I haven’t written anything in a couple of weeks and it’s making me a little…scratchy. I’m not a poem-a-day person, but I like to at least write one every two weeks!
I got two rejections and an acceptance today. After weeks of nothing. Isn’t that always the way.
A poem of mine is out in the new issue of The Cincinnati Review. It’s one of my “element” series, called “Cesium Burns Blue.” It’s one of my husband’s favorite poems. The issue also has poems by Nance Van Winckel, Chase Twichell, and Sherman Alexie.
Speaking of Alexie, he went on The Colbert Report and talked about how the local media doesn’t care about books any more. I don’t know if you noticed, Sherman, but it’s not that they don’t care, it’s that local media doesn’t really exist any more. Little newspapers – and big ones – are drying up and blowing away. Local news and radio shows are getting swallowed up by big conglomerates.
And, tell me what you think, but the local radio shows and newspaper stories don’t really sell books – or not any more than say, a blog or a web site might.
A necessary addendum to yesterday’s post, in which I may have been a bit cranky (because, I don’t know, I have a broken foot and a sprained hand and live in a multiple-story walkup, perhaps…? And my husband’s company is announcing layoffs and oh, yeah, no pay raises this year at all…)
Because I was disappointed in Jon Stewart’s response to our inaugural poem, I knew Colbert would come through for poets, and now I have even more of a crush on him than ever. And Elizabeth does pretty well too:
Elizabeth Alexander on the Colbert Report
(Thanks to Kelli A. for the link)
Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and SFPA’s Elgin Award, Field Guide to the End of the World. Her latest, Flare, Corona from BOA Editions, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She’s also the author of PR for Poets, a Guidebook to Publicity and Marketing. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and JAMA.
