Port Townsend Writers Conference and a new review of Torn
I’m writing you this note from chilled, damp, but still beautiful Port Townsend. I snuck up yesterday to see Dorianne Laux talk about music and language and Erin Belieu read with Cate Marvin. That Cate! That’s someone you watch read and wish “I wish I was more like that when I read.” Then I went and met some new friends that I had only known by e-mail before, and that was fun. Saw lots of old friends too. I told Glenn I probably knew 80% of the crowd in the audience last night, from someplace.
We saw heron and many, many deer. The whole place was in a cloud, and I think the temp topped out at 59 degrees. Must remember to bring warmer clothes this weekend.
My new Rumpus review of C. Dale Young’s third book, Torn, is up! And I think it’s much better than that New Yorker review. But tell me what you think!
https://therumpus.net/2011/07/even-more-taboo-than-love/
I’m reading on Saturday with Dorianne and feel excited but nervous. I bet everyone will be exhausted by Saturday night. People are already starting to get the midweek “stare of doom.” Wish me luck!
Late July Happenings
I had so much to do the last week – we celebrated our 17th anniversary, Glenn turned 40, and of course, still organizing readings and such for my new book, She Returns to the Floating World. (Have you gotten your copy yet? I still have a few copies left if you want a signed copy…) New readings I’m putting together include the Richard Hugo House’s Cheap Wine and Poetry Series this fall and the new Northwest Bookfest in October. Excitement! The fall is filling up!
Remember to check www.versedaily.com tomorrow to see a poem from my new book! (Link to the poem will go live tomorrow…so excited to see which one it is! Thanks Verse Daily guys! – Here it is, “Advice Given to Me Before My Wedding”)
I’m going up to visit the Port Townsend Writers Conference this week as well, culminating in a little reading on Saturday night, the 23rd, at 7:30, with none other than my literary heroine Dorianne Laux. A dream indeed! And I am looking forward to catching up with lots of friends – after all, I used to live up there! (And here’s a list of readings in the local paper the Port Townsend Leader, including mine!)
Hope you’ve been enjoying the Summer Interview series feature on the blog! So far, we’ve featured Roland Kelts on Japanese literature, novelist Helen Phillips, Kelli Russell Agodon, Susan Rich, Diane K. Martin, Marie Gauthier, Collin Kelly on social media, Elizabeth Austen on radio interviews. Let me know in the comments if there’s someone you’d love to see interviewed!
I’m going to the rheumatologist down at UW today so if I have enough energy after, we’re going to go see the new Harry Potter (well, if it’s not sold out…lots of kids in capes around here!) I strongly believe in balancing time spent in doctor’s offices with time spent doing something more pleasant. There is so much to be thankful for, this gloomy rain-cloud-y Seattle morning…I’m thankful for my friends, for my husband, that my ankles and TMJ are slowly improving, that my allergy situation seems more stable…that I’m back in a place where I can visit doctors without worrying about crazy unexpected bills (our insurance didn’t transfer well to California…) and that I’m looking forward, in a hopeful way. I’m hoping for good things for this little new book of mine, for my two as-yet-unpublished manuscripts of poetry, for stable health, for dreams of maybe writing a little creative prose, for more work opportunities if if if the economy improves…
Seattle and Portland: Poetry Wonderlands
Getting ready to make the 12+ hour drive home to Northern California, I’m lugging way more books. There are new chapbooks by Dorianne Laux, “Dark Charms,” and Joe Millar, “Bestiary,” from the Pacific University MFA reunion last night, where I got to see Kwame Dawes, Jack Driscoll, and Pam Houston read. Yes, Kwame Dawes is as good a reader as you might think. It was wonderful to see all my former advisors – the whole faculty there are still as warm and sweet as ever – and the shiny faces of all the new students. It’s been a few years now since I graduated, so there weren’t any of my old classmates there, but I still feel a sense of pride and happiness whenever I visit. I got to hang out with my sci-fi-writing friend Felicity for a few hours beforehand too, which gave us a chance to discuss genre and the blurring of lines between literary and “other,” Michael Chabon, Margaret Atwood, Junot Diaz, etc.
Of course, due to a visit in Seattle at Open Books, I ended up with way more books than I even have time to read – the Gurlesque anthology, Canadian poet Susan Holbrook’s “Joy is So Exhausting,” an anthology of interviews called “Poetry in Person,” Allen Braden’s first book from U of Georgia Press, “A Wreath of Down and Drops of Blood” – which was even better since I ran into Allen at the bookstore and had him sign it – poetry books by Stephen Burt the critic and Lisa Russ Spahr, and, my friend K. Lorraine Graham would be proud, a book of experimental feminist poetics called “Feminaissance” that has a pretty rockin’ cover as well. So I’ll have to write my next two reviews and get to reading this summer!
