Reading Report from an Artist’s Reception and a Wonderful New Review

Thanks very much to The Pedestal Magazine and critic Michael Adams for a wonderful new review of She Returns to the Floating World
http://www.thepedestalmagazine.com/gallery.php?item=20261

You want a copy? Get one here or here or order a signed copy from me here!

So, I want to come out and say it: artists and art-lovers make for great poetry audiences! Deborah Scott’s wonderful paintings from her show “Waiting for Prince Charming” were in a lovely setting at Georgetown’s All City Coffee (I had seen them in a studio setting, but they were all the more impressive hung together thematically and with good lighting.) I read poems inspired by similar fairy tales – Snow White, Princess and the Pea, Alice in Wonderland – and the crowd, most of whom had never been to a poetry reading before, were kind and attentive (and bought books!) It was probably the most fun I’d had at a poetry reading in a while. Here is a picture of the curator, artist Deborah Scott (with the tiara, appropriately) and me, and other photo of one of the paintings from her Snow White series…

Waiting for Prince Charming – Artist Reception and Poetry Reading

You know how I’m always talking about how artists and poets should work together? Well, here is an awesome chance to check out art work and poetry at the same time!

Artist Reception for Deborah Scott’s show, “Waiting for Prince Charming,” with Poetry Reading by Jeannine Hall Gailey

Sex, Lies and Mentoring: What’s a Woman to Do?

Writer Paisley Rekdal has a post on her blog about the problematic nature of finding mentors for young women here: http://paisleyrekdal.blogspot.com/2011/10/on-writing-mentors.html?spref=fb

I read it with interest, because I, too, as a young female, have been fairly cautious – maybe overly so – when talking with older male writers – always a bit suspicious, I’m afraid, of ulterior motives…but something about getting a little older, a little closer to forty, makes this all less of an issue, and of course being married to a big, scary-looking guy who’s pretty much around all the time helps, too. So I’m not quite as reflexively self-protective as I used to be.

And I have had good experiences with female professors, reaching to help out when and how they can, even if their time and resources tend to be more limited (as Paisley points out.)

But, how common is this female inability to accept mentoring? How many women writers has it hurt? Has it hurt me? What about you?

To make matters more complicated, when I read this post, I was watching the British movie “Tamara Drewe,” basic on the graphic-novel-based-on-the-Thomas-Hardy-Novel Far From The Madding Crowd. In it, the young female protagonist, in a pique because the guy she likes is with someone else when she happens to be free, beds the oozingly-creepy-older-male-writer – even though he’s married – and gratefully accepts his older-male-writer writing advice. Ick. I can’t help but have a visceral reaction, maybe because I’ve seen it too many times in real life. I mean, we ladies can get writing advice without doling out sex, right? Right? I was disappointed to see it in a (rare) movie about a female writer. (The philandering older male writer character, spoiler alert, bites it. Hardy was awfully hard on his philanderers, though he was famous for that activity himself.)

So what has your experience been with mentorship? Have you been overly cautious, or have you found mentors at all? I was thinking that for me, perhaps friends have been more important than mentors, because friends are the ones that stick with you through the bad times, encourage you when you’re down, help you write and send out in the day-to-day activity of being a writer. It also made me think about how I need to be willing to help others – I think of myself still as a struggling – what is that word…”emerging” writer…but I think I might be able to help more people if I made more of an effort. I’m happy to get a chance in the next week to lead a high school student workshop in Redmond (see more info here) but I would like to do even more of that kind of work.

What Poetry Can Learn From the Pops

Glenn and I went to the symphony yesterday for the first time since…well, I used to go all the time when I was in junior high and high school, because I was friends with the daughter of one of the conductors of the Cincinnati Symphony and therefore got to go for free, and really enjoyed especially the outdoor pops shows with all their fireworks and fanfare…and when I lived in Richmond, VA, I got to go to all kinds of cultural events, opera, ballet, symphony – for free because I was a reviewer for some digital media outlets. But, in Seattle, I’ve rarely had the time or money – or the combination of both – to take advantage of some of the local cultural wonders, so it had been a while. So finally, when the Seattle Symphony pops had an “Sci-Fi” event, we bought a couple of tickets and went. It was a little pricey for us, but we always talk about supporting the arts, so…

We had lovely seats down by the orchestra, and they played selections from John Williams (Star Wars) and the Planets, among other things (a Thriller arrangement with zombie-dressed amateur dancers?) The energetic conductor, Victor Vanacore, gamely sang the words to “Ghostbusters.” Even better, if you are a Star Trek: Next Generation fan, Jonathon Frakes got up and introduced each piece. (I have never noticed this before, but sci-fi movie themes tend towards the bombastic and war-like – every piece sounded a bit like a march, a bit like the 1812 overture.)
I was thinking, as I looked around the hall crowded, yes, with the gray-haired, but also a surprising number of children and youngish types, that this was “symphony evangelism.” Sure, it got children to listen to some of the classics, but each piece was short enough for a child’s attention span (or the average techie’s) and there were visual cues – a charming host, zombies, etc – to help keep the audience entertained.
I’m betting it was a lot more crowded than the average symphony show. And it got me thinking – if the symphony knows how to reach out to the crowds, why not poets? Keep things short, have some banter in between readings, and maybe invite some zombies…and hope they come back for the serious stuff, the Stravinsky or Bach.

Reunions, Poemeleon, and inspiring reading…

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.