All right, feeling more myself, finally. Went to a fun reading last night by Elizabeth Austen and Christine Deavel at the new-age shop (with a great stage) SoulFood Books. I finally got some work done, yay! Maybe the lull in August is normal – after all, it seems like about 5,000 things start being due in September – job openings, book contests, lit mags, grant applications.

Any techies still out there reading this blog? If so, you may want to vote in the Made in Express contest where all the contestents (all men, by the way, what’s up, women of technology?) have created their own cool little projects, including a very interesting robot project. Disclosure: One of the contestents may be related to me. Hint: my father is a robot scientist. I’ll leave the rest up to you.
http://www.madeinexpresscontest.com/finalists.asp

Next, two items in the “Crass Commercial World o’ Poetry” Department…oh, the cynicism…

This note on What the Hell is Up With Your Author Photo…How much should we stress out over those book photos anyway? Well…see this article from Writer’s Digest…writersdigest.com/articles/hogan_bookjacket.asp
It talks about how a magazine sent out a post to PR reps for publishers in NYC asking to see pics of an “Attractive female writer, aged 25-35” for a feature they were doing. Which seems like style before substance, no? On the plus side, this matters more for multi-million selling fiction writers that poets.

Also, I saw an interesting ad somewhere for a $600 conference for first poetry book manuscripts, where participants got to hang out with key publishing folks (publishers from Four Way, Alice James, Tupelo, etc) and got manuscript critiques. It seems like it’s a lot cheaper option than an MFA for folks who are just trying to get a first book out there and don’t care about teaching. What do you guys think of this? Is it a trend? Do you think it’s worth it? I probably would have considered something like this, when I was pondering the big scary poetry publishing world four or five years ago and felt like a clueless outsider…

Been feeling down because of the whole, general state-of-the-world problems – you know, problems I can’t fix or control, like terrorism and flying and war. I know some people are like, turn off the news, you’ll feel better, but I know the bad is still out there, waiting. I keep having dreams about going into politics.
I did manage to make it out to the reading at Hugo House to celebrate the latest issue of Cranky, a great local mag, very eclectic. Saw many friends briefly. And the next day my husband dragged me down to Pike Place market to get flowers and coffee and generally cheer up. And that helped. I wrote a poem afterwards, which broke my over-a-week-long no-poem-writing spell. The poem was about a fox goddess. Actually, she was originally a human figure, and the foxes were her messengers, but I guess some of her worshippers now consider the fox to be the representation of her. And I watched a show on foxes on Animal Planet afterwards. Then read more Japanese mythology. So it all worked out.
Have not been sending out submissions. Bad me. I have new poems stacking up with no places to go. Must write a blurb and a review and do more homework. Sorry that you have to witness my “to do” list – but if I don’t keep track here, I’ll probably forget!
Oh, August, when will you become September?

Watched the Gen-Y friendly (pop cultural references to the Animatrix, Van Halen, Evangelion, and South Park, anyone?) anime series Fooly Cooly (Furi Curi? FLCL?) this weekend, and now I can’t get this song, “I Think I Can” by The Pillows, out of my head. Here’s a link to a video (which includes clips of the anime) so this song can be in your head too. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7821642967984690264
I ended up doing a full eight-hour day of real (non-volunteer, non-homework, non-poetry) work yesterday. Ah, the drives of capitalism.
I Think I Can!
PS – All anime viewing can be considered homework, since my thesis revolves around Japanese pop and mythological culture.

Is it me or has the news become so completely depressing it feels like a car landing on top of you in one of those video games every time you watch it? I barely scan the headlines, terrible, terrible. Injustice, destruction, rape, death, war. How to fight against this? In the comics, in a fight for earth, Wonder Woman versus Mars the God of War, Wonder Woman countered Mars’ Nazis with the Sermon on the Mount, with doves. In real life, what to do?

Also, on a not-related note, do not eat light ice cream that is made with eel blood. For more info, google “unilever ice cream eel” and see what you come up with. Organic only, baby! (Not responsible for nausea brought on by reading this story. Member FDIC. Not available in Alabama or Tennessee. Sorry Tennessee!)

The Blue Angels will be shutting down the 90 Bridge from the East side to Seattle on Saturday from 12-2:45, which screws up traffic. In case, for instance, you’re trying to get from Bellevue, Washington to a Saturday at 3 PM at The Richard Hugo House poetry reading/art show, I would recommend leaving early and taking a different route.

Oh yes, that’s right:

The Wild and Wicked Tour:

Co-sponsored by Richard Hugo House, The Wild and Wicked Tour presents readings of two new books of poetry from Steel Toe Books, “Becoming the Villainess” by Jeannine Hall Gailey and “Blue Positive” by Martha Silano, and a one-day-only display of artwork by the book’s cover artists, Michaela Eaves and Tom Collicott. 3-5 p.m. FREE. Hugo House’s Cabaret.

Totally worth it just to check out the artists’ killer work. Not that Martha and I are chopped potatoes, or anything. We’ll bring it. Oh yes.

