Here’s where I’ll be this week – if you’re around, come out and say hi!

Tuesday, October 3 – Bowling Green, Kentucky. Jeannine Hall Gailey is reading from her new book, Becoming the Villainess, at Western Kentucky University at 7 PM, Room 125 in Cherry Hall.
(PS – A short hour’s drive from Nashville, Tennessee!)

Friday, October 6, 2006 – Cincinnati, Ohio. 4 PM – Jeannine Hall Gailey reads from her new book, Becoming the Villainess, at the Elliston Poetry Room in Langsam Library at the University of Cincinnati

Also, there’s a little newspaper article about the readings:
http://news.communitypress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060927/NEWS01/609270677/1062/Loca
I’m not sure I said all those quotes – especially the last one – in exactly that way, but overall, I thought the writer did a very nice job.

Think good thoughts for me maintaining health – I’m on a couple of antibiotics right now, and struggling to get better from a mean chest/throat/eye infection, and air travel is always iffy for me anyway, I catch everything. Does this happen to anyone else before readings? It’s like your body knows…

Well, it’s no poetry bus, but I am going to be doing a bit of a book tour for the month of October…Wish me luck!
Here’s the schedule: On Saturday the 30th I leave for Cincinnati. I stay there a day or so, getting adjusted to East Coast time and saying hi to family before driving to Bowling Green, Kentucky, to speak with Tom C. Hunley’s classes and do a reading at Western Kentucky University on October the 3rd. After that, I turn around and make the five-hour drive back to Cincinnati, attend a Shakespeare play-in-the-park with the family, and then read at University of Cincinnati on Friday October 6th. On Saturday, my parents are throwing a little book-party shindig at their place in Cinci, which should be a good opportunity to see some old friends. I fly back to Seattle on Sunday, then on Wednesday the 11th, I sneak down to Portland to do a reading with the imitable Laurel Snyder, courtesy of the excellent Burnside Review guys, at Portland State University. Then, the 21st, I go up to Bellingham, WA, near the Canadian border, to do a reading at Village Books with Martha Silano, my fellow Steel Toe Books author. Anyone besides me exhausted yet? I don’t know how those Poetry Bus people do it, driving to a different city every day and reading. With no showers!
I’ve been a little under-the-weather, which is why I haven’t posted, plus I had to have a little adrenal tumor CATscanned, which isn’t too traumatic, but I’m supposed to get the results this week, dan dan dannn, which leaves one a little nervous, even though it’s probably nothing. I’m taking lots of vitamin C to prevent any colds on the trip, and was very happy to wake up today and hear the news that the TSA is going to allow liquids (such as lip balm and hand lotion, bottled water, etc.) on planes again. It was just too terrible to contemplate flying with no water bottle and no lip balm. I know, I’m spoiled. I almost contemplated taking a train (from here to Chicago, and then to Cinci) but it was too expensive. Plus I’ve submitted several packets of poems, a couple of book manuscripts, and trying to do all last-minute errands.
I’m also trying to research the history of female savior characters in Japanese mythology and anime. If you have any theories about this subject, or know of any place to read about them, please post them. Miyazai in particular builds these great myths of female heroines and links them to Japanese tradition through historical references and fairy tale structures. But I’m linking this to the legend of Queen Pimiko (or Himiko) who was one of the first documented rulers of the early tribes of Japan, and also the legend of the sun goddess. The more I study this stuff, the more interested I get. I’m currently addicted to my stack of out-of-print books from the library.
In other news, congratulate Paul Guest, who is the monthly feature at Verse Daily!

I have to start out this post with other people’s good news:

A certain robot scientist WON the Made in Express contest – http://www.madeinexpresscontest.com/
Congrats!

Kate Greenstreet’s first book of poetry is out! I want a chance to review it.

Went to Kathleen Flenniken’s launch of her first book of poetry, Famous – her reading at Open Books was great (crowded!) and the party afterwards was rockin. Thanks Kathleen!

