Wintering: The New Year So Far, Honoring the Season, and the Choices We Make

Bunnies with Ornament: Woodinville

Wintering, Or the New Year So Far

Well, it’s been a tough 2024 so far – Glenn got my evil virus on New Year’s Eve and has been sick since, and I have still not recovered from the original bug that hit me over a month ago. It seems so many Facebook friends are sick that I shouldn’t be complaining. At least it’s not covid I guess?

I have been deep in my wintering activities—watching a lot of movies I missed during the year, reading (right now, for the Bookwalter Wine Book Club, re-reading Isak Dinesan’s Winter’s Tales, full of odd spirituality and Denmark and melancholia) as well as Julie Cameron’s memoir. Glenn and I finally have the ornaments off the large Christmas tree, but the lights are still up all over Woodinville, including our strange bunny statues with pink ornament. It’s been cold and gray, with ice-rain, very dreary, even my birds aren’t showing up regularly. Every time I step outside, no matter how I’m dressed, I regret it.

Towhee in January

I haven’t been writing much—not enough mental energy—but I do think about the idea of “wintering,” or that we need to sort of make our way through winter gingerly, at least making some awareness of the need for warmth and hibernation. I’ve been sleeping at off hours—awake at 3 in the morning, asleep at 5 pm—which means I’m only watching weird stuff on television and reading in stray catches of awake time. “Winter just wasn’t my season,” as the song “Breathe (2 AM)” says.

I woke up today wondering how soon it would be spring, envying my friends and relatives taking vacations to sunny climates. How nice it would be for my cough and sinus stuff to have hot dry air for a change? Even though I’m allergic to the sun and MS hates heat. LOL.

My garden looks very bare right now, except for a few shoots in some containers, and we’re trying to keep a little lemon tree a neighbor gave us as a gift alive despite a lack of sunlight and freezing temperatures outside. We also bought a small Christmas tree we’re trying to keep alive on the back porch. Can’t ever plant enough trees, I say, even as I struggle to keep them alive. We try to keep our hummingbirds and towhees alive with feeders and birdbaths.

Is it hard for you to keep up your spirits and health in January? Maybe it shouldn’t be treated as a disorder, but a sign of our bodies’ alignment to the seasons. Wrap yourself in blankets, drink hot tea, read some somewhat mystifying short stories from a brilliant but strange writer of another age. Take a couple of sick days. I hate the late-night commercials for diet pills and exercise machines in a month that makes most of us long to eat more carbs and stay under the covers an extra 20 minutes. And maybe that’s actually the right medicine for this time of year. Why do we struggle against what even the plants and animals know how to do? I have a bright red vase of tulips above my desk right now, a sign of life in the otherwise foggy gray landscape. I think of all the writers that died in England of TB in the 1800’s, think about how the weather here in Seattle is so similar to London, all cold wind and rain but rarely snow or ice. It feels like ice and snow might be seen as celebratory next to the drab rain.

Along this vein of melancholy, I was thinking of two great writers we recently lost, Louise Gluck and Colleen McElroy, how both had disabilities they rarely talked about (Gluck had epilepsy, Colleen had RA), both were fiercely devoted to their work. Gluck was born into a lot of privilege; Colleen had to struggle more against a world less friendly to women, especially women of color, as a young person. I feel Colleen didn’t get enough recognition for her gifts as a teacher and writer and was the kind of person you instantly trusted—she radiated energy and warmth. Gluck wasn’t warm—even her obituaries seem prickly. I wonder about the value of our writing and our personhood after we pass away—how will we be remembered? Will time be kinder to one than the other? I wonder about the value of work versus the value of relationships, how often women are forced to choose in a way men are not. I am lucky I had a husband who was just as supportive when I was working ninety-hour weeks at Microsoft as when I now spend hours submitting poems to journals that don’t pay enough to cover the cost of submission. I never had to choose between a marriage and work, or a child and work (since I couldn’t have kids in the first place). As I get older, in the cold January months, I think harder about the choices I’ve made in my life. It will be later in life that I’ll be able to see if I made the right ones.

Well, on that note, my friends, honor the season. Stay in, light a fire, read a book off your shelf that has sat there for a few years. Sending you thoughts for restful wintering.

Happy New Year! What About 2024? Recovering from Christmas, and Planning on a Restorative Year

Happy New Year! What About 2024?

