America Goes Backwards 50 Years, Karyna McGlynn’s Terrific New Book, and Spending Time with Flowers When You Want to Burn It All Down

Towhee is outraged

America Goes Backwards 50 Years

This was a terrifying and terrible week for women in America. Not only did this activist awful Supreme Court turn back a gun law that had been on the books in New York State for over 100 years, as they swore they would not when they were approved by congress, they overturned Roe v Wade. As someone who uses contraceptive pills to live (literally – would not have survived without the birth control pill to control the bleeding from my heritable bleeding disorder – and getting pregnant would kill me and the baby, so that’s a big no) it makes me so angry that so many people I did not elect are controlling my medical decisions and those of half of the population. If it was about children, conservatives would pass things to feed children, educate children, keep pregnant women and babies alive (we have the worst death rate of babies and pregnant woman of any developed country), or literally anything to make sure children are taken care. Instead, they scream “life” when they are literally condemning some women and children to death, whether fast (like me, or any woman with a bleeding disorder – or a woman with an ectopic pregnancy, like many friends of mine who would have died without sacrificing the implanted cells) or slow, with no health or child-care support for women in poverty or crisis. This is no joke. It has made me consider moving to a better, more progressive country, like Ireland or France. I’m sure I’m not the only woman considering this. By the way, these laws also put the kibosh on IVF. And the Supreme Court seems likely to continue its terrible path. Am I mad? Am I protesting? But what else can I do?

purple alliums

Spending Time with Flowers (When You Want to Burn It All Down)

I’ve been so down this week. It’s also turned from freezing cold spring to blazing hot summer, in the nineties now where it was in the sixties last week. It’s horrible for anyone with MS to deal with heat and these extreme weather changes.  I can usually find some solace with flowers and birds, in nature, but it has been hard, honestly. I went to the Bellevue Botanical Gardens when it was cool enough in the evening but today it’s too hot to go anywhere. It’s pretty miserable to go from supercold and wet to superhot and dry but that’s been the pattern on the West Coast the last few years. Meanwhile, in the background like radiation ticking, people are still dying of covid, and monkeypox is spreading and the CDC does not have it under control – they’re not even testing adequately. Like they’ve learned nothing from the last pandemic. It’s shocking, and also, not shocking at all.

I thought about things we can do. We can donate money to the right causes. We can ask congress and the President to do something to stop the runaway evil train that is the Supreme Court and do things like pass sensible gun laws (some gun laws were passed this week, but pretty weak) and pass a national protection for women and doctors to make the choices about their health and bodies. These seem like reasonable things to me – and with a Democrat President and Congress you’d think we’d be able to do it, but Trump did so much damage during his Presidency that we may never be able to fix it – and the Jan 6th hearings have shown there are still people willing to kill the police they pledged to support to get their way, even if the Democratic vote says otherwise. We should be worried. But what can we do, practically? I mean, we can leave if we have the means, the health and the job flexibility. but what else?

Sylvia poses with Karyna McGlynn’s new book

Karyna McGlynn’s Got a Great New Book Out

Another coping mechanism of mine during stress is reading, and I had a wonderful new book to enjoy this week, pictured to the left. My literary cat Sylvia poses with Karyna McGlynn‘s new book from Sarabande, 50 Things Kate Bush Taught Me About the Multiverse, which is a fun, flinty, 90s-nostalgic Kate Bush love letter with terrific titles like “I Wake Up in the Underworld of My Own Dirty Purse,” which starts:

My stage name is Persephone./ I perform nightly for a smattering/ of ill-informed Tic Tacs.

And oh, any girl who went through an all-male barrage of poetry professors when they were young will immediately understand and identify with “How to Stop Raping the Muse,” with lines like

in workshop suggested/ my poems had Teeth but no Tenderness…my lines were called sharks and shameless/ hussies.

Anyway, get this book from Sarabande, terrific for a summer night read with a little rose. And maybe a cat and a typewriter. Will this solve all of our problems? No, but it will take your mind off of them for a little while.

Gardening in the Rain and a Plethora of Birds, Turning in the Final Copy of Flare Corona to BOA, and Favorite Father Poems

Sunflower raised from seed

Gardening in the Rain and a Plethora of Birds

In the coldest and wettest spring (and now, almost summer) we’ve had here in 50 years, it’s been uniquely dispiriting to try to garden. My pink lady apple tree has black mold on its leaves; many of my perennials have died, along with my herbs like rosemary and sage, my roses (but not my neighbors’ roses?) continually eaten by deer. So here are a few pictures of the hard-won successes – a sunflower raised from saved seeds, my lamppost growing with pink clematis and peonies.  It’s cold and gray today, again. I’ve had the flu this week (almost inevitable with the nasty weather), so I’m mostly indoors, not doing enough, not feeling productive. But the birds. even in the cold rain, have arrived faithfully. Here are a few pictures—goldfinch on fountain with sunflower, flying pileated woodpecker, cherry tree finch, and salvia with female rufous hummingbird.

