Keep putting comments in for the book giveaway contest!
But…
I have to migrate my blog this week, because Google’s blogger is no longer supporting FTP sites, which mine has been. So the new blog address will be:
http://myblog.webbish6.com/
Please make a note of it. Update those blog links!
If you subscribe to an RSS feed or anything, the new RSS link is
http://myblog.webbish6.com/feeds/posts/default
And I’ll have a redirect page as well, that will hopefully work just fine.
Poetry Book Giveaway
Post a comment (along with your e-mail address) and I’ll put your name in a hat. The lucky winner gets three books! Then a runner up will get a different two books, because that’s how I roll! Two chances to win!
WonderCon not AWP
Well, here I am entertaining you while all the other poets are off at AWP. WonderCon was definitely fascinating, I met some wonderful writers while I was there, real life superheroines, and got to do some very unique people watching (stormtroopers? anime characters come to life? A bevvy of Boba Fetts?) I still miss the literary slam dance at AWP, of course.
April seems to have come to California in stops and starts – it was forty and driving rain on Sunday, today it is seventy and sunny, this Sunday it is supposed to be cold and raining again. The sky can’t make up its mind. This is my birthday month, which maybe I am also ambivalent about, like the weather.
It’s also poetry month, and I’ll be participating later in the month in a poetry book giveaway. I’ve been thinking about work – work that sustains poets, work I should want to do, work I should try to get – lately, too. Teaching versus marketing writing or technical writing, the practical versus the passion. There were some interesting conversations on the Harriet blog about poets who do something besides teaching for a living.
Are you writing a poem-a-day this month? I always think this idea might work better in August than April, because for me, April is usually a frenzy of events, family visits, and work overload. And besides that, I find I only write the usual amount of decent poems a month even if I write every day; if I don’t try to write every day, I usually write about four poems a month, give or take. I do try to read more poetry and attend more readings during April, and also to take in more art – I went in to San Fran for some blood tests and got to go beforehand to a couple of art galleries, because that makes the trip less onerous, and also because I feel I write more when I get to see more art. Reading good books helps too.
My little brother and his wife are coming in town tomorrow, and that means doing more of the tourist stuff around Napa, which should be fun. Wish me luck and health!
Yes, while everyone else is talking about where they’ll be at AWP, I’m putting the finishing touches on my presentation “From Buffy to Xena: Female Comic Book Superheroes in Women’s Poetry” for Sunday at WonderCon in San Francisco. (Sunday, 12:30-1:30, in the Moscone Center, room 204/206, in case you’re wondering!) It’s not traditionally a poetry venue, perhaps, but I’m hoping it will be fun and some people in the audience will find out that poetry can be, well, something different than love songs and nature odes. Right? And I’ll be wearing my Wonder Woman costume. Just kidding. April Fools!
Anyway, I hope you poets at AWP keep us all up on the gossip going on it the poetry world on your blogs – and I’ll be sure to post if I accidentally run into Kevin Smith or something.
In other news, The Beastly Bride is available today from Amazon and other fine booksellers. This is the anthology that Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling edited on tales of transforming women – one of my favorite subjects – and it happens to have three poems of mine on the old French fairy tale, The White Doe, in it – three poems you can’t find anywhere else! It’s a great gift for any daughters, sisters, or friends who are even remotely interested in mermaids, selkies, or women who change into any manner of trees or animals. It’s mostly fiction, not poetry, and did I mention it’s a really fun collection?
Very excited to have a poem in the “Dossier” section – on the 1970s – of the newest issue 7 of Court Green, a magazine that, like MARGIE, I feel proud to be a part of. The poem right before mine is by Adrian Blevins, “The Hospitality” (I love her work!) and selfishly, I couldn’t ask for a better poem to sets up my poem, “Knoxville 1978: The Girls Next Door.” You can tell a lot of thought went into the order, and a lot of the poets are kind of the famous/hipster variety (except me, of course 🙂
Health stuff is boring to blog about, I know, but I’ve spent – and will be spending – a lot of time this week commuting a couple of hours at a time to specialists at the big-city teaching hospital, because my immune system seems to be acting up and attacking my GI tract and liver. Good times. I’ve never had a liver problem before, it’s one of the organs that has been trouble-free, so I’m disappointed to see it causing problems, especially since I’ve never drunk alcohol (I’m intolerant, genetically – yes, you’ve finally found a poet who doesn’t drink!) and avoid even minor liver-hurters like Tylenol. On the sunny side, at least I’m losing weight! Anyway, think good thoughts for me, I have to face some major blood tests and I’m sooo tired of the needles. I try not to spend too much energy worrying, you know, positive energy and such, but the fact is, it all takes it’s toll – the poking and prodding, the questions, the medical records, scan and test.
My big nervousness, though, is that I have to give this presentation next week on Poetry and Superheroes next week (Sunday at noon on April 4th at WonderCon) and I’m still a bit wobbly on my legs (the torn ligament et al are healing up, but I still have trouble with stairs and balance) So wish me luck on that too! And come if you can. WonderCon should be a blast if you’re even the least bit geeky. And wish me some people to show up to the talk and maybe even buy some books (to offset those awful San Fran parking and hotel room costs…)
One of my poems is up – as a podcast and a “readable” poem – at qarrtsiluni today, for their “Health Issue:” “Advice From the Robot Scientist’s Daughter.”
