Cover Reveal and Pre-Order Page for Flare, Corona, a New Poem in The Indianapolis Review, Welcome to the Big Dark: November, Twitter, Voting, Book Club

Cover Reveal for Flare, Corona (and Pre-Order Page is Up!)

I am so excited to finally reveal the cover of the upcoming Flare, Corona officially! Here it is! I am posting this a little earlier in the week than I usually do, but I thought I had enough news to justify it…

Designed by Sandy Knight at BOA Editions, the cover art is meant to suggest both an eclipse, a solar flare with corona, and the neurons that are attacked and inflamed during an MS flare. This was a harder cover than usual to think about in terms of design. There’s a lot of solar weather in there, I wanted the idea of the neurons, I thought about adding other things from the natural world. But in the end, this simple, striking design won out. As you may notice, the web site looks a little different too!

And here we have the official pre-order page from BOA Editions. The book will be out in spring 2023. Pre-orders really help gauge the size of the print run, generally, so each one is a help! Thank you in advance! I am so excited to be at Seattle’s AWP in person (hopefully protected by a new infusion called Evushield which supposedly protects the immune-suppressed for up to six months) and sign books (and hug people again).

A New Poem in the Indianapolis Review

I’m also pleased to share a new poem in the current issue of The Indianapolis Review, “Self-Portrait at Midlife as Horror Story.” A sneak peek at the poem below. This whole issue is terrific, and not just because it has a bunch of my poet friends in it! (Hi, Martha Silano, Emily Perez, Luke Johnson, Donna Vorreyer!)

Happy November, Voting, Twitter Thoughts, and More

It’s November, which is Seattle means the beginning of the long dark—after the time change, it will get dark—if it ever gets light enough with the rain—at 4 PM. It can be a tough time of year for a lot of people—the holidays, voting, Twitter being taken over by billionaires because they’re cranky someone didn’t let them tweet a conspiracy theory or something racist. Hey, I am with you. Washington State has a very close race between an anti-abortion Trumper named Tiffani Smiley and Patti Murray. I hope everyone gets out and votes. So much angst in the air right now. Antonio Gramsci’s quote, “The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters” seems apropos. Poetry prompt? Is now the time of monsters?

I had a great time on the Halloween podcast with Rattle—if you want to catch it, I think you can still watch it here on YouTube. It starts at about minute ten. Spooky poetry, PR for Poets, poems from the new book, and various side discussions in which I get pretty silly.

As for Twitter, I’m not leaving yet, but not because I’m such a fan of Elon—after all, I’m still on Facebook, and that’s not exactly run by a saint. But I’ll monitor how things go. So far, my Twitter feed looks pretty much the same, except a little smaller, but I mostly follow poets, mute anything even slightly likely to bring out trolls, and only go about once a day. I started Twitter for the same reason I started on Instagram—reluctantly, but because my poet friends were there. I’ll probably stay until that ceases to be the case. I can only hope we move from Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter onto some better online networks eventually.

I got good news on one of my health scares from the last post—so far, they don’t think my thyroid tumor looks like cancer, so just monitoring it for the time being. And I’m possibly finally going to get the Evushield I was approved for months ago? I’m allergic to a preservative they use in the MRNA shots, and the J&J shot caused some other side effects, so Evushield would be my safety—and I’d finally be able to socialize, go to museums and shops, you know, participate in the world without as much fear. (I just got over a virus that was not flu or covid, and it was still pretty vicious, so, you know, I still have to be pretty cautious. No licking strangers for me!) This month is a bear, full of specialists discussing scary topics (possible liver cancer and biopsy, my bleeding disorder, etc), so I’ve got to schedule in some fun too. This is an important survival skill for the chronically ill/disabled, because it’s very easy for your whole life to be about blood draws and waiting rooms and grim-faced doctors who you have to tell your story to for the 4,000th time. You’ve got to schedule a little fun in between.

Oh, one thing I am looking forward to the next book club at Woodinville’s J. Bookwalter’s Winery on Nov 9th at 6 PM. Ward off those cold chills with wine and book talk! We’ll be discussing Melissa Studdard’s funny, sassy, moving book of poetry, Dear Selection Committee. We will probably be meeting inside, so mask to your comfort, and I will be bringing an air purifier with me!