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?)
Optimism Despite…
I’ve been thinking about optimism, about how it applies to life as a writer. How we must remain optimistic despite…despite rejections, despite days when you despair of ever writing what you’re really meant to write, despite the long hours and low pay, despite the evidence that the writing world is still a man’s world, etc. We keep writing. We keep sending out our work.
In my “real” life, I sometimes encounter a similar…intractability…with my health situations. I can do one of two things – I can despair, weep, shake my head, give up and lie in bed and not try to do anything, or I can embrace life, try different treatments, try to research and come up with better answers than the doctors give, and do the things that make life worth living, having fun, etc. Keep breathing, keep living every day and make every one as full as you can possibly make it.
This week I embraced optimism in both my regular life and my writing. I sent things out. I took a ton of benadryl and went ahead and went out with other writers. I put blonde streaks in my hair. I bought jeans that fit – a smaller size than I’ve been since high school, thanks to food allergy testing and those darn elimination diets – instead of walking around in old clothes that were too big. I requested a review copy of a book I’m absolutely loving. I received some tentative good news. I applied for jobs I might not get, but at least I will know I tried. I made reservations for a reading down in Southern California in two weeks, which I probably can’t afford, and tomorrow I’m having two friends – an artist and a writer that I rarely get to see – over for a visit. My house is full of pink tulips and pink lilies, because in February, we need to remember spring is almost here.
And you know what? These actions are the things I want to define me, not my rejections or my weird sporadic health problems. I choose fun, friends, pink tulips, and poetry, along with a little bit of chocolate. (See? I’m even cheating my elimination diet a little. But what is life without a little dairy-free, gluten-free chocolate? And it’s almost Valentine’s Day!)
In other literary news you might find interesting…more recaps from AWP, Claudia Rankine’s letter on race and poetry, and my friend sci-fi writer Felicity Shoulder’s Asimov’s story on Escape Pod…
Overscheduled but Happy on a Rainy Weekend
This morning I woke up early (at the crack of a very grey dawn) to Skype-meet with a class of students in New York state (hi Dustin’s class!) and frighten them with stories of learning to shoot a gun in Tennessee when I was seven and the sexual connotations of the joystick. When will I learn to be more appropriate? Then I sped down to physical therapy (where my PT person recommends socializing less to relax my jaw and help it heal – whoops!) and then raced home to change and meet my friend, rising star Sci-fi/Fantasy writer Felicity Shoulders, for coffee in downtown Seattle. I just got home from a rainy, traffic-y drive after stopping off at our poetry bookstore, Open Books, for a copy of “Mentor and Muse: Essays from Poets to Poets,” which looks fantastic.
Then I got the welcome news that Redactions had nominated my poem, “She Justifies Running Away, from the newest issue 13, for a Pushcart Prize. You can read all of this year’s nominees from Redactions here: http://redactions.com/pushcart-poems.asp
Now I think I will have a hot bath and some cider while simultaneously catching up on some bad tv and reading magazines. Tomorrow I go into downtown again for the 3 PM Crab Creek reading at Elliot Bay Bookstore with contributors Erin Malone, Kevin Miller, Peter Pereira, Michael Schmeltzer, and Martha Silano. A lovely group, I think you’ll agree!
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.
My writer friend Felicity Shoulder’s new story is out in the January issue of Asimov’s so I recommend checking it out. I have been telling her for a long time that she is going to be the next sci-fi/speculative writing sensation, and I’m never wrong about that stuff.
