- At June 04, 2008
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In Open Reading, Steel Toe Books
0
Public Service Announcement:
Do you have a poetry book you want to be published?
Did you know Steel Toe Books’ Open Reading time is the month of June? See this page for details. The cost is only the cost of one book ($12) from Steel Toe Books catalog – you could get my book, or Mary Biddinger’s or John Guzlowski’s or Martha Silano’s – really, nothing but good choices 🙂
Good luck!
- At June 02, 2008
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In CD Wright, convergences, Poetry
- 0
Odd Convergences in a Small Town…
Sometimes things just come together. Today I got two contributor copy magazine issues (of Mythic Delirium – a paying market, by the way, of science-fic poetry, and Poetry International, where I share pages with the likes of Li-Young Lee, Nin Andrews, Lynell Edwards, and more…) and two acceptances in e-mail, one from the very last issue of the Journal of Mythic Arts, a terrific resource that I’m so so sad is at an end.
Then, I got an acceptance of a query for a poetry journalism piece, then an e-mail inviting me to a small reading and Q&A session with CD Wright (!!) this very afternoon! She’s going to read in a few days in Seattle, but she happened to be in my small-town neck of the woods for a local class, so it was basically the ten students, ten folks from Copper Canyon, and me! Fun times. She read some from her newest book, which I liked as it was all post-apocalyptic. I definitely benefited from hearing her read her work – I had thought of her as a difficult poet, but when you hear how she reads it, it no longer seems difficult, if that makes sense. She was very charming and down to earth, too, answering questions. She talked a little bit about collaboration with artists (which I loved hearing about) and about hybrid forms (same.) I asked about her use of the line, which always seemed to me to be very progressive. She responded that “I was never very good at the line, but I was good with sentences, and dialogue, and so I wrote around my weaknesses.” Ha! Like I said, very charming.
It was also my first day of this current residency, which goes through June. If only the cabins had internet – or I had one of those roaming internet devices. It seems like all my work these days – submitting, researching, interviewing, etc – requires an internet connection. And don’t forget I’m researching new cities to live in, as well – the move is just around the corner now, and we still haven’t made a solid decision…
Sorry to neglect the blog! Husband G got a cold, then I got it, and in my downtime, I got to revamp my two manuscripts and write some new poems. I’m writing more about my childhood in Knoxville, and about the whole “nuclear” thing in Oak Ridge, which is on my mind more and more these days. My father worked as a consultant on the Oak Ridge site, checking in and out with his radioactive-monitoring badge, showing me how to work a Geiger counter at an early age, and owned a black safe in which “secret government documents” were kept. Dad worked on the cleanup end, trying to figure out how to make the place safer, not on the whole “making bombs or reactors” side.
I’m also planning a big web site revamp, moving from the techie main site with poetry subsite to a main site focused on poetry. The site will have fewer subpages, the navigation will be cleaner, and the style will be a little softer, a little more “creative type” and a little less “Matrix.”
After all, when I started webbish6.com lo these many years ago, I was mostly a freelancing technical journalist, who was just starting to get going on the poetry stuff – whereas now, I’m mostly a poet – at least I think so. Plus, the code is old and doesn’t run well on Firefox, which is what about a third of visitors are using, according to my web stats. My little brother, who is a graphics wizard, is helping me build the layout, and we got permission to use some art from one of my current favorite artists. I hope you’ll like it!
I know exactly what you want to do with your beautiful Memorial Day weekend – get a peek at my thesis essay on persona poetry! You know you want to.
If you’ve been following this blog, you know I’ve been interested in persona poetry pretty much since I started writing. Poemeleon, that paragon of online poetry magazines, just published its theme issue on persona poetry, which contains poems by me (from the Japanese MS,) Mary Agner, Dorianne Laux, Bob Hicok, Lana Ayers (her Red Riding Hood is a hoot,) and a bunch of other cool poets.
