Talking Apocalypse, End of Summer, Hospital Trips (and Other Unplanned Trips)

End of Summer

It’s getting to be the end of summer – people are celebrating the last hot days of August. Sending kids back to school, or preparing their own syllabi.

I’m personally looking forward to fewer 90 degree days and less wildfire smoke. Looking forward to feeling more energetic, getting to apple cider and pumpkin farm season. The end of summer here has been rough – worse air quality here than in Beijing last week and this coming week, constant heat and somehow also clouds. The best parts of a Seattle summer – the clear seventy-something days, the blue skies, seeing the water, mountains, and the flowers – are being squelched by this second-year-in-a-row disaster zone of fires in every direction. It certainly feels apocalyptic. And then, when you’re looking of your friend’s pictures on Instagram of various fab vacations, you get the type of trip you don’t plan for.

Hospital Trips (and Other Trips You Don’t Want to Take)

Speaking of disaster zones…sorry I’ve been absent – I’ve been really sick, not even really able to do any reading, or sending out work, which always sucks. I was in the hospital a couple of days ago, giving me flashbacks of last summer, where I had four trips to the hospital during August. That really persistent bug plus the MS just overwhelmed my immune system and I couldn’t really function. Some weird stuff. They’ve found some new problems in my stomach, they want to check me for new brain/spine lesions, and of course, my thyroid/checking in for carcinoid too. I’m doing a little better now (more nausea meds plus a new antibiotic for the bug) but it’s a reminder that I have to appreciate the good days, and find a way not to lose hope during the bad ones. I have so many doctor appointments and tests coming up…sigh. Sometimes I feel I have no identity outside of “weird sick person.” When I’m in a bad spell, sometimes it feels like “normal” will never come back.

Here’s a dahlia from our garden to remind us of (hopefully) better days to come…

Talking Apocalypse

But on the plus side, after having to cancel a reading the day after I got out of  the hospital, I took a whole bunch of prescription drugs and set out to conquer the world – two days after.

Brick & Mortar Books in Redmond hosted a panel on apocalypses, including me, YA author (The Last One) Alexandria Oliva, and Gather the Daughters author Jennie Melamed, last night. It was great – a good sized audience, great questions, and the two other authors were wonderful. I was so happy that I turned a corner –  I was really nervous I’d have to cancel. It was a nice reminder that I am more than just a sick person or a super mutant patient of a bunch of specialists.

It was also nice to sell some copies of Field Guide to the End of the World, talk to other writers about writing, and talk to an audience about the joys of poetry. Things that remind me of the good parts of being a writer.  Today I got an acceptance in my inbox of two poems, which was a nice reminder, too, that it the middle of what feels like an endless stretch of bad, there might be good things waiting. Wishing you a similar promise of good things to come.

 

 

 

Making Peace with a Body at Odds with Your Life Goals

Hummingbird in fuchsias

When Your Body’s at Odds with Your Life Goals

This last week I haven’t been able to do much, by which I mean, move, shower, or leave the house. I got an infection which triggered my MS symptoms and my body does not want to work. It does not want to eat, sleep, or move around properly. I feel nauseous all the time. I can’t concentrate. My legs give out from under me at random times. I’m so frustrated because, yes, my body is at odds with my life goals.

Friends who have perfect health, good for you. Please enjoy it. Everyone else, what can we do? Yesterday a friend was reading downtown at Open Books, but instead of being there, I was sleeping. It was a perfectly beautiful day outside, which is saying something for Seattle – 75 degrees and sunny. My flowers were blooming. The hot air balloons went up and down in the morning and evening. I was surrounded by beauty. I just couldn’t do anything with it.

