My Rumpus Review of “Search for a Velvet-Lined Cape and Synthesizing Bad News at Summertime

Thanks to The Rumpus who just published my review of Marjorie Manwaring’s first book, Search for a Velvet-Lined Cape (isn’t that a great title?) You should go read the review and then the book. I get really excited by probably one out of every twenty books of poetry that I read, and this is one of them.

Summer summer summer with its relentless SUNSHINE these days and HEAT and we’re not used to that in Seattle we usually drift through summer in the seventies with no humidity and only the occasional sparkling blue clear day where everyone crowds together by the water, but now we’ve had over twenty days without rain and many days in the eighties and without air conditioning that can be pretty miserable. I walked around a beautiful field of flowers yesterday but the smog hung oppressively over Mount Rainier, so much so you could barely see the white snow on the mountain. I’m so not a sunbunny, as I learned living in San Diego and Napa, I’m quite literally allergic to the sun, so I’m looking forward to Fall, to September, the overcast and the cool rain again.

I’m also figuring out how to synthesize some bad news at a doctor’s appointment, you know how you go and have tests and they let you go again? Well this week, one of my last doctors was all “look at this” and “this shows positively this” (Yes, I’m being cagey as I wait for further testing the next couple of weeks) and I came home and felt scared and blue and made a playlist of songs like “Dark Days” by the Punch Brothers and “Will She Just Fall Down” by Til Tuesday, Fiona Apple, The Cure’s “To Wish Impossible Things” and “Young and Beautiful” by Lana Del Rey, a long playlist and listened to it all and let myself feel a little sad, which I don’t usually indulge in. I’m not terribly addicted to robust physicality but I don’t like the feeling of losing things little by little the feeling of normalcy the expectations I guess of things that lie ahead sort of sinister. I’m a poet after all, I don’t need everything to be perfect, I don’t need all of my body to be functioning correctly at the same time, I know already that I am a little mutant and monster and I guess it’s good to get some answers. See? I’m trying to look at the bright side even now. I wish medicine and tests weren’t so expensive these days. I wish I could just let go of expectations and worry and watch the grebe in the pond outside my house and the little families of hummingbirds in my back yard, the egg-sized baby bunnies in the clover of the house down the street, enjoy the jasmine that has come back to life in all this sun and heat.

I will try to be back to my upbeat usual self by the next post. I will hope for unexpected beautiful things. That is the world, it’s beautiful and terrible and we’re rarely prepared.