A new review on The Rumpus, and some upcoming readings you shouldn’t miss (but they’re not mine)

I’ve got a new (non-poetry) book review up at The Rumpus, of Jeffrey Skinner’s The 6.5 Habits of Moderately Effective Poets. I hope you enjoy it; I tried to have some fun, and the book itself doesn’t take itself too seriously, either.

Here are a couple of local events you all shouldn’t miss. They aren’t even my events, that’s how serious I am.

One is the debut reading at Open Books of Annette Spaulding-Convy and her new book on November 11, In Broken Latin. Here’s the link for more info: http://www.openpoetrybooks.com/calendar/archives/000546.html but just let it be known that you are in for some great poetry, AND it’s saucy nun poetry, which I don’t think really we have enough of. It’ll put you in a good mood no matter how worried you are about the election!

The other is the November 17 reading, at Redmond Library, of Washington state’s Poet Laureate Kathleen Flenniken, from Plume. And after I will ask her questions in a nice little Q&A session and you can meet her and buy books and get them signed and ask her questions about Hanford. There will be refreshments. Come out! Did I mention this is the kickoff reading for my ambitious plan as Poet Laureate to get everyone to read one book of poetry a quarter, called “Redmond Reads Poetry?” Well, it is!

The last note is: one more month til my second book, She Returns to the Floating World, is about to go out of print from Kitsune Books, as they are closing at the end of the year. So if you want to buy it in either print or e-book form, get on it! I hear it’s a pretty good book!

And, I may have good news to announce soon about my third book, Unexplained Fevers, which was orphaned after Kitsune Books decided to close. It may be that I’ve found a new publisher. Who might it be? Stay tuned to find out…

Looking for some good news?

The storm coverage is still swirling, NYC underwater, the Jersey Shore in tatters. Election coverage is an incessant background noise in everything from comedy sitcoms to twitter.

So I know we are all looking for some good news, some hope. And then, I don’t know, Disney goes and buys Lucasfilm and announces yet another (inevitably terrible) Star Wars movies? Penguin and Random House are merging. The world, for writers, is looking a little grim. But when has it ever been otherwise? (Yes, I’m also writing this post after a brutal dentist visit – three fillings today with no Novocaine, so perhaps I’m looking for a little cheering up.)

I want to call your attention to a couple of articles I thought were worth reading. One was about the proposition of value that publishers bring to authors. My little brother asked me recently, what is the purpose of finding a publisher for your poetry books instead of just publishing them yourself? In the old days, I would have had a much clearer answer – something about publishers offering authors marketing, financial support, distribution into bookstores, legitimacy, even. Now, in this new era, still emerging with its e-books and Amazon dominancy and ever-shrinking-and-hard-to-find-poetry-audiences, I’m not so sure of the answer. So, do publishers need to offer more value to authors?

Poets are generally so grateful to have a publisher that they will waive almost everything – marketing expectations (even modest ones, say, an ad in Poets & Writers or even on a web site somewhere,) promised prize monies, royalties, say to where and how their work appears – in order to be published, to be “legitimate”. Is the author’s only other option to go rogue, self publish, and push their wares at readings and on twitter? As a reviewer, I’ve often found that small presses’ books are inevitably more interesting and better written than either large press or self-published work. I am a fan of the small, struggling press with one or two people trying to make it work; they have the courage to have a point of view, an integrity of taste, that even when it isn’t your taste, you have to respect.

And onto reviewing – many years ago a female poet told me that I have a duty to review, that there are not enough women reviewing books, and not enough books by women being reviewed. I did start reviewing because I felt it was something I owed the poetry community, to find interesting books and talk about them in a way that might make a reader, you know, want to read poetry. In particular, I wanted to find poetry that other people weren’t already celebrating, poetry that deserved celebration.
Here’s a link to Margaret Atwood writing in 1976 – when I was three years old – about being a woman writer, and about the problem of reviewing in particular.
http://thisrecording.com/today/2010/8/29/in-which-we-change-diapers-and-collect-china.html
The same sexual put-downs, the old sexist stereotypes – is she an “Emily” or a “Sylvia?” – are still sadly pretty freaking wide-spread. Read VIDA’s count to find out if the numbers have changed, because, for the most part, they haven’t.

Did I promise you good news at the beginning of this post? Somewhere floating around the internets this morning was a picture of a big rainbow over NYC, a reminder of the Biblical flood and its inexplicably happy rainbow ending:

(Source: http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/science/rainbow_real.jpg)
If we believe the rainbow, things will get better for us. We will keep writing, even if we’re unsure of our audiences, how to reach them effectively, even how to communicate with our fellow human beings. We will keep creating because it is in us to create, to paint the rainbow even if it is absent in the story, because we all want to believe in happy endings.