In other news:
Check out our own Rebecca Loudon’s interview about her first book here:
http://www.kickingwind.com/80206.html
I love this series.

Summer 2006 Literary Magazine Blowout Special

I have has so many of these come in the mail while I was gone, and no time to account for them.
First of all, a big thank you to The Pebble Lake Review, which accepted two poems. Yay! I’ve had several friends in this journal and it looks beautiful. So I’m excited! One of them is the first prose poem I’ve ever published.

32 Poems – Spring/Summer 2006 – I’ve been a fan of this little saddle-stitched journal from the moment it was born. The short length of the poems demands a gift for the lyric and the short length of the journal demands a reader’s attention for just so much time, and then it’s done. In this issue, I was surprised to see famous (ly evil?) critic William Logan’s name – he has a little nostalgic mood piece poem called “Hometown.” I was most enchanted by Nickole Brown’s “From Sister: A Novel Verse” and Terese Svoboda’s “Hurricane Girl” – “She outlines her eyes with ink/ from a Bic. In war or ardor? / The ferry’s bow light/ / misses her hand’s No.” Fellow blogger Steve Mueske has a poem in here too! So get it, read it, etc.

The American Poetry Journal – Summer/Fall 2006 – This is a journal where I consistently like almost all the poems in it, which is to say, I must have taste very like the editor’s. And how often does that happen? Not very! Another saddle-stitched smaller all-poetry deal, not only do I like the poems in here, I like the people – a friend of mine, Ronda Broatch (“The Boy Becomes Carp), is featured, as is my publisher, Tom C. Hunley, (“At the End of a Long and Varied Career”) and fellow-blogger Steve Schroeder (“Clockwork”) – and rest assured, all their poems are fabulous, and not just because I know them. I also loved Sara Talpos’ “Aisle 8: After Chernobyl.”

Prairie Schooner – All right, I have got to love these guys for the mere fact that they just printed the book of a deserving friend, Kathleen Flenniken’s Famous, and they’re going to publish the book of another deserving friend, Paul Guest’s Notes for a Body Double. So right there you know I think they have some kind of good taste. The summer 2006 issue features four poems by another friend, Dr. Peter Pereira. Check this lines from “Seven Views of the Eclipse:” “When his fevers came they’d sleep/ with a pillow lodged between them -/ their bodies in syzygy,/ solar flares diffused/ by a cloud of white.” Bam! Who doesn’t love that? And former advisor/mentor-type Marvin Bell had a few poems in here, and so does another advisor/mentor-type, Dorianne Laux, as well as an array of famous types and newer voices, and there are stories and reviews as well. I found almost all the poems in this issue fresh and readable.

In other news, a moment of silence for Kelli Russell Agodon’s blog. Lots of people have written in to ask about this. Well, she took down the blog, it may go up again someday, but no guarantees. I miss her too, even though I get to actually see her in person and talk to her on the phone, because her blog had its own very positive spirit, if that’s not too cheesey. We miss you Kells! But I’m wishing you well during your electronic sabbatical.

And, if any of you receive your contributor copies of Silk Road, let me know! I am anxious that these beautiful mags get into the hands of their worthy poetry contributors. I thought the faculty editor would send them out mid-July as she indicated, but you know how the summer is on college campuses, so, hopefully, you all get them soon!

And, I’ve been doing lots of homework – reading volumes and volumes, writing my annotated bibliography, working on my thesis (currently titled “In the Animé Version of My Life”) and editing a children’s poetry book. I’ve been getting lots of editing work lately – mostly through the web site – and I really enjoy doing it.

Oh! The New Superhero Stamps from the Post Office feature Wonder Woman doing something I quote in my poem, “Wonder Woman Dreams of the Amazon.”
“…Inexplicably, snow-feathered doves appear in my hands…”
Check it. I write it, and it becomes a stamp. What does this mean?
Incidentally, the scene where she produces doves is in a comic-book fight with Mars, the God of War.

