On Re-Entry, MRIs and Tulip Fields, National Poetry Month – What Are You Doing?

Purple Tulip Field, La Conner, WA

On Re-Entry, Week 2: MRIs and Tulip Fields

So this second week of April, after my two week past-vaccination date, I have been experiencing gradually the pains and pleasures of re-entry into what most people would call “life.” Last week, a Zoom reading, a doctor’s appointment, a haircut, a visit to the gardening store.

This week, a little more challenging: MRIs and the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival.

I had an MRI I had put off for a year, this is to check that the tumors in my liver have not grown or spread, indicating cancer or other bad things, so really not good to put off too long. Wearing a mask for someone with claustrophobia in an MRI tube while having to “Hold your breath” for extended amounts of time is something I will add to my list of “do not want to do again.” Even though I’ve been vaccinated for a while, I still didn’t really feel comfortable in the waiting room (and they were running an hour behind) so I kept walking out of the building and walking back in. So, that was something I tried and didn’t feel comfortable with, but I don’t know how comfortable I was before with MRIs, frankly. Think good thoughts for the results for me.

Me in red tulip field

Skagit Valley Tulip Festival

So, last year they cancelled the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival because of the pandemic, so we were really looking forward to attending this year. However, we woke up the day we had made reservations (you have to make reservations and pay ahead of time this year, new irritating feature) and it was spitting snow. On April 10! All day long we were followed by threatening clouds, cold winds, spitting snow, hail, and rain.

And yet, we still soldiered on. This was probably the most challenging thing I’ve done people-wise, and body-wise, although a lot of it was outdoors, and people weren’t pressing in as close as usual. The traffic was knotty getting up – I guess we weren’t the only ones anxious to see some signs of spring. Everything wasn’t blooming yet – even the weeping cherry at Roozengaarde wasn’t blooming, and I would say more than half of the tulips weren’t up yet.

Glenn and with tulips and forsythia

After the MRI, I had a sore throat, tummy troubles, and my ankles were acting up (stress and/or giant magnets sets of my autoimmune problems,) so along with the cold, we maybe should have rescheduled, but we were anxious to get some spring flowers into our eyes, if not our nose (because in the gardens, even though we were vaccinated and outdoors, everyone’s still required to wear masks, which seems a little like overkill to me science-wise even as an immune-compromised person, but… So all the pictures without masks are either outside the official gardens or in an area without other people, just to clarify.)

We saw a pair of nesting bald eagles and a few herons, as well as horses, sheep, chickens, and peacocks, but missed out on seeing seals and otters, which we usually see. We did find a new piece of sculpture we really liked celebrating the annual Snow Goose migration to the Skagit Valley. Here are a few pictures. Even on a day spitting rain and snow, and everything not quite in bloom yet, it still managed to a good day for photos.

So we had an adventure! By the time we got home, we were exhausted and crashed into bed. Every time I go up there, I’m inspired to buy a small farm and start being  an organic flower farmer, or perhaps a miniature pony farm.

Me in pink with pink tulips just opening

National Poetry Month – What Are You Doing? How Are You Doing?

In years past, as I read past blog posts for April, I noticed I would attend about three readings a week, give a couple of readings, attend a conference or a ‘con, get together with friends for their book launches. It was so much it was overwhelming even to read about!

This year feels quieter and more muted. So how are you still celebrating Poetry Month during the pandemic? I managed to squeeze in a couple of Zoom talks this week, one by Dana Levin (who talked about strangeness in poetry) and C. Dale Young (who talked about rhetoric vs the image among other things) – two poets who would be hard for me to see in person, so that was cool.

Glenn and I with tulips and threatening clouds

I’m giving a Zoom reading on April 18th (I’ll post more when I have the link) and I’ve been reading more and trying to write more (although I haven’t been able to do a poem a day this year.) Too many in-person re-entry things to do! It takes more energy than it used to to do simple things, like go a store or the doctor, in person. This is part of the re-entry pains. My favorite all-poetry bookstore hasn’t re-opened yet for shopping in person, but soon, and I’ll enjoy browsing there again – it’s a great place to run into poets books you might not have heard about anyplace else.

In personal poetry news, I’m feeling a little discouraged, by not getting a big grant I applied for, or a job I applied for, or individual rejections, or the fact that I can’t find anyone excited to publish my new manuscripts, which may be slowing down my writing and submitting. It may be that the re-entry is more anxiety-producing than I’m admitting or aware of. It’s certainly not “life back to normal” here in the Seattle area, yet. Will it ever be? Life post-pandemic seems fraught with questions we don’t yet have answers for. I’m an introverted extrovert but not being able to interact with others on a regular basis is also still kind of a bummer. I’m hoping to have actual in-person contact with friends and family soon…

Pair of bald eagles with nest

Anyway, I want to wish you an April full of health, happiness, flowers, vaccines, and a gentle re-entry. I hope you read some poetry you enjoy and maybe even discover a new writer to love or lit mag you’re excited about. Hope you can get outside and listen to the birds and enjoy the outdoors and that it doesn’t spit snow on you. I really want to hear about how you’re celebrating a modified  National Poetry Month.

