Elemental [poof]

“It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.”

Thanks for all your birthday wishes! It was even a teensy bit sunny today, but still not warm. And we saw majestic bald eagles, little deer in our yards, hummingbirds and goldfinches. Banner wildlife, Washington State, if not banner weather…

And C. Dale, I did love Virgin Airlines – especially on the way home, when we got bumped up to first class!

On the last day of April, here are the last two drafts on NaPoWriMo, or the April of 1001 poems…(Be careful. These poem drafts will self-destruct.)

Poof!
*
Poof!

Yay, got an acceptance from Willow Springs of a longer (and somewhat darker) poem from my third MS, so that was good news.
And going to see Lucille Clifton in Seattle tonight! It’s totally worth the five hour round trip…I love her persona poems especially.
Update: My poem “Love Story with Fire Demon and Tengu” is up on the Haibun Today site today, Monday the 7th!
http://haibuntoday.blogspot.com/2008/04/jeannine-hall-gailey-love-story-with.html

She Justifies Running Away
Poof!

Mini-Review of Red Jess, by Judith H. Montgomery (Cherry Grove Collections)

Blood runs through the pages of Red Jess; the blood of a heart pounding out of control in “Gallop,” the blood of secrets in “Gretel’s Spell,” the blood of birth (and a red pen) in “A Cultural History of Fences,” and the blood of passion in “Ophelia, in Winter.” Nature plays a central role in many of these poems – flowers, trees and birds (especially the hawk) lovingly described – as well as the heat and burn of relationships. From “Gallop: “The day before she turns five, Amy hears/ doctors speak of her galloping heart…When she is alone, she listens for the horse/…for hoofbeats in her blood.”

Don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to keep this up, especially as I’ll be away from home tomorrow, but…

She Should Have Been in Politics

Poof!

Mini-review of the day: Dog Girl, by Heidi Lynn Staples from Ahsahta Press

Ahsahta’s books are always beautiful objects…I haven’t, in the past, I admit, been a big fan of Heidi Lynn Staples work – I saw it as being poetry so insistent on “interrogating the language” that it was on the edge of not giving anything to the reader, resolutely nonsensical and overly in love with its own puns. So, I was pleasantly surprised by this collection – perhaps I like wordplay more than I used to, perhaps the poems about marriage tempted me, the interest she has in Japanese forms that I share, that epigraph from Grimm’s obscure (but loved by me) fairy tale, Jorinde and Joringel – but something drew me in. Here are some playful and passionate lines from one of a series called “Prosaic:” “His hands touched me with a whole science…His eyes shined with hackers. I opened my codes.” There are some surprisingly touching poems here about the loss of a baby (“Not, You No” and “Arson” among them) that transcend wordplay and ring with emotional impact.

The Foxfire Books: In Case of Emergency, Learn to Make Glass

Poof!

In other Poetry-related news…

Amazon is acting very antitrusty, very monopoly-like, telling small publishers they’d better use their in-house (and lousy/expensive by reputation) POD printing service, Booksurge, or else loose their books’ “Buy” buttons. Holy crap, right? And, putting small publishers in a worse bind – Lightning Source’s (BookSurge’s main competitor) POD services include distribution through Ingram – Booksurge’s doesn’t. Looks like Amazon will lose a lot of good customers, and create a lot of ill-will among customers and authors, and for what – a few more pennies? More about this here, here, here, and here. Read this, and complain to Amazon about these lousy, non-small-publisher-friendly practices.

And, my April reading at Northgate has been cancelled. Sorry to all of you who planned on attending!