A Somber Week, Reading Lesley Wheeler’s Poetry’s Possible Worlds and Diane Johnson, and a Visit to the Japanese Gardens

Hummingbird at fuchsia

A Somber Week

It’s been a somber week, with a school shooting that broke so many hearts, and also was a reminder of so many previous school shootings in America and yet our elected officials do nothing…and cooler and rainier weather than we’re used to, even here in Seattle. I’ve been sick for so much of May I’m kind of forgetting how it is to feel well, so hopefully this sinus/stomach/bronchitis thing will end when the cold weather does – really soon? Memorial Day Weekend, and constant rain and a high of 54 today – it’s enough to make the die-hardest Seattle-ite wish for a weekend somewhere dry and warm.

And no worries – I did get one day of sunshine and warmth and spent some of it at the Seattle Japanese Gardens, so plenty of flowers and birds in this post to counter any gloom.

Pink Typewriter with peonies

Reading Report – Diane Johnson and Lesley Wheeler

I did spend more time reading and editing, and I attended a Zoom poetry reading last night that was really amazing (Melissa Studdard, Erika Meitner, and Rosebud Ben-Oni were particularly moving.) In the “mom-and-me pandemic book club” news, we have started a new novel, Lorna Mott Comes Home, by Le Divorce‘s Diane Johnson, about a sixty-something formerly highly respected art historian who ends her second marriage and comes home from France to California. The passages about trying to promote her book in a post-internet world are particularly appealing – the frustration trying to get back in the game after being out of it for 20 years – her daughter writes her Amazon reviews and she goes to bookstores for signings and they can’t find her books. Her adult children and two ex-husbands are in various levels of crisis as well. I might have mentioned I’m fascinated by these newer books that seem to focus on women in academia (or post-academia) going through midlife crises – there are so many about men, so few about women! The last one I really loved was Lesley Wheeler’s Unbecoming. (If you have recommendations for others, please leave them in the comments!)

Lesley Wheeler’s Poetry’s Possible Worlds

Speaking of Lesley, I finished a new book by Lesley Wheeler that’s a fascinating mix of poetry close reading, cultural criticism, and personal essay, called Poetry’s Possible Worlds. She navigates difficult subject matter – including the death of a parent and political turbulence – by reading contemporary poems and then connecting them to the wider world.

She talks about how each book of poetry opens up alternate possible worlds for us to inhabit, which can help us deal with life’s crises and foibles alike. Like poet-essayist Kelly Davio’s It’s Just Nerves, which combines personal essay, navigating a mysterious autoimmune illness, and pop culture representations of disability, it’s a thought-provoking collection that makes me want to try my hand at this kind of hybrid essay-criticism. Anyway, if want to curl up with a good poetry/criticism/personal essay hybrid book, pick this up. The last essay, about her writing process, was one of my favorites in terms of its descriptions of writing flow and how projects interact with each other.

A Visit to Seattle’s Japanese Garden, and More Flowers from a Sunnier Day in Woodinville

One of my favorite places to visit in Seattle was the Japanese Gardens, and the one sunny and warm (it got up to 70!) day we had this week, we went down and bought a membership for the first time in two and a half years! With an unusually cold and wet spring, there was a weird combination of blooms – wisteria, which I love, but also azaleas, rhododendrons, hydrangeas.

Although I wasn’t well enough to truck around for long, it was long enough to give me a little sun-and-flower boost. An osprey also flew right by us and disappeared in the trees. Some young women were practicing painting with water colors, and others were practicing TikTok dances. Ah, to be young again! Another sign the pandemic might be lifting soonish – the Woodland Park Zoo’s Butterfly Exhibit is coming back after two years of being closed.

We also visited a new winery in Woodinville during another brief interval of sunshine, and the surroundings were full of beautiful blooms – this time, pink roses, orange honeysuckle and purple irises.

In the summer, they have live music every weekend and these wineries hop. It’s good to get in before it gets too crowded. That’s the benefit of living down the street.