Happy New Year my friends and family! Wishing you all health, hope and happiness in 2024!

(Image at left from VartaCrafts on etsy.)

But seriously, what are you looking forward to in the new year? As I recover from the meanest throat/sinus/lung infection I’ve had in years, I’ve had plenty of time to sleep, dream, watch all the shows I meant to catch up on, and of course, have anxiety about the year ahead.

I don’t like that it’s an election year. I’m nervous about the several wars going on in the background of our newreels. I don’t have much on the calendar yet, which might be okay – just a residency, possible start of a new immune system treatment, and the somewhat scary bathroom-accessibility renovation.

Haven’t had the mental/emotional energy to set intentions or do my usual vision board yet, but I know I will eventually feel a little better and will be able to think clearly enough to do that stuff.

Family Christmas pic, with Dad, Glenn, me, mom, Mike, and Loree

Recovering from Christmas and Planning for a Restorative Year

So I’m recovering from the evil Christmas illness – my first Christmas illness in a while – and big family visit. It was really good to see everyone but I was so miserable and worried about getting others sick it wasn’t ideal. After the folks left, I caught up on my movie viewing – saw Oppenheimer, Saltburn, a great Christmas classic dark comedy movie called We’re No Angels among others – but didn’t catch up on as much reading as I wanted. Glenn finally caught this bug as well (we did check him for covid as well) so now the whole house is sick except for the cats!

I’m hoping the coming year will offer more peace and rest for us after the hectic flurry of last year’s AWP, book launch readings, and several large family visits. I want to focus again on my writing and photography, and tend more closely to my health. I may start IVIG treatments this year, which is scary but also possibly hopeful, giving my immune system more of a boost so I don’t get sick (and stay sick) as easily.

A lot of the things I’m anxious about (war, election, my health problems, etc) I don’t have a lot of control over. I want to build in more restorative activities to my year. I read something that I really liked – thinking about what makes you happy, and putting more of that into your life. We are more than what we weigh, or what we earn, or what we get done. We worry so much about being productive, but how much do we actually think about the activities and people that make us happy or give us joy? So that’s my modest goal for 2024 – trying to focus on the things that bring joy, and less on everything else.

Wishing you joy in 2024!

Happy Christmas! Tales from a Holiday Hospital Trip, and Challenges in Holiday Plans

Merry Christmas Eve!

Merry Christmas Eve!

Hello friends and family, wishing you all a very merry Christmas Eve! The picture on left is from a completely charming Christmassy store called Cranberry Cottage in Bothell, which I just found out is closing in January. So sad! But I was able to take my folks there and get my mom a Christmas present, so that was good.

My folks are in town but I’ve mostly been too sick to entertain (week four of the mega-virus that’s not covid or flu) so I’ve only had a partial Christmas experience so far. I had an ER trip again this week (that’s the third one in three weeks – and holiday ERs are weird) and numerous doctor appointments. I spend all night coughing and all day with stomach trouble – oh, it’s glamorous all right!

Challenges in Holiday Plans

Everyone has the idea of what the holidays should be, how things should go. They rarely include accidents, illness, bad weather, bad moods – which makes the pressure of the holidays to be happy almost impossible. Challenges happen – not just for me, but a lot of people this year. We try our best to be merry and bright, even in spite of the list of things that go wrong.

But it’s not really about being a Hallmark perfect family, or having a perfect time. I’ve been reading all week about friends having divorces, having emergency surgeries, getting covid – and of course, the news from the Ukraine and oh yeah, the birthplace of Jesus, Bethlehem, is extremely unnervingly dark. Life cannot be perfect. Life is not a Hallmark movie. We have to make do with the imperfect moments.

Me and Glenn at Willows Lodge for a brief break from my house and the rain

And so, that concludes our “challenges” section. Hopefully by next week I will have made a complete recovery. And it would be nice if, for once, there could be peace on earth. I wish you and yours a very happy holiday season.

Season of Lights, Year in Review and What’s Ahead in 2024

Season of Lights

This week I’ve recovered from my multi-week illness enough to start enjoying going out a bit to enjoy the holiday lights. Chateau Ste Michelle has a new “Wine and Joy” sign in lights, and as I write this I’m still warming up from going out into the Seattle cold to enjoy some holiday lights with my little brother and sister-in-law.