Stealth Spring in Seattle, Spring Submissions, Poetry Month Approaches

Early pink cherry blossoms

Stealth Spring in Seattle

Waking up to gray, forty-something degrees most days this last week, it felt like we were experiencing a “stealth” spring – flowers were blooming, little by little, birds were singing a little more, but the warmer days (and the accompanying sunshine) have not, so far, appeared. Nevertheless, I’ve kept my eyes open for signs – a few daffodils opening here and there, early cherries, and here and there, a branch of flowering quince. All these pictures were taken in my neighborhood. O3

I had a reading – a Redmond Poet Laureate Reunion Reading – on Thursday, which I had to leave early from in order to speed Glenn across town for his first Pfizer shot. Soon we will both be safe to go inside buildings and visit with friends – although people still are very cautious here, everyone’s still wearing masks and nothing is as busy as you think it should be – except for the outdoor winery tables, which are overflowing with people, here in Woodinville.

Daffodils

Spring Submissions

And along with spring, comes spring submissions season. Of course, some places read submissions year-round, but for some reason – spring – particularly April – and fall – particularly September – seem to be the big submission month, maybe because most lit mags read during those times. So I’m printing out my Excel spreadsheet and looking at lists of places that are open. Hey, getting published isn’t easy or effortless – it takes a lot of work. And more organization and detail-orientedness than is ideal for someone like me. Oh well. Part of the job of being a poet.

Besides individual poetry submissions, I’m now sending out three (!) separate poetry manuscripts, which seems nuts. Someone has got to pick up one of these collections soon!

Red quince and red rhodies

Poetry Month Approaching!

It’s almost April, which is National Poetry Month – which means more readings – yes, even I’ll be doing a reading – and more attention to poetry in general, which is good. It’s also my birthday month, and when I’ll technically be able to safely go out and be fully immunized. And it’s Tulip Festival time – even if spring is running a little late, Skagit Valley will be full of blooming tulips by the middle of April, and I’m planning a day trip up there to see them this year, having missed it last year due to the shutdown. Wish me good weather luck!

It’s also a month when many new poetry books come out, including my friend Kelli Agodon’s book from Copper Canyon, Dialogues with Rising Tides, among others. Go ahead and treat yourself to a few good poetry books for poetry month. If you want any of mine, signed by the author, (some of them hard to find on Amazon anymore), see here!

Anyway, I am wishing you all a happy and healthy spring, and a happy National Poetry Month. I am hoping the vaccines will be faster than the variants. I am hoping for an end to our plague year at last

Spring Equinox, St Patrick’s Day, Vaccinations, a New Book in the Works, and an Upcoming Redmond Poet Laureate Reading

White cherry blossoms, white sky

Spring Equinox and a New Book in the Works

It’s cold and gray on today’s Spring Equinox and official first day of spring here in Seattle, although there is evidence spring is approaching or at least trying to make some progress. I usually write and think about poetry (and life) more on the equinox for whatever reason (passage of time, seasons, poetry stuff, don’t they go hand in hand?) and today found me organizing, shuffling, taking poems in and out, copyediting a brand new poetry manuscript – all written in the last year and a half. A press asked to see the full manuscript yesterday, which led to me having a flurry of fixing and editing and polishing and retitling. But it was a good feeling – productive, happy – to be working on this new book manuscript, and looking towards the future.

St Patrick’s Day and Vaccinations

It was a more celebratory St. Patrick’s Day this year than usual because I was finally able to get the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, so a lucky day indeed. I felt great the day of the shot, no allergic reactions, though had a down day the next day (like a normal human – fever, chills, headache, nothing crazy.) It was sunny and Glenn and I went out and took pictures with the plum blossoms afterwards. Glenn won’t have his shot for another week or two at least so it’s a moderated celebration, but it feels like there’s something positive on the horizon. after so much stress and anxiety about when and how I’d get the shot and if I’d catch covid before I got the shot.

Washington State has only vaccinated about 12 percent of people so far, so we still have a long way to go to any kind of “safe” opening up, but at least it’s finally moving forward after crawling at a snail’s pace while other states raced ahead. The process of getting the vaccination appointment took three people (myself, my mother in Ohio, and Glenn) after a friend called me to clue me into to how the vaccines were proceeding so yay teamwork, but it shouldn’t have been such an undertaking. Don’t be afraid to ask for help if you are still waiting for your shot – your tech-savvy friends and family, your friends who are volunteering at vaccine sites – and I hope you all get your treasured vaccines sooner rather than later. It really took away a great weight and anxiety I had been feeling for at least a year, but even more recently as numbers and variants have been on the rise. I feel like I can focus on other aspects of life again. Like writing. And friendships. And living life.

And my birthday is coming up at the end of April, usually a happier time although last year it had a distinctly mournful feel in the middle of rising death tolls and with the vaccine far on the horizon. I hope this year will have better things on the horizon.

Upcoming Redmond Poet Laureate Reunion Reading

And I have a Zoom reading coming up – a Redmond Poet Laureate Reunion reading, with current Redmond Poet Laureate (and friend) Raul Sanchez, Rebecca Woods Meredith, Michael Dylan Welch, myself, Shin Yu Pai, and Melanie Noel. It’s from 3 PM to 4:30 PM Pacific on Thursday the 25th, so you’ll see each of us read for a few minutes, which should be fun. I’m going to read some new work!