PS By the time we have a party, we will have so. much. wine. ready to go! And one last shot of Sylvia posing with Lesley’s Poetry’s Possible Worlds.

A Week of Podcasts, First Time Cover Artists, Being Under the Weather, and Real Spring Begins

Our first butterfly sighting – a Red Admiral on our lilacs – actually two!

A Week of Podcasts

I’ve been a bit under the weather this week – with unpleasant bug of the sinus/stomach sort, not the coronavirus (or monkeypox, thank goodness) but just enough to keep me mostly in bed. On the plus side, I got to photograph a few birds (see below) and the first butterflies of spring in my very own garden.

In writing news, I had a big week otherwise – my first podcast appearance in a while with Writer’s Digest, talking about worldbuilding in poetry, and a little about promoting books for poets. You can click the link to watch the podcast.

The weather went from absolutely grim – cold rain and clouds – to blue skies and finally, finally warmer weather – today went up to 66 degrees! I am hoping it helps me get better faster – it certainly raised my spirits.

Sylvia with my first photo cover artist credit, on Ordinary Splendor, a poetry book from MoonPath Press

  My Very First Cover Artist Photo Credit

I was very excited that the author Judith Waller Carroll’s sent me a copy of her book Ordinary Splendor from Lana Ayers’s MoonPath Press, which I have the honor of having a cover artist credit on. My photograph of a fox from San Juan Island last year was used as the cover art for the book, and I couldn’t be happier.

Sylvia fluffing up on my cover photo

I feel like a real photographer now, not just a five-year amateur. I took some real photography classes in high school, but it’s been just the last five years that I spent the time and effort to use a good camera and try to learn the tricks of digital photography beyond my iPhone.

Meanwhile, I’m working with BOA’s designer to figure out what we want on the cover of Flare, Corona. I wish I had a good vision for exactly what belongs on the cover. But that’s why we have collaborations!

Glenn and I at Carillon Point yesterday

Real Spring Begins (?!?)

It is almost the end of May, and it seems that spring is finally here. The temperature is above 65° and the sun is out. The butterflies, grosbeaks and goldfinches are all signs, as are more summer blooms – wisteria, lilacs, with roses, lavender and peonies are on the way. But has it been a colder and wetter wait than we usually have? Absolutely! Have I kept saying “it’s spring” only to retreat inside from the cold miserable wet weather? Yes!  But next weekend is Memorial Day weekend, so surely we’re safe to put away our winter clothing and plant our sweetpeas and basil in the hopes they won’t die this time?

Yesterday though I wasn’t feeling 100 percent yet, we stopped by Kirkland to pick up some flowers and cherries (local asparagus was already obtained by Glenn at the Farmer’s market in the morning, but cherries right now come from California and require a grocery trip) and walked along the water a bit. The Woodmark Hotel, where I first stayed twenty years ago when interviewing for my Microsoft job, has been undergoing quite a bit of demolition (out came the decades-old rose garden that grew in the front of the hotel, where the weddings usually took place – now all is mud and dirt). It’s sad to see so many things we love changing – lately trees on our street have been torn down and turned into sawdust for inexplicable reasons (no HOA report about why). Progress, progress, often making the landscape less friendly (and less plant-filled).

Anyway, soon as my brain recovers from this week of antibiotics and cold medicine, I have my book’s final edits and a review to work on. Then, later this week, some crowns—remember all those root canals? Yes, they were expensive, but nothing compared to getting the crowns on top. Urgh! I need a poetry grant just to pay for my health care and dental work these days!

Anyway, enjoy these pictures of flowers and butterflies. I hope your spring will be beautiful, safe, and healthy!

On Writer’s Digest’s Podcast to Talk About Worldbuilding in Poetry Today!

Worldbuilding in Poetry on The Writer’s Digest Podcast

Reader, I don’t do podcasts very often, but when Robert Lee Brewer asked me to come talk about worldbuilding in poetry, I jumped at the chance, because I think it’s a fascinating subject! The interview with me starts at about minute 38. Thanks to Robert, Writer’s Digest and you for watching!

