All News Tuesday
Thanks again for all your help picking out the author photo. The winner was #4. Now you will have to wait to see the final version on the book 🙂
New River’s radio show on Art Internation Radio includes two poems of mine being read by a famous New York theatre actress, Patricia Randell. Here’s what they say:
Our premiere show is Emerging Women Poets: 24 minutes of poetry by Jeannine Hall Gailey, Melissa Range, Darcie Dennigan and Reena Ribalow, read by Patricia Randell, Randell Haynes and Lori Myers. Please check it out by going directly to http://urls.artonair.org/newriver (this show will also be featured on their homepage at www.artonair.org all this week).
My poems are the first ones up, and start around minute one!
Two wonderful new books of poetry just hit the shelves.
Kelli Russell Agodon’s second book, Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room has made its debut. Here’s my blurb, so you know what I think of it:
“Agodon’s book is a bright, funny, touching meditation on loss, love, and the power of words. Her genius is in the interweaving of God and Vodka, bees and bras, astronomy and astrology, quotes from Einstein and Dickinson, a world in which gossip rags in checkout lines and Neruda hum in the writer’s mind with equal intensity.”
Jim Brock’s book, Gods & Money, was just released by WordTech Press.
Here’s my blurb for that book:
“Pop culture, poetry, politics, and religion—all subjects that come under scrutiny in James Brock’s book, Gods & Money. With his tongue-in-cheek humor and observant eye, Brock entrances us with his tales of the melancholy romance of soup, the connecting threads between Walt Whitman and the Florida Everglades.”
Also, Steel Toe Books is open for submissions again, this time for books with religious and/or spiritual themes.
In health news, I got a b12 shot yesterday. I run a little low on b12 sometimes, which I had forgotten about (I’m not a vegan or anything!) and luckily the doc checked for it. I’ve been sleeping ten hours a day lately and moving with the alacrity of a turtle, so hopefully this extra vitamin boost will help power me through the parents’ visit, finding an apartment, doing a reading or two in San Francisco in October, moving, and writing two new book reviews. And trying to write a poem a day, sending out subs, and trying to find work. B12 does give you superpowers, right?
Discouragement, Nice Rejections, and Persistence
Sometimes reading an old blog post accidentally can be really enlightening. I posted about “nice rejections and the MFA blues” a few years ago, back in 2007.
http://myblog.webbish6.com/2007/02/does-anyone-write-nicer-rejection-slips.html
What’s especially interesting is that the comments were so supportive, mostly from people I’d never met (though I would meet some along the course of life as a writer.) David Barber has since continued to write me very nice rejection slips over the years. I almost look forward to them now!
I also thought it was interesting that Kelli Agodon said she had never sent to the Atlantic, and that was February of 2007. By August of 2007, her poem “How Killer Blue Irises Spread” was published in The Atlantic. John Gallaher mentions his own post-graduate blues; this is right before his second book, The Little Book of Guesses, appeared, to pretty terrific acclaim.
I was also thinking that I didn’t remember being particularly discouraged as a writer after my MFA – but apparently I was, because there is the proof, captured in an old blog post. A cycle of discouragement appears throughout the years on this blog – sometimes I’m excited and busy, like I am right now, consumed with a new project. But sometimes I feel sending out poems and manuscripts is drudgery (not the writing part, but everything that goes with writing.) Sometimes I feel happy with my work, other times not so much, but what’s interesting is the work keeps happening, whether I’m happy with it or not. My writing and submitting habits – which you could follow if you could see my files on the computer – stay remarkably consistent, regardless of what I’m feeling, apparently. Which I think is actually a good thing. Keep sending out your poems and manuscripts. Try sending somewhere you might not believe you’ll get an acceptance from. You just never know.
On the nets:
In the “Why didn’t I think of that” category, a female writer nets seven figures for YA book trilogy retelling Helen of Troy and Persephone’s stories…Dang! If only I’d written Becoming the Villainess in prose…and made it more of a love story…and more cheerful…
Amazing interview with one of my favorite poets, Dana Levin. She always manages to sound so much smarter in interviews than I do. Sigh! (By the way, her book, Wedding Day, is a perennial favorite of mine.)
Kelli Russell Agodon details how to make a book trailer. Very helpful! Her follow up on the process is here.
Ron Silliman blogs about women in poetry.
Not poetry related, but very funny: Google apologizes for privacy breaches with eerily specific apology. My favorite part:
“The company has also encouraged feedback, explaining that users can type any concerns they may still have into any open browser window or, if they are members of Google Voice, “simply speak directly into [their] phones right now.”
Either way, the company said, “We’ll know.”
I know AWP is the place for poets to be in April, but it turns out the universe has other plans for me: my presentation was accepted for WonderCon 2010, which is a few days earlier in April and much closer to home, in San Francisco. The presentation will be on something like this, I think: “From Buffy to the X-Men: Female Comic Book Superheroes in Women’s Poetry.”
I have to admit to being pretty excited. There are supposed to be something like 34,000 attendees. Gail Simone, one of my favorite female comic book writers, will be there, as will Peter S. Beagle, who I had the pleasure of meeting in Seattle a couple of years ago. (One of my early literary heroes, as he penned one of my favorite childhood books, The Last Unicorn.) Plus, some tv and movie stars and comic book royalty and such. Squee!
I’m beginning to feel better after a two-week mystery virus had me bedridden with chills and on a fluid-only diet, and I started at a newer, fancier physical therapy place for my tendon problems/sprained ankles that have had me in a wheelchair since Christmas Eve. It’s very shiny and has a recumbent stair-climber that I think I would like to have in my house, even after my ankle problems have cleared up.
Aside from that, I’m trying to fix up my taxes, apply for the NEA grant though I have a discouraging feeling about it, and send out poems/book manuscripts, which I also have a generally discouraged feeling about. I don’t know if the discouraged feelings have anything to do with reality, it’s just something that happens and I don’t want to send anything out, though I never ever stop writing. Discouragement keeps me from submitting but not from writing, isn’t that odd? Anyway, as a segueway, let me introduce you to this lovely post about rejection from Kelli:
http://ofkells.blogspot.com/2010/01/notes-from-beneath-covers-why.html
that will remind you that rejection is really not all about you, which is pretty comforting, actually.
Also, check her blog for a recent call for submissions for Ekphrastic poetry for Crab Creek Review.
More on Contests…
Go congratulate my dear friend Kelli on her win of the White Pine Book award! I told her, the weirdest thing was, the night before she found out, I dreamed she won a book prize. I had the wrong publisher, so I’m not completely pyschic, but still…
I’m very excited for her, and here are a few things I really like about her press: they print beautiful books (which I know because another friend, Susan Rich, has published with them) and they have excellent distribution with Consortium. They seem committed to their authors. These things make a huge difference, in the long run, in author happiness. I can’t wait to get a copy of Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room!
Poets on the Town
I had dinner last night with the delightful Kelli Agodon and her husband last night. It’s always nice to catch up with poet friends in my little town, which is at least an hour’s from other small towns.
Also, if you are a high school person or you have any high school kids with nothing to do in the Washington/Oregon area who would be interested in studying theater, arts, or writing for a week, the Centrum High School Intensives weeklong program still has scholarships available! For more information or to register, go here:
http://www.centrum.org/youth/yap-hs-summer.html
I’m pretty excited about this. I think I’ve already got ten students signed up for my class! It involves discussing how mythology and comics/graphic novels are related, and having students write their own myths and comic book superhero characters. Should be fun.