The Bellevue Botanical Gardens Garden d’Lights are one of my favorite holiday lights show, because their lights are so creative—flowers, dragons, birds—and they have a place for you to get a hot coffee and their gift shop is full of ornaments like mushrooms and owls. It’s important, I think, as part of my traditions/rituals this time of year, to celebrate the light.

At Molbaks, with poinsettia tree

Looking Back on the Year

This year has been a big one—I had a new book, Flare, Corona come out with BOA Editions. I turned 50. I had a full dance card at AWP where I got to talk about writing with and about disability and PR, among other things, I had poems in great journals, including JAMA. For the new book, I did readings, podcasts and interviews. I had big family visits from loved ones I hadn’t seen in too long.

I spent a lot of time at farms, getting to know more about pumpkin, lavender, and Christmas tree farms, and it helped my MS to work on stability and muscle development walking around all those farms, and it helped my feeling of community getting to know the farms and farm workers around Woodinville. It also, I realized, made me happy. I’m happy around plants and people who plant things. There was a reason I spent so much time in botany classes for my first degree! I also took a lot of pictures of these farms, which I also really enjoyed.

I noticed I spent less time on social media or watching the news this year. I spent less time tracking the pandemic. I lost some doctors (I mean, they quit being doctors, not that they passed away) to what I guess was “pandemic stress” and several years of tracking death tolls and hospital rates was wearing on me, too. So I tried hard to focus on what I could control: spending time with loved ones, writing and reading, and now we’re embarking on a remodel to make our main bathroom more handicapped-accessible. When you’ve got MS, yes, you can do physical therapy and exercises etc, but you also have to make modifications to your life (and sometimes your house) to accommodate your disability.

And What’s Coming in 2024

How is it already almost 2024? I hope better things are ahead? It’s very hard to say. I will be working on my next book of poems, and perhaps more prose as well. I hope to spend more time with friends and family. I hope to spend more time outdoors when possible. I hope (health permitting) to be going to a residency in Palm Desert, which will be my first residency in a while. Going into the fourth (!) year of the pandemic, I hope to finally recover a little bit of normalcy, or at least try to integrate a few more normal activities back into my life, like going to museums and galleries and bookstores. Covid still seems to be hitting my community pretty hard, though—it would be nice if they made some breakthroughs in treatments (or at least a new monoclonal antibody treatment). I may be starting IVIG treatments for my immune system issues, which is scary and possibly dangerous but also could be super helpful? I hope to write more about environmental and disability issues, as well. There are a lot of “hope” statements here. I’ll be working on my vision board for the solstice (one of my solstice traditions) and will try to visualize all these hopes. I hope you all have a wonderful year ahead, too.

And here are a few more pictures of me and my family clowning around at the Bellevue Botanical Gardens. Merry holidays to you all!

An Interview in Whale Road Review, Two ER Visits in a Week: Not the Way to Spend the Holiday, Books for the Holidays

Anna’s hummingbird on tiny Xmas lights

A New Interview in Whale Road Review

Ominous But Bright: A Conversation with Jeannine Hall Gailey and Cynthia Hogue – Whale Road Review

First of all, a big thank you to Whale Road Review for publishing this interview, and to Lesley Wheeler for being a great interviewer, and to Cynthia Hogue for being a great co-interviewee.

Cynthia and I talk about our new books with Lesley, and it ended up being a really fun three-way conversation. I hope you check it out! Here’s a short excerpt:

“LW: …What kind of future do you want to conjure? And can poems ever help make certain outcomes happen?

JHG: One of the original titles of the book was Post-Life. I was having a discussion with someone who was talking about being “post-doc” and it just led my imagination to think about what if I was that excited to be “post-life,” not dead, which was an interesting spin to me. Post-life has so many more possibilities. Hence the future tense! Since I started writing the book under the shadow of a terminal cancer diagnosis, my hope was just to leave a little something behind—but I wanted something more than a funeral dirge, something more funny, more hopeful. I have to say my essential personality is “hopeful pessimist” or “optimistic realist,” depending on how you look at it, and even with the worst news, I never really lost hope. My thought at the time was: what are the positives in leaving life behind? Which sounds a little crazy. My last book, Field Guide to the End of the World, was all about hope after the ultimate sorts of endings, so this was sort of a smaller, more personal version of that. (I did worry a little that writing Field Guide sort of conjured an apocalypse, you know?) So Flare, Corona isn’t trying to create darkness—it’s trying to focus on light, so to speak—the corona of the eclipse, the bright red of the Blood Moon, the coyote in the street—ominous, maybe, but bright.”