I’m in a tizzy trying to finish up numerous projects before I leave for my eight-day Midwestern book tour on September 30th (well, just Kentucky and Ohio!) I have to send out my third packet – including an updated thesis MS – to Pattiann, send out a couple of applications for grants, readings, and festivals before their upcoming due dates, send out my second book MS to some open reading periods and contests, send out some poems (I’ve been running behind on submissions) and I just agreed to help run a reading series on the East side of Seattle and maybe start an anthology project and…and…and….
Too late. I got exhausted just thinking about it and now I’m just going to go shower. See what happens to my momentum?
Actually I’ve been spending all my spare moments researching, trying to get ahold of obscure Japanese fairy tale index references and out of print Miyazaki interviews. I have this idea that adding quotes to my book manuscript will help readers make sense of it – it’s a collection of poems about Japanese fairy tales, especially non-human wives and rescuing older sisters, about Japanese anime heroines, and, you know, a little about me in there too (I’m the boring part!) I had my brother’s former Japanese professor take a look at it, and her husband told me he was really proud of me for knowing a certain myth – he had done a book report on the subject in grade school in Japan– that he said even most contemporary Japanese people don’t know anymore. This means I’m almost definitely sending out stuff that normal readers/judges will have no clue about. Obscurity much? Oh, and the chances of some random reader knowing Japanese mythology AND having a working knowledge of Miyazaki movies? Probably low. Why do I get obsessed with these subjects? Why can’t I just write about my nice life, walking along and seeing a cow (or, as in my real life, some cute baby otters!) and communicating the wonder of life? Or how about some nice love poems which are not in the voice of some kind of fox-bird changeling? I think I would have a much better chance if I did that. Well, I have to close my eyes and pray for an eccentric publisher to discover my brilliance. (Hahahhaahahahaha – insert other maniacal laughter here.)

I’ve been practicing lately a Japanese form called the Haibun, which was practiced by the hallowed poet Basho. It’s a delicate balancing act of prose plus poetry – a paragraph followed by a related haiku or tanka. I’m taking a very loose approach, of course, but trying to follow some of the principles just the same. For some interesting reading on Haibun and how to teach it in the classroom, check this.
Between these and writing prose poems, I don’t know how I can call myself a poet at all. Soon I will forget how to make a line break. I seem to be obsessed with story, (I love stories, but not retelling them – I just want them as kind of a metal frame) but my poems are getting more and more surreal, characters that act within the realm of a narrative but seem to want to find a way out of it. Personal, confessional poetry? I’d much rather play on the monkey bars of another world. Not that I mind reading other people’s personal/confessional work. Of course, all poems reveal something intimate about the writer, their obsessions, subconscious associations, etc. Whether we want them to or not. Hmm. It’s quite possible some of that theory from my MA program go through after all – I think I might be a sort of Jungian Deconstructionist. If that’s not too out of date. Who knows what the kids are calling it today – those kids and their rock and roll music!
I’m afraid this second book is shaping up to be weird with a capital W. This means it will probably have a hard time winning any contests, or getting by any committees.
Speaking of which, if you were going to start a press and wanted to forgo the usual contest route – which is usually the means by the publisher (possibly/usually penniless) of raising the money to print the book, would you prefer – open submissions where you paid a fee, which would get you a copy of the selected book when it came out? Open submissions, with fee, with commentary on the work by the editor/publisher? Or would you guys rather just have the little publisher run the usual $25 contest, send a copy of the book when it’s out, and get the thrill of the “winning?” Tough questions.
I have put myself on the waiting list for a large PO Box. I am scouting out web domains. I’ve retired from the editorial staff of Silk Road to focus on “new projects…”

{Update to previous post: Hey, guess who else showed up in the “Honorable Mentions” of the Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror? Aimee Nezhukumathathil!! Wow! Also, Albert Goldbarth. And the poet that reviewed my chapbook for The Pedestal Magazine, JoSelle Vanderhooft. There was only one poem chosen for the actual anthology, everything else was prose.}

First of all, go read Charles Jensen’s excellent post called “What Makes a Writer?” It talks about rejection in a very interesting way.

My anthology could beat up your anthology! Or at least beat it in Worlds of Warcraft…
I don’t know if this is news you should congratulate or mock me for…
Sure, we all know Reb Livingston made it into this year’s Best American Poetry – which we are all very happy for her about! Way to go, Reb! – but I got into The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror! A kind editor pointed out that he had seen my name in there, and sure enough, I went to the local bookstore and found the new 2006 edition, opened it up to the introduction, and in the section marked “Poetry,” the editors talked about my chapbook, “Female Comic Book Superheroes.” Four poems from the chapbook were listed as “Honorable Mentions” in the back as well – although my first name had lost one of its “n’s” So, anyway, this was a huge surprise! I don’t usually consider myself a fantasy and horror writer, but I’m going to go with the flow. Kelly Link, one of the editors, is one of my all-time favorite female writers, right up there with Atwood – if you haven’t read her short-story collection, Stranger Things Happen, you should go out and get it, it’s amazing.
I also had two acceptances – one from Sentence, who included a nice note about the poems I sent – and another from a magazine I just discovered, called The Magazine of Speculative Poetry.