Plus, a shorter-and-sweeter version of my MFA thesis critical essay on the persona poetry of Lucille Clifton, Louise Gluck, and Margaret Atwood called “Why We Wear Masks.” Also, why isn’t there a good anthology of persona poetry already out there? Paging publishers and anthologists!
Some more on Poets Earning a Living, a continuation of my current fascination with the subject:
http://pshares.blogspot.com/2008/05/bah.html
Ploughshares blog discusses this article:
http://www.nplusonemag.com/?q=money
The N+1 article reminds me I am spending too much on rent.
Second Book Blues
So, working on the re-organization of my two manuscripts for the next set of deadlines. For all the “first book” contests, there really aren’t that many places interested in reading second books. It feels harder this time than last, and that could be simple math – there’s just not as many places I can send. Fewer places are accepting open submissions; Copper Canyon’s contest for first or second books is on indefinite hiatus, Wave Books isn’t accepting subs til next year, Ausable decided not to read open subs this year, etc. Sign of the times?
- At May 22, 2008
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In Rhino 2008 review
- 0
RHINO is a magazine I started liking way back when I was a reviewer for NewPages.com. The voices are often direct, edgy, humorous, dark in an odd way, the language interesting but not punch-drunk.
So, receiving my contributor copy this year of RHINO 2008 made me happy. They published one of my fox-wife poems (“The Note the Fox Wife Leaves Him”) with a tiny mistake that I may have made or may have been made at the copy-edit level. You know the difference between a “–” and a “-” can make a lot of a difference to the meaning of a line, I discovered as I tried to piece together what the word “mind-remembrances” could have meant – then I realized it was supposed to be an – which separated two clauses between “mind” and “remembrances,” and the poem became familiar again.
Notwithstanding my own poem, mind-remembrances and all, there’s a lot of great poetry here. The poem “Why Lot’s Wife Was Turned into a Pillar of Salt,” by Mel Patrell Furman, I thought would be a re-telling of the familiar Biblical tale but ended up a sensuous and melancholic meditation on 9/11:
“For doubting the life that continues after the towers have fallen when plum silk lies in lines of ash on the floor of Neiman’s and whitehot blasts have darkened the extra-virgin oil,
after the laundresses have been martyred, and the manicurists…”
In a similar mood, Ivy Alvarez’ “The Ruin” imagines a lost past…”you shamble beside me/ the jester/ /carrying clementines for eyes…there is a ledge/ with room enough for two//we do not sit.”
Wendy Wisner’s lyric prose poem about a seagull stealing her hamburger on a cold beach ends with the terrific line: “It was winter, a time of hunger.” Oliver de la Paz’ “The Dogs of the Orchard” allows the speaker to commune with wild things. Glenn Shaheen’s amazing poem based on the knock-knock joke form, “From a Hundred and One Hilarious Knock-Knock Jokes,” moves to places you would never guess, and the form allows for expansive, ironic musings: “Orange you glad we live in a society of cheap trinkets? It’s not a bad thing at all to be shown this kind of love.”
Anyway, there are only so many little literary magazines I enjoy every time, and RHINO is one of them. Congrats, editors, on your years of hard work – thanks!
Back from the Skagit River Poetry Festival and soo sooo tired. We left the house 9 AM Friday morning to catch a ferry to go over to La Connor, WA (arriving just past 1 PM) and just got back now at 8 PM Saturday night. In between that time, I caught a couple of panels (Poetry and the Spirit, Women’s Voices, etc) and some great readings (Pattiann Rogers, Rachel Rose, David Wagoner among them) and saw lots of my NW friends, and other old friends who’ve moved farther afield, if only briefly.
Got to go out to dinner Friday night with Pattiann, who was my thesis semester advisor at Pacific, and talk about her new book, Wayfare, as well as my plans (who knows?) and how/when I’m going to publish my second book (who knows?) Oh, my life is up the air. Where to live? What to do? Anyway, she was very supportive and funny as always. Her accent always reminds me a lot of my multitudes of Missouri relatives. She took me out to ice cream today and I knocked Carolyn Kizer’s daughter off the sidewalk in my enthusiasm. Oh, my childish ways!