Two Visits to the ER in a Week: Not Fun for the Holidays!

Yes, I spent a great deal of time being sick enough to be in the hospital twice, getting IVs of fluids and tons of blood work and swabbed in the throat and nose multiple times. Nope, it wasn’t covid, just a bug that most people wouldn’t even be bothered by but, because I’ve got a weak-kitten immune system, became pretty serious. This is not a fun or cheery way to spend a rainy cold week during the holidays—I had to cancel going to see the Bellevue Botanical Garden lights with my brother, among other things. There were also three rejections this week, plus a scandal around an anthology I’d sent in a poem for and the editor taking things out of bios (for instance, people’s preferred pronouns, and in my case, my MS). That’s the first time I haven’t been sent a proof of my bio and my work before it went to publish, which I consider strange anyway. It was contentious and one of those things where you think, “the poetry world is so hard already—can’t people just, you know, print the bio the way it was sent, or just be kind and considerate to each other?” Oh well.

I have not been productive in the last three weeks—our Christmas tree is just now fully decorated; I usually have it done by the beginning of December. I haven’t written or submitted much. But that’s part of the cost of being a disabled/chronically ill person. The past several years, I managed to miss being sick during the holidays, but bam—it got me this year.

Charlotte with tree and carousel horse with bookshelf

Books for the Holidays?

I understand people cutting back this year, as things are more expensive than usual, but you know what? Most books are the same price they were ten years ago! I don’t know if you’re the kind of person who gifts books, but if you are, I most heartily recommend the following:

-Kelli Russell Agodon’s Dialogue with Rising Tides

-Lesley Wheeler’s Unbecoming (speculative fiction) and (nonfiction) Poetry’s Possible Worlds

-Cynthia Hogue’s instead, it is dark

-Melissa Studdard’s Dear Selection Committee

–Rosebud Ben-Oni’s If This is the Age We End Discovery

Some of my favorite fiction reads this year included White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link (re-imagined fairy tales) and When We Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill.

Charlotte the literary kitten with Flare, Corona

and if you have friends or relatives who’ve struggled with a tough diagnosis in the past couple of years, may I recommend my own Flare, Corona? A book I hope others will find helpful in tough times. Hope your holidays will be healthy and bright!

A Podcast about Flare, Corona and Thoughts on Being Sick During the Holidays

A Podcast about Flare, Corona

A big thank you to Dion O’Reilly for doing this podcast with me about Flare, Corona. You can listen to the podcast below.

S5:E37 Jeannine Hall Gailey talks with Dion O’Reilly by S5: E37 Jeannine Hall Gailey talks with Dion O’Reilly (spotify.com)

It’s a very thought-provoking conversation mainly because Dion asked such good, thoughtful questions.

Hairy woodpecker

Thoughts on Being Sick During the Holidays

I’ve had a very nasty bug (but tested at doctor’s office – not strep, flu, or covid)—mainly sinus issues, fatigue, and a very sore throat (along with an asthmatic wheeze and of course MS symptoms)—since Thanksgiving. I feel like I’m missing out on a lot of holiday merrymaking, including being able to write anything cogent or decorate my Christmas tree or go holiday shopping. It’s been colder and rainier than normal so maybe I’m not missing out on that much. If I’m not writing scintillating prose this week, I apologize—but this week has been productive from things I did in the past—I did have a poem come out in JAMA (which you can read here) about climate change and Persephone I’m very proud of, and a Podcast I did earlier in the year when I didn’t have sinus problems or a wheeze.

Anyway, I hope you are feeling fine and avoiding all the bugs in the world right now, and celebrating with friends and family, because we could all use a little light right now. I promise to have a better, more cogent post next week, if I’m better.

“Persephone Explains Global Warming” appears in JAMA!

So excited about this publication, for several reasons. Excited that doctors will be reading this poem, one of a series that will form my next book. Excited for my parents, who, since I got a Biology degree, always wanted me to be a doctor – well, at least I can now say I was published in JAMA. And excited for the thoughtful editor’s note that accompanies the poem.