Here’s where to register for the event. 

Changing Times (and Seasons), New Poems in the Fairy Tale Review, Science Fiction Libraries, and Daring to Hope

First Plum Blossoms

Changing Times (and Seasons)

Well, we’ve now had a few sunny dry days and already our late spring seems to be starting to arrive; I snapped pics of the very first cherry and plum blossoms in our neighborhood. I was out sick last week after a mammoth five-tooth-repair dental appointment (these things knock me out for about a week, typically – I blame my weak immune system) but this week I notice I am moving slower, going to sleep earlier, and craving more vegetables (especially in soups – potato and fennel, snap pea and asparagus) and our time change happens tonight at 2 AM, which can affect a lot of people different ways.

In Seattle, I’m usually happy for the extra hour of light, which is desperately needed. I purposefully took some walks around town this week, trying to get some exposure to the sun, fresh, air, birdsong, etc. This morning we picked out some herbs to start in the garden and Glenn will do the hard work of getting them in the ground. I’ve been practicing my Japanese (still very beginner level) and guitar (same, I’m afraid.) I snapped some pictures of birds as well as flowers.

Sylvia poses with Fairy Tale Review’s Gold issue

New Poems in Fairy Tale Review

I had a little good news in the mailbox this week.  The first was the Gold issue of Fairy Tale Review, a journal I have been trying to get into for years, maybe since it was first created, and this issue (yay!) has two of my poems in it. The theme of the poems was Anne Sexton’s Transformations.

I’ve included them below in case you want to take a sneak peek at them.

Two poems from the Gold issue of Fairy Tale Review

First cherry blossoms

Science Fiction Library Feature

I also received a lovely booklet from Jeremy Brett, a librarian and archivist at the Science Fiction Library at Texas A & M University. This booklet featured a bunch of books, but my book The Robot Scientist’s Daughter was featured in “When Science Goes Awry” with a nice write-up. I appreciate it, guys!

If you ever get a chance to visit Texas A & M, you should seek out the Science Fiction library, which includes wonderful archives of terrific science fiction writers (including me!) It’s on my list of trips to take!

Steller’s Jay in planter

Daring to Hope

So, are we there yet? Chronically ill and disabled people in Washington State are STILL not eligible for the vaccination yet, but I’m hoping the time is drawing closer (and I’m twittering about it to my governor as much as possible.) With the vaccine being an important step to being able to live a normal life again for both me and Glenn – we are starting to think about things we might be able to do again without worry – shopping at a grocery store or picking up flowers, browsing in a bookstore or going for my MRIs (among other doctor and dentist appointments) without fear of dying as a result. I have been in a stew of anxiety since the year began – wondering and waiting for the vaccine to be available – but now I’m starting to hope I’ll be vaccinated by my birthday at the end of April, that I’ll be able to visit Skagit Valley’s tulip gardens while they’re still in bloom, that I might be able to see my friends and family in person and even hug them (?) I’d like to visit Snoqualmie Falls in spring, too – I love the woods – and maybe even an exotic day trip out to Port Townsend.

Me with new fixed teeth

And, I have to admit, as an asthmatic, I am really hoping they do away with mask requirements for vaccinated folks (at least outdoors,) because I didn’t want to complain publicly because I know we had to wear them for safety, but I struggle to breathe in almost any kind of mask for any amount of time. But I will probably still wear one in dentist and doctor’s offices, when I have to go into the hospital, for medical testing, and certainly in any kind of mass transit, for the foreseeable future. With a primary immune deficiency, I realize there are more germs than just coronavirus out there, and I could have been doing a better job protecting myself – mask, gloves, changing shoes and clothes when I get in from a crowded setting or travel. This pandemic has made me much more aware of my vulnerabilities – and not just to coronavirus. I want to spend as little time in the hospital as possible for the rest of my life, and these new practices might help.

During this last two weeks, I also had some pretty crushing rejections – including a press that kept my book for a year (ouch) – and am hoping that a good press will give one or both of my books a chance very soon. I want to be able to focus on something positive as we wait out the rest of this painful year (plus) of plague.

So what about you? What are you most looking forward to?

Almost Spring, Tired of Resilience, and Contemplating Ten Years Ago

Pink rhododendrons

Almost Spring

Spring on the East side of Seattle typically starts showing up mid-February, with daffodils, cherry and plum blossoms, and camellias, but this year, winter has kept its cold grip on us, and all the gardens – including mine – are showing barely a spark of life. So we went driving around yesterday looking for signs of spring. We didn’t find many – these pink rhododendrons by Lake Washington, a red swirl camellia, and the jonquils in my yard were the only signs spring might – MIGHT – be on its way. And we’ve had more than our share of rainbows, but mostly in between the gloom of hailstorms, thunderstorms, and just plain rain. We are ready for more light, and more than just metaphorically speaking.

House finch and chickadee

Tired of “Resilience”

Are you as tired of that word as I am? If I am told one more time by a newsperson or magazine article that I need to build more “resilience,” I will scream. It has been a year since the pandemic was recognized here in the states, a year in which we lost 500,000 people in our country and 5,000 in our state. I am still waiting to hear when Washington State will start vaccinating people like me – disabled, chronically ill types who would certainly be at risk of death if they caught covid – but alas, they are only focusing on age as a risk factor, so I guess I’ll be waiting forever? It’s enough to give a girl a nervous breakdown, especially with the news that more contagious, more deadly variants of covid-19 are developing in CA and NY.

