved to tears by seeing all the little girls holding flags and Kamala Harris addressing them directly. In Biden’s speech, he didn’t say he hated anyone, or encouraged people to chant “lock him up,” or make comments about women’s bodies – he talked about healing, and making a plan with scientists for coronavirus. It was wonderfully unhorrible. That’s my baseline now – anything not actively stupid and hateful from a Presidential figure is a huge relief. I also saw footage of people in Philly, LA, DC dancing in the street, My friend in London said they set off fireworks where she lived all night. Paris rang church bells. The whole world seemed to be celebrating. Not the Civil War that people imagined, but real happiness, thankfulness, relief.

So I’m very excited about Kamala Harris being the first woman Vice President, (and a Gen-Xer at that, what what!) but honestly, I am so ready for a woman President! Next time, maybe. I wish January were already here. You know Donald isn’t going to do one useful thing in his remaining time, and probably will just cough on all the furniture to make the next administration sick. I hope they open some windows in the White House and hit that place with a lot of disinfecting robots  before they let Biden in! It seems Trumps’ chief of staff is now out sick with covid. Was this White House purposefully infecting everyone? It seems like it. Ugh, so glad to get rid of those anti-science, racist, misogynist jerks. And hopefully never talking about them again, except to discuss jail sentences.

Carousel Detail

A Very Chilly Week with a Zoo Visit

It’s been a colder-than-normal week, but we decided to distract ourselves during the stress with a trip to Woodland Park Zoo to see the new little fluffballs – two red panda cubs that were born in May. We wore masks and the zoo was a little less crowded than usual (we went on Monday) and all the indoor things were closed but it still felt like something “normal” – even with our rising rates of coronavirus – that we could do that was still fairly low risk for me. I took a few pictures of the shadowed light on the 100-year-old carousel, because it seemed so haunted. They also had giant inflatable animals for their holiday lights this year. We saw penguins, a snow leopard, the red pandas (of course,) and beautiful wolves, meerkats, and owls. It was a quick trip, and of course, everything’s different with covid-19 and the zoo is no different, but I seriously thought about applying for a job petting red panda babies and/or feeding otters while I was there. Did you know one of my original ideas of what to do with my biology degree included becoming a zoo worker? I even took a class at the Cincinnati Zoo that covered what zoo work actually looked like, including training ambassador animals. Yep, that’s one of my “could have been” careers.

closed carousel with reflections of bright sky

More About Making a Living as a Poet

See this picture of a carousel with reflections of the sky? This is sometimes the image I think of when talking about things like: how to make a concrete living as a poet. I’m giving another talk tomorrow to the disadvantaged teen group in Ohio, and I’m supposed to talk about practical things like making a CV and grants and fellowships. Interestingly, I also had an e-mail this week from my teenage second cousin, who wanted to know about the same questions: how do I publish my poetry book, and more importantly, how do I make money doing it? Tough, tough stuff.

Sylvia Plath is a great example of a poet who hustled a LOT to make a living as a poet – she sold poems to The Atlantic and the New Yorker, she got grants and fellowships and residencies. She hated teaching. Probably not a great example to bring up to teen poets though, because the story of her suicide is more famous than the story of her hustle.

Most poets, honestly, don’t ‘make a living” as poets. I know poets who make their livings as doctors and lawyers, who are non-profit administrators, who work in publishing, and of course many work in teaching at creative writing and English programs. I personally earn a partial living as a freelance writer, sometimes supplemented with grants and poetry/review payments, but for twelve years I worked as a tech manager, marketing manager, and even an acquisitions editor for large corporations to earn a living. My husband right now has the job with the all-important health insurance, and if he didn’t, I would have to get that kind of job. Because MS, among other things, is expensive. I want to be honest and say: if my husband didn’t work in tech, I probably couldn’t have done things like work as Redmond’s Poet Laureate (which paid less than 5K a year at the time I did the gig) or spend as much time writing and applying for grants.

Me with teeny Fender, still with tags and sticker. (I know one song and I can remember maybe two chords, so not quite to rock star status yet.)

Interestingly, along with trying to learn electric guitar, I’m also applying for jobs again. Tentatively. I want to be giving back and being more productive. The good thing about all the quarantine is I’ve stayed fairly healthy and productive-feeling without all the running around regular life requires, and I have enough energy to think about at least part-time work in the literary publishing industry, such as it is. So maybe that will be my answer: don’t stop writing poetry, but consider adjacent work that will help you support yourself.

What advice would you give these teenagers? What advice would you give them about publishing books, earning a living?

Also, I know coronavirus is still taking its toll on America, and Trump is still President ’til January, but I encourage you all to celebrate, or at least, take a deep breath of relief. Ring your own church bells or light your internal fireworks or dance around to “Celebrate Good Times.” Small happiness has to be appreciated, even in the middle of a plague year.

Happy Post-Halloween and Blue Moon, Election Day Voting Interview on Health, and More!

Fox Statue with Typewriter, at My Redmond City Hall (where my ballot box is)

Happy Post-Halloween! And Looming Election Day!

Hello my friends! I hope you had a safe and happy Halloween. We dressed up, decorated, and tied bags of candy on our tree branches and retired for the night to eat pumpkin soup and watch Buffy Halloween episodes. And of course, in tradition, I dyed my hair purple for the occasion and we made a unicorn pumpkin. I took pictures of the orange moon as it rose, and the Blue Moon – once in a blue moon seeming an ominous prediction.

Election Day is looming before us, though when they will declare a winner is unknown. I voted weeks ago of course – in Washington State, everyone can vote by mail as early as you receive your ballot. This fox here represents my voting space (as well as my love of foxes and typewriters!)

Downy woodpecker, perched

An Interview on Voting as a Disabled Chronically Ill Person in Health Magazine

Usually, I’m a writer, and the interviewee, not the interview subject, but recently I was asked to be part of an interview series on voting and gladly participated. I hope it is helpful to some of you. It is so important to vote this year, however you can. You know. It could save countless lives; it could endanger other’s health, depending on who you vote for. (Biden/Harris for me, of course, because they believe in science, health care, and try not to be superspreaders (see recent news on how several Trump fans went into the hospital for hypothermia and how 20,000 covid-19 cases and 700 deaths have been linked to Trump rallies.)

Here’s a link to the article: Chronically Ill and Disabled Americans Share How They Are Voting

The Election, The Month of November: Plans, Worries, Etc.

So, with a fraught election and a pretend king who doesn’t want to give up power, I notice the media has been teeming with mentions of civil war. That’s not comforting. I hope we have a peaceful, overwhelming Biden win on election day. I hope we can sleep better soon.

People are storing up food, medication, and some are buying guns. What am I doing, you ask? Why, planning to write a page a day in November on my novel-in-progress, participating for the first time in NaNoWriMo. Why not be optimistic in the face of apocalypse? I have always done it before.

The sky is blue and I’m going to try to get out in the weak November sun soon, so I’ll leave you with a couple of poems: “Wonder Woman Considers the Pandemic,” and “Poison Ivy Considers the Apocalypse.” One of which will appear in an upcoming Freezeray anthology on Covid-19 and Superheroes!

I’ll do another book giveaway after Election Day! Until then, stay safe and warm, read some poetry, and vote!

 

Jeannine Hall Gailey

Jeannine Hall Gailey
Jeannine Hall Gailey is a writer with MS who served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and is the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize, Field Guide to the End of the World, and the upcoming Flare, Corona from BOA Editions. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and Ploughshares.

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