The weather went from a bleak six months of temps hovering at the top at 50 and rain to a sudden 86 degrees this weekend, and boy did that sun come back with a vengeance. Some kind of bipolar weather. I think my lips got sunburned, just walking around. Saw tons of bald eagles, heron, even some wild turkey (the bird, not the drink.) Right before we left Friday morning, we saw a mother deer and her baby on the beach, walking in the water in an attempt, I assume, to cool off.
So good times but such a flurry of poetry activities, long driving times and many restaurants/events without air conditioning that I am exhausted. Off to shower and sleep!
Sorry I haven’t posted – I got hit with one of those May (!?!) bugs, sore throat and head cold and the whole shebang, been walking around like a zombie all week. But now I’m off to the Skagit River Poetry Festival, packing my vitamin C and elderberry and teas and antibiotics. Hopefully the sunshine and poetry will work their crazy magic and make me all better!
So, besides a poem in the 2008 Rhino (“The Note the Fox-Wife Leaves Him,”) I realized from the contributor copy that arrived today I’m also in the latest Rattle, (“Advice Before My Wedding”) along with a bunch of good poems and interviews from Marvin Bell and Bob Hicok. Good times. A Rhino review (and perhaps some news from the fest) when I get back.
For today, a road trip to La Connor to see some poetry and catch back up with friends.
Dang! And Happy Mother’s Day to you Mothers!
**Update: I think both my contact form and book order form work again now. Try sending me a message for fun!
Thanks to this blog, I found out my webbish6 contact form is totally broken. Urgh! I hate it when my web site breaks (especially some of the creakier old code.) The code that my web site provider requires for a form mail has changed (without notice – thanks guys!) Plus I think my hotmail account is blocking my form mail. So I have to recode it to make it work, then redirect to my newish gmail account instead. I find gmail’s mail threads extremely hard to follow, so I’ve resisted gmail for a long time, but hotmail has given me a lot of headaches this year.
So, if you have used my contact form in the recent past, and not received a response, it’s not because I hate you – it’s because I never received your mail. I’m very, very sorry. I’ll try to get my contact form code back up and running soon.
In other news, I was browsing around at Open Books (best poetry bookstore ever, in Seattle) today and someone came in looking for my book. The minute she said “Becoming the Villainess” I was all “brrrt?” What are the odds? Hi-larious. So glad I stopped in! Plus I picked up that new women-in-poetry mentoring book. And another copy of Daisy Fried’s My Brother is Getting Arrested Again (to replace the one that disappeared from my book shelves after I lent it out.) I love love love that title. In the book, the title poem is (which I think is a persona poem) is about the speaker’s brother getting arrested for some kind of righteous protesting. It would have been more fun if he had been knocking over a liquor store or something. Also, that’s what young men in the neighborhood I grew up in were more likely to be arrested for. I mean, it’s still a good poem, but, you know…
Coming soon: a review of the new Rhino 2008, since I just got my contributor copy in the mail.
Had a fantastic time today for my reading-Q&A-teaching guest thing with poet Jared Leising’s creative writing poetry class today at Cascadia Community College. The entire 25-something person class enthusiastically participated in class (and even returned to class after a freak fire alarm in the middle of the “exercise” section of the class, which, I have to admit, as an undergrad I might not have done.) These students asked intelligent questions that indicated they’d actually read my book – in advance. Knock me over with a feather. Then a bunch of the students bought books. (!!) And, apparently, if all poetry readers were like this class, books of poetry about comic books and Miyazaki would fly off the shelves. One girl even brought up Selkie wives! I mean, who knows about Selkies? Cool, right? And there was a Mary Biddinger doppleganger in the class. Anyway, it was a great experience, definitely worth the two-hour trip each way. If I could go do that every day, feeling like I was actually helping and encouraging people, I would be a happy girl.
Funny aside: one student asked if I had any advice for aspiring writers. When I told her the old “read” advice, she said, “I mean the good, special, real advice.” Ha!
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.