How to Accept Your Losses

I’ve always been an A-type, goal-oriented human. The problem with that is when you can’t achieve your goals, do you consider yourself a failure? Do you forgive your body for betraying you? I think the trick is to enjoy and appreciate the moments when you can do things, and the rest of the time, you have to be okay with the fact that your body isn’t going to work all the time. Which is tough. We live in a society that values doing things, not being things. I used to, for instance, earn good money as a tech-writing manager. Not anymore – I’m lucky to break 15K a year as a writer and editor these days. (Just being realistic, people. This was also true when I was working as an adjunct!) Am I worth less as a person because I make less money? I’m still writing. I still send work out to be published, just maybe not as fast. The poet in me says: this downtime is allowable. It does not make you less of a poet. But the A-type, goal-oriented part of me says: what are you even good for these days? It is angry that I’m not able to do even simple things every day – go to a bookstore, or a garden, or hike by a waterfall – that bring me joy. I can’t socialize every day anymore.  Those feel like losses to me. I love my friends, my spouse, my garden and my cats, all of whom have put up with me in my new, broken condition – one that is fragile, and somewhat unpredictable. I need to be able to accept my new condition as well.

This has made me think about Emily Dickinson, who was home-bound for most of her adult life. She didn’t get out much, although single women couldn’t do as much in her day even if she had been totally well, which some historians thinks she was not. She did have a fabulous garden and greenhouse (concreted over by the next owners of that property, by the way, to make tennis courts – the shame!) She famously wrote a poem about what might make a life worth living (“If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking”) so I think she also struggled with, having not attained publication or fame during her lifetime, and not getting married or having a family (women in those days didn’t have much chance of having any type of career) seeing herself as a failure, coming up with coping mechanisms for not being able to achieve her goals. “Victory Comes Late” is one of my favorite of her poems, because it deals with bitterness and loss from the perspective of achieving goals, but late and at a time when it no longer brings a thrill. (Did she foresee her own post-life fame, I wonder?)

Moving Forward

So, how does one move forward with this? I know that I have good days and bad days, and I’ve had a pretty bad, say, month. I know that MS can be worse in the summer, and that has definitely been the case for me. So I have to roll back some of my expectations. It’s beautiful outside, but I’m lucky that I can enjoy some of that from my deck, where I can watch over my flowers and birds (and occasionally, rabbits and deer.) There are a lot of things I’d like to do – take a day trip up to Port Townsend, go downtown more often to see art or poetry readings, or just see the rose garden at the Woodland Park Zoo, or the lavender fields. I miss those things. But I have hope that I’ll have more good days again, that I’ll get this MRI on Tuesday (checking my brain and spine for more lesions) and see my neurologist and maybe those will give me some answers. I pray (and also donate money that support this cause) that they are going to find an MS cure soon. They are working on new drugs – because most of the ones that exist, sadly, don’t work very well (40 percent or less effectiveness, which is not great) or have terrible side effects – like death, or cancer. I hope they get some new drugs soon that help people like me that struggle to do their everyday things. I’m working hard to find a new primary care doc that doesn’t just blow me off or get overwhelmed by my complexity. In the meantime – I will continue to do the things I can. I will try to forgive my body on the days when it’s hard work just getting out of bed.  I still have goals – writing, submitting, getting out in the world – even trying to edit or review books when I can – I just have to accept that some of the time, my goals have to be smaller and more manageable, or not depend on the “zing” of accomplishment to feel okay about my life. I have to be okay with my hummingbirds seen from a window, the undependable nature of flowers, blooming or getting eaten by deer, variously. The hot air balloons a symbol in the distance of lightness and movement, of hope.

 

New Review of PR for Poets, Hot Streaks, Hot Air Balloons, and Blood Moons

Hot Streaks, a New PR for Poets Review and Blood Moons

Hello from hot and muggy Seattle, where our Blood Moon looked fantastic because of the fire pollution up and down the West Coast, and of course, fire pollution from Siberia (!) We are supposed to get a break in the hot weather soon, which can’t come soon enough for me. I’ve started to dream at night about Antarctica trips and outer space.

Thank you to Carey Taylor at The Poetry Department blog for this brand new review of PR for Poets! If you haven’t got your copy of PR for Poets yet, summer is a great time to plan your promotion for the rest of the year.