Add on top of that, the writer’s life that is mostly rejection, rejection, rejection, and the advice to build resilience can get really old. I did get an acceptance today, and I have some poems coming out soon in “dream journals” of mine, journals I have been loving for years, like Fairy Tale Review and Image, among others. So I am thankful for that.

But as I as listening to hail hit our roof and windows the other night, I was wondering if one of my three manuscripts I’ve been sending out will get taken soon, or at least before I die. I’m not kidding about that, and I’m not being melodramatic. Everything feels dangerous right now – I have to go to the dentist for a broken tooth this week, and get an MRI for my liver tumors which could kill me if we don’t keep a close eye on them- and without a vaccine it literally feels like I’m risking my life. And let’s not even talk about how impatient my neurologists are being for me to get brain MRIs and other MS tests I have to do in person. I can’t imagine how it feels for my friends who are young but have cancer and are going to regular treatments – and I have several – and be unable to get a vaccine while constantly being in a dangerous hospital environment. Much worse than me, probably. In the meantime, I’m happy for friends in other states who are able to get the vaccine, but I wish my own state would start acting like it values the lives of people like me. I’m happy the third vaccine, Johnson & Johnson, has been approved, but no word on rollout yet. No amount of resilience is going to make up for the tension, anxiety, loneliness, boredom, danger and strain of the last year, and platitudes do not make things better. My usual coping mechanisms- spending time in nature, reading and writing, and connecting with friends (these days, mostly by phone) – may not be adequate to what we are facing.

Reading before a party, 2011

Nostalgia and Reminiscing: Ten Years Ago

What were you doing ten years ago? I couldn’t really remember, so I looked back in a fit of nostalgia at pictures and blog posts from ten years ago, in 2011. I was 37, my second book came out, and even though Glenn remembers me being very sick that year (as yet undiagnosed with a mast cell disorder, a primary immune deficiency, or MS, I was really struggling with symptoms of all those things uncontrolled), I noticed I traveled, I saw friends, I even hosted a couple of parties and did readings. When I was younger, it was easier to “push through” than it is now. I am lucky enough to still be friends with most of the people in these pictures, too! We can’t always say that!

In March 2011, I was very concerned about the Fukushima disaster in Japan, especially as I have several friends that were impacted by the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown, and its enormous environmental impact. We are always experiencing some kind of crisis here on earth, aren’t we? I was looking forward to going to the Skagit Tulip Festival, I think I was planning a birthday/book party (?), and the Skagit Poetry Festival was coming up. Even though I was sick, I managed to go to a lot of things that cheered me up, and saw a bunch of friends. Looking at these picture makes me impatient for the time I can be inside a bookstore with friends, having people over the house without worry. When will we be able to do that again? Experts are giving us different times – summer, Christmas, 2022? Hopefully sooner rather than later, and hopefully science (the vaccines) will outpace evolution (mutations of the virus).

Sylvia and Shakespeare, looking like negative photos of each other

So much happens in ten years, right? But some things are comfortingly the same. The tulips will bloom in La Conner this year, whether or not there are crowds to greet them. I lost cousins, a close Aunt and Uncle, both my maternal grandparents. I gained four nieces and nephews. Spring will eventually come to us in Seattle, the days will get longer, more people will get vaccinated. Over ten years, I published three more books, getting correctly diagnosed with several health problems meant I could manage my symptoms better, and I am thankful for friends and family that are still with me. Getting older for me really does feel like a blessing, given that I was given six months to live back in 2018 from liver cancer, and multiple cases of pneumonia could have killed me, but didn’t. Even in quarantine, I am thankful for birds outside my window, my little garden, my cats, husband’s steadiness in the face of disasters. I am wishing you things that can make the next few months, if not joyful, at least bearable.

Snow Woes, Who Gets to Be a Disabled Writer, and Having Trouble Getting It Together? Me too.

Valentine Tulips delivered late in the snow

Snow Woes

So our week was generally discombobulated because of our giant (for Seattle) snow event – about 8-10 inches of snow. Vaccine appointments got cancelled, shipments didn’t arrive or arrived late. Mail and packages arrived late, including the tulips Glenn ordered for Valentine’s Day arriving three days late, a little the worse for wear, but still pretty.