Here is a screenshot of what the print version looks like, and links to the poem and note online:

“Persephone Explains Global Warming”

Editor’s note on the poem by Rafael Campo

And for those of you who do not subscribe to JAMA, here’s a sneak peek:

A Week of Eagles, Thanksgiving Celebrations, a Poem in JAMA this Week, Guest Appearance at Washington and Lee University, And Year-End Evaluations

Eagle silhouette with Frost moon

A Week of Eagles and Thanksgiving Celebrations

Do you believe that birds can be messengers or signs? We do have a lot of amazing birds in the Pacific Northwest, but my little corner of Woodinville is rarely a place to sight eagles—although this week, we saw as many as five at once and even witnessed (gruesome, but also slightly awe-inspiring in a nature-documentary way) an immature eagle fly away with a Canadian goose. And at twilight one day, we saw a group of…snow geese? tundra swans? With the Canadian geese on the local pond. Amazing sights.

We had a fairly quiet Thanksgiving celebration with just my little brother and Glenn and me, we Facetimed our folks and took a picture, took a walk outside in the sun, and then changed into pajamas to chill out the rest of the day. (My preferred way to spend Thanksgiving.) We all Covid tested before getting together—so many people have covid right now, and we all had allergy symptoms, so we wanted to be safe.  Now, suddenly it is holiday season—Glenn was out hanging Christmas lights yesterday, and it’s been unseasonably cold and dry here, maybe that’s why all the eagles are showing up? Below, more pictures of eagles, and the mysterious snow geese/tundra swans.

The local wineries and municipalities have started putting up their holiday decorations as well—sparkly deer and lit-up trees—and we hope for peace on earth, good will towards men.

Kitten Charlotte in a Christmas tree wishes you a very happy holiday season

A Poem in JAMA, An Appearance at Washington and Lee University, Holiday Wishes and Year-End Evaluations

It’s a busy week this week for me with a poem that’s supposed to appear this week in JAMA (I’ll put up a link when I get it,) a guest appearance for Lesley Wheeler’s class at Washington and Lee University to talk about Flare, Corona, and about ten year-end doctor appointments (somehow, they all stack up at the end of the year, don’t they?)

This time of year also brings on my informal year-end evaluations—what went well this year and what didn’t, things I want to invite into my life and things I want to do less of. It’s easy to forget the accomplishments and successes of the year in cold, stark November—so I try to keep track of those too. On the writing front, I had the book launch for Flare, Corona in May (and a preview of it at AWP, where I connected more than ever with the disabled writing community, which was great), and I turned 50—there were many more family visits than in the past seven years, and I reconnected with friends that I wanted to see again who had sort of slipped out of focus. I’m prioritizing friends and family, my writing work, and my health in 2024 for sure. I also want to make sure that I do less unpaid labor (and look for more paying opportunities) because my financial health is becoming a priority too—especially as my health care becomes more specialized—and more expensive.

Deer and lights, Chateau Ste Michelle

I love the poetry world but one thing about it I don’t love is how it relies on writers’ unpaid labor (and submission fees, etc.)—usually the people who can least afford it—to prop it up.  I’ve been volunteering as a reviewer, editor, fund-raiser, PR person, etc. for over 20 years. Isn’t that crazy? If I acknowledge that I have limited time and energy, then I need to volunteer…less. This also means being pickier about venues for submitting poetry and reviews, as well as maybe trying to write more essays. (And a big thank you to the journals that pay reviewers and writers and the folks who organize paid readings and classroom visits!)

How do you guys balance your art with your finances and your health? It’s tricky. I also want to continue to schedule specific times to get together with writer and artist friends, too—and to continue to support local farms and artisans. If I can make it happen, maybe a residency or two and even a little travel (health-dependent, but it would be nice). It’s possible my folks may be doing an extended visit out here as well next year, which would be exciting. I’m going to try to continue to promote Flare, Corona (and hopefully help get some more reviews, especially—let me know in the comments if you’re interested) into the new year. It’s easy to get book fatigue at six months—I definitely feel like everyone has already heard about it from me too much already—so I need to keep at it and not get discouraged.

I hope during these darker, colder, hibernating months that you are taking good care of yourself, and I am sending you good writing energy and light. The holidays can be tough, so I hope they bring you a little bit of joy.

