Rumpus Reviews, an interview, and a perfume anthology

Sorry to have been absent – lots of boring wrestling of my crazy autoimmune problems this last couple of weeks, plus, another of my former homes in California (this time, the Napa apartment-rental one) struck by a natural disaster, this time earthquake. For the record, that’s: all the places I lived in California have now been hit by either fire or earthquake, which could be a California cliche. I’m grateful I’m not there now, but thinking good thoughts for all my friends in Napa. (I know people think everyone in Napa is wealthy, but there are a lot of working class folks there who work in the wine industry – people like our apartment complex next-door neighbors who were retired vineyard workers, for instance, and sweet/generous/lovely, always bringing us sacks of avocados or other produce, along with anecdotes about working in the industry.) And Napa’s only hospital is so small that I worried about them getting 70 patients at once. I used to walk in there with my asthma or food-allergy-related anaphylaxis-y things and there would only be one other patient there, usually, and they barely had staff for that!

But now it’s almost fall and I have a bunch of new info, so:

–Read this interview at Zingara Poet about the Redmond Poet Laureate gig and whether I think you should get an MFA (trick answer: it depends!) here: http://zingarapoet.net/2014/08/25/interview-with-redmond-washington-poet-laureate-jeannine-hall-gailey/ Thanks to Lisa Hase-Jackson for her kind and intelligent questions! The interview was done a while ago, in case you were wondering why I refer to being Redmond’s Poet Laureate in the present tense.)

–My review of Matthea Harvey’s new book, If the Tabloids are True What Are You, is up at The Rumpus! (Spoiler alert: I really liked it!)

–I have a poem in the new perfume-based anthology, The Book of Scented Things, in which many poets were given samples of a perfume and asked to write about them. It’s a solid anthology, particularly if you are, like me, sort of a perfume junkie – here’s an early review, which mentions my poem, “Safran Troublant” along with Juliana Gray’s charming “Vanille Abricot” and Elissa Gabbert’s “Consider the Rose.” (Mary Biddinger, Sandra Beasley, Hilda Raz – it’s like a gallery of poets I like!) There are a number of great male poets in here too, in case you were wondering: friends like Jericho Brown, Matthew Thorburn, and John Gallaher as well as Matthew Zapruder, Brian Turner and Ander Monson. The editors did a great job putting this book together, so thanks Jehanne Dubrow and Lindsay Lusby! The book officially releases in October – find more info here.

And, just in case you were wondering what Seattle’s skyline looks like in August, here’s a visual, taken from the Bainbridge ferry:

Elgin Award Voting, Poetry on Buses, and Summer Virus Attack With Reading Suggestions

So, I had a little good news today, which was my poem “Whispers of Home: Redmond” will be featured with the 4Culture Poetry on Buses 2014-2015 project web site, which is pretty cool. Somehow I’ve become a civic poet!

I also want to thank Diane Severson for her kind words featuring my little book, Unexplained Fevers, in her writeup of all the Elgin finalists for the SFPA prize on the Amazing Stories blog (Unexplained Fevers’ write-up is all the way at the bottom of the page, as books are listed alphabetically.) It turns out the voting has just been extended til the end of the week, so if you are a Sci-Fi Poetry Association member (or want to be) please go ahead and vote (for me, if I may ask so boldly?) (Voting rules are listed here.) Yes, there are some great books on the list, by writers I really admire: Sally Rosen Kindred, Brian D. Dietrich, Noel Sloboda, and more!

I’ve had a nasty summer virus that has flattened me since Sunday, unable to talk on the phone, sing, work much, even take my nightly walks around the woods near my house. So…here are some reading and viewing summaries, rated for appropriate sickbed reading:

–My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead – a sort of non-memoir-memoir which includes fascinating bits of research about George Eliot, Middlemarch, and other cultural details of her era. A little slow, but fun for those who are interested in Eliot, her life, and her era.

–Muppets Most Wanted: Meh. I just wanted a little more from this movie, although, admittedly, I did watch it while on a lot of cold medicine and very little sleep. There were a few giggles but doesn’t rise to the level of the last movie, which in my mind, didn’t rise to the level of some of the best classic Muppet films.

–Austenland: A movie that seemed much more amusing to me than it did on my first viewing – hey, a movie that improves with cold medicine! A woman who loves all things Austen spends her life savings to go to a grown-up sort of Jane Austen summer camp, but surprise! Instead of living a fantasy, she’s treated like a poor relation, is seen as awkwardly single, and manages to get in trouble with the people in charge, just like her favorite books’ heroines.

–I read the last little bit of Flannery O’Connor’s gigantic collected letters, The Habit of Being, which involve Flannery writing letters and stories like a fiend on her deathbed, literally unable to get out of bed, getting blood transfusions to extend her life, and suffering from anemia and kidney infections – not an especially glamorous ending, and so surprisingly moving because of her steely attitude towards her own health and frailty. If you can be said to have lupus “like a boss”…Anyway, not especially smart sick reading, since it’s a bit depressing and reminds us of our relatively short lifespans here on earth (she was dead at 39.)

–Delicious: A Novel by Ruth Reichl. I’m not far into this one yet, but it’s a bit of light reading about starting out at (a thinly disguised Gourmet) Delicious! Magazine, where the young assistant Billie discovers a trove of a correspondence between a young girl and James Beard. Not a masterpiece, perhaps, but fun for people who love food writing! Which I do!

–Lucky me, I got Murakami’s new book on the very first day it came out from the Redmond library, bless them! Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage suffers, perhaps, from some of the same clunky redundancy that plagued IQ84 (that book needed an editor to take out half of it) and the translation is either really bad or Murakami’s sentence structuring and language has suffered since his last book? (I suspect the former, not the latter.) Anyway, same old Murakami – magical sex dreams, suicidal tendencies, train stations, aimless 30-something man who barely knows about the internets plagued by a loved one’s unexplained disappearance, some pop culture references – I don’t want to sound jaded, because you know Murakami is among my favorite writers, but…I haven’t been blown away by this book yet. Would love to hear your thoughts on this one!

Speaking of Japanese cultural phenomenons…Two fascinating discoveries (courtesy of my little brother Mike, who supplies much of my Japanese cultural knowledge) – the movie The Edge of Tomorrow with Tom Cruise? Based on a Japanese novel (also made into a graphic novel) called All You Need is Kill, which I recommend checking out if you like Japanese sci-fi. And, the lovely cover art for “The Robot Scientist’s Daughter” named “Cocoro” by Masaaki Sasamoto may be related to the classic Japanese text “Kokoro,” a novel about a young troubled student. The word has many meanings, but one of them is “the heart of things,” which makes Masaaki’s cover art’s name make a lot of sense.

Here is the cover art for The Robot Scientist’s Daughter again, in case you haven’t seen it in a while (coming out Spring 2015 from Mayapple Press!)

Writing Process Blog Tour, the Supermoon, Auburn Days, and another shot postponement

Supermoon! (Perseid shower the next two nights as well!) And a little Anna’s hummingbird that guards the feeder in our back garden:

Well, the reading and panel at Auburn Days was fun, got to chat with other local city and county Poet Laureates, which was fun, but I came home feeling a bit under the weather, and woke up this morning in the full grip of an eevil upper respiratory/sore throat thing – on one of the hottest days of the year! What’s the logic of that? So we had to postpone my shot again, this time til Thursday.

Thanks to Joannie Stangeland (http://joanniestangeland.com/2014/08/blog-tour-2014-snapshot/) and Jose Angel Araguz (http://thefridayinfluence.wordpress.com/2014/08/04/my-writing-process-blog-tour/) for tagging me in this round of the Writing Process Blog Post. They’re both wonderful poets! I think I may have done this before, but I guess an update might be in order:

What am I working on?

Right now, I’m finishing up edits for my fourth book, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, which is coming out in spring 2015 from Mayapple Press, and adding poems to my fifth manuscript, about, among other things, apocalypses, scientific scams, neurological short-outs, which is currently titled Field Guide to the End of the World.

I’ve also (shhhh) been working on some short personal essays and pieces of short fiction. I can’t say I’ve mastered the other two genres yet, but it’s kind of fun to pick up some books on writing in other genres and experiment a bit!

How does my work differ from others in its genre?/ Why do I write what I do?

Everyone’s writing mirrors their interests, the way their brain works, the language they use every day, the books they read.

I think my work reflects my interests in pop culture, science and archetypal mythology. If the question is, why I write poetry at the exclusion of other forms, well, I’m working on it!

How does my writing process work?

I often write poems after interacting with other kinds of art – visual art, music, novels, comics, movies, sometimes even just reading a news headline or seeing a particularly interesting or funny image in a magazine. I often write late at night, when my subconscious is more awake and my inner critic is a bit quieter. My earlier work was very much inspired by mythology, but I feel like lately I’ve been more inspired by science and science fiction, which means my next two books have a bit of a different flavor than my first three. In The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, for instance, there are references to radioactive elements, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Madeleine L’Engle, and The Day After Tomorrow. In my newest poems, I’ve been inspired by things like as mundane as Anthropologie catalog and even having HGTV on in the background!

I’d like to tag poet Natasha Moni, a medical student whose book The Cardiologist’s Daughter is coming out this fall! Her web site is http://www.natashamoni.com/blog

Why Bother Reviewing Poetry Books, and Auburn Days

Thanks to Robert Brewer, who put my post on reviewing poetry books up at Writer’s Digest today – check it out!

http://www.writersdigest.com/whats-new/reviewing-poetry-books-why-does-it-matter

I hope it encourages you to write about one of your favorite poetry books for one of your favorite journals.

And since I didn’t get my weird shot today (see previous post), I slept in instead and will encourage you all to check out Auburn Days this Sunday, where I’ll be reading with a bunch of local city Poet Laureates at 2 PM and then serving on a panel called “What to Poet Laureates Actually Do?” at 2:30. Check out the entire schedule here.

Auburn is a ways out for us but Auburn Days are always a curious amount of fun. I love meeting the people there and always have a good time reading. I hope to see some of you there!

Autoimmune Diaries: Xolair Shot Number One, Wish Me Luck!

Updated Note: Due to a fairly violent allergic reaction early this AM (to goodness knows what) the first shot has been postponed til Monday. Thanks for your good thoughts for that day, now!

So, dear readers, it is with great trepidation that, because of the autoimmune issues that have plagued me since my teens, and in particular, the ones that have made eating out in a restaurant, going out in the sun, etc…impossible in the last four years, I’m trying out a new biological agent (technically chemo, a monoclonal antibody that suppresses your IgE reactions) called Xolair (real name: Omalizumab). Xolair is a once-monthly shot you get for six months, which helps asthma, allergies, angioedema (tissue swelling,) hives, and possibly even food allergies (it’s in testing for deadly food allergy treatment now). Since I have all those things, if it works, it’ll be lovely. I’m starting with one 150 mg shot, to ramp up to 300 mg in a few months if the results are good.

But the side-effects are scary. It doubles your risk for all cancers (from .02 percent (control) to .04 percent, but still), has a 2 percent risk for anaphylaxis, and a much higher risk for less frightening but still less fun things like headache, joint pain, and reactions at the injection site. A lot of people report feeling flu-like for three days after the shot. Oh, and did I mention the possible hair loss???? Yes, that’s something I’m hoping to dodge.

So it’s not a dream drug by any means. But since, for the last four years, I can’t even touch wheat without having a severe reaction, I’ve been pretty unable to travel due to things like ‘spontaneous idiopathic anaphylaxis’ – not any more fun than it sounds – and I’ve had asthma and allergy problems since I was a teen, it seems like a good risk to take. Some doctors give patients steroids before the shot, but because of my bleeding disorder, which makes steroids complicated, I’ll be going in armed only with Zyrtec and Benadryl, along with my epi-pen and inhaler (required by the doctor, ‘just in case.’)

Will you wish me luck? Another down side is you have to wait several hours in the doctor’s office after the administration, as they make sure you don’t react to it right away (although you can react after your first or second shot, and even more than 24 hours after.) So I’m stacking up books, my Kindle, and my laptop to while away the hours after I get the shot. Since I’ve had reactions even to shots as innocent as b12 shots, I’m (understandably, I hope) a little skittish. I thought seriously about making a will yesterday. (I’m 41, for God’s sake, and not immortal, so I guess it would be a grown-up thing to do anyway.) But still.

You know, one day you’re worried about your poetry book, getting your bangs trimmed, your 89-year-old grandmother’s (very similar to your) allergy problems. The next you’re all, “I hope I don’t die from this experimental chemo drug.” So, hopefully you’ll hear from me again soon, all happy that I took this crazy expensive drug and that it will have immediate positive results like, I can touch wheat again without having anaphylaxis, or I can walk briskly without having an asthma attack, or I can walk out on a summer afternoon without going red with sun-welts. (Note: results usually do not emerge for four-six months of treatment.)

Here is a picture of a grumpy heron at sunset at Juanita Bay in Kirkland, apropos of nothing. Walking around at sunset is so nice here these days…