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.