“Persephone Explains Global Warming” appears in JAMA!

So excited about this publication, for several reasons. Excited that doctors will be reading this poem, one of a series that will form my next book. Excited for my parents, who, since I got a Biology degree, always wanted me to be a doctor – well, at least I can now say I was published in JAMA. And excited for the thoughtful editor’s note that accompanies the poem.

Here is a screenshot of what the print version looks like, and links to the poem and note online:

“Persephone Explains Global Warming”

Editor’s note on the poem by Rafael Campo

And for those of you who do not subscribe to JAMA, here’s a sneak peek:

A Week of Eagles, Thanksgiving Celebrations, a Poem in JAMA this Week, Guest Appearance at Washington and Lee University, And Year-End Evaluations

Eagle silhouette with Frost moon

A Week of Eagles and Thanksgiving Celebrations

Do you believe that birds can be messengers or signs? We do have a lot of amazing birds in the Pacific Northwest, but my little corner of Woodinville is rarely a place to sight eagles—although this week, we saw as many as five at once and even witnessed (gruesome, but also slightly awe-inspiring in a nature-documentary way) an immature eagle fly away with a Canadian goose. And at twilight one day, we saw a group of…snow geese? tundra swans? With the Canadian geese on the local pond. Amazing sights.

We had a fairly quiet Thanksgiving celebration with just my little brother and Glenn and me, we Facetimed our folks and took a picture, took a walk outside in the sun, and then changed into pajamas to chill out the rest of the day. (My preferred way to spend Thanksgiving.) We all Covid tested before getting together—so many people have covid right now, and we all had allergy symptoms, so we wanted to be safe.  Now, suddenly it is holiday season—Glenn was out hanging Christmas lights yesterday, and it’s been unseasonably cold and dry here, maybe that’s why all the eagles are showing up? Below, more pictures of eagles, and the mysterious snow geese/tundra swans.

The local wineries and municipalities have started putting up their holiday decorations as well—sparkly deer and lit-up trees—and we hope for peace on earth, good will towards men.

Kitten Charlotte in a Christmas tree wishes you a very happy holiday season

A Poem in JAMA, An Appearance at Washington and Lee University, Holiday Wishes and Year-End Evaluations

It’s a busy week this week for me with a poem that’s supposed to appear this week in JAMA (I’ll put up a link when I get it,) a guest appearance for Lesley Wheeler’s class at Washington and Lee University to talk about Flare, Corona, and about ten year-end doctor appointments (somehow, they all stack up at the end of the year, don’t they?)

This time of year also brings on my informal year-end evaluations—what went well this year and what didn’t, things I want to invite into my life and things I want to do less of. It’s easy to forget the accomplishments and successes of the year in cold, stark November—so I try to keep track of those too. On the writing front, I had the book launch for Flare, Corona in May (and a preview of it at AWP, where I connected more than ever with the disabled writing community, which was great), and I turned 50—there were many more family visits than in the past seven years, and I reconnected with friends that I wanted to see again who had sort of slipped out of focus. I’m prioritizing friends and family, my writing work, and my health in 2024 for sure. I also want to make sure that I do less unpaid labor (and look for more paying opportunities) because my financial health is becoming a priority too—especially as my health care becomes more specialized—and more expensive.

Deer and lights, Chateau Ste Michelle

I love the poetry world but one thing about it I don’t love is how it relies on writers’ unpaid labor (and submission fees, etc.)—usually the people who can least afford it—to prop it up.  I’ve been volunteering as a reviewer, editor, fund-raiser, PR person, etc. for over 20 years. Isn’t that crazy? If I acknowledge that I have limited time and energy, then I need to volunteer…less. This also means being pickier about venues for submitting poetry and reviews, as well as maybe trying to write more essays. (And a big thank you to the journals that pay reviewers and writers and the folks who organize paid readings and classroom visits!)

How do you guys balance your art with your finances and your health? It’s tricky. I also want to continue to schedule specific times to get together with writer and artist friends, too—and to continue to support local farms and artisans. If I can make it happen, maybe a residency or two and even a little travel (health-dependent, but it would be nice). It’s possible my folks may be doing an extended visit out here as well next year, which would be exciting. I’m going to try to continue to promote Flare, Corona (and hopefully help get some more reviews, especially—let me know in the comments if you’re interested) into the new year. It’s easy to get book fatigue at six months—I definitely feel like everyone has already heard about it from me too much already—so I need to keep at it and not get discouraged.