Hot Air Balloons, Rejections and Slowing Down Time

I’ve been rendered house-bound for a while (except for doctor’s visits) with severe MS symptoms during the hot streak and a sprained ankle, so in the meantime I’ve been dreaming of escape, taking pictures of hot air balloons, our beautiful eerie moons, and birds. I’ve also been working on revising my sixth book manuscript. I only have it out to a few places, but received a rejection yesterday. Part of the job, I know, but still, discouraging. I’ve been searching for a good new primary doc, too, without success (the last one wasn’t afraid of my complexity, but said I’d do better with a doctor who was connected to the major medical databases and a major hospital. I guess she’s right.) Rejection all around! And meanwhile, the muggy, airless heat wave continues.

During the evenings when it’s a little cooler I’ve been watching the hot air balloons that rise and fall right around our house. I’ve also had plenty of time to watch my flowers struggle with the sun, the birds fighting over seeds and hummingbird feeders, and discover a new flowering tree in the back yard I’d never noticed before. The day we had a nearby fire, this flicker perched on top of one of our birch trees and just sat, beak in the air, for over an hour. So strange. Time moves slowly when you’re not feeling well – I’ve been trying to fill the time with reading encouraging writing books, watching stand-up on Netflix (I recommend “Elder Millennial,” if for nothing else than the ten minute bit that I swear was inspired by the Melusine myth, which I wrote about in my first book, Becoming the Villainess, in the poem “The Monster Speaks: It’s Not So Bad”) and, well, lots of sleep and fluids. Not the most glamorous summertime activities.

I am wishing us all less fire, fewer heat waves and rejections, and enough time to enjoy the good things about summertime.

Heat Waves and Poetry Scandals, Poetry Writer Dates, and Sending Out Work in the Summer

End of July Heat Waves and Poetry Scandals

How are you holding up in the heat? We’ve had literal weeks of 90 degree weather here in Woodinville, which is welcome to leave any time (although it’s not supposed to get cooler for a while.) I love being outside but right now even my sunflowers are wilting from too much sun!

I’ve been laying a little low while dealing with MS symptom misery, but not low enough to avoid reading about scandal after scandal this week! A woman scams the literary world (and I mean, why would you target the literary community? It’s a community without a lot of money. Go pick on a richer group! And she was particularly targeting feminist writers. Did I mention I think I was Facebook friends with her at some point in the past?) And another literary agent was just accused of fraud, even writing fake letters with offers from presses to writers she worked with. Yikes! Writers beware, indeed.
And a terrible poem that offended about just about every group that exists was published and that also caused a scandal. (Note: Persona poetry is not a crime, but maybe try to avoid taking the identity of someone who might be underrepresented…Also, it was not a good persona poem because it relied too much on obvious cliches…The editors of the magazine involved are really nice, hyper-socially-aware writers, which begs the question of…well, hey, even good editors have off days…) I tried to avoid getting too involved in the scandal and gossip maelstrom on Twitter etc. It is funny how many people would rather get together and hate on a poem than ever ever talk about something positive about a different poem. Ah well. Such is social media. Which brings me to the importance of in-person writer time!

Poetry Writer Dates

Much more uplifting – real life time spent with real life writers! Spent a whole lovely day with Kelli Russell Agodon talking about our latest poetry manuscripts, the poetry world, and, bonus, I got a 20-minute Instagram tutorial on hashtags (which I needed because I am still so clueless on Instagram.) Glenn put out strawberry cupcakes and sparkling rose from the winery next door and it was just so nice to relax and spend time with another writer one-on-one. Plus, I was able to tackle my manuscript revisions the next day, so now I feel like I have a better, more complete version of my manuscript to send out.

Glenn and I drove Kels down to the Edmonds ferry and hung out on the beach to watch her leave. The sunset was beautiful and the breeze off the Puget Sound was perfect.

Sending Out Work in the Summer

Yes, go out and enjoy the flowers and good things the summer offers that the rest of the year doesn’t. For me, I love watching the hot air balloons go up and down at sunrise and sunset around Woodinville, and getting to watch gardens at their loveliest – right now, the lavender and roses are loving the heat.  Yes, of course, summer is the perfect time for taking the chunks of downtime to revise a manuscript or even a few poems and stories, a great time to rest and restore and create, but did you know it’s also a really good time to send out work? Not as many places are open to submissions, true, but the ones that are get fewer submissions because people don’t schedule in a ton of submission time this season. A few great presses are open for submissions right now. Plus, more writers have the endorphins from vacations, time spent outside, and sunshine to help them deal with rejections. Check out Entropy’s list of place to submit during the summer months…It’s easy to let a whole month slip by without sending out work. Make sure you send out at least once before July ends!

Happy end of July! Wishing us slightly cooler temperatures and plenty of ice cream!

Goldfinch and Sunflowers, Thanks to the Coil, and Celebrations

July, the Season of Goldfinch and Sunflowers, The Coil, and Revelations

Happy Mid-July! It’s the season of sunflowers and goldfinch appearances, my 24th anniversary, my husband’s birthday, and a summer bug that kept me down a bit last week.

But I am happy to thank The Coil and Leah Angstman for including my poem “When It All Falls Apart” in this week’s literary roundup (which includes many amazing literary stars.) Check it out!

Late edition: Thank you to Colleen Anderson for including my poem Revelations in the latest issue of Eye to the Telescope. (You’ll need to scroll down a little bit to find it.)

In other news, we had a low-key celebration of our anniversary, but I wanted to post a picture. Glenn and I bought a “poetry chandelier” a few years ago and every time he puts up poems from my newest manuscript, the book seems to get taken.

Poetry Chandeliers, Anniversaries and Birthdays, Taking a Little Time to Celebrate

So for our anniversary this year, he put up poems from my latest manuscript along with fancy cherry blossom paper. It casts a blueish glow over the room which is nice when it’s 90 degrees (whew!) outside. Now it’s only a matter of magic and time til a publisher picks it up, I’m certain!

Here’s what it looks like.

So I’ve been mostly resting, avoiding the heat, and writing and submitting (painstakingly slowly) and working on revising my book manuscript. Summer always seems to go by too quickly and at the same time too slowly? How is it already mid-July?

July is a good time to get together one-on-one with friends, to appreciate the little beauties around us, to maybe make peach ice cream or learn one more grill-out recipe to share. We just celebrated Glenn’s birthday with my little brother and sister in law drinking cider, eating grilled-duck tacos and spent the end of a warm evening watching the hot air balloons going up in Woodinville. The goldfinch showed himself off too.

So, be sure to enjoy your summer, be sure to enjoy the little things, take advantage of downtime to do things you forget to do during the rest of the year – watch the birds, water your garden, drink something cold outside. Read some poetry and be kind to your little poems as you revise and refresh. It’s a good time to go a little easier on ourselves.

 

 

Poets in the Park Report, Summertime Revising Season, and MS Energy Conservation

Summer is the Season of Revision

Hope you all had a good holiday week. I spent a good deal of the holiday sick as a dog with an upper respiratory thing, which meant we stayed home and listened to locals shooting fireworks from noon to midnight. I took the opportunity (as I was not able to sleep much) to revise my sixth manuscript again. Last time I went through it very carefully and didn’t find anything to cut. This time I was like, “Why are these six poems even in this manuscript” and found the same poem in two different places. Sigh. But the good things about the relative downtime of summer is that it releases the time for revision, which I don’t know about you, but I usually need to do quite a bit of.

On the plus side, my roses are finally flourishing now that the deer have for some reason stopped eating them. I surrounded all of them with edible herbs, like thyme and rosemary, which seems to have helped deter the cute but pesky flower-eaters. The hummingbirds are still going crazy now that the dry season has finally started – I did manage to catch a rainbow a couple of days ago during a brief storm. I love rain in the summertime. Where I grew up in Tennessee, there was a brief rainstorm almost every afternoon in the summer. And it was always wonderful – you could smell the air getting cleaner and the flowers being happy.

