New review for She Returns to the Floating World, New Poems, New Vistas…

I woke up to a new review of my second book of poetry, She Returns to the Floating World up at Web Del Sol Review of Books. Thanks Web Del Sol and Gina Barnard!

With this latest bug I’ve had, I’ve been running high fevers, especially in the evenings, and waking up every night at 3 and 4 in the morning. Now I’ve got Murakami’s IQ84 audio book on my CD player in the bedroom, so I can listen to it when I wake up and can’t get back to sleep. Last night, I actually had an idea about feral princesses and prophets for a poem at 4 AM – I’m so happy I wrote it down because when I woke up for real this morning, I had a new poem I was actually pretty happy with (especially since I wrote it in a daze in the middle of the night.)

I have a confession, though I know it’s not confession Tuesday: this last week with the flu, I’ve started watching the Home and Garden network shows, like “Property Virgins” and “House Hunters.” I’m trying to remember the language of floor plan, square footage, and closing costs. It’s been too many years, and the processes have changed a lot, since the last time I did this. I watched a single girl in Seattle buy a $275K one bedroom, one bath condo in Ballard. (Where I grew up, $150K bought you a two-story four-bedroom home – and probably still does today. So.)

I’ve also been trying to write a little creative non-fiction. What I struggle with is setting a scene, slowly, building suspense, extending scenes with dialogue and description. So many years of poetry has taught me to condense, to capture a moment in as few words as possible. It’s like retraining muscles. Got to learn to create new vistas for my readers, for myself.