I hope during these darker, colder, hibernating months that you are taking good care of yourself, and I am sending you good writing energy and light. The holidays can be tough, so I hope they bring you a little bit of joy.

Speculative Sundays Reading Tonight, a Video on How to Read a Poem, Celebration vs Obligation

Speculative Sundays Reading Tonight, Sunday, 7 PM Pacific

I’m doing a reading and Q&A tonight at 7 PM Pacific with Speculative Sundays. Tickets are free and available below. I’ll be reading a little from my newest book, Flare, Corona, and a little from my previous book, Field Guide to the End of the World.

Speculative Sundays Poetry Reading Series presents Jeanine Hall Gailey Tickets, Sun, Nov 19, 2023 at 7:00 PM | Eventbrite

Photos of Charlotte and Sylvia at the request of my mom. She likes to see proof of cats!

Edited: I missed this reading somehow by two hours and never got the correspondence the organizer sent. I’m so sorry if you showed up and I didn’t. I was having breathing trouble tonight (MS-related? asthma?) but I had my outfit and makeup and even practiced the reading (for no one, sadly.) Boo hoo.

Canadian Geese in flight

A Video on How to Read a Poem

Last week, at our Reading Between the Wines book club, we talked about Louise Gluck’s Meadowlands, and I was asked to give a talk for beginning poetry readers on how to read a poem.

I talked a little bit about this in my last post, the fact that I hadn’t really ever given a talk on how to read a poem, rather I was used to teaching people how to write a poem. Here it is on YouTube, though the lighting is less than flattering. Caveat: it’s fairly short, people may not agree with everything I say, and I use Meadowlands’ poems as examples throughout the talk. Canadian geese in flight at a winery down the street from my house.

Sylvia holiday

Celebration vs Obligation

I had the good experience of a salon with Tatyana Mishel Sussex on the subject of celebration, and then talking about how holidays, birthdays, writing news can be seen as obligations and celebrations. You may have heard the “magic” of the holidays is mostly created by the free labor of women. I am a big holiday person, though I hate Thanksgiving (pretty miserable childhood Thanksgivings probably the source) and love not just Christmas, but all the yuletide-type celebrations of light—Hanukah, Dewali, the New Year, etc. Anything that celebrates lighting a candle in the dark. My husband, when we got married, was not much of a Christmas person but loved Halloween—so we started a tradition of spaghetti dinners on Christmas Eve, chilling out, watching movies as well as me embracing a much more Halloween-y Halloween.

This has been a rough week for me—a close relative was diagnosed with cancer (and I’ve already got a list of good friends and relatives—mostly youngish—battling it) and I had a mini-flare (or exacerbation) of MS caused by mystery reasons—I did have a mini-flare at this time last year, so maybe something about the time of year—the cold, the lack of light, allergies, time change, the stress of the holidays. Anyway, it meant I couldn’t sleep, read, I had trouble swallowing, I kept tripping and I had to take emergency medication. A lot of my friends and family have covid right now. Glenn had a restaurant event with work, he got a flu shot but the Novovax won’t appear in our pharmacies until next week. Have you read it’s a record year for norovirus too? Martha Stewart, that icon of home-and-holiday-celebrations, had to cancel Thanksgiving because too many people called in sick.

Me at Cranberry Cottage in Bothell

We’re just trying to stay as safe as we can—while still trying to connect with friends and family, doing the celebrations that are important to us. This picture is from a little excursion to a new-to-me corner of Bothell—a neighboring town—with a cute shop called Cranberry Cottage, which has got to be the most Hallmarky-name of a shop like this in the universe. I got some presents for my mom and surprisingly, my oldest brother—who both have birthdays coming up in the next couple of weeks, I talked to some of the employees, some of whom made candles or ornaments that were on the shelves. I admire makers—writing is a kind of making—and once again, just like at the farm, it felt like small connections to the world around me, from which I mainly hide or communicate by Zoom, phone, or e-mail.  I’m looking forward to spending Thanksgiving with my little brother this year—a small but manageable celebration, and mostly very chill (although Glenn is still making his extravagant plans for roast duck, stuffing with apples and cranberries, roasted sweet potatoes and carrots, probably some amazing appetizers as well and dessert, which he has been doing experiments for the past couple of days).

