Blurbs and Friends’ Good News
Interested in reading the blurbs for the back of She Returns to the Floating World?
Well, just wait for a second. First of all, let me congratulate my good friend Felicity Shoulders about her Nebula Award nomination for her story in Asimov’s, “Conditional Love.” Pretty kick-ass for a girl who just celebrated her 30th birthday, right? You can listen to her story in podcast form here.
OK, now for the blurbs. I’m so excited, particularly because all these blurbers are personal heroes of mine (if you’re a fan of studies of Japanese pop culture, check out Roland Kelts’ book; if you’re interested in some fantastic editing of fairy-tale lit and fairy-tale-related art, check out Terri Windling’s work; Sandra and Aimee are of course amazing poets!) Soon, I’ll be able to post the cover, which is so looking awesome.
Blurbs for She Returns to the Floating World…
“I deeply admire the skill with which Jeannine Hall Gailey weaves myth and folklore into poems illuminating the realities of modern life. Gailey is, quite simply, one of my favorite American poets; and She Returns to the Floating World is her best collection yet.”
—Terri Windling, writer, editor, and artist (editor, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror series and collections like The Armless Maiden, as well as The Endicott Studio)
“Kin to the extraordinary pillow book of tenth-century Japanese court poet Sei Shōnagon, Jeannine Hall Galley has created her own collection of extraordinary myths, fables, and folktales for the twenty-first century . Fed by scholarship, a passion for animé, and a singular, brilliant imagination, this poet designs female heroes who challenge and transform our quotidian lives.”
—Sandra Alcosser, author of Except by Nature
“The poems in Gailey’s highly anticipated second collection mesmerize the reader with its glimmering revisitations of myth that explore love and desire via the most unexpected conduits: foxes, robots, and the “kingdom of animé.” She Returns to the Floating World is a captivating gathering of poems written with the rare but immense knowledge of (the) matters of the heart and the often-ecstatic natural world. Gailey illuminates our place within myth with stunning precision and the awareness of what it really means to be fully alive with the ones you love.”
—Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of At the Drive-in Volcano and Lucky Fish
“These poems fuse figures and narratives from Japanese myths and folklore, Shinto spirits, philosophy and popular culture to explore the nexus between the spiritual and the sensual, places where the act of touching is both metaphorical and sometimes violently, painfully physical. Amid musings on the darker corners of Japan’s postwar legacy are flashes of the humor born of perseverance. Even Godzilla has a cameo.”
—Roland Kelts, author of Japanamerica
Now, to hunker down for a snow day tomorrow. And I’ve got books to review (Dana Levin’s Sky Burial and Erika Meitner’s Makeshift Instructions for Vigilant Girls – pretty great reading, don’t you think?)
The haibun on Ploughshares (and a poem from my second book!)
I’m in love with a Japanese poetry form called the haibun. I teach it in my poetry class at National, I’ve taught it at poetry conferences, and if you’re around long enough, I’ll probably try to get you to write one.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil has a wonderful post covering the basics of haibun on the Plougshares blog and kindly used one of the poems, “The Fox-Wife Describes Her Courtship,” from my upcoming second book from Kitsune Books, She Returns to the Floating World, as an example. Thanks for the shout out, Aimee! I appreciate it and I’m glad to have more props for this very cool (and surprisingly contemporary-feeling despite its ancient origins) poetic form. When can we make an awesome haibun anthology?
Confession: I’ve never been much for a rhyme scheme but somehow syllable counts don’t bother me. Another confession: if you read through my second book and pay close attention, you’ll notice a lot of the poems are in syllabic forms. Am I becoming a secret semi-formalist? The answer: no, probably not.
