Note: Real Life Taking Over Other, More Interesting Lives
Not writing. Not really reading. End of current rental: May 30. Just driving from one bland rental space to another, every day, until they are all a blur, climbing across stairways and walkways, yards and driveways, trying to find a place 1. that allows cats, 2. that doesn’t have holes in the floor, 3. Doens’t smell like something died in it, 4. Is within our price range. Note to self if self ever gets time-travelling ability: don’t move to Seattle seven years ago. You’ll never be able to afford it!
My asthma’s been acting up, etc. Not sleeping well. Also, freelance work has overwhelmed me, just when I’m in the midst of everything else.
So, don’t expect anything witty or bright or interesting from me until after I’ve moved. I’m in guarded survival mode. Tauruses like stability and routine. So, expect me to be mean as a wet cat til I’m entrenched anew.
Sorry for the complaints. I will be back to being happy poet girl at some future time. Or I’ll be one of those crazy homeless people eating grass. One or the other.
- At May 03, 2007
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In Poetry Heroes
4
Tagged! By Mary B! And there’s no way out!
Say someone asked, “I kind of like poetry, but I don’t know anything about contemporary poetry. Who should I read?”
No blog friends. No real-life friends. No real-life mentors. Alive as of this writing.
1. Louise Gluck
2. Margaret Atwood
3. Denise Duhamel
4. Dorianne Laux (yup, breaking a rule, I don’t care, she would have been there had I not worked with her, etc.)
5. Rita Dove
6. Lucille Clifton
7. Carol Ann Duffy
8. Dana Levin
9. Beth Ann Fennelly
10. Marie Howe
11. James Tate
12. Brigit Pegeen Kelly
13. Ilya Kaminsky (another slight rule break, but I had to fit another guy on my list!)
If you haven’t been tagged yet, go write up your list and be quick about it!
After some exciting dental work today (two new fillings for cavities underneath old fillings) I have no energy to do any of the work I’m supposed to be doing – an interview, a freelance assignment, Crab Creek stuff. I’m barely up to television! Yet here I am on the blog…
I rarely write autobiographical poetry, and when I do, I probably won’t admit that it is. That’s just how I roll. However, now, I can say, I have an autobiographical poem up on Wicked Alice right now in the Spring 2007 issue. Don’t just read it for the possibilities of emotional pornography, though – the issue is a great collection of edgy poems! (Full disclosure: I was never in med school, only pre-med, but we did get to sit in on the dissection of cadavers the day they got into the heart. Practically autobiographical.)
On the night of my birthday, I went to see Peter S. Beagle, author of The Last Unicorn and A Fine and Private Place, among other books. He read a long story about sinister wine and then played the guitar and sang two songs he had written. He’s about my Dad’s age. He also dropped a Buffy reference casually during his Q&A, which will make me love him even more forever. I heart Peter S. Beagle.
This sunny morning I turn 34. This weekend I:
–visited open houses in the hope of finding a place to live (disappointing, ugly, and expensive. Sigh.)
–visited the zoo to see the new Sumatran tiger cub (cute!) (and also saw adorable foxes – blue and Artic, as well as fennec – and the red panda.)
–started packing up books
–discovered a beautiful park with a sandy beach in Ballard called Golden Gardens, it was packed because it was sunny and beautiful. I also had a red velvet cupcake at the Ballard cupcake shop. Love Ballard, cannot afford anything remotely livable there. Unless someone donates me a place to live? Anyone?
–scanned newspaper listings for jobs and places to live – some more
–avoided doing anything poetry-related
Tonight I’m going to see Peter S. Beagle, author of The Last Unicorn, give a talk on dialogue and read. Should be fun!
My husband has ordered a small ice cream cake (chocolate, with black cherries and whipped cream) for my birthday. I haven’t had one of those since I was eight. I hope it tastes as good as I remember!
Also: to celebrate the last day of poetry month: The World’s Tiniest Dog, Dancer – click on the first video pic link to see him hopping around in the grass (kawaii! as they say at my local anime shop)
A slew of pubs to post about:
A review of Kate Greenstreet’s case sensitive up at The Pedestal Magazine’s 39th issue
A review of Becoming the Villainess in the 2007 Rhino (thanks to Mary B for writing it and Martha S. for telling me about it so I could order a copy!)