Changing Horizons, Considering New Hometowns: La Conner Edition, Moving Forward with Flare, Corona, and More Birds and Blooms from Woodinville

Apple tree with tulips, La Conner

Changing Your Horizon – Considering New Hometowns, La Conner Edition

How often do you consider changing your horizon? Since travel has been off the table for many of us during the pandemic, the way to change one’s horizons is considering a new hometown. For us, we’ve been thinking about moving to a smaller town – La Conner, Washington is this week’s pick.

We scheduled a time to look at a house whose best feature was its outdoor space – lots of landscaping flowers, lots of birds, and a backyard that looked onto protected land. Sitting out in those gardens – with a view of the water – was heaven. Talk about the temptation to impulse buy! But this is a house, and a big time town change, so we can’t just sign on the dotted line because the flowers and birds were showing off. There was also a guitar festival going on – and there is a local poetry festival that happens every two years – I mean, artistic and culture scores are pretty off-the-charts for a small town. Plenty of art galleries, a Northwest Art Museum, and cute shops and restaurants along the water, the Swinomish Channel. Woodinville, known for its wineries and restaurants, is no slouch in the food and wine departments, but lacks that grass-roots deep community caring about music, visual art, and literature.

Glenn and I with orange and red tulips, La Conner

We actually made a stop at the Roozengaarde Gardens, where, surprising us, some late tulips were still blooming – we even brought some bouquets home with us. We also made the effort to find and shop at the local bookstore – Seaport Books – which had a great poetry section – I bought Canadian painter Emily Carr’s collected poems, for instance – what a cool find! We looked around neighborhoods. We checked crime rates and charted paths to the local grocery and hospitals. La Conner is for sure beautiful, the people are small-town friendly, and you’re only an hour and change back to Seattle (no ferry ride, just bridges). Fidaglo, Fir, and Camano Islands are also great small-town communities near La Conner.  So it’s a tempting thought to relocate. Woodinville is closer and more convenient to the cities of Bellevue and Seattle, and we love a lot of things about our house and our neighborhood. But a lot of my local doctors are quitting, and many of my friends who lived here have moved away, and some of the rural attractions (a horse farm on the neighborhood, a lavender farm, and now, the dreaded move of old Molbak’s to new corporate housing) have been lost, so a lot of the attachment factors that brought us here have changed. Moving can inspire change in ourselves, our outlooks, and definitely our community.

Solar flare, corona

Moving Forward with Flare, Corona

So I received my editorial feedback from Peter Conners at BOA Editions, and am getting to work on – scary – final edits so it can be sent to typesetting. This means fixing up the acknowledgements (and trying to nudge journals that have had poems from the book for a year or so), looking and asking for blurbs, and thinking about cover art (shutterstock photo at left is a literal photo of a flare and a corona).

After the final manuscript is sent in, in truth, the real work of promoting the book sets in. Scheduling my first readings, a book launch party, and starting to try to get in the reviewer queues in next.

Speaking of solar and lunar events, tonight is the Super Flower Blood Moon. Remember the solar eclipse on my birthday? This is the matching lunar event.

Me with lilacs

More Birds and Blooms from Woodinville

Now, to this house and Woodinville’s credit, one of the things that has kept me sane during the pandemic are the beautiful surroundings. The birds that came to my feeders, trees, and planters. The landscaping around the Sammamish River and the beautiful wineries. There’s a view of the mountains from my street, and I look out from my bedroom on treetops. Cannot take any of that for granted. There’s enough space for all my books (the house we looked at didn’t have quite as much space for bookshelves. Downsize my books???)

We’ve been here for five years – when I signed the lease, I had just been diagnosed with terminal liver cancer, we didn’t have Sylvia yet, there was a horse farm on the street instead of condo construction. We had different neighbors (one of whom passed away in interim years). Changes happen whether you want them to or now. People change jobs, or the jobs themselves change, friendships wax and wane, professionals we count on quit or move as well. Businesses change hands – here, Woodinville staples Chateau Ste Michelle and Molbak’s both sold to larger corporate interests. Which never, sadly, makes for positive changes.