Part of the garden: pink clematis and peonies on lamppost

Turning in the Final Copy of Flare, Corona to BOA Editions

I turned in my final copy of Flare, Corona to the editor at BOA Editions this week. I’m waiting for final feedback (I added six poems) before it goes to typesetting. I’m also waiting to see cover graphic ideas. I’ve reached out to a few people for blurbs – never my favorite part of the job, especially with such a vulnerable, personal book.

Turning in the final copy of the book, as many writers will tell you, is stressful and involves a certain amount of “letting go”—you know, you can hold on to the book making tiny or large changes forever, and often making the book worse because of anxiety. A little like my garden—you can desperately edit, weed, fertilize, and at some point you will just make the garden worse with all your worrying. You have to appreciate the parts that are working, that are flourishing, like peonies, as much as you regret letting go of your four-year old rosemary. A good thing about turning in your book is that you can start working on your next book—I already have two manuscripts in progress going, still shaping them and writing new poems for them. I am hoping for the launch of Flare, Corona to be post-apocalypse—I mean, post-pandemic—and for next time this year to be peaceful, healthy, happy, with normal-ish weather and getting together with friends and family. I’m hoping.

Favorite Father’s Day Poems

It’s Father’s Day and Juneteenth, which is being celebrated tomorrow as a national holiday. I have a few favorite poems about fathers – one I memorized in sixth grade for a poetry recitation contest, called “My Father in the Night Commanding No” by Louis Simpson, and another “Father of my Country” by Diane Wakowski. And of course, Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy.”

Father’s Day can be a difficult day for many who didn’t have present fathers, or ideal fathers, or very nice fathers. What are your favorite father poems, of any kind? I would love to see poems in the comments. And if you have Juneteenth poems to share, those too!

Zoo Visits, Crowns, and Family Emergencies, Melissa Studdard’s Dear Selection Committee and Setting Boundaries in the Lit World

Close up of snow leopard

Zoo Visits, Crowns, and Family Emergencies

This week felt stressful. Glenn’s parents (who are yes, vaccinated) tested positive for Covid, and his father was in the hospital for related heart issues. It’s very hard to be far apart when your loved ones are going through health crises. Glenn’s brother did a great job of keeping us informed, but it reminded us both that living far from your parents can be stressful and it’s hard when you can’t help.

I also had a long dental appointment – I was supposed to get three crowns in one morning, two of them from root canals from the previous two years – it ended up, thankfully, only being two crowns – and we decided to spend an hour or so the day before at the Zoo in a brief window of “no rain,” where they’d recently re-opened an exhibit that had been closed for two years during the pandemic, the butterfly house. The birds were all off display because of the threat of Avian flu – a bit of a metaphor for our own pandemic, right? I’m really off-exhibit right now? But we had a chance to see the snow leopards, who don’t always make such nice appearances for us. Spending a few moments admiring the beauty of butterflies and snow leopards was an excellent stress-reliever. The rain came back the next day and has stuck around, it feels like, forever.

Sylvia with Dear Selection Committee

Melissa Studdard’s Dear Selection Committee

Had the pleasure of reading Melissa Studdard’s new book from Jackleg Press, Dear Selection Committee. This is a book of exuberant, joyful, and heck, sexy and fun poems set into the framework of applying for a very specialized kind of job. Some poems are heartbreaking, taking on contemporary tragedies. It’s an inspiring book, too, making me want to write for the first time in ages.

Here’s a short excerpt from “My Kind,” the opening poem: “I am my own kind. I’ll learn to play piano. Like Helene Grimaud, / I’ll see blue rising from the notes. I’ll be an amateur bird watcher,/ a volunteer firefighter, a gourmet chef, a great/ humanitarian. I’ll plant a prize-winning garden,/ grow a pot farm. My hair is on fire. I’m running/ out of time.” The cover art by Karynna McGlynn is also amazing.

Setting Boundaries in the Lit World (Is Hard)

I’ve been writing an essay for an anthology on “Self Care for the Disabled and Chronically Ill Writer.” Writing this essay has made me start to think about drawing more boundaries around my life, especially around unpaid labor. Since I started living life as a creative writer, I’ve been writing book reviews, blurbs, writing recommendation letters, volunteering on boards of lit mags, as the editor of lit mags, served as Redmond’s Poet Laureate (paid, but barely), taught at an online MFA program (again, paid, but barely), run youth programs for creative writing, hosted readings, and just given advice to strangers at random when they asked for twenty years. Twenty years!

Some of these things brought/bring me real joy – I still get a thrill out of introducing young people to the kind of fun poetry they’ve never experienced – but other parts, I fear, have started to not bring joy. I’ve talked, in my book PR for Poets, and on this blog, about the idea of writing karma – that we give back what we can when we can in the hopes that the good energy would come back around.

