- At April 04, 2007
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In Blog
4
I’ve never had to cancel a reading before – I’m really sorry that I won’t be able to perform tonight at ParkPlace Books. Doctor’s orders to stay in bed and keep my lung infection from turning into pneumonia. But you should all go see Natasha Moni, who is a very talented poet and Lana Ayers, another terrific poet who is MC-ing.
So to those I miss – I’m sorry! Have a great time without me.
In other news, blech. I’ve been given the grandfather of all drugs, apparently, to treat a very intractable deal in the sinuses and lungs. It’s called Avelox. May it do its work quickly. I fear this has put me behind in all my scheduled work. Not to mention poetry writing and submitting. Well, it will all have to wait a little longer. Note to self: take more vitamins when travelling around for readings. Also, go to the doctor the first week you have the weird cough, not the second or third.
Still sick.
So, this is what Poetry Month has been like at our house so far…
(This is our cat, Shakespeare. He was a bit bored by the latest issue…)
A bit under the weather here with a lung infection that I am being dosed up with antibiotics for (OmniCef, this time – doesn’t that sound like a bank? or a hotel?) I keep falling asleep for no reason, even on 24-hour decongestents, which usually kick off an energetic phase. So, not the most productive of times.
On the plus side, instead of doing all the fun social things I was going to do this weekend (like seeing Jenifer Lawrence read from her new book at Elliot Bay, or going to the Comicon where the artists from Buffy’s newest comic and the artist who does the future-telling art from Heroes were going to be, or hanging out with friends at the local jazz place) I am reading. I just finished Charles Jensen’s Living Things chapbook (which reminded me, in its restraint and solemnity, a little of Louise Gluck) and re-read a book of Japanese fairy tales. I finished up a review of Kate Greenstreet’s case sensitive for The Pedestal. And I finally got to read the “season eight” Buffy comic, which has a beautifully drawn cover.
Speaking of beautiful covers, Bookslut is using Michaela’s work to advertise the upcoming reading in Chicago with myself, Ander Monson and Catherynne Valente. I’m excited about the reading – and the people I’m reading with – and hope I get to run into some Chicago friends while I’m there. I love that city!
April, my birthday month, is almost here. Seattle is being sulky and sullen and hanging around the fifty-degree point, even though the cherry blossoms have already started to fall.
- At March 29, 2007
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In Blog
- 0
Just heard that 2River’s blog is podcasting some poems of mine:
www.2river.org/blog/archives/2007/03/jeannine_hall_g_1.html
Thanks!
Just rolled back in from Portland, after not one, but two semi-sunny days in a row – a miracle in the Northwest in March. The reading with Josh and Marvin Bell went really well – there were about seventy people there, the library was a wonderful venue, and I got to hang out with my cool Portland friends afterwards at the lounge at Pazzo’s (fancy!) I even sold a handful of books – enough to pay for dinner for myself AND Glenn! Now to rest up until the April 4th reading, and then Chicago.
How do we do it? Volume!
Going down to Portland…
Hey Portland-area friends, if you aren’t doing anything Wednesday night, head out to see me read with Marvin Bell and Josh Stuart at the Central Library. Details:
Where: Portland, Oregon
Central Library, 801 SW 10th Avenue, in the US Bank Room (1st floor.)
When: Wednesday night at 6:30 – early – and they’re selling books before the reading, rather than after, since we have to be out of the library by 8 PM
With Who? Jeannine Hall Gailey, Joshua Stuart and big star poet Marvin Bell
Got back last night around 9 PM after a ten-hour round trip to visit my friends and workshop on the island (really, the Kitsap peninsula.) The poetry and hanging out with bar food appetizers afterwards was worth the grueling drive/ferry trip/ferry lines.
Mystery of Hotmail Problems…Solved! It turns out I was involuntarily upgraded to the new “Windows Live Mail Beta” yesterday, and I bet they lost mail or locked out senders or something when they transferred servers. Perfect – thanks Microsoft! If only Gmail’s horrid “threading feature” didn’t make me want to punch a hole in my computer screen. Where have all the good free e-mail providers gone?
Mystery of back problems – Solved! Turns out from an MRI I had a disc bulging against a nerve. Yup, it hurt. But now it’s getting better. No surgery, no steroids. Yay!
Mystery of where to live starting in May – Still unsolved. Stay tuned.
Poetry News Items:
I have tentatively signed on as a co-editor (or possibly some sort of hybrid poetry editor/web editor/jack of all trades) of a little Northwest lit mag called “Crab Creek Review.” I will revamp the web site as soon as I get time. Lots of paperwork to sort out. But the new Crab Creek editorial team seems really great. So, say goodbye to my free time!
