Thundering Seattle and more…
Yesterday there was a lightning strike so close to our apartment building that I almost thought it hit us. It might have hit us. The phone went dead and the cable went out, but eventually the internet blinked back on. Lightning is very uncommon in Seattle, though where I grew up in Knoxville, we watched the storms come through every afternoon, we opened the door and watched the wind shaking our trees and smelled the clean electric smell of storms, and in Cincinnati, every thunderstorm meant the possibility of tornadoes (one struck while I was babysitting two young kids when I was about 13. Another tore up one of my high schools and gym – luckily, no one was in either when it hit. ) I have been listening to hard rain against windows.
AWP is going to be Seattle in 2014! I think this is a good sign that AWP is following me around. I think AWP should stop being in places like Chicago (so many times!) and the coooold East Coast in winter – let’s face it, no one wants to make that plane trip in Jan or Feb – and start having itself in warm, tropical venues – or at least San Francisco or San Diego. I think by 2014 I should have a permanent house, a permanent job, and another book. You know, if 2012 doesn’t get all apocalypse-y. Maybe that’s too optimistic, but I hope not. Then I can host AWP sleepovers!
In other news of good people getting good things, Ilya Kaminsky was named director of the Poetry Foundation’s Harriet Monroe Institute. I remember meeting him in Seattle when Dancing in Odessa had just come out. I loved the book and when I met him, I thought, what a charming and intelligent young man (well, he’s a little younger than my younger brother, so I can’t help thinking of him as really young.) I thought, I bet he’s going places.
(In a late addition: Remember Aimee’s book I mentioned in my last post, Lucky Fish? Well now it’s been chosen by The Rumpus Poetry Book Club. So Yay for her too!)
I’m spending too much time grading and not enough time writing poetry. Too much time worrying about Christmas “business-busyness” – cards, present buying, corporate party-going – and not enough on Christmas fun. (Although last weekend I did get to visit with artist Michaela Eaves and a pair of tiger cubs at the same time as we toured Port Defiance Zoo. Which was pretty great all the way around – holiday lights, good friends, meerkats and reindeer and Sumatran tiger babies…who could ask for anything more?) Maybe next week will be a bit more peaceful…
Had a lot of fun last night at the Poetry International reading at DG Wills bookstore in La Jolla. The MFA students working for SDSU’s literary magazine were bright and interesting, and Ilya Kaminsky is always a kick. Got to meet the next New Issues poet on the rise, I think – Jericho Brown, whose first book, Please, is passionate and bluesy, plus, chock-full of persona poems! He read one last night in the voice of Janis Joplin that was terrific.
I read a poem from issue 12 about Amaterasu, the Shinto sun goddess, and a couple of others. (Even sold a book – to a couple of fellow Buffy fans 🙂 One of the other readers had a few poems about translating Japanese, which I thought was fascinating. In fact, I was genuinely impressed with nearly every reader, and besides that, the people just had what I think California people might call “good energy.” It feels like perhaps I’m finally finding the literary folks of the San Diego area, slowly, maybe, but getting there. Still, there’s no Open Books substitute.
Also, a health note: a bit of constant sore throat and cough, it seems, is par for the course in October, even for die-hard San Diegans, because of the Santa Ana winds, so at least I’m not alone in that. A couple of people last night, my ultrasound tech, and countless others have told me that locals always get sick in October. I had to fire Dr. Botox Barbie (which means another round of paperwork and records fun, sigh) but found a very good doctor at the urgent care office next to my apartment complex, and thanks to my best-ever-Seattle-hematologist, the hardest working doctor ever, have an appointment with a new GP recommended by the head of UCSD Medicine. How’s that for a referral? I’m ready for a health boost!