Crabapple Blossoms with mountains

So it’s a good time to reassess – our values, our desires for the next five years, and even, for me, a physical reality – I have MS, and my current home is two stories, which isn’t ideal for down the road.  I want to think about being part of a community – if not here, or in Seattle, then where? I spent years living around Seattle’s smaller neighborhoods – as far out as Port Townsend and Bainbridge, in larger family-friendly communities (now overpacked) like Issaquah, in Redmond and Bellevue (which are now priced outrageously high).

A move might not be ideal today or tomorrow…but it might be in the cards in the next year or so.

A Root Canal Birthday Week, Work on My Upcoming Book, and Talking about Timing and Poetry Submissions

Red-Winged Blackbird, Singing

Dreary Root Canal Birthday Week, Working on My Next Book and Timing in the Poetry World

So, on my birthday, I developed a dental abscess and a fever, and after frantic calls to the dentist I got some antibiotics and an appointment for a root canal, only my third. Please remember I cannot have Novocain, Advil, anything in the morphine family, or aspirin, because of allergic reactions (Novocain, morphine family) or bleeding complications (Advil and aspirin). So, Tylenol it was. The only positive was that I was three pounds thinner on my birthday than usual, because I couldn’t eat much, LOL!

So, on top of this, it was a double-root root canal, which was a fairly painful experience, and I had a mutation in the tooth that made it look fractured (but it wasn’t, thank goodness). I’ve been recovering slowly this week, and the weather – gray, fifteen degrees colder than normal, and rainy – has not encouraged cheerful thoughts.

Goldfinch in cherry tree

And did I mention that the Supreme Court had a leak that they were going to overtone Roe v. Wade – a precedent set in my birthday year, 1973? (Happy Mother’s Day, BTW – which was originally a feminist anti-war holiday created by a childless woman, Anna Jarvis, as a protest – was co-opted by the government, look it up – and guess what, the government gets to decide if you are a mother or not now! This is why it’s so important for women to vote for their own best interests – there are always people (ahem, mostly men) who feel it’s their business to take away our choices.)

So, it was hard to get going this week. On the plus side, this blog post will feature some beautiful shots of birds and flowers, who continued to dazzle even in the cold rain of May. And I had a wonderful stack of reading material to enjoy as I recovered.

Bi-color lilacs

Work Starting on my Upcoming Book: Flare, Corona

One thing that took my mind off of the abscess/root canal business was that my author questionnaire for BOA was due on my birthday, and then the finished draft of my manuscript of Flare, Corona was turned in a half-hour before my root canal a few days later. (I knew I wouldn’t be up to much the rest of that day, because they give me some anesthesia – Versed – for the root canal that doesn’t take away pain but does make your memories fuzzy and makes you very sleepy the rest of the 24-hour period. Also keeps you from flinching as much when they’re trying to drill your teeth.)

I’d been working on the book since its acceptance, so there wasn’t much left to do: shifted some poems around, updated the acknowledgements, added a couple of newer poems, and had my mom proofread for obvious grammar/spelling issues, and sent it off to my editor at BOA. Now I just have to wait for edits – exciting! You may think: “Jeannine, isn’t it awfully early to be thinking about your book which is slated for release in spring/summer 23?” But no, it’s really not! My next steps include finding good cover art and starting to collect blurbs!

Pileated Woodpecker in Flight

Timing, Literary Magazines Under Pressure, and Poetry Submissions

I thought I’d talk a little here about timing and poetry submissions. This has been a tough time for many literary publishers during the pandemic – many large and small closing for good, many others under pressure and understaffed. I have been submitting poetry on and off since I was 19, so I have experienced a lot of strange things as far as timing of responses, but this last two and a half years have maybe been the worst in terms of timing that I’ve ever experienced. I received a rejection – on my birthday, no less – from a top-tier lit mag after a year and three months. A day later, I received an acceptance from another journal after a full two years. So, if you are newer to the poetry game, or you only submit a couple of times a year, and you are experiencing weirdly long and erratic response times, that is part of the new normal. My suspicion is the volunteer army that helps lit mags run has been impacted by the pandemic more than most. So, what I’m saying is, don’t stress out if it has been a while and all you’ve heard is crickets. It’s the pandemic, it’s not you.

