Reunions, Poemeleon, and inspiring reading…
- At October 14, 2011
- By Jeannine Gailey
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First, let me tell you to go read something from the new issue of one of my favorite online journals, Poemeleon: http://www.poemeleon.org/table-of-contents-6/
I may have a poem in there. It is secretly one of my favorite poems ever. It may also be one of my geekiest poems ever. Also, poems by Sherman Alexie, my friends Michelle Bitting and Ronda Broatch, and Ann Fisher-Wirth, among others.
Now that you’re back, let me confess that this weekend I was supposed to be at my 20th (yes, 20th!) high school reunion. In celebration of this missed event, I watched one of the best ever episodes of 30 Rock, called “Reunion.” In it, Liz Lemon discovers she was not the oppressed nerd she always thought she had been, but instead, a cruel bully that everyone feared and hated. Pretty hilarious reflection on how our memories – especially youthful memories – tend to be not only narcissistic but inaccurate. You may remember how much you hated so-and-so, the popular girl, but she will remember how she tried to be friends with you and you made a cutting remark about her mother’s drug addiction. So, I am missing that treasured event this weekend. See the downsides of living thousands of miles from the land of your Midwestern middle-childhood?
Another guilty secret: I am one of those people that spends the extra $5 to buy the British versions of magazines like Vogue and Bazaar. And here is why: the fashion spreads occasionally are based on things like the plot of The Snow Queen or Victorian poets. Also, they contain interviews with writers, rundowns, with photos, of writer’s conferences, and even, once in a while, really good little pieces of fiction. This October issue of British Harper’s Bazaar has a genius little contemporary re-take on Wuthering Heights, called “The Heathcliff” by Jeanette Winterson. Go out and get it and read it. Love! The last lines are
“The waitress smiles at me and looks at my book. ‘I love that song by Kate Bush.’ I ask her if she has read the novel. ‘No, but everybody knows it don’t they? It’s a love story.’
I am not sure that it is.”
Among other secrets: I sometimes enjoy writer’s books of essays on writing more than their actual fiction or poetry or whatever. This may be the case with Margaret Atwood, whose new set of essays on the sci-fi/speculative genre, In Other Worlds, made it to the top of my reading list. I love one essay where she talks about creating, yes, bunny superheroes. Her famous resistance to calling her own work “science fiction” is also discussed.
Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and SFPA’s Elgin Award, Field Guide to the End of the World. Her latest, Flare, Corona from BOA Editions, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She’s also the author of PR for Poets, a Guidebook to Publicity and Marketing. 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 JAMA.