Speculative Sundays Reading Tonight, a Video on How to Read a Poem, Celebration vs Obligation

Speculative Sundays Reading Tonight, Sunday, 7 PM Pacific

I’m doing a reading and Q&A tonight at 7 PM Pacific with Speculative Sundays. Tickets are free and available below. I’ll be reading a little from my newest book, Flare, Corona, and a little from my previous book, Field Guide to the End of the World.

Speculative Sundays Poetry Reading Series presents Jeanine Hall Gailey Tickets, Sun, Nov 19, 2023 at 7:00 PM | Eventbrite

Photos of Charlotte and Sylvia at the request of my mom. She likes to see proof of cats!

Edited: I missed this reading somehow by two hours and never got the correspondence the organizer sent. I’m so sorry if you showed up and I didn’t. I was having breathing trouble tonight (MS-related? asthma?) but I had my outfit and makeup and even practiced the reading (for no one, sadly.) Boo hoo.

Canadian Geese in flight

A Video on How to Read a Poem

Last week, at our Reading Between the Wines book club, we talked about Louise Gluck’s Meadowlands, and I was asked to give a talk for beginning poetry readers on how to read a poem.

I talked a little bit about this in my last post, the fact that I hadn’t really ever given a talk on how to read a poem, rather I was used to teaching people how to write a poem. Here it is on YouTube, though the lighting is less than flattering. Caveat: it’s fairly short, people may not agree with everything I say, and I use Meadowlands’ poems as examples throughout the talk. Canadian geese in flight at a winery down the street from my house.

Sylvia holiday

Celebration vs Obligation

I had the good experience of a salon with Tatyana Mishel Sussex on the subject of celebration, and then talking about how holidays, birthdays, writing news can be seen as obligations and celebrations. You may have heard the “magic” of the holidays is mostly created by the free labor of women. I am a big holiday person, though I hate Thanksgiving (pretty miserable childhood Thanksgivings probably the source) and love not just Christmas, but all the yuletide-type celebrations of light—Hanukah, Dewali, the New Year, etc. Anything that celebrates lighting a candle in the dark. My husband, when we got married, was not much of a Christmas person but loved Halloween—so we started a tradition of spaghetti dinners on Christmas Eve, chilling out, watching movies as well as me embracing a much more Halloween-y Halloween.

This has been a rough week for me—a close relative was diagnosed with cancer (and I’ve already got a list of good friends and relatives—mostly youngish—battling it) and I had a mini-flare (or exacerbation) of MS caused by mystery reasons—I did have a mini-flare at this time last year, so maybe something about the time of year—the cold, the lack of light, allergies, time change, the stress of the holidays. Anyway, it meant I couldn’t sleep, read, I had trouble swallowing, I kept tripping and I had to take emergency medication. A lot of my friends and family have covid right now. Glenn had a restaurant event with work, he got a flu shot but the Novovax won’t appear in our pharmacies until next week. Have you read it’s a record year for norovirus too? Martha Stewart, that icon of home-and-holiday-celebrations, had to cancel Thanksgiving because too many people called in sick.

Me at Cranberry Cottage in Bothell

We’re just trying to stay as safe as we can—while still trying to connect with friends and family, doing the celebrations that are important to us. This picture is from a little excursion to a new-to-me corner of Bothell—a neighboring town—with a cute shop called Cranberry Cottage, which has got to be the most Hallmarky-name of a shop like this in the universe. I got some presents for my mom and surprisingly, my oldest brother—who both have birthdays coming up in the next couple of weeks, I talked to some of the employees, some of whom made candles or ornaments that were on the shelves. I admire makers—writing is a kind of making—and once again, just like at the farm, it felt like small connections to the world around me, from which I mainly hide or communicate by Zoom, phone, or e-mail.  I’m looking forward to spending Thanksgiving with my little brother this year—a small but manageable celebration, and mostly very chill (although Glenn is still making his extravagant plans for roast duck, stuffing with apples and cranberries, roasted sweet potatoes and carrots, probably some amazing appetizers as well and dessert, which he has been doing experiments for the past couple of days).

All this is just to say, we have to remain in balance—safe, but still connected—celebrating, but not out of a sense of obligation, but real, well, thankfulness, at a time of year when it’s cold and dark. Here’s wishing you and yours a safe and happy holiday season.