Closeup of pink crabapple blossoms

This is also a good time to see, if you have a little extra money even with all the inflation going on, if you can help support your favorite lit mags with a donation or a subscription. It was just National Poetry Month, but I bet most places didn’t get the usual business they expected. And let’s be extra kind to each other when we can – not stressing over weird rejection language (that’s been a thing on Twitter) or even weird acceptance language – and remember we’ve all been in a really hard place for the last two years. Bookstores and book sellers, publishers, editors, and literary magazine staff – this has not been an easier time for them than it has been for writers and artists. So yes, also a good time to order a book directly from an author or publisher, or some art from your favorite artist whose art shows – usually the main way to sell art is through galleries – may have been postponed or cancelled the last few years. Artists and writers are struggling too. What I’m saying is, let’s show a little support, kindness and patience for each other.

Three Poems in Laurel Review, Birthday Visit to Open Books, Last April Flowers, and Welcome to May

Late Cherry Blossom Bower

Welcome to May! Birthdays and Magic…

It’s a two blog-post week! Well, this week we said goodbye to National Poetry Month and welcomed (a hopefully warmer, sunnier) May.  It was a Black/Lilith Moon last night (very witchy,) a partial solar eclipse for my birthday, and we’re supposed to have a meteor shower this upcoming week. We also celebrated my 49th (!) birthday, and this weekend we had our share of fun and stress – from a dental emergency (going in tomorrow, thanks) and a beloved 20-year immunologist retiring, to an overnight trip to local hotel Willows Lodge and a trip to the new location of Open Books, the all-poetry bookstore. After a month that felt like it was full of mostly rejections, a bouquet of poems appeared on my birthday week – including three in the Laurel Review.

Laurel Review cover art

Poems in the Laurel Review

I’m so happy to have three poems in The Laurel Review, which is full of wonderful work, including poems by Martha Silano and Mary Biddinger (see my review of her latest book in the last post). So check out the whole issue.

Here’s a sneak peek at one of the poems, “Hello I Am the Four Horsemen:”

Glenn and I in the Willows Lodge Garden

Birthday Celebration: Willows Lodge, Gardens, and Visit to Open Books

Since it’s still pandemic-ish, no birthday party this year, but Glenn organized a surprise overnight trip to Willows Lodge, and we also strolled around Woodinville’s beautiful gardens in blooms. See? There’s not just wine, there are beautiful gardens connected to a lot of those wineries. I usually have black forest cake (gluten free, but always my favorite) for my birthday, but Glenn made black forest cheesecake instead – and it was amazing. Where he gets fresh cherries this time of year – it’s magic!

This was also the day I found out my 20-year-immunologist – whose care has probably saved my life countless times when I was having unexplained anaphylaxis – is retiring. I also had a minor dental emergency (helped by my kind dentist giving me a call and antibiotics – I’m seeing him tomorrow!) And I’m prepping for a thyroid ultrasound to check out something there. So a little stress along with the fun. Isn’t that always the way.

Me in front of the new location of Open Books

Open Books Birthday

It’s a tradition for me to visit Open Books on my birthday, and I was able to celebrate this tradition again this year. It was wonderful to say hi in person and browse through a ton of new poetry books. It has a very different feel than the Wallingford location but it was a separate location for classes and has a very old-Seattle feel. I got a first edition of Carolyn Kizer’s Knock Upon Silence and new books by Victoria Chang, Rae Armentrout and Daisy Fried as well as a few poets as yet unknown to me, as well as an Open Books Tote bag (so cute! and remember AWP Seattle is coming up soon!)

Open Books Haul, plus a few lit mags

So poetry, flowers, and black forest cheesecake: a good birthday, despite the medical and dental stressors. I am wishing you a wonderful – and hopefully, warm and sunny – May!