It’s disconcerting and disappointing that our vaccine operations – already in WA state going way too slow compared to other states – were derailed by weather. As someone with multiple health vulnerabilities, I have a vested interest in vaccine operations going better than they have been, here. Please, if you care about the lives of your disabled and chronically ill friends, please write to Jay Inslee and tell him to open up vaccinations to us now. Other states have already opened to people with medical conditions AND teachers, like Ohio. Why aren’t we doing things as well as Ohio or New York state? It’s so frustrating to watch.

three deer visitors in the snow

But nothing like what happened in the South, especially in Texas, this week. Many of my friends (and a few relatives) were out of power for days in single-digit temperatures and had no clean or running water. Does this seem so impossible in a modern age, that an entire state could suffer so much from a cold snap? Weird anomalies – like Texas being on its own power grid (except for El Paso, which is on its own grid connected to other states) unconnected to other states because of a decision dating back to 1939 not be part of the federal power grid, and then further that Texas deregulated power and so all the power companies are for-profit entities, and then further than things happened like the nuclear power – that Texas relies pretty heavily on – was run by people who didn’t anticipate things going wrong at a nuclear plant in the cold, which, as luck would have it, they did. (Not bad enough to kill people, but bad enough to shut down a nuclear plant for a while.) So the cold and snow wreaked a lot of havoc and caused a lot of deaths there, due to some some decisions made not by the people there today but politicians of the past  and their poor (and dangerous) choices. This was not aided by their Senator taking off to Cancun in the middle of the emergency.

Steller’s Jay

Having Trouble Getting It Together? Me too.

This week I didn’t feel great – a sinus infection thing that caused a bit of a fever – so I lost some time and didn’t feel productive, which I always beat myself up over. I’m stressed out about the lack of access to vaccines in the state and county I live in, I’m stressed out that I still have relatives dying of covid while the country continues its (too slow) vaccine rollout, I’m stressed about not being able to do anything safely, still, a year after I started quarantining due to covid and my health issues including a primary immune deficiency and lung damage from previous pneumonia, which could prove deadly in the face of this virus. People talk about hitting a wall – but it’s more like getting punched in the face repeatedly, by the news, by tragedies, by uncertainty. I mean, I feel like I’m in a losing boxing match I never signed up for. But I was reminded by one of my doctors that everyone is angry, anxious, stressed, getting poor sleep, overwhelmed, and not as productive, or nice, or living “their best life.” We are trying to survive a year of plague that has taken, at this point, almost 500,00o American lives, and many more throughout the globe. Let me say that again: we are trying to survive. That means we are focused on our most basic needs, and this has been thrown into bright relief by the tragedies in Texas brought on by a cold front. When you are focused on your most basic need – to survive – you have to relax about the fact that your self-actualization – at the top of the hierarchy of needs – will have to wait a bit.

Who Gets to Call Themselves a Disabled Writer?

I’m going to tell you a funny story about being disabled, because it sort of encapsulates the way we respond to society’s messages about disability and ability. I was in a wheelchair for the majority of the time between, say, 2007 and 2018. I mean, I could not walk, I could not do stairs. I didn’t have my MS diagnosis back then, so I was going for a variety of therapies – physical therapy, among others. But I never asked my doctor for a handicapped placard for my car. That’s years of being in a wheelchair without every asking for the basic thing that would have made my life much easier doing everyday things, like going to the doctor or the grocery store. And why was that? Because I was loathe to call myself “handicapped.” I did not think of myself as disabled, though anyone looking at me would surely have thought I was. When I was finally hospitalized with overwhelming symptoms of MS – inability to talk, walk, vomiting every day from vertigo, and almost no hand or foot control – I went to the my doctor and asked for a placard. A temporary one, I said. A few months later, I came to the realization that MS was not a temporary problem. My years of falling, accidents, “clumsiness,” had not been random – they had been part of my MS symptoms. Still, I never mentioned MS or my disability in any of my writing. Why not? Maybe because I still didn’t consider myself “disabled enough” to use the name, disabled. Or maybe I didn’t want to accept it would be part of my identity, like walking with a cane or wheelchair, for the rest of my life. I have started to write poems about the subject only in the last couple of years, and I feel very tender about these poems and essays still.

Sandra Beasley, a friend of mine who has several severe food allergies like my own, wrote this essay about claiming her identity as a disabled writer. It’s worth a read. And it made me think of my own nervousness, two AWP’s ago, when I was on a panel and was part of a reading for disabled writers. Was I disabled enough?  Could I speak to this group with any authority? Anyway, what does it mean to add “disabled” to your bio, or your descriptions of yourself on social media? If you look at my pictures, you wouldn’t necessarily see any disability, unless you looked closely, or looked at how I cropped out a wheelchair or cane. I notice small things (like my left side never fully recovered from the 2018 MS flare, and I still limp a little on that side, and my eye on that side isn’t quite the same as the one on the right side. Another small thing is I have more trouble reading my poems correctly out loud than I used to. A poetry editor recently asked me to record a video for their site, and asked for a re-recording because I had made minor errors in the words. But I knew that in a re-recording, I was likely to make the same, or worse, errors, because MS makes it difficult for me to read, focus on a camera, and stand at the same time. Did the editor know how bad she made me feel for this neurological anomaly? Probably not. It’s the same with Zoom readings and meetings – I have to shut off my camera sometimes when my brain gets overwhelmed trying to sort noise and imagery and trying to respond properly that that information. It could be perceived as a bad attitude – but really it’s my disability that’s controlling things. During quarantine, I have not asked as much of my body – not trying to walk unfamiliar routes, or dealing with people who don’t know I have MS, or driving to downtown readings that require stairs or doctor’s appointments that take hours of physical endurance to go to. But I still get tired doing things the average person wouldn’t. I have a telltale sign when I’ve done too much that my husband notices – my hands and legs start to tremble fairly aggressively, and this usually means worse symptoms will happen. “Time to rest,” he’ll say, and though I might resist his advice, he’s right. Anyway, I’m telling you all this because it’s hard to be vulnerable and admit your physical, neurological, and mental disabilities. Everyone who has them has a hard time claiming them in a positive way. Do we call ourselves a “disabled person” or a “person with disabilities.” This is an actual thing we have to think about. Disability activists, by the way, are all always tired. They are already pushing themselves to put out the message that access for all is important, that including disabled people in political and artistic venues is important, that their lives still matter even if their legs or brains or ears or eyes don’t work exactly the same way a “normal” person’s do. So be kind when they ask your arts group or association or conference or residency for accommodations – they have already done so much work and they are tired. Disabled people are not trying to make you feel bad or scared or guilty or deal with your feelings about your own mortality/health/human frailty, they are just trying to live their lives in a world that’s fraught with consequences for even mentioning you might be outside the norm.

The Power of Claiming My Identity as a Disabled Writer

Happy Valentine’s Day (during a Pandemic and a Snowstorm!), Tentatively Thinking About the Future, and Adventures in Japanese and Plath

Happy Valentine’s Day from us!

Happy Valentine’s Day 2021 (with Pandemic and Snowstorm!)

So, what are your plans for Valentine’s Day? Is it watching eight inches of snow fall on your doorstep, essentially trapping you at home which you were trapped in anyway because of the pandemic? Yes, that is our plan!

I was pretty sick at the beginning of the week, and then the impeachment with its disappointing ending, so you could say it wasn’t a very romantic beginning to the week. But I’m recovering, we’ll watch some romantic movies tomorrow and Glenn will make a fancy steak dinner (and he made pink heart-shape marshmallows for me!) and we’ll do our best to cheer ourselves up. I’m hopeful that the vaccines will be available for people here soon after a lot of shortages (and government mismanagement) in WA state. My parents in Ohio already have gotten the vaccine, so they will be safe – at least from covid, which is cheering. I’m hoping WA decides to prioritize the disabled, immune-compromised and chronically ill, but there’s no sense of that yet.

The results of the impeachment were not what I hoped, I’m hoping that with the impeachment over, we just don’t have to hear much about former President 45 ever again. It’s so nice to have a competent, low-key, polite President not taking up space in my brain all the time.

The snowstorm is beautiful, even if it keeps away our packages and grocery delivery, and watching the flakes fall is so mesmerizing. We get a big snow – eight inches and still going – so rarely, that it seems almost celebratory.

Valentine’s Kiss

Tentatively Thinking About the Future

So, as we watch old movies, and watch the snow come down, I’m tentatively thinking about the future. Have you started doing that yet? I’m thinking about my birthday, April 30, and daring to hope I will have the vaccine by then so I can safely go to, for instance, the bookstore or the dentist. Things I’ve been putting off – like going to the gardening store I love, or schedule an appointment to go into Open Books again to browse poetry. I hope to have a celebration, even if it’s just a small one.

And I’m scheduling some medical appointments I’ve been putting off. I’m getting my MRI of my liver  – which I haven’t had for a year – next week, and hoping for good news (or no news) there, and soon I’ll be getting my brain MRI for my MS. Health care does feel a little safer now that health care workers, at least, have been vaccinated, even if I haven’t.

And looking at book publishers and imagining which I would like to have publish one of my book manuscripts. There are great established publishers I love – like Copper Canyon, or BOA, or Graywolf – and some great newer ones, like Acre Books or Yes Yes Books. I’ve even started thinking about book covers…I’m hoping that the acceptance of one of the books isn’t too far off now. Is this unfounded optimism? I don’t know. I’m even working on a third manuscript – which seems like the height of nuttiness, but I think I’ve written another book after the second one, all about the pandemic. I’ve also reached out to a couple of poets that I’ve been online friends with for a long time to talk about publication, and it turns out, it’s a great idea to talk on the phone to people instead of just social media. It reminds me of the eighties, when you’d write letters to your friends and sometimes call them, but it was probably too expensive to do often. I’m realizing I have a poetry friends I’ve known for years all over the US, and talking to them reminds me we are all in this together – whether you’re in upstate New York, rural Virginia, or like me, in a far-out suburb of Seattle. Everyone has struggles and doubts, and talking about them seems to make them lessen, and encouraging friends make everything a little better.

Adventures in Japanese (and Plath)

Sylvia cuddled up with Aoka Matsuda’s Where the Wild Ladies Are

With Glenn in data science school at night, I’ve been teaching myself Japanese on Duolingo every night (really helpful – I’ve been trying to teach myself Japanese for more fifteen years, and never gotten very far) and reading a terrific Japanese book, Aoko Matsuda’s Where the Wild Ladies Are, funny, feminist re-takes on some really melancholy Japanese ghost/folk tales. (High recommend for people who like Haruki Murakami, for instance, or Kelly Link.) Also still reading the new, very detailed, Plath biography, Red Comet, which has some terrific samples of her unpublished fiction (found that fascinating) and photos and art work by Plath I’d never seen before.

I had researched the Japanese language, Japanese poetry, and Japanese folk tales for several years to write She Returns to the Floating World, but I still have so much to learn. I would love to actually visit Japan one day, if I ever get healthy enough. When I studied French, going to France really helped me learn to use French in a practical way that I would never have learned remotely, and the constant feedback on accents and vocabulary were invaluable. Right now we can’t travel, but we can dream of it in the future, still. It’s nice, during the pandemic and the winter when we can’t get out as much, to have a project to work on. Next I might try to teach myself the computer language Python, which Glenn is learning for his grad school. It seems pretty accessible. We’ll see!

Valentine Picture with Pink typewriter and Tulips

Anyway, happy Valentine’s Day, or Galentine’s Day, however you choose to celebrate. I recommend, whatever you do, watch something that makes you happy, drink some hot chocolate, and be kind to yourself. And maybe get out a new (or old and well loved) book of poetry to read out loud to yourself or with your loved ones. Some people call Valentine’s Day the Poet’s Holiday, but I’m not sure about that. Nevertheless, if people go looking to poetry in search of romance, or solace, or even apocalypse meanderings, that’s not a bad thing.

Envisioning Better Things

Corvid, not covid

Envisioning Better Things – A Practice of Hope, During a Plague Year

So, things have been rough this week. It’s been dreary, rainy, and too cold to go outside much. America hit the 450,000 mark in people that have been lost to covid, as variants with higher contagion rates and seemingly slightly more dangerous consequences are spreading around the world.

Washington State has still got a shortage of vaccines, and they don’t seem to prioritizing the chronically ill or the disabled. I’ve been struggling with anxiety about that and at the same time, trying to get better from a sinus thing and a stomach thing (not covid, just the result of my normally crappy immune system.)

Meanwhile, a literary magazine I’ve respected and longed to get into for twenty years, about ten months after my work appeared in it for the first time, decided to publish a former professor-pedophile who abused students and kept a gigantic collection of child rape films. This triggered a lot of sadness and anger from a lot of abuse survivors, including me (I was raped when I was six years old). The literary magazine then published a non-apology. The whole thing left me feeling sick and disappointed in the poetryworld. Meanwhile, I’m sending my manuscripts out into the world, hoping for a good press to pick them up. Have we decided what a “good press” means to us?  What are we even hoping for?

Pink Tulips

So, What Next?

Most pandemics in history have not lasted forever, even with a lack of soap, vaccines, or N95 masks. So we know that this will not last forever, no matter what we do. The vaccines may help squash the numbers of the dead, and help propel the economy back to health, if they can actually be gotten out fast enough to do any good.

Washington State’s lack of prioritization of the chronically ill and disabled may mean a wait for me of some months, but in the meantime, they’re probably going to approve the third vaccine for the US – the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, which might be slightly safer for people like me with a history of anaphylactic reactions to shots. The earliest we can hope to get the shots from them is April, I’ve read. But every person that gets the vaccine now helps slow the steady growth of the virus, slow the ability to mutate safely within each person, and makes the entire planet a little safer.

So, I have reason to think things will get better, gradually, for us in terms of what feels for people like me like an endless quarantine, and for us all in general. Things will get better. Pandemics do not last forever. However, this pandemic has changed the world in ways that might not be reversible. Will we ever feel the same about screaming at a concert, or even singing in a choir?

Resting deer

And as Far as the PoetryWorld

PoetryWorld can feel like a strange and mysterious planet. Like a world of science fiction, with secret languages and disguises and scary monsters.  Sometimes this can be overwhelming. You can make friends with other poets, you can help support other younger poets, and you can try in your own way to support journals and presses by buying their books or subscribing or sending in your work. You can review the books of poetry you respect and admire, poets who might not get as much of the limelight as they deserve. But how do we work to make things better for, say, child rape victims, or any victims of sexual abuse in a Poetryworld that seems like it’s still (Still!) run by people either abusing or making apologies and excuses for abusers? Is there a way forward in that goal?  Can we just make the poetryworld a better place by staying in it, or staying apart from it? I do not have an answer for this. I wish I did. The truth is, you and I are part of the Poetryworld. We may not run things, but if we stick around and make our voices heard, eventually things might get better. Someone tell me so.

Learning from Women Writers, Under a Wolf Moon, Looking at Book Publishers During Submission Season, and Waiting (and Waiting) for the Vaccine

Cold Wolf Moon

Under a Cold Wolf Moon

Many people have been talking to me lately about feeling stressed, having insomnia, feeling anxious about getting the vaccine (welcome to the club on that one!) and general angst. Just consider that we are about to hit the one-year mark on the pandemic taking over our lives. That is a long time to live in fear, uncertainty, maybe losing jobs and family members, your hobbies and friends, your sense of normalcy. 2020 – and 2021, probably – have been traumatic years. It is normal to feel a little lost, a little frazzled, a little at the end of your rope. Also, this full moon of the past few days has always been a weird one for me – the day I was hospitalized and diagnosed with MS with a full Wolf Moon night, for instance.  The moon messes with people’s mood and sleep – a known thing. And it is hard to sustain hope during a worldwide pandemic. The plague years – 1918’s killer flu, the bubonic plague, the years tuberculosis swept Seattle – are bitter, hard years for everyone, almost like war years. We’ve lost 425,000 people in less than a year, and many more have long term damage, and we’re still not 100 percent sure how to treat it now, though we’re doing better than we were last February. And four vaccines within a year (only two have been approved in the US, but hopefully AstraZenaca and Johnson and Johnson will be approved soon) is pretty incredible, even if our rollout has been chaotic and too sporadic as of yet. Anyway, just like the photo – there’s light at the end of the tunnel, even if the light is obscured by clouds of uncertainty.

Downy Woodpecker Watching Flicker

Learning from Women Writers

My goal to keep learning about women writers and their lives continues, this week with the second season of Dickinson, the Apple series on Emily Dickinson, reading Red Comet, the latest biography of Sylvia Plath, and also research on Stella Gibbons, a curiously undercelebrated early-twentieth century English novelist and poet, who wrote Cold Comfort Farm, the satiric novel she’s best known for, but also 22 other books, including a couple of books of poetry and many short stories and the book I’m reading now, My American. Stella was, like me,  a journalist before she was a poet and fiction writer. Many of her books are out of print and unavailable in America, but she won a bunch of awards in her day, and held literary salons into the 1970s. When I read about the lives of successful women writers, I’m always curious about their similarities – for instance, women writers like Atwood, Gluck, and Plath (and me) were all the daughters of scientists – Gibbons’ father was a doctor (“a good doctor,” his daughter would say, “but a terrible father” – he was often violent at home but charitable at work). Otto Plath was one of the leading experts on bumblebees in his time – he began his PhD at Harvard at age 40 before he met Plath’s mother, so he was a very old father – but not, by all accounts, much fun to be around. (Coincidentally, Plath’s son, Nicholas, kind of followed in his grandfather’s footsteps – became a leading expert in the Northwest on salmon and orca patterns, before taking his own life in his early forties.)  Sylvia had a kind of extreme ambition and broke 50s modes by being a woman who wanted to work and have children at the same time (gasp), while Stella Gibbons poked fun at the literary community and often refused to follow convention of what women writers were supposed to be like. Being different – standing out – and rebelling against current modes.

Camellia flowers

Dickinson, the show, besides having a really fun contemporary music thing going on in the background, revels in pointing out Emily’s early ambitions and successes, before her near complete retreat into solitude later in life. In season 2, through her best friend/sometimes girlfriend/sister-in-law Susan, she meets the editor of her local newspaper, who may – or may not – publish her poetry. She complains that she feels unable to write, like “a daisy that needs the sun” of the editor’s approval to shine on her. Another character turns to her and says, “You are not the daisy. You are the sun. Be the sun.” I thought this was very profound, flipping on its head the way that writers often feel – desperately waiting for some publisher or editor to notice us – and instead insisting that the artist is the important source of what the editor or publishers do, the creative force on which they feed. Empowering writers who suffer from the cycle of constant rejection and even worse, inattention of the literary world, seems important for our mental health, and productivity. Remember, you are not the daisy, you are the sun.

Doe in the Rain

Looking at Book Publishers During Submission Season

This brings me to something I don’t think enough writers talk about during submission season – as many first book contests open up and open submissions periods open – which is, deciding which book publishers to send your book manuscript to. They are not all going to be perfect fits. This year’s judge may be looking for certain things which you can never be. They may not be interested in your subject matter, or your point of view, or the publisher just doesn’t publish the kind of thing you write – they’re extremely conservative and publish formal verse, and you’re experimental, or they’re interested in ecological issues, and you’re interested in exploring mythology. So how do we decide?

You would think I would know more about this as I am sending out my sixth and seventh books-in-progress. There are actually fewer opportunities for people like me than you would think – there are many more opportunities for people publishing a first or second book. This time around, a little older and perhaps wiser, I’m looking for a publisher that has good distribution and more than one person running the press, maybe some press with an actual person just dedicated to publicity and marketing. I’d like a press that I could stay with for more than one book, who might be interested in helping support my career down the road, who might consider, for instance, eventually doing a Selected Work or Collected Work. Are these crazy dreams? Maybe…

The process of sending out manuscripts is so expensive that I have to be pretty selective, especially if I want to send out multiple manuscripts. Sometimes it takes a long time to hear back from presses or contests, which is frustrating. The plague year hasn’t made things easier for those in the poetry publishing business, I’m sure, or for us as writers. It’s like targeted gambling, in a way, in that you choose which presses seem most likely to welcome your style, your content, your kind of work. So, that’s the work I have to do this month and next month…

Waiting for the Vaccine

Speaking of frustration, wait times, and gambling, waiting for the vaccine as a chronically-ill, immune-suppressed person who has not been allowed to get the vaccine yet by her state is pretty terrifying and frustrating. Why people with chronic illnesses (or teachers, for that matter) haven’t been prioritized is confusing to me. I see states who are doing a much better job than Washington State is in getting their shots into people’s arms. There’s not much I can do about this except stay Zen, stay aware of any changes in policy and places I might be able to get access a vaccine, and advocate for my vulnerable group with politicians like Jay Inslee. My father has had the shot, in Ohio, and my older brother and sister in law who are health care workers in Tennessee have gotten the shot, but that is it in my family. You would expect Seattle with all its money and hospitals to be doing a much better job. Sigh. Well, I’ll let you know when anything changes. I hope you also get your vaccine sooner rather than later.