All this is just to say, we have to remain in balance—safe, but still connected—celebrating, but not out of a sense of obligation, but real, well, thankfulness, at a time of year when it’s cold and dark. Here’s wishing you and yours a safe and happy holiday season.

How to Read a Poem, In Between Holidays, and Galloping Toward 2024

Our red maple

How to Read a Poem

Hello from chilly, blustery November in the Northwest. This picture is from my maple tree during a brief break of blue sky. I was under the weather for a lot of the week (some days not even able to get out of bed)—not covid, but another equally annoying bug I caught probably when I went to the dentist earlier in the week. Sigh. Even Glenn got the sniffles and slept in a bit.

I’ve been trying to prepare a 15-minute talk for my winery bookclub this Wednesday. We’ll be discussing the late Louise Gluck’s terrific book, Meadowlands.

I’ve taught classes to veterans and disadvantaged high school kids and college students, but since I usually teach creative writing, I would instead talk more about how to write a poem than how to read one!

I know what I don’t want to say—poetry isn’t supposed to be an escape room, it’s supposed to be something enjoyed or appreciated the way a piece of visual art or music is. Poetry isn’t autobiography—it can be memoirish, but it can also be fictionish.  But there are some tools poets use that non-poets might want to understand or know about, so I thought I’d talk about those—tone, diction, punctuation, sonics, images, metaphors, etc. Anyway, I hope it will be useful! And if you have any suggestions, leave them in the comments!

Sylvia and Charlotte with Halloween decorations

In Between Holidays

As we took down the decorations for Halloween (see the cats who had a lot of curiosity about said decorations), we started thinking about our plans for Thanksgiving (this year we’ll be celebrating with my little brother) and Christmas (only five weeks away now, somehow…which means it’s almost the new year—an alarming thought).

The state of the world, such as it is, seems like the opposite of peace on earth, good will towards men right now, so it’s hard for me with the cognitive dissonance of the news and the celebrating of our usual holidays. But there are still small kindnesses all around—an older man in a cowboy hat helped me when I lost my balance with my cane at the grocery store, waving off thanks, and there’s the kindness and love of my friends and family that they show to each other, even struggling through cancer, covid, money troubles.

Glenn and I with poinsettia tree at Molbaks

I know in my last post I talked a little about feeling down and I’m still struggling myself with—I don’t know, depression and anxiety for cause? It’s hard to motivate myself to do my usual things. Especially when my MS acts up as it did this week, when I got the dental work-related bug. And it’s extra hard to get out of bed when the wind is howling and the rain keeps falling.

But I’m also trying to do the small things that I can do to brighten the days. Visiting with friends and neighbors, buying little gifts for loved ones, reading books I love, even trying to write and submit a little bit after a break of a few weeks. Yes, even putting up holiday decorations or admiring the ones going up around my neighborhood. I’ve even been gardening a bit—planting bulbs, fertilizing my little trees that I’ve planted over the last few years in my small yard, as it feels like something productive even when I can’t be productive in other ways. I also spent time watching movies I love—Before Sunrise, Christmas in Connecticut…old Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant films never fail to make me smile.

There’s something about the end of the year that makes me take notice of the things that happened in the year, significant, happy and unhappy. In the year 2023, I turned 50, I saw my parents and older brother in person for the first time in years, my sixth book came out with a terrific press, and I even did a mini book tour for Flare, Corona (my next reading, by the way, is online on November 19th—no rest for the wicked!) I made new friends among local farmers and winery workers and book club participants. I spent a lot of time walking with my cane through flower fields and pumpkin farms. And even though I feel a little down now, I can say this year really did have a lot of gifts in it.

Carousel Horse at a local shop in Bothell

Galloping towards 2024

Yes, just like this little carousel horse, I’ve felt like I’m galloping towards 2024. It seems like it’s creeping up on us whether we want it to or not! The year of the Dragon! The year of America’s next Presidential election. What good and bad await us next year we have to wait and see.

I’m hoping for a more peaceful year in 2024. I’m hoping this darn pandemic starts to wind down a bit, still having a number of friends and family in the hospital—while trying to dodge the germ myself—is a bit wearying. I’m hoping to find a way to make enough money to pay off my student loans and hope to find a magical miracle kind of work that I can do while chronically ill and disabled and that I actually enjoy. I’m hoping to see more loved ones in person, both friends and family.

So, during this “in-between” holiday season, I’m wishing you peace and joy. I wish you time for fun and hope, not just worry.

And in case you missed it last week, our baby bobcat paid us another visit captured on our Ring camera and here it is:

Welcome to the Big Dark—Halloween Costumes and Cats, Hanging with Poet Friends, When You Contemplating Quitting (Poetry, etc) and End Times Mindsets, Bonus Bobcat

Cat disguises self as Halloween candy

Welcome to the Big Dark!

Seattle welcomed—or, grudgingly accepted—the Big Dark last night, when the time change brought us dark mornings AND dark afternoons, and dark all the time in between. Plus, a week of power outages, rain and windstorms! You can see why Seattle-ites—even non-sunworshippers like myself—can suffer from depression this time of year.

Fortunately, the storms waited until after the trick-or-treaters on Halloween! You can see this picture of Glenn and I dressed up as Barbie and Ken (below). I couldn’t attend the Barbie movie premiere in person because my immune system (I was still being fairly protective because of some antibody infusions I was getting) so we brought the props home—a little child-size Barbie box and Glenn looking legit like Western Ken (sans fringe).

Me as Barbie and Glenn as Western Ken

Plus, this cat was trying to escape disguised as Halloween candy. No good, Charlotte! We saw right through your schemes! We did get a lot of cute trick or treaters this year, which is always fun and we took the rest of our candy to a local winery that donates Halloween candy to the troops, which seems much better than Glenn and I eating it.

The weather also mercifully held out until my poet friend Kelli Russell Agodon and her husband Rose got on the ferry back to their home, after their visit out to see us and do some local celebrating at Woodinville’s Molbaks, which does some fantastic holiday display stuff (as you will see in pictures later in the post).

Because we visited the very day after Halloween, they didn’t have ALL the holiday decorations up yet—missing some lights and a huge poinsettia tree that was up two days later.

Kelli Agodon and I with tropical plants at Molbaks

Hanging with Poet Friends

One thing I’ve been trying to do is make time to see friends in person—at three and a half years and counting, it’s been a long pandemic—and this week my friend Kelli and her husband made the long trek from over the water to see Glenn and me. Glenn provided a delicious brunch, we had sparkling wine from a local winery, and then we went adventuring at the aforementioned home and garden store famous for its over-the-top holiday decor—like $1100 stuffed display polar bears, oversized trees, camping scenes, holiday pastel bakery scenes. Hey, when you’re trying to stave off Big Dark (not to mention, horrible news all day everyday) sometimes you’ve got to do some crazy things. It is really good to see people we love in person. Kelli and I got to talk a little shop too—about writing, making money, survival as a poet, book sales during a pandemic, and more.

So below, another pic of Kelli and me, and then two pics of Glenn and I two days later at Molbaks’ holiday party because yes, that’s how much I like being around flowers in November.

When You’re Considering Quitting (Poetry and Etc)

I had the sad news today that Tom Holmes was quitting his quirky-but-fun poetry magazine that I’ve been a fan of for years, Redactions—and that’s the news after a couple of high-profile lit mags went down this week. Funding is being pulled, universities are laying off staff left and right, and lit mags are struggling. The poetry world in general is struggling, maybe just here in America, but it feels like maybe this is a larger phenomenon. People in general are struggling to feel hopeful. This made me think about mindsets of writers in the past. T.S. Eliot wrote his classic “end of the world” poem “The Waste Land” in 1922 – he hadn’t even been through the Great Depression or WWII yet!