Poets at the Park in Redmond – a Delight

I managed to cold-medicine myself up and make it to my PR for Poets talk and reading with Jack Straw at the yearly Redmond poetry festival Poets in the Park. It was great opportunity to reconnect with old friends (especially a few I hadn’t seen in a while) and hear poetry and sell some books. The PR for Poets talk was crowded and people asked a lot of really good questions. The reading part – I read some new poems as well as a couple from Field Guide to the End of the World on the subject of resilience seemed to go well, except I need to remember that reading while standing makes my MS symptoms really act up – vertigo, the shakes, even trouble breathing (!) Reading while sitting seems to not bring these on, which my neurologist explained was because trying to keep your balance when you have brain damage in your brain stem and balance center takes quite a bit of work, so the other stuff gets a little iffy while you’re doing it. A reminder to me that I need to ask for a chair at readings from now on. I don’t want to fall on anyone and then get a rumor started that I’m a drunk or something. (I can’t even drink so that would be a very unfair rumor!)

MS Energy Conservation Lession #212

I got to see my friend Natasha Moni read at Poets in the Park, as well as the new Washington state Poet Laureate Claudia Luna and Jack Straw alums. I wish I could have stayed longer, and done more socializing, but even that three hours and a half made me super shaky and exhausted. Right. So. Trying to remember to keep that MS energy meter thing controlled. Energy conservation seems to be a repeated lesson I am not good at learning. Especially in the summer time, because, in case you ever have any friends with MS, it’s a struggle because heat, sun and humidity all increase MS symptoms. Which I remember because, that’s right, this is exactly the time last year I was in the hospital and I couldn’t walk, talk, or swallow. So at least I’m better than that, but management is still something I have to continuously remember.

So today I am taking it easy, resting in an air conditioned room, and quietly reading and writing – not even watching any television. Staying cool and quiet seems to help the MS symptoms recede a bit. It’s really like a miniature lesson in life balance that becomes super annoying really quickly. LOL. I have a meditation app on my phone now (no eye rolling) and practice things like breathing and balance (the literal kind) on these down days, too. Oh and sip things like watermelon juice and take extra vitamins. Man. If I didn’t get to visit with you at the festival, I’m sorry, and please feel free to shoot me an e-mail. I’m much better one on one these days anyway! I’m pretty sure I’m behind on some paperwork (backed up grant paperwork, e-mails, blurbs, and etc) so if I owe you something, please remind me. I’m just a little slower at getting things done these days, and I guess that’s the new normal, especially in summer. The forced slow-down does give you something, I’ll give you that – I pay much more attention to little things like the garden and my birds and the texture of a piece of clothing or the taste of something as simple as juice. You check in with yourself and your body more, too – am I cold or hot? Am I thirsty? Do I need to nap? It’s like advanced accelerated AP self-care but instead of grades you just get zapped with a million symptoms if you fail. I bet a lot of people with a chronic illness feel this way – if I don’t do everything carefully, slowly and meaningfully, my body will spiral into some kind of terrible disaster zone. Anyway, if you’re out there reading this, I feel you. I’m going through the same things. We have to adjust our expectations, the pace of our lives, even the breadth of our ambitions to make money, be successful, be a great friend/spouse/etc. We have to accept the lessons without fighting against them every day. It’s tough. It’s revision on steroids, revising your life to just the simplest, most necessary things. Sometimes I want to be able to do things like a poetry festival appearance, but I have to remember that before and after, I’ll need a ton of rest. Resist, resilience, revise, refresh, rest.

Poems in Tinderbox, a New Review of PR for Poets, a new Poetry Star, and Summer Downtime

Tinderbox Poems

Thank you to Tinderbox Poetry Journal, its new issue has two new poems from me, the apocalyptic When It All Falls Apart and Almost April, the story of how I was almost named April and instead was named after Joan of Arc or Jeanne d’Arc. It’s a great new grouping of poems, including poems by friends of mine like Jason McCall, Sally Rosen Kindred and Lena Khalaf Tuffaha.

A New Review of PR for Poets at the Handy Uncapped Pen

Thank you to J.R. Jackson for this new review of PR for Poets at the Handy Uncapped Pen, which is a blog with great resources for disabled and neurologically divergent writers.

A New Star of the Literary World

Remember how I posted last time about having poems in the new issue of Prairie Schooner? And I posted a picture of kitten Sylvia holding the issue? Well, guess who was the cover girl of the latest Prairie Schooner e-newsletter? Now someone’s poetry-famous!

