An Interview in Whale Road Review, Two ER Visits in a Week: Not the Way to Spend the Holiday, Books for the Holidays

Anna’s hummingbird on tiny Xmas lights

A New Interview in Whale Road Review

Ominous But Bright: A Conversation with Jeannine Hall Gailey and Cynthia Hogue – Whale Road Review

First of all, a big thank you to Whale Road Review for publishing this interview, and to Lesley Wheeler for being a great interviewer, and to Cynthia Hogue for being a great co-interviewee.

Cynthia and I talk about our new books with Lesley, and it ended up being a really fun three-way conversation. I hope you check it out! Here’s a short excerpt:

“LW: …What kind of future do you want to conjure? And can poems ever help make certain outcomes happen?

JHG: One of the original titles of the book was Post-Life. I was having a discussion with someone who was talking about being “post-doc” and it just led my imagination to think about what if I was that excited to be “post-life,” not dead, which was an interesting spin to me. Post-life has so many more possibilities. Hence the future tense! Since I started writing the book under the shadow of a terminal cancer diagnosis, my hope was just to leave a little something behind—but I wanted something more than a funeral dirge, something more funny, more hopeful. I have to say my essential personality is “hopeful pessimist” or “optimistic realist,” depending on how you look at it, and even with the worst news, I never really lost hope. My thought at the time was: what are the positives in leaving life behind? Which sounds a little crazy. My last book, Field Guide to the End of the World, was all about hope after the ultimate sorts of endings, so this was sort of a smaller, more personal version of that. (I did worry a little that writing Field Guide sort of conjured an apocalypse, you know?) So Flare, Corona isn’t trying to create darkness—it’s trying to focus on light, so to speak—the corona of the eclipse, the bright red of the Blood Moon, the coyote in the street—ominous, maybe, but bright.”

Two Visits to the ER in a Week: Not Fun for the Holidays!

Yes, I spent a great deal of time being sick enough to be in the hospital twice, getting IVs of fluids and tons of blood work and swabbed in the throat and nose multiple times. Nope, it wasn’t covid, just a bug that most people wouldn’t even be bothered by but, because I’ve got a weak-kitten immune system, became pretty serious. This is not a fun or cheery way to spend a rainy cold week during the holidays—I had to cancel going to see the Bellevue Botanical Garden lights with my brother, among other things. There were also three rejections this week, plus a scandal around an anthology I’d sent in a poem for and the editor taking things out of bios (for instance, people’s preferred pronouns, and in my case, my MS). That’s the first time I haven’t been sent a proof of my bio and my work before it went to publish, which I consider strange anyway. It was contentious and one of those things where you think, “the poetry world is so hard already—can’t people just, you know, print the bio the way it was sent, or just be kind and considerate to each other?” Oh well.

I have not been productive in the last three weeks—our Christmas tree is just now fully decorated; I usually have it done by the beginning of December. I haven’t written or submitted much. But that’s part of the cost of being a disabled/chronically ill person. The past several years, I managed to miss being sick during the holidays, but bam—it got me this year.

Charlotte with tree and carousel horse with bookshelf

Books for the Holidays?

I understand people cutting back this year, as things are more expensive than usual, but you know what? Most books are the same price they were ten years ago! I don’t know if you’re the kind of person who gifts books, but if you are, I most heartily recommend the following:

-Kelli Russell Agodon’s Dialogue with Rising Tides

-Lesley Wheeler’s Unbecoming (speculative fiction) and (nonfiction) Poetry’s Possible Worlds

-Cynthia Hogue’s instead, it is dark

-Melissa Studdard’s Dear Selection Committee

–Rosebud Ben-Oni’s If This is the Age We End Discovery

Some of my favorite fiction reads this year included White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link (re-imagined fairy tales) and When We Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill.

Charlotte the literary kitten with Flare, Corona

and if you have friends or relatives who’ve struggled with a tough diagnosis in the past couple of years, may I recommend my own Flare, Corona? A book I hope others will find helpful in tough times. Hope your holidays will be healthy and bright!