I recently read Agatha Christie’s Hallowe’en Party (the book on which the recent movie Haunting in Venice is loosely based – free on Hulu right now, FYI). It was written in 1969, right after the UK took away the death penalty for murder, a change that Christie – a woman who, might I remind you, successfully faked her own death when she found out her first husband was cheating on her and obsessively read crime news articles – thought was definitely signaling moral decay and even an end to civilized society. (Hey, stuff was weird in 69—the first lines of the song “Beeswing” are “they called it the summer of love—they were burning babies burning flags the hawks against the doves”—sound familiar?)

When Virginia Woolf took her own life at the midst of WWII, her house in London had just been bombed and she legitimately thought the Nazis were going to win and come and kill her husband (who was Jewish). Did England at the end of 1941 feel like end times? I bet it did. Add to that health problems and mental health issues, and it became too much.

Sylvia Plath and Marilyn Monroe took their own lives way too young, both thinking they were somehow “over the hill” (!!) and looking at themselves as failures, when years later we still see them as legends. It is a shame neither lived long enough to see how long their legacies would last. If they’d only held on a little longer, maybe they would have known more about their own success, their impact?

It is easy to lose hope. Little and big things—the weather, current events, job and money anxiety—can make life seem that much harder for people who were already struggling. Be sure to reach out to your loved ones and make sure they are doing okay. Be extra kind to the people around you, if you can be. I am a girl who thinks about endings a lot—I mean, I wrote a book that was published a few years ago all about the end of the world, and that was BEFORE the pandemic, Trump, the recent wars in the Ukraine and the middle East.

This year, I turned 50, and I guess I am feeling a bit of the midlife crisis they advertise – that is, questioning my life’s work at this point, wondering why I haven’t been able to pay off my student loans yet, wondering if poetry is something I should continue doing, worrying over the dwindling numbers of poetry mags and book sales. Should I do something that makes more money but that I hate? My health problems at this point probably make working a “normal” job impossible, but taking disability—which some of my family members have advised, given how little money I’ve made in the last couple of years—seems extreme at this point. (Plus, dealing with lawyers and paperwork are two of my least favorite things—I barely apply for grants and residencies as it is because I will do anything to avoid paperwork. That they ask sick and disabled people to jump through so many hoops to get payments that would barely cover my grocery bill is another whole problem. The average wait time in this country to get disability is six years.)

I love art. I love encouraging and mentoring people, but teaching full time—which is the way many poets and writers make their living—seems not likely at this age. (Multiple degrees, and eight books, what do I have to show for it besides a lot of debt? Sigh, sigh.) I could do a part-time low-residency job, but those are few and far between. I’m told I’m good at editing, which I could do part-time, but honestly, it takes a lot of brain power and MS has made it harder than it used to be.

All this is just to say, how do we decide when it’s time to quit—a job, a relationship, or even a passion for an art that just doesn’t seem to be thriving the way we wish it would? I’ve quit poetry twice during my lifetime—in my middle twenties, right after my MA when I decided the poetry world was too corrupt and became a tech writing manager for a dozen years instead, and in my thirties, when I struggled to get my first book—the one that became Becoming the Villainess—published. My love of poetry and desire to do it has flared up intermittently—the two notable times, when I had double pneumonia and was living in California, struggling to pay regular bills, at the hospital on several IVs and oxygen and thought “I can’t die—I haven’t published my second book yet!” and again when I was diagnosed seven years ago with terminal cancer and thought “I can’t die—I still have more poems to write!” Every single decision we make in life has an impact—where we live, whom we live with, what we choose to do for a living, who we hang out with, how we vote, even adopting an animal, taking on volunteer work for a charity—and sometimes it’s good to have moments when we look hard at our current situations and ask: is this right for me, right now?

Anyway, I certainly don’t have all the answers. If you are a writer and questioning whether you’ve made the right decisions, I understand. Just remember we’re not always the best judges of whether or not we live in “end times” or whether or not we’ll be considered “failures” down the line. Don’t give up too easily. I am saying that to you and to myself. Maybe there are good things right around the corner.

And if you’ve made it this far, just for a little anti-darkness cheer, here is a real-life video from this week of a baby bobcat on my back porch. I mean, baby bobcats! Or bobkitten, if you will!