How to Read a Poem, In Between Holidays, and Galloping Toward 2024

Our red maple

How to Read a Poem

Hello from chilly, blustery November in the Northwest. This picture is from my maple tree during a brief break of blue sky. I was under the weather for a lot of the week (some days not even able to get out of bed)—not covid, but another equally annoying bug I caught probably when I went to the dentist earlier in the week. Sigh. Even Glenn got the sniffles and slept in a bit.

I’ve been trying to prepare a 15-minute talk for my winery bookclub this Wednesday. We’ll be discussing the late Louise Gluck’s terrific book, Meadowlands.

I’ve taught classes to veterans and disadvantaged high school kids and college students, but since I usually teach creative writing, I would instead talk more about how to write a poem than how to read one!

I know what I don’t want to say—poetry isn’t supposed to be an escape room, it’s supposed to be something enjoyed or appreciated the way a piece of visual art or music is. Poetry isn’t autobiography—it can be memoirish, but it can also be fictionish.  But there are some tools poets use that non-poets might want to understand or know about, so I thought I’d talk about those—tone, diction, punctuation, sonics, images, metaphors, etc. Anyway, I hope it will be useful! And if you have any suggestions, leave them in the comments!

Sylvia and Charlotte with Halloween decorations

In Between Holidays

As we took down the decorations for Halloween (see the cats who had a lot of curiosity about said decorations), we started thinking about our plans for Thanksgiving (this year we’ll be celebrating with my little brother) and Christmas (only five weeks away now, somehow…which means it’s almost the new year—an alarming thought).

The state of the world, such as it is, seems like the opposite of peace on earth, good will towards men right now, so it’s hard for me with the cognitive dissonance of the news and the celebrating of our usual holidays. But there are still small kindnesses all around—an older man in a cowboy hat helped me when I lost my balance with my cane at the grocery store, waving off thanks, and there’s the kindness and love of my friends and family that they show to each other, even struggling through cancer, covid, money troubles.

Glenn and I with poinsettia tree at Molbaks

I know in my last post I talked a little about feeling down and I’m still struggling myself with—I don’t know, depression and anxiety for cause? It’s hard to motivate myself to do my usual things. Especially when my MS acts up as it did this week, when I got the dental work-related bug. And it’s extra hard to get out of bed when the wind is howling and the rain keeps falling.

But I’m also trying to do the small things that I can do to brighten the days. Visiting with friends and neighbors, buying little gifts for loved ones, reading books I love, even trying to write and submit a little bit after a break of a few weeks. Yes, even putting up holiday decorations or admiring the ones going up around my neighborhood. I’ve even been gardening a bit—planting bulbs, fertilizing my little trees that I’ve planted over the last few years in my small yard, as it feels like something productive even when I can’t be productive in other ways. I also spent time watching movies I love—Before Sunrise, Christmas in Connecticut…old Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant films never fail to make me smile.

There’s something about the end of the year that makes me take notice of the things that happened in the year, significant, happy and unhappy. In the year 2023, I turned 50, I saw my parents and older brother in person for the first time in years, my sixth book came out with a terrific press, and I even did a mini book tour for Flare, Corona (my next reading, by the way, is online on November 19th—no rest for the wicked!) I made new friends among local farmers and winery workers and book club participants. I spent a lot of time walking with my cane through flower fields and pumpkin farms. And even though I feel a little down now, I can say this year really did have a lot of gifts in it.

Carousel Horse at a local shop in Bothell

Galloping towards 2024

Yes, just like this little carousel horse, I’ve felt like I’m galloping towards 2024. It seems like it’s creeping up on us whether we want it to or not! The year of the Dragon! The year of America’s next Presidential election. What good and bad await us next year we have to wait and see.

I’m hoping for a more peaceful year in 2024. I’m hoping this darn pandemic starts to wind down a bit, still having a number of friends and family in the hospital—while trying to dodge the germ myself—is a bit wearying. I’m hoping to find a way to make enough money to pay off my student loans and hope to find a magical miracle kind of work that I can do while chronically ill and disabled and that I actually enjoy. I’m hoping to see more loved ones in person, both friends and family.

So, during this “in-between” holiday season, I’m wishing you peace and joy. I wish you time for fun and hope, not just worry.

And in case you missed it last week, our baby bobcat paid us another visit captured on our Ring camera and here it is: