My New Review up on The Rumpus, Spending Time with Poet Friends, and Unexpected Downtime

Kitten Sylvia posing with Tsunami vs the Fukushima 50

New Review up on The Rumpus

Happy to have my new review of Lee Ann Roripaugh’s excellent and timely Tsunami vs the Fukushima 50 up at The Rumpus today. Check it out! Sneak peek:

“In Tsunami vs. the Fukushima 50, a book that crackles with imaginative language and mythological retellings that represent real-life disaster, Roripaugh offers the audience a new way to think about nuclear and natural disasters and the remnants and ghosts that remain in their wake. Worth a close reading just for the sonic skills displayed, this book manages to weave a larger message for the reader inside poems that are at once playful, plaintive, and foreboding.”

I really do believe that reviews are part of staying a part of the “giving” part of the poetry community, and I hope that reading this one 1. brings you joy and 2. causes you to look up this book, because I’m very enthusiastic about it.

Natasha Moni and Jeannine Hall Gailey, being poets

Spending Time with Poet Friends

Speaking of poetry community, I had the chance to spend some time catching up with my poet friend – or should I say, doctor/poet friend – Natasha K. Moni. She has just opened up her practice in the South Sound, and we talked publishing, book sales, balancing being a writer and a doctor (she also offerings book “doctoring!” – ie editing services!) I mean, that’s a lot going on!

One thing that will always make you feel a little less frustrated and alone in the poetry world in spending time with other writers. Every one of us has good news and bad news, good days and bad days, figuring out this whole “living life as a writer” thing. We have to help each other celebrate and mourn, fight the good fight, etc.

Glenn and I at Carillon Point

Unexpected Downtime

The fun of having a kind of crappy immune system is that one day you feel fine – see above re: socializing, and the picture of me enjoying some sunshine and flowers at the edge of Lake Washington – and the next, you’ll have to cancel all your appointments and are forced to take some unexpected downtime and go to the doctor instead of doing something “useful.” That was the case for me this week when I caught one of the stomach bugs going around. Mostly it meant lying around groaning (I’m not good with stomach stuff, though I’m pretty tough at this point about most health things) and extra sleep while playing classic movies in the background (the news was much too terrible to contemplate even on a very empty stomach) and it reminded me again that we have to appreciate the good days when they happen, and be gentle on ourselves on the bad days. I used the downtime to order a new Yoko Ogawa novel and peruse some poetry journals which had been lying next to the bed, and decide to grade Audrey Hepburn movies from best to worst (My favorites remain Sabrina and Paris When It Sizzles because writer satire on the latter and Paris featuring in both, plus I would definitely date William Holden and marry Humphrey Bogart.) Funny Face is a distant third, only because Fred Astaire just didn’t seem to have good chemistry with Audrey, but at least it has some nice scenes in a bookstore.

Our society really pounds in the point that we’re only to be valued if we are of use, and that is a negative lesson. Human beings – including myself – have value even if they’re not being “productive” or “turning a profit” or “making widgets.” One thing poetry does is teach people to slow down and evaluate their world (and worldview.) If the news says the world is burning, it may be, and what does that mean? And what can we do about it? That’s why the kind of poetry book I reviewed (link at the beginning of the post) is important – not just that it examines a huge cultural and environmental catastrophe of our time, but that it really makes us thing hard about why these things happen and how we are involved. And maybe even more valuable than the things you plan to do is the unplanned downtime that gives you time to ponder. Even if that downtime is the kind that leaves you moaning in bed.

Well, I’m hoping to post a healthier post next week, but until then, enjoy the last of August before September is upon us. Remember to eat a popsicle and run around barefoot and smell at least one flower before it’s over. I will do the same.