A new poem, “The Fox-Wife Describes Their Courtship” in the Spring 2007 Columbia Poetry Review (the cover of the Spring issue is amazing. Check it out, art peeps!)
Update: Poetry Southeast has posted their contest winner – and finalists 🙂
And, thanks again to Juliet Patterson, who read wonderfully last night at the Richard Hugo House (not to be confused with the Victor Hugo House, which I believe is in France.)
The rest of April is all rest for me. And yearly doctor and dentist appts. And celebrating my 34th birthday.
And I received Jessica Smith’s Organic Furniture Cellar in the mail. Beautiful!
- At April 23, 2007
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In Sharkforum
- 0
Thanks to Simone for letting me know she put a poem of mine up on Sharkforum today!
You guys will be so jealous of me when I tell you who I got listen to yesterday at the poetry festival – Richard Siken, blogger and winner of the Yale Younger Poets prize for Crush. He did a charming reading/talk on spirituality and the self – reading some new work as well as “Crush” poems, which I enjoyed anew. What an interesting and funny guy. He said some accused him of being a “morning after poet.” HA! Here’s my favorite poem from the book, “Poem in Which Things are Crossed Out.”
http://poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=177722
Anyway, I know some of you must be tired of seeing me promote readings, but I promise this is the last one for April! (Oh, poetry month, both a blessing and a curse, and full of your muddy shoes!)
Hey Seattlites! Come out to the Richard Hugo House at 7 PM tomorrow to see me reading with Juliet Patterson, who hails from far away Minneapolis who reads her book, Truant Lover, from Nightboat Press, which is pretty cool. Click here to read her “first book interview” with Kate Greenstreet and one of her poems:
http://www.kickingwind.com/62906.html
(In the voice of the guy who sells Monster Truck rallies…)
SATURDAY SATURDAY SATURDAY is POETRY POETRY POETRY
Sure, you could come out to the Seattle Poetry Festival on Saturday for poetry luminaries like Richard Siken and Mary Jo Bang. Or friends like Martha Silano and Peter Pereira. Or to see slam poets go up alongside academic poets like Heather McHugh for the sheer fun of it.
But, if you make it to The Richard Hugo House in Capitol Hill by 11:45-12:15, you get a chance to see me and fellow co-editor of Crab Creek Review, Natasha K. Moni, go old-skool head-to-head with our “bad girls lost in a dark wood”-style poetry. Becoming the Villainess will be available for sale for 30 minutes afterwards while I sign books. After that I will be hanging out as a spectator, catching all the cool poetry action. Don’t miss it!
In good news, look for Mary Biddinger today on Verse Daily!
In other news:
My poor sweetie has been so sick, the doctors think he has ‘walking pneumonia.’ I took him to the hospital for chest x-rays today. He’s on the same antibiotics I was taking last week, and they gave him an albuterol breathing treatment at the dr office. Think good thoughts for his speedy recovery!
Still don’t know where I’ll be living after the end of May, and still interviewing for jobs. I wouldn’t mind some good thoughts in that direction too!
In good news, Smartish Pace, after having a review I’d written since 2005 of David Lehman’s last book, finally published it this week! There’s a link to it on the front page, and here’s a direct link:
http://www.smartishpace.com/home/dynamic.html?reviews_lehman.html
I’m finishing up a review of Ivy Alvarez’ Mortal as well. And I’ve started up a (still, fairly lame and new) blog for Crab Creek Review, whose web site has proved more challenging for me than I expected, due to its programming – a Unix server, old PHP programming, old server-side includes – I’ve programmed web pages with Microsoft technology for so long (um, 15 years?) it’s a shock to my system! I’m not even sure exactly the way to change the price of the subscription because I’m not sure of the code in the order form! And the CSS form looks like something I’ve never seen. I don’t understand having a CSS – I mean, there’s barely any style to the Crab Creek pages right now, why do they need such a complicated style sheet? I could remake the site from scratch, like I don’t already have enough to do…
- At April 17, 2007
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In Blog
- 2
My heart and prayers go out to the friends and family of the dead at Virginia Tech. I am saddened but not shocked. Campuses are one of the least safe places you can be. And evil, unexplained evil, is all around. I am suprised by all the goodness that still surrounds us, even in darkness. I am surprised by hope. It takes more courage to love than to kill. More strength to have compassion than hate. Being a hero in this world means, sometimes, ignoring the evidence, and reaching out to others, saying yes, saying, you are worth risking.
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.