Back from Port Townsend (where we had record heat waves – in the 90’s – with no breeze and the buildings lack both air conditioning or much ventilation. ) On the plus side, I saw many little fawns and seals and walking in the morning on the beach was still very relaxing. And crashed many readings at the Centrum Writer’s Conference, since I didn’t officially sign up for the conference, just kind of made my way to the events that sounded fun, including Ilya Kaminsky and Joshua Beckman. No internet and no cell phone, just my stack of books, the sand, the local wildlife (including a long-haired blonde woman rolling around in a suburban yard for some reason. Then, she shook herself off, and walked on. And, completely out of touch with the hippy atmosphere of Port Townsend, two young men in three-piece suits and gelled hair who accosted me outside the local grocery store, who looked like they had walked out of the movie Wall Street. )
Back in Seattle, where, again, we lack much in the way of air conditioning, I’m sadly making my way towards colder spaces – the mall (ho hum), the theater, with its rash of misogynist films about evil, vindictive women who want to hurt the unlikeable male leads – I’m thinking of seeing Clerks II just to avoid the Super Ex-Girlfriend or John Tucker movies – or, um, the grocery store? It just looks weird to hang around in a bank, even if it is air-conditioned.
I’ve read another five books on my reading list – including the fabulous Ink Dark Moon – worth the cost of admission just for Jane Hirshfield’s discussion of translating from the Japanese – and the Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, which seemed so contemporary it was uncanny. I actually even used a tip from the book – in summer, in Japan around 900 AD, they put their hands in bowls of ice water to keep cool. Good thinking. She’s a writer who loves showing off how witty and clever she is, seems to be mostly amused by the men who try to seduce her, and generally makes fun of people in misery and the less fortunate. In short, sort of a “Mean Girls” model of the Heian period.
Check out these quotes:
From 62. Annoying Things: “One has sent someone a poem (or a reply to a poem) and, after the messenger has left, thinks of a couple of words that ought to be changed.”
From 14. Hateful Things: “A man with whom one is having an affair keeps singing the praises of some woman he used to know…(Yet sometimes I find it is not as unpleasant as all that.)
From 63. Embarrassing Things: “A man recites his own poems (not especially good ones) and tells one about the praise they received – most embarrassing.”
From 148. Pleasing Things: “Finding a large number of tales that one has not read before. Or acquiring a second volume of a tale whose first volume one has enjoyed. But often it is a disappointment.
Ha – # 148 could have been written about any summer sequel.

Another reading? Yes! This one is tomorrow night, Tuesday, in Redmond, WA, with the fantastic poet (and friend) Annette Spaulding Convy, with her sexy/funny convent poems. (After this, I’m ushering myself off to the beach and a B&B for a few days of R&R.)

SoulFood Poetry Night
Tuesday, July 18, 2006, 7:00 p.m.
SoulFood Books, 15748 Redmond Way, Redmond, Washington
(for directions, visit www.soulfoodbooks.com)
We’re pleased to feature the following poets, plus an open-mic reading:
Jeannine Hall Gailey is a Seattle-area journalist whose first book of poetry, Becoming the Villainess, was recently released by Steel Toe Books. Poems from the book have been featured on Verse Daily and on NPR’s Writer’s Almanac. Her work has also appeared in journals such as The Iowa Review, The Evansville Review, The Columbia Poetry Review, and others. Jeannine is studying for her MFA in poetry at Pacific University where she volunteers as a poetry editor for Silk Road.
Annette Spaulding-Convy’s poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, North American Review, and Crab Orchard Review. Her chapbook, In the Convent We Become Clouds, won the 2006 Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Contest. She is also the recipient of a Washington State Artist Trust GAP Grant.
Reading series curated and hosted by Lana Hechtman Ayers and Michael Dylan Welch.For information, please phone the store at 425-881-5309.

I have the crazy idea that I’d like to hop down to San Francisco around the first week of September and do some readings for Becoming the Villainess there. I found super-cheap airfare and hotel – but I don’t have many connections to the San Fran area. Is there anyone who could help set me up with a reading in the area? Thanks in advance!

Today is Glenn’s birthday, which means cake! and presents! And possibly going to that pirate movie, finally! A banner day all around.

Three acceptances this week from online literary magazines: Perigee, The Boxcar Poetry Review, and Poetry Southeast. All of them got back to me in less than a month! This cheered me up considerably, especially after I heard that in a response to a withdrawn poem, Many Mountains Moving thought they had lost my submission (they couldn’t be sure?) – after 14 months! Not to complain, but, really! That kind of thing just sucks the life out of me and my desire to lick envelopes.

I have a reading this Saturday, if you’re in the Kent/Auburn/Tacoma Washington area (my understanding is that these Cornucopia Days festivals involve tasty snack opportunities. I’m just saying.)

POETS AT KENT CORNUCOPIA DAYS
2-4 p.m. Saturday, July 15

The Northwest Renaissance this year celebrates its 20th consecutive summer poetry reading and conversation event a month early and in a new venue. The reading will take place 2-4 p.m. THIS COMING SATURDAY, JULY 15, in the Fine Art Exhibit, upstairs in the Green River Community College facility at Kent Station, 417 Ramsay Way in downtown Kent during Cornucopia Days. NWR program director Marjorie Rommel said “We’re delighted to find ourselves so much in the thick of things as part of the city’s historic Cornucopia Days in downtown Kent.”

This year’s readers include well-known Bellingham poets Malcolm Kenyon and rising slam star Dustin Ryler; Linda Malnack, Des Moines; Auburn poet and performance artist Stephanie Skura; Sherry Reniker, who teaches at Highline Community College; Seattle poet Jeannine Hall Gailey, whose new book Becoming the Villainess is just out from Steel Toe Books; and popular Tacoma poet and poetry host Michael Magee. Colorful (and highly dramatic) Kent poet R.D. Shadowbyrd will emcee.

The event, free and open to all, is supported by the Kent Arts Commission. For more information, contact Marjorie Rommel, 253/939-0571, mrommel@qwest.net, or visit the Kent Cornucopia Days website, http://www.ci.kent.wa.us/arts/news/2006_cornucopiadays.asp.