Reading good books, more poetry event-ing, gluten-free and okay, writing and publishing are two different things
As a reviewer, I get sent a lot of books for free. And I have a lot of friends who are really good writers who also send me books. This week I read a book that I not only enjoyed, but also felt something of a kinship with, since the author and I share an interest in femme fatale heroines and their sad fates, sci-fi time-travel, and nostalgia for the eighties. I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl is not only a wonderful read, but feels like a book I should have written. Dang it!
Continuing to celebrate National Poetry Month with even more poetry-related social events this weekend. Hopefully they will be fun! The sun has finally come out and finally visible are the products of spring – bunches of red-and-orange roses (this must be a Napa Valley obsession – red and orange roses are everywhere – on the walls of restaurants, in front of run-down homes, on street corners) – my primary care doctor’s office has become picturesquely draped with wisteria blossoms – and pink dogwood bloom in the tiny yards of of row houses. Thin asparagus is cooking on the grill, along with bulbs of fennel, almost every night. The minute I get diagnosed with a gluten intolerance, the local cupcake shops starts carrying gluten-free cupcakes, a week before my birthday. I mean, how could things not be looking up?
I wrote a poem I am really proud of this last week, but I’m not ready to send it out anywhere yet. I’m ready for another book to be published, I’m downright impatient actually, I’m ready to take on more work for more money, I’m ready to be healthy and get on with things in general. I feel madly in love with my husband – we’ve been married for 14 years, so you know what? That’s pretty cool. And I’m happy with my weight for the first time in a long time (I’m such a chick, but guess what? I cut out gluten and I lost a significant amount of weight in a matter of weeks. I recommend it! New weight loss/health advice book by me: figure out what the hell the foods are that you can’t digest and stop eating them. If you need to see a nice gastroenterologist who specializes in immune-system-related gastro problems like I did, so be it. It’s worth the time and trouble.)
So how much of my life do I have control over? I can try to get more freelance work, I can send out queries, I can send out my book manuscript in a poetry world surely crammed with the manuscripts flooding in after AWP. I can go and read new books of poetry and get inspired, go see poets read and get inspired, do things – like reading and writing – that reaffirm that I actually like poetry. That’s what I’m all about in this last week before I turn – gulp – 37. I’m going to do the things I can do and try to enjoy those things and not worry about the things I’m not in control of. I’m going to write new poems, they will be poems that take risks and allow me to try new things.
And if you haven’t entered my book giveaway yet, leave a comment here.
Twilight Poem, Marin Poetry Festival
I am not a Twilight fan. I notice that Twilight is creeping into my students’ poems. So I decided for poetry month to write one of my own. Yes, it’s supposed to be funny.
The Problem with Twilight
She looks at him and thinks
I am worth more dead
He looks at her and thinks
what’s for dinner
In other news, I got to go to at least part of the Marin Poetry Festival, though it was in the least handicapped-accessible venue I’ve ever seen – to make it to this ampitheatre in the woods, you had to climb down a steep, rocky, rooty, unpaved hill. Neat! I felt sorry for all the poor elderly women with walkers (way to to think of others, poetry festival organizers – at least half the crowd was over 65) and thankful for Glenn and Natasha’s help navigating (using my pink cane. I’m now to the cane phase of my two-bad-ankle-injury recovery, by the way. Our of the wheelchair for the most part. Yay!)
It was set in a quite beautiful park, with a wide stream and under the shade of giant evergreens in the Old Mill Park. I had never been to the town of Old Mill before, which was quaint and cute with lots of weirdly upscale shopping and I want to go back and visit later. I got to see J.P. Dancing Bear (of American Poetry Journal and Dream Horse Press) and C.J. Sage (of the National Poetry Review) read and that was a lot of fun. I also got to catch up with poet-friend Natasha Moni, who is currently training for medical school, because being a poet isn’t enough, she also wants to be a doctor. Some people! 🙂
California Poets in the Schools
Today we drove out to Santa Rosa, about an hour away, to participate in and enjoy the California Poets in the Schools reading. The best part was watching some little fourth graders reading their own poems. It was inspiring, because these kids delivered good solid imagery with poise. I wish every open mike was that entertaining. Plus, fourth graders are adorable! I also got to catch up with some of the CPITS poets, who are all wonderful women with just good spirits. They remind me of my Seattle poetry friends, in that they are generous, good-natured, and good poets all at the same time. It was great to get out and about a little bit. I’ve been laid up so much in the past six months that I haven’t been able to socialize as much as I’d like. Tomorrow if I’m well enough I’m going to try to make it to the Marin Poetry Festival to see some more poets read. That’s what poetry month is all about, baby!
Sorry I had to do the blog move so suddenly; google’s blogger decided it didn’t want to support the kind of blog I had, so I had to change it to a kind they would support. Please remember to update your links!
Also, had interesting news from my last set of blood tests. I was just ranting and raving recently about all the tests I’ve had done over the past ten years, but I think I might have found a doctor who actually ran some of the right autoimmune tests this time. We’ll see. I want to confirm with the doc before I say anything for sure, but I’m cheered up that I might be near the end of the testing tunnel, with a real answer perhaps!
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.
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.