I went to Susan Rich’s book launch reading and party for Cures Include Travel, her newest edition of poetry, at Elliot Bay Bookstore. The room was more full than I had ever seen it for a poetry reading, the crowd was very responsive, and the party afterwards – thrown by the women’s residency center Hedgebrook – was so crowded you could barely move. So, a happening event. Congrats, Susan!

If you’re in California, you might be able to hear my radio interview tomorrow night (Wednesday Sept. 6th at 8 PM) with JP Dancing Bear on his “Out of Our Minds” radio show on 91.5 FM out of Cupertino. Exciting! My first ever live radio interview. Tune in for scintillating revelations!

Last night, I got to go to Bumbershoot to see some readings from Wave Books and Copper Canyon (Erin Belieu, Matthew Zapruder, Arthur Zhe, and Eileen Myles) and hang out a little bit with the famous Poetry Bus Tour folks. A set of brave souls going by bus to fifty cities to do readings, picking up and dropping off poets along the way. Erin read from her new book, Black Box, and Eileen really blew me away with the new work she read, especially with a faux-sestina at the end. Good luck on your tour guys! Erin said she may be blogging about the tour for The Poetry Foundation’s journal-thing. She promised gossip!

A reminder for those of you females under 40 – the book prize just for you – Switchback Books’ Gatewood Contest has their final deadline on October 1, so submit!
Thanks to Editor-in-Chief Brandi Homan who has been graciously answering my many questions, I feel much more confident about launching my own little press in 2007.

And, fellow blogger poet Steve Mueske has his First Book Interview with Kate up now!

In other news, in the last seven days I have a. tripped and fallen down my stairs (damn flip-flop sandals!) b. seen the hilarious Little Miss Sunshine (go see it!) c. fallen even more in writer-crush with Margaret Atwood because of her interview in the September 2006 issue of British Harper’s Bazaar – she’s got a great answer to the interviewer’s question about why men feel comfortable reading her books.

Steve Irwin the Crocodile Hunter has passed away. It was very sad. He was only 44, about the age of my oldest brother. It was also one of the first times I ever saw the usually profane and insulting guys on the Aintitcool talkback boards actually write kind and moving words about another person. On the news, people kept announcing his death with a sort of “I told you so” sneer.

Good News Abounds!

Check out Aimee Nezkumathil’s interview in Kate’s First Book series – here’s a great quote – “I think little girls, especially, are trained early on to say sorry for everything: for being loud or too quiet, for being first, being last, for winning, for losing. But on the page, I know I can be as bold (or as nuanced) as I want to be. No apologies needed (unless they are to myself, during revision!).”

Tom C. Hunley (publisher of Steel Toe Books and a darn fine poet) and Steven Schroeder will both be featured on Verse Daily this week! (Tom’s poem Here!) (Steven’s poem Here!)

My friend Kathleen Flenniken will have a poem from her new book, Famous, on Poetry Daily this week on Friday.

Lana Ayers, another good friend, has a chapbook, “Love is a Weed,” now available from Finishing Line Press: http://www.finishinglinepress.com/2006newreleasesandforthcomingtitles.htm

Congrats to all of these great poets! We’ve got to celebrate 🙂

All right, friendly readers: I need your help. I’ve finally got myself organized to send out some submissions, but I’m flipping through my bookcase-o-lit-mags and wondering:
What are the best journals for prose poems? I haven’t really dallied with this form before but notice that many journals don’t publish these at all, or at least not often. I’ve already got Sentence on my list.
Tell me your picks! And a big thanks in advance!

I’ve got some new and welcome company at Steel Toe Books! Everyone congratulate Mary B!

The very cool Kate has an interview up with me at http://www.kickingwind.com/82006.html, where she has been interviewing poets about their first books. I’ve been following the interviews avidly for a while now, so I felt honored to be in the other poets’ company. I do think I sound much less sophisticated than the other poets. Read if you dare! (Warning: Anyone claiming there’s no such thing as robots may be a robot themselves.)