After the Storm, and a New Review of PR for Poets

After the Storm, Pt 1

Thank you to everyone for their good thoughts last week. My dad is finally home from the hospital and recovering slowly. I feel like I can breathe a little easier. The shot is from Seattle’s Japanese Garden, solstice edition. Only a few blooms left – water lilies and water iris are the last things to bloom at the Japanese garden – so hurry out and get a look.

Besides my dad being in the hospital, having multiple specialist appointments last week, we had a nightmare storm of terrible government stuff – children being locked in abandoned Walmarts, parents having no idea where their children were taken or when they would be reunited, etc – it was just a rough week. My MS symptoms acted up and I had to take a break from Facebook (although I was able to contact my local representatives. Letter writing is old-fashioned but effective!) I also had to wrangle problems with not getting essential MS prescriptions for added fun (and the mere thought of switching PCPs is stressing me out.)

New Review of PR for Poets

And I woke up today to a lovely new review of PR for Poets up at Suko’s Notebook, part of the Poetic Book Tour. This one was particularly interesting to me because it provided the perspective of a non-poet on the book! It was a really thoughtfully-written review.

After the Storm, Pt II

Today is cool and rainy, after a beautiful solstice weekend punctuated by another thunderstorm last night. I got a couple of shots of late June blooms, goldfinch visitors, and Glenn and I taking a short break from the stress of last week at one of my favorite local retreats, the Japanese Gardens.

I’m catching up with correspondence from last week and my reading, including the new issue of Poets & Writers (I especially enjoyed the interview with Lauren Groff and the feature on Terrance Hayes) and an interesting book called Light the Dark: Writers on Creativity, Inspiration, and the Artistic Process. Essays by some problematic writers are included (inc. Sherman Alexie and Junot Diaz) but essays by Aimee Bender, Roxane Gay, Elizabeth Gilbert and many others made this an easy and inspirational read, and I needed a little bit of that after last week. Plus I liked the title. I actually wrote a poem and worked on my sixth poetry manuscript and sent it out to a new place. And we had a friend’s good news to celebrate – Natasha Moni won the Floating Bridge Press Prize this year, so looking forward to seeing that!

What a Difference a Year Makes

I actually meditated on the differences between last year’s solstice – still reeling from a stage IV liver cancer diagnosis, right before the MS flare that sent me to the hospital and left me house-bound for several months with problems eating, talking, and walking and this year’s – relatively calm, despite the first paragraph of this post. Last solstice, I had a coyote sighting on my street – this year, it was a pair of quail and an immature eagle, and seeing a turtle laying eggs in the Japanese garden. I’m learning, slowly, how to manage symptoms, avoiding MS triggers like stress and heat, and after having to be “up” for a day, taking a day of rest. Being thankful that my liver tumors have been “stable.” I’ve learned to appreciate the good days, the small things like the visits of goldfinches and hummingbirds, time spent talking poetry with a friend. I’ve also learned I have to prioritize things that bring joy, because life will certainly bring you enough stress and pain, so it’s important to take an afternoon to just focus on writing, on one other person, or on the changes of the seasons. I am trying to schedule these things in between the necessary evils.  I’m trying not to get overwhelmed by the dark.