Two pileated woodpeckers at a feeder meant for a much smaller bird

As someone with limited energy and time, I have to start setting boundaries in the lit world – when to say no, when to say yes. I’ve also realized that writing friendships, though sometimes requiring more energy, are something essential to keeping me going when I get discouraged, so I want to spend more energy on the friendships that are actually mutually beneficial (because, let’s be honest, they aren’t all mutually beneficial).  I’m not a person who likes to set limits or say no. But this is part of self care. I cannot give and give forever. And as someone with expensive dental care (see above) and medical care (try having MS sometime – it’s super expensive), I may need to focus a bit more on work that pays more than “almost nothing.” These are hard decisions. But protecting your time – if you are a chronically ill and/or disabled writer – is one of the most important things you can do for your writing. If you’re worn out by unpaid labor, you are not as likely to write your best work or have the energy to promote it. So choose you. (This is really hard, especially for those of us with people-pleasing tendencies.) As I get older, I want to claim my time more. We do not have forever – choose the things that are really at the top of your priority list. Spending time at the dentist or doctor  or testing or physical therapy – while not my favorite things – are necessary evils, and they already take away time from family, fun, writing, and things like spending time regenerating your soul with butterflies. When I consider how my light is spent, as someone wise once said.

Three New Poems in Bourgeon, How to Cope with a Rough Week, Talking Publicity Efforts and Finishing Up Manuscripts and Other Poetry Things

Three New Poems in DC-based Bourgeon

I want to start with a thank you to DC-based Bourgeon, a new literary journal, for publishing three brand new poems from me, “A Woman Turns Fifty with Cherry Blossoms,” “Cassandra Reminds Us the Spring,” and “Dating Profile” (which, warning, is a little spicy.) Here’s a link to read them all. 

Sneak peek of one of the poems below:

How to Survive a Rough Week

So this week has been a little rough, with more shootings, I’ve been struggling with a never-ending sinus/bronchitis infection not helped by the constant rain and storms (will we ever get spring weather? Before we get blistering summer? It seems not!), more fights against the rights of women, and my father-in-law in the hospital many miles away in Ohio.

I often tell people that surviving a bad week is purposefully grounding yourself in things that bring you peace, happiness: for me that includes pink flowers, my pink typewriter, and spending time with friends and loved ones, even if that’s on the phone.

Our garden was trashed by the cold wet winter and spring—lots of stuff died or is dying of mold or related diseases – so we picked up a few new plants to put in the ground. It’s not like we lost a crop as farmers, but still, Glenn and I put so many hours into so many things that did not survive (or were eaten by deer) that it’s discouraging. It’s not just us—we’ve strolled many nearby usually-flower-filled spaces that have been decimated by either poor weather or construction (so much construction killing so many flowers and trees).  Still, baby bunnies, chickadees feeding baby chickadees, and flowers cheer us up.

Talking Publicity for a New Book, Finishing a Manuscript and Other Poetry Things

I had a good conversation with a friend who just had a book come out. She has been doing a ton of readings—both in person and on Zoom—and was just two weeks into her book’s launch, but was feeling overwhelmed. When is enough enough?

My attitude towards this, when I talked about it in my book PR for Poets, is that no one will ever say “you’re doing enough” so you have to decide. If you love doing readings, or social media, or sending out postcards, do that. Poetry has a longer shelf life than most things, so don’t worry if in the first month you haven’t gotten to everything – interviews, podcasts, blog posts, readings, etc – all of it takes it out of you, especially in the third year of a pandemic and people are just starting to go to bookstores in person again. So be kind to yourself, set boundaries. Don’t say yes to everything. And try to celebrate the small wins.

As I am finishing up my final version of Flare, Corona for BOA Editions, a lot of anxieties have come up. Is this grammar okay? Why did I leave punctuation out of this part of the poem but not this other part? Have I forgotten people I need to thank (probably!) or acknowledgements for poems that might have slipped through the cracks? I really do need to turn it in to typesetting but there is so much you want to all of the sudden fix about your manuscript. Since this is my sixth poetry book, I can say yes, this is also a normal part of the process. I get very insecure about my book right before it goes out into the world. I loved the book so much while I labor-intensively (and money intensively) sent it out to publishers. I loved it when it was taken. But now, I see nothing but flaws.

I also got a few acceptances this week that would normally be big deals to me but it felt hard to celebrate with so much other bad stuff going on. The world feels very dark and dismal (and it’s not just the abnormally cold rain, though that hasn’t helped). If you are struggling, please reach out for support and take good care of yourself. Please remember you are making a difference in the world, even if sometimes it doesn’t feel that way. Maybe take a break from social media and news. A friend of mine reminded me to submit poems (which I hadn’t been) and give myself time to write (which I also hadn’t been doing much of). Put at least one positive thing on your calendar just for fun. Wishing you as good a week as possible.