Here’s a hint:

Well, she’s going to be impossible to live with, now that she’s “poetry-famous.” I did tell her “poetry-famous” is not the same as “Instagram-famous” or “real-famous.” But cats don’t always get those kinds of nuances.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Summer Rain, Summer Virus, Summer Downtime

While a heat wave hits the rest of the US, Seattle’s been cold and rainy for a week – I actually went out and snapped these two pictures from my garden in the rain!

Along with the rain, I’ve caught some nasty upper respiratory virus thing – sore throat, aches, stuffiness – which has left me totally wiped out. Between that and the rain, I’ve slept way too much (MS, stress, and viruses are a bad match for my immune system – it’s like, oh, I give up!) but managed to work a little bit on my latest book manuscript, send out a couple of submissions, read a little poetry (for fun! not just for reviewing!) and dealt with a flurry of “business” e-mails about upcoming readings, publications, etc and rescheduling doctors and dentists that I had put off while my dad was in the hospital. If I still owe you something, please remind me.

Usually the summertime brings a flurry of activity to my part of the country, people desperate to get outdoors and in the brief season of sun,  and usually also unofficially doesn’t start until the day after July 4 – and this kind of weather is why. By next weekend we’re supposed to be back in the sunny seventies, and I hope I’m over this cold/MS double-hit by then! I’m not a sun-lover – MS folks are supposed to avoid sun and heat, and I was allergic to the sun since I was a kid (hence my lovely vampire-esque complexion, LOL.) But the long string of grey days gave me time to think about how I’m spending my time, how much time I should give to political activism vs arguing politics on social media, to dealing with insurance/prescription/medical-related nonsense (it could literally take over my entire life if I let it, but it’s dangerous to ignore it) and writing new work vs revision vs manuscript shaping vs submitting vs writing. How much time I can afford to spend alone in nature, which seems to me to be restorative both health-wise and spiritually. I’m usually a go-go-go type of girl, but MS has taken a bit of that out of me, and being a bit slower and more deliberate hasn’t actually really made my life worse, though I often feel frustrated by not “getting enough done.” I have to quit judging my life by the amount I get done, and start appreciating the good things that happen without a deadline, outside of time.

Poems in Prairie Schooner, Poets in the Park, A Summer Twitter #PoetParty and More

Sylvia poses with Prairie Schooner

Taking a Break for Poetry

It’s been such a terrible week, I’ve been so frustrated I’ve not only called my representatives and donated but have been posting political things on Facebook (a recipe for disaster, eh?) in the hopes some of the people in my family and circles who are republicans or moderates might see “the light.”

Poems in Prairie Schooner

But there are still good things. A wonderful new issue of Prairie Schooner came in the mail. The issue starts with wonderful poems by Alicia Ostriker, and if you look, it has two poems from me as well in there somewhere (“Self-Portrait as February Morning,” and “When I Thought I Was Dying It Was Easy”) I really enjoyed reading the whole issue, which contained some truly inspired work (and a few pieces from friends – always welcome!)

Strawberry Moons and Poet Parties on Twitter

Yesterday there was a beautiful full moon and sunset over Mt. Rainier. I didn’t catch the Strawberry moon early enough to get its rosy hue but it was still ghostly in the clouds. It’s been gloomy – like my mood, like the news – the last few days, I’ve been fighting off a virus going around, and catching up on reading and writing after last week’s debacle.

This upcoming Sunday I’m hosting a special Twitter #PoetParty (6 PM Pacific, 9 PM Eastern) with guest Dr. Erika Dreifus of the Practicing Writing Blog, where we’ll be talking about places to send in the summertime (and more!) So bring your questions, follow the hashtags and we’ll lose ourselves in poetry talk for a few minutes.

 

Poets in the Park 2018

And speaking of losing ourselves in poetry for a while, Redmond’s Poets in the Park festival is coming up July 7 at Anderson Park! I’ll be giving a talk at 1 PM on PR for Poets, and I’m part of a reading at 3 PM with Jack Straw current poets and alumni. It should be fun – see here for more information!  It is one of the best events that happens on the East side of Seattle, just for poetry. If you’ve never been come out! Redmond’s full of trendy ice-cream and indie coffee shops now.