Kate Greenstreet and Janet Holmes read from their new books, Case Sensitive and F2F, at Open Books on Tuesday night. They are both really animated, energetic readers. Kate, who comes from New Jersey, has a great voice for radio. That’s just my opinion. Are you listening, NPR? Seriously though, sometimes writers really give you a chance to rethink their work off the page, and the one thing I learned is that Kate’s book, which I had read more than once, actually has a lot of funny bits that I had missed.
Dang it! If you have been sending me e-mails through my web form or to my hotmail address, they have NOT been getting through, so please re-send. I’m so sorry to do this through the blog, but I have missed pretty much all my messages from yesterday and today. I am not ignoring you, I promise.
Endicott Studios blog strikes again – this time, with two poems from Pebble Lake Review, including one of my myterious “fox-wife” poems:
http://endicottstudio.typepad.com/endicott_redux/2007/03/the_sunday_poem_2.html
and “Sibyl” by Kim Young.
Possibly trivial observation – Sarah McLachlan’s song, Building a Mystery, is about a sexualized embodiment of the female’s male muse, in opposition to all those poems and songs about the male’s female muse?
Read Charles Jensen’s take on the lessons of Buffy in the non-profit sector.
Congratulate Eduardo!
And, last, find me a place to live and a decent job.
More mini-review madness
Mary Biddinger’s Prairie Fever:
Don’t expect any mild-mannered nature poetry about prairie wildlife here, although wildlife does appear, torn and bedraggled, birds dead on windowsills, red flowers appearing on throats. Full of dark fragmentary looks at the inner and outer violences of the bored bad girls of the prairie, poking dead bodies with sticks, rinsing their hair with beer, and making out in abandoned barns. Stark, vivid writing illuminating shadows with lightning-sharp imagery and bone-cracking emotion.
Did some more Expedia work today, then combed Craigslist for places to live, which were all too expensive, which made me comb Craigslist for more part-time work. All in all, depressing.
In reading news:
Peter’s new book reading at Open Books was standing room only, and Peter was wonderful. His new book even has a couple of mythology-alluding poems in it! You know I’m a sucker for those. Here’s the first few lines from “Case History: Persephone:”
“The visiting surgery resident
inserts the icy speculum
while the mother stands nearby
clutching her only daughter’s pale hand.
Outside the window – a barren
January day. The long fields lie empty,
their edges stitched with bare trees.”
Isn’t he a great poet?
Today, I’m re-socializing myself by going to Peter Pereira’s new book reading and party, which should be wonderful, and I’m meeting up beforehand for a birthday lunch with a friend (her birthday, not mine) which should be good as well. I always need a little living-in-a-cave-by-myself time after big social weeks, like AWP or the school residencies. I swear I’m an extrovert, I just need breaks in between extroverted events.
So, onto writers and their portrayal in film. I loved the tremendous “Stranger than Fiction,” which features an author obsessing over how to kill her main character, a vulnerable and subtle Will Ferrell. Then I fell into the movie “Music and Lyrics” (Hugh Grant, Drew Barrymore,) a much less tremendous film, which features a foetry nightmare character – a girl who seduces her powerful professor (a la David Lehman) at the New School to get her poems published, (or so the professor says) and when he dumps her and writes a thinly-veiled fictional account of her seduction, she has a nervous breakdown and becomes “charmingly quirky” (except the script allows the quirks to come and go like cats in the scenes. There’s no continuity or integrity about the character.) Then she’s redeemed by writing the lyrics for a pop-tart’s hit single. Nothing like the music business to clean up the dirt left by the poetry biz? LOL.
Post-AWP Reading:
I’m reading Simone Muench’s Lampblack & Ash, which is painfully pretty and powerful, like walking in stilletos over every word, and Brandi Homan’s chap, Two Kinds of Arson, which I read all in one sitting and then promptly wrote a poem afterwards (always the sign of good reading.) I even envisioned a string of poems about Rapunzel. So, my advice: read both books, then get to your writing! I also read the lastest issue of Sentence, which had some wonderful bits by Margaret Atwood and a bunch of fascinating stuff. It’s not just your typical lyrical surreal prose poem kind of writing. A nice diversity.
I may get in trouble for mentioning it (he explicitly asked for no reviews!) but Jim Behrle’s chapbook, She’s My Best Friend, is fun reading, as well as beautifully produced. OK, that’s all I’m saying.
(Music: Reasons to Be Beautiful by Hole)
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.
