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?)
Happy Valentine’s Day – News and Love Poems
Happy Valentine’s Day!
First of all, you may have already read about Eduardo C. Corral’s good news – he has won the Yale Younger Poets Prize! I’ve been admiring Eduardo’s poetry since I discovered his blog in 2005, so I felt really happy about this. A great Valentine!
A nice shout-out from one of my mythology heroines, artist and writer Terri Windling, here.
I was honored to be nominated not once, but twice, for something called a Memetastic Blog Award, once by Marie Gauthier and the other time by Kristin Berkey-Abbott. (I will post more fully on this later, but wanted to thank them both for the nomination!
Two love poems from my new book, She Returns to the Floating World (due out in July from Kitsune Books!)
Love Story (with Fire Demon and Tengu)
Maybe in this version you are a bird, and I have become an old woman. Maybe you ate a falling star. It’s hard to love someone in a castle—they always feel distant. I will open a flower shop and learn to speak German, take to wearing ruffled dresses and straw hats. You’d like to pin me down, but you could tell my feet weren’t touching the ground. I called your name over and over, but you couldn’t hear me above the din of the bombers. It was like movies of wartime Japan. I looked up and there were planes bulging with smoke.
The blue sky kept getting darker –
sometimes, I thought,
with your shadow.
In the end, I have a dog in my arms and a scarecrow for a friend, but I never make it to Kansas. The field is wet and stormy, I kiss three men goodnight for their magic. The door to your childhood is opening for me. It allows me passage into a brick wall, my fists full of shiny black feathers, the shell of an egg, the howl of cold wind against a mountain. Don’t worry, your heart is in good hands. Let me keep it a little longer; its blue glow illuminates everything.
The thick knife gleams under your strong hands,
slicing carrot, onion, garlic, pepper,
scattering slivers into the air,
staining your fingers with their gold juices.
You chop so quickly the definite line
between “hand” and “knife” dissolves.
You strew pieces into the skillet,
listen for the right sting and sizzle of oil and wine,
waiting to feed me the work of your hands,
that broken finger, the tiny cuts
that lace and scar your surfaces.
