New Poems in Sycorax Review, November Gloom, and Waiting for Magic

November Sunset

November Gloom

Hello from the other side of the time change! We’ve been strangely dry and cold here in Seattle, with beautiful sunsets. November can be tough, as it tends to get dark here around 4 PM. We Seattle-types get out our cardigans and our coffee, and huddle up.

It’s a good time for writing and reading, and I’ve been reading the Cold War novel The Secrets We Kept, about three women involved with the story Dr. Zhivago, as well as some new poetry books. I’ve been listening to new music and watching old movies, a good combination for poetry writing.

Sylvia on Sylvia Plath

I was also remembering that I received my copy of Sylvia Plath’s complete letters on this day last year, and I’m finally finishing it! I tried to read the whole thing at once, but it’s a bit overwhelming for the mood, so I’ve been delving in bits. Sylvia the kitten is helping me finish the book, as you can see to the left. Sylvia’s letters remind me that the feeling of needing to “make it” by a certain age is a certain kind of tyranny. I wrote in my last post about her extreme anxiety about having an expiration date, about never meeting the standards she held herself to, of no amount of success being enough. And also her difficulties being taken seriously as a woman writer. She was ahead of her time, born too early for her to find her real audiences, but unable to settle in comfortably to a life she found frustrating and constricting. It was hard to “make it” as a woman poet then, and it still is today. How to stay vigilant against despair?

Red Leaves with statues at Bellevue Botanical Gardens

Two New Poems in Sycorax Review

One piece of good poetry news this month is that I had two poems published in the latest issue of Sycorax Review: “Self-Portrait as Magician” and “When She Goes Dark.”  A big thank you to Sandi Leibowitz for including my work in the issue.

Here’s a sneak peek at the poem “Self-Portrait as Magician:”

from Sycorax Review

Mysterious deer, by daylight

Waiting for Magic

Despite the November gloom, and a persistent cold, I woke this morning feeling unaccountable optimistic. A few days ago, I twittered about being up late at night, watching my e-mails for unexpected good news. In some ways, we writers are all waiting for a little magic.

This mysterious deer figure showed up in the area around my neighborhood has week, and this week, I discovered its real function: it sparkles!

This reminded me of the magic we can find all around us if we just pay attention. Or, hope springs eternal, even in November.

Mysterious deer, at night

After a bit of a pause, I’ve started sending out my two book manuscripts again. I’ve been sort of picky about which publishers I’m sending it to so it’s been a slow process. It’s been almost exactly three years since my last poetry book came out, and I’m ready for the next one to be in the world again. I just need to find a publisher. It’s always hard, the sending out and the waiting, the months of fretting and alternating getting hopeful and depressed. You need a good support system to stay balanced, being a writer, especially being a poet, which few people in America take seriously and even fewer really values. Sylvia lacked this support system – she married an unreliable man, and moved away from family and friends. I’m lucky to have good friends and a terrific husband, in a city that’s no London but tries to, at least, make an effort to value art and poetry and music.

We’re heading towards the holidays. I heard Christmas music somewhere today and saw racks of food magazines specifically marketing pumpkin recipes. The holidays can be both utterly delightful and utterly depressing. The pressure! The obligations! The pumpkin recipes! (I actually like a good pumpkin recipe, but I’m still baffled by the number of magazines offering new takes on pumpkin recipes!)

Hummingbird on late roses

The hummingbirds have gotten very flutterly lately, in the cold, dancing around the last flowers and available hummingbird feeders. The hummingbirds stubbornly see out the cold season here and in a way we manage the same way. I am writing, editing, and sending out work trying to stay warm in a cold season, drinking cider and listening to my sad music and reading novels into the night (I have terrible insomnia during time-change season). What drives us to survive? To try to create beauty, or even just to notice beauty, in a world that often seems to try to trample it, or ignore it? We wait for magic. We might even create our own.