And, it’s congrats in order for the girls today! January O’Neil, Nin Andrews, and Allison Benis White all had their books nominated for the Foreward’s Book of the Year Award in Poetry! Nice!
Are you worried that your poetry is boring? If so, read this post from Martha Silano!
Happy St. Patrick’s Day and some congrats to a few bloggers…
Eduardo C. Corral’s wonderful poem, “To a Jornalero Cleaning Out My Neighbor’s Garage,” is up on Poetry Daily today.
Say congrats to Charles Jensen and Brent Goodman who were both nominated for the Lambda Literary Awards.
So, to borrow the words of a song, “Let’s Hear It For the Boys!”
Seriously, all three of these guys are great writers, and I’m happy to see them getting accolades.
As for me, I’ll try to wear some green and avoid malicious leprechauns.
In celebration of Tim Burton’s new Alice movie:
Alice in Darkness
Forget tears. Chasing
white animals with timepieces
in this drug-trip landscape
can only lead to more of same.
Hedgehogs, playing cards, paintbrushes:
full of undisclosed danger.
Didn’t your mother tell you
not to kiss strangers?
That Cheshire smile shouldn’t fool you.
Pull your skirt down.
Your nails are growing so fast
you’re hardly human.
Alice, fight your version of Bedlam
as long as you can.
Sleep the sweet dream away
from that gooey looking glass, or mushrooms,
or the fear of your own body.
Forget what the night tastes like.
Stop wondering through the shadows,
holding your neck out
for the slice of the axe.
Verdict: Liked. Definitely a movie you’d enjoy more on the big screen. Surprisingly, I also liked the SyFy channel’s more modest version of Alice as well – both were versions of the story where a more empowered grown-up Alice re-enters Wonderland to become a hero. Burton’s was a more straight-forward Joseph Campbell “Hero(ine)’s Journey” while the SyFy version dealt more with political intrigue.
Just read After the Workshop by John McNally, a novel about a writer twelve years out of Iowa’s MFA program struggling to finish his book and support himself as a freelancer and “media escort” – someone who drives around visiting writers. The writer is very funny – I laughed out loud at a couple of things- although the story is very, in some ways, “macho” – there’s a lot of drinking and all the female characters women are portrayed as sex objects and nothing else. Once again, it’d be nice to see a book about writers with women as any of the main characters.
I watched “Up in the Air” last night, a surprisingly downbeat movie worth watching. There was a part that made me wince – the part where the hard-charging younger woman and 30-something business woman were exchanging their expectations for their romantic lives, and of course the younger woman’s are much more grandiose and optimistic. She says: “When I was 16 I thought by 23 I’d be married, maybe have a kid and a corner office.” The older woman says something like “Life can underwhelm you that way.”
[OK, even more cringe-inducing was the line where the young woman says: “I appreciate everything you (feminists) did for us and all…but I still feel like nothing I accomplish will matter if I don’t find the right guy.” Eek! I never felt that way. Do people really feel this way!?!?]
I was thinking about the differences between my expectations at 21 and my expectations now at 36. I had the supposedly “great” job and an actually great guy by my mid-twenties, but life threw some twisty obstacles in my path (re: health problems) that kepts me from storming the corner office, as it were. So there were some detours: instead of trying to become a director by 30, I took time off writing, went to an MFA program, published a book of poetry. Are my expectations less than they were? They’re different, for sure. My hopes and dreams: to publish more books, to make new friends and get time to hang out and visit my current ones, to be healthy enough to be able to go out and enjoy art museums and parks and once in a while a take a romantic trip with Glenn the way we used to. A little better financial situation would be great (grants, freelance, awesome paying job, etc.) but I don’t think of myself as a failure because I make a bit less (ok, a lot less) than I used to. Just a reminder that values change, and life can underwhelm you/thwart your younger-self dreams, but you will probably still figure out a way to do the things most important to you.
On the nets:
In the “Why didn’t I think of that” category, a female writer nets seven figures for YA book trilogy retelling Helen of Troy and Persephone’s stories…Dang! If only I’d written Becoming the Villainess in prose…and made it more of a love story…and more cheerful…
Amazing interview with one of my favorite poets, Dana Levin. She always manages to sound so much smarter in interviews than I do. Sigh! (By the way, her book, Wedding Day, is a perennial favorite of mine.)
Kelli Russell Agodon details how to make a book trailer. Very helpful! Her follow up on the process is here.
Ron Silliman blogs about women in poetry.
Not poetry related, but very funny: Google apologizes for privacy breaches with eerily specific apology. My favorite part:
“The company has also encouraged feedback, explaining that users can type any concerns they may still have into any open browser window or, if they are members of Google Voice, “simply speak directly into [their] phones right now.”
Either way, the company said, “We’ll know.”
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.