It was chilly and rainy almost the whole week I was visiting the Northwest, even a little chilly and rainy for Northwesterners, which is saying something. It reminded me why I owned so many sweaters and wore so few sandals when I lived up here. The other thing I was reminded of is why a community of writers counts for so much in a person’s life. I felt renewed and energized to go back home and pay attention to my writing, to revision and submitting and all the things that can sometimes feel like chores.
Thanks to Kelli for pointing out this wonderful interview with Dorianne Laux, one of my favorite poets, about her new books – and if you look hard, there might even be a mention of me right beside one of my other favorite poets, Denise Duhamel. I’m honored to be in the same paragraph! Thanks Dorianne!
Heading into Ballard for a poetry reading tonight. Had a lovely time yesterday at a holiday gathering of friends, despite a persistent head cold that has rendered any talk of venturing out into the blistering cold (temps in the 30s which is awfully chilly for coastal Washington) deeply uninteresting.
Just a few days left to finish up freelance work and finish Christmas shopping for my family…
The Thyroid and two Poetry Books Everyone Will Love…
So, got back from a thyroid specialist yesterday who told me I’ve had a weird thyroid problem for some time (manifested by odd lab results and by the big old swollen thyroid I’ve had for years) where it switches from hypo-to-hyper, and has to do with the immune system. So I’m starting a new med, this time a synthetic t4 thyroid hormone. Oh, the excitement of me and my new medications…(PS some problems that can be symptoms of thyroid problems – constant sleepiness or sleeplessness, blood pressure fluctuations, joint problems that mimic arthritis, and of course, the weight fluctuations that come out of nowhere. and puffy eyes. It’s really the puffy eyes that got me. Puffy eyes? I’m such a girl…)
On to Poetry!
Dorianne Laux’s first book, the truly great Awake, is soon going to be re-issued by Eastern Washington University Press, and good for them! This book has long been one of my favorites of hers, a little rawer but certainly as powerful as anything in the later books, including a certain poem called the “Tooth Fairy” which may be Dorianne’s best poem EVER! (Buy it from the Press here: http://ewupress.ewu.edu/poetry/awake.htm) It makes a great holiday gift!) I hate it when good books go out of print too early, and Awake was definitely one of those books. Kudos to EWU Press!
I have to admit that, though I loved Matthea Harvey’s poetry in journals like A Public Space, when I bought her first two books I liked, but not loved, the work – certainly you could tell Harvey was a clever and funny writer, but the whole books seemed a little intimidating, or opaque. Her newest book, Modern Life, I have fallen in love with the entire thing. It’s not just the references to robots (of course, I’m always game for those) or Japanese anime classics (her “Robo-Boy” being a clear reference to “Astro Boy”) because even the standalone poems in the book are outstanding, as are the poems in the series “Terror of the Future/The Future of Terror” that was based on a dictionary list of words between “Future” and “Terror” and manage to evoke our post 9/11 anxiety in a new and chilling way.
Here’s a link to buy it at Amazon:
Modern Life at Amazon
And, Matthea Harvey is coming to Seattle to read at Open Books on November 14!
It is Monday, though I feel quite cheerful because I have a new computer that works (thank goodness, finally) and I wrote a letter to the editor at the Atlantic and I’ve never written a letter to the editor before but I thought it was for a good cause (to cheer Kelli and Pacific U) and this afternoon I am going to a very smart rheumatologist who may at last tell me why I’ve had a fever for two months and have albumin-anemia and high C-Reactive Protein. This I believe has been the cause of my fatigue and “down” moods lately – I was telling a friend that I feel my “down”-ness is in my body, not my head, that’s exactly it. I actually feel okay with my life, especially now that: a. I am wondering where to rent next (always an adventure when you’re picking a new town, even a new town in driving distance) and b. where/if/how I should work (teaching? publishing? more freelancing?) and c: I feel happy about the third manuscript I’m working on, and how I’m writing a lot of poems about sleeping women. It’s just that I have so little energy – like having lead weights on all the time. I always feel weird talking about my physical stuff here but it’s hard to explain my life without also explaining that stuff, if you know what I mean. So, it’s part of my life – like writing, like my husband and cat, like where I live – it’s part of the life environment – when you are sick, it affects everything else.
But enough about me! Here’s a neat link to an interview with one of my favoritest faculty at Pacific, Dorianne Laux, at the Smoking Poet!
And, apparently, a party run by the Poetry Foundation was shut down by police in Chicago this weekend. Look, poets are already paranoid enough that “the man” is out to get them – you don’t need to encourage that kind of thinking, fellas! Wish I could have been there to see it.