PR for Poets And America and Poetry and All

Besides giving a talk on the subject next week at the Poets in the Park festival, in the new issue of Poets & Writers (the one with Terrance Hayes on the cover) which also features a fascinating interview with fiction writer Lauren Groff, there is hidden inside a real-live ad for PR for Poets.

And I also had a nice feature on The Book Connection with a little excerpt from PR for Poets.

I’m still waiting to hear about my sixth book manuscript which is still out with a few publishers. (It has been out with one publisher for a year and six months now!) I had a few acceptances for poems that came in to balance out a month or so of straight rejections. I know this is not the most important thing on the landscape – not even on my own landscape. My father’s still slowly recovering from pneumonia, my own MS likes to act up every time it gets hot, reminding me “I’m still here,” the news is full of shootings again, of bad men being in power doing bad things. It made me think of Langston Hughes “Let America Be America Again” with its powerful refrain “America never was America to me.” Can America be made better? Can we get good people to care and to vote for good people? Can some kind of conscience spring up and be stronger than the lowest common denominator, prejudice and money? Maybe America was never that great. But I know it can be better than it is right now.

After the Storm, and a New Review of PR for Poets

After the Storm, Pt 1

Thank you to everyone for their good thoughts last week. My dad is finally home from the hospital and recovering slowly. I feel like I can breathe a little easier. The shot is from Seattle’s Japanese Garden, solstice edition. Only a few blooms left – water lilies and water iris are the last things to bloom at the Japanese garden – so hurry out and get a look.

Besides my dad being in the hospital, having multiple specialist appointments last week, we had a nightmare storm of terrible government stuff – children being locked in abandoned Walmarts, parents having no idea where their children were taken or when they would be reunited, etc – it was just a rough week. My MS symptoms acted up and I had to take a break from Facebook (although I was able to contact my local representatives. Letter writing is old-fashioned but effective!) I also had to wrangle problems with not getting essential MS prescriptions for added fun (and the mere thought of switching PCPs is stressing me out.)

New Review of PR for Poets

And I woke up today to a lovely new review of PR for Poets up at Suko’s Notebook, part of the Poetic Book Tour. This one was particularly interesting to me because it provided the perspective of a non-poet on the book! It was a really thoughtfully-written review.

After the Storm, Pt II

Today is cool and rainy, after a beautiful solstice weekend punctuated by another thunderstorm last night. I got a couple of shots of late June blooms, goldfinch visitors, and Glenn and I taking a short break from the stress of last week at one of my favorite local retreats, the Japanese Gardens.

I’m catching up with correspondence from last week and my reading, including the new issue of Poets & Writers (I especially enjoyed the interview with Lauren Groff and the feature on Terrance Hayes) and an interesting book called Light the Dark: Writers on Creativity, Inspiration, and the Artistic Process. Essays by some problematic writers are included (inc. Sherman Alexie and Junot Diaz) but essays by Aimee Bender, Roxane Gay, Elizabeth Gilbert and many others made this an easy and inspirational read, and I needed a little bit of that after last week. Plus I liked the title. I actually wrote a poem and worked on my sixth poetry manuscript and sent it out to a new place. And we had a friend’s good news to celebrate – Natasha Moni won the Floating Bridge Press Prize this year, so looking forward to seeing that!

What a Difference a Year Makes

I actually meditated on the differences between last year’s solstice – still reeling from a stage IV liver cancer diagnosis, right before the MS flare that sent me to the hospital and left me house-bound for several months with problems eating, talking, and walking and this year’s – relatively calm, despite the first paragraph of this post. Last solstice, I had a coyote sighting on my street – this year, it was a pair of quail and an immature eagle, and seeing a turtle laying eggs in the Japanese garden. I’m learning, slowly, how to manage symptoms, avoiding MS triggers like stress and heat, and after having to be “up” for a day, taking a day of rest. Being thankful that my liver tumors have been “stable.” I’ve learned to appreciate the good days, the small things like the visits of goldfinches and hummingbirds, time spent talking poetry with a friend. I’ve also learned I have to prioritize things that bring joy, because life will certainly bring you enough stress and pain, so it’s important to take an afternoon to just focus on writing, on one other person, or on the changes of the seasons. I am trying to schedule these things in between the necessary evils.  I’m trying not to get overwhelmed by the dark.

Crisis Mode, My review of Oceanic up at the Rumpus, Redactions New Issue, Lit World Gender Representation, Crisis Mode Again

Purple iris in Willows Lodge back garden

Crisis Mode

Hey guys, it’s beautiful outside but I’ve been in crisis mode since my last post. My Dad’s been in the hospital with pneumonia and he hasn’t been let out yet. It’s tough – I’ve had pneumonia a bunch of times, so I kind of know how it goes, but he’s older and has never had pneumonia before, so it’s all new to him. It’s also the fact that I’m stuck here while he’s across the country but MS makes it tough to travel. Dang.

Also, of course, the heartbeat of tragedy in our country as young children are put into cages and ignored and lost. This cannot be ignored.

What can I do about either situation? It feels like very little. Not enough.

 

 

Oceanic Review in The Rumpus and New Issue of Redactions

In good news, my review of Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s newest book from Copper Canyon, Oceanic, is up at The Rumpus. Oceanic is a wonderful book to read right now – both intense, crisis-minded and hopeful.

The newest issue of Redactions is out – and several friends are in there with me, including Steve Mueske and Kelli Russell Agodon. My poem, “Grief Language,” was about trying to put into words my feelings about the terminal cancer diagnosis I received eighteen months ago. Here’s a picture of Sylvia, my kitten, a vase of sweetpeas, and the new issue, all together.

I’m still waiting to hear from several presses about my latest book manuscript, which deals with the cancer diagnosis and then the MS diagnosis, along with apocalyptic news and weather events. I’m hoping my sixth poetry book finds a home soon. And the VIDA numbers just came out this year, which actually made me feel depressed this year – not enough representation for women, for women of color, for the disabled. Come on, literary community – you need to do better. I’m thinking about where I’m spending money on lit mags and books more carefully these days – who am I supporting?

More Crisis Mode

So, it’s been beautiful but hot here – record-breaking heat across most of the country, which is very bad for MS patients, who are warned to avoid heat. So I’ve been dutifully going to specialist appointments every day this week and last week, trying to avoid going out during the beautiful sunny days as much as possible, not stress out about the state of the country or my Dad’s health (because stress also brings on MS symptoms – whoops!)

It makes me think about how Americans deal with the moral crises going on in their country now, how close we are to creating new internment camps like America did in World War II for the Japanese-Americans, like the Germans did for the folks in their community who were too Jewish, too Catholic, or just didn’t fall in line enough. Remember no one really put up a fuss in either situation. Who knows how ashamed they were afterwards? I think now might be a good time to put up a fuss. We still have freedom of speech and we should use it. Call your congressperson, or write to them, and don’t let your Trump-voting friends get away with parroting lies about how they’re “just carrying out the law” or how the Bible justifies it (I’m a former Sunday School teacher who knows the Bible back and forth, and I can saw without the equivocation that it does not. And a lot of Christians agree with me.) It’s unacceptable. And who are we as poets if we don’t agitate at least a little? I mean. It’s sort of our job. We are supposed to remind people of souls, empathy, human capacity for good or evil.

In this body, which has become increasingly fragile as I age, I worry I can’t do enough – for others, for my country, for my dad. What can my contribution be? Well, I can at least not stay silent. I can at least let my politicians who care about my vote know where I stand. I can let my Dad know I’m thinking of him with care-packages and advice. I feel like I’m on the verge of yelling or crying almost all the time these days. None of it is enough. I can write my way through it – probably the only thing I feel competent to do right now.

How do you get through Crisis Mode? How do you take care of yourself and still help take care of the world? How do you, as a poet feel we should respond?

Jeannine Hall Gailey

Jeannine Hall GaileyJeannine 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.

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