High School Poetry Visits and Library Book Groups and Invisible Illness Impacts

Tonight is the first ever “Redmond Reads Poetry” book group meeting at the Redmond Library. I’m excited to try this out, but I have modest expectations for tonight’s attendance. Although I love our first book pick, Kathleen Flenniken’s Plume, and think it will be really fun for a Redmond techie-type crowd to talk about. Hopefully some folks come and we have a good time. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in a poetry book club!

Monday I did a high school class visit at Redmond High, which I really enjoyed. Surprisingly, you might not believe me, but high school kids love Gluck. No joke, I have never had kids not love poems from Louise Gluck’s Meadowlands (the first poetry reading I took my then-seventeen-year-old little brother to was Louise Gluck when she was touring for Meadowlands, and he still has a signed copy of her book.) “Telemachus’ Detachment” has got to be one of the best teen poems ever. We also read some Lucille Clifton, and a poem from Becoming the Villainess and She Returns to the Floating World. The students were really attentive, they laughed in the right places during the class, they were excited to talk about their latest comic book/video game loves, they wrote really good persona poems and then actually spontaneously clapped at each other’s readings of the exercise poems. One in particular I remember was a young man’s poem in the voice of a supervillain, which seemed to be a revenge poem but turned into a really touching meditation on mortality. The kind of poem I wish I had written! The teacher was also enthusiastic and great to work with.”Oh my God,” my husband said when he picked me up outside the school, “I’m on the set of Degrassi.” It is a school full of bright, articulate, telegenic teens. They asked me really interesting and thoughtful questions, like, “Was getting the MFA worth it, or was it mostly stuff you could have done on my own?” And after I answered the standard answer, that the MFA gives you discipline and encouragement and the benefit of experienced mentors, and they followed up with: “And it’s really hard to get poetry mentorship outside of a graduate program, right?” I said: “Not a day goes by I don’t wonder about that myself!” No, I didn’t, but I thought it loudly. They already knew about the youth programs at our local literary center, Hugo House, and about Poet’s Market. They were sure more aware of the writing “game” than I was at seventeen or eighteen.

I have to admit that I think the Poet Laureate work has been taking a bit of a toll on my health, I seem to have a never-ending flu (for about a month I’ve been running 101 fever and waking up coughing in the middle of the night almost every night) and some new migraine/heart stuff I’ve never had before. It’s always an internal argument with me; my physical, emotional, and mental energies aren’t exactly at the same levels, and I need to decide what’s worth the physical energy output, how protective I need to be. This is difficult to talk about in a public forum (anyone with “invisible” health problems like autoimmune or bleeding disorders or rheumatoid arthritis or allergies or MS or etc already knows this, because you look “fine”) but I think it’s worth discussing because a lot of writers have health problems that limit what they’re able to do physically. In fact, Christian Wiman recently wrote a really touching essay recently on his cancer, about having kids and having faith/hope in the face on an incurable and increasingly debilitating disease. I’m learning more – as scientists research more – about some of my genetic conditions, like for instance, with PAI-1 deficiency, a chronic low level of plasminogen may lead to increased inflammation, which may be the root cause of some of these never-ending illnesses and joint problems (although it does seem to decrease my risk of diabetes, at least, in rats.) I may be oversharing, but then again, I want to be honest about the chronic health issues and how that impacts my life as a writer, working, family life, even minor things like not being able to travel to AWP every year because sometimes I end up in the hospital with flu, or have to cancel readings. And I have to be aware of how much I take on, how many social engagements I make, how often I shake hands with children (whom I love, but who are, how shall I put this, terrific vectors for all things infectious.) It puts limitations on a life I wish could be lived without limitation. Then again, if I hadn’t gotten ill, chances are I would probably have decided to become a doctor, or at least remained an upper-to-mid-level manager at a tech company, instead of a poet. The enforced time of rest, of required disengagement from ninety-hour work weeks, meant I have had time to write for the past seven or so years, time to write, in fact, several books and attend a low-res MFA program (as discussed above) and spend time sending out poems – time I might not have had if I was totally healthy, time I might have seen as extravagance I couldn’t afford. Anyway, I just have to make decisions based on the information and health levels I have at the time, and adjust as I go. I look forward to things – like celebrating my fortieth birthday (and hopefully, a third book) next year. Making new friends. Having a positive impact on my community when I can, and maybe even creating, you know, art that makes a difference.

Five Questions with Washington State Poet Laureate Kathleen Flenniken and Autumnal Doldrums

First of all:
A short interview with Washington State Poet Laureate Kathleen Flenniken is now up at my Redmond Poet Laureate Blog here:
http://redmondpoetry.blogspot.com/2012/10/five-questions-with-washington-state.html
Go read all about Kathleen and her new book, Plume (which I reviewed a little while ago for The Rumpus…) as well as her duties as a State Poet Laureate. It’s very inspiring!

So, I’ve been in a serious case of autumnal discouragement, which is odd, because usually September and October are my GO! times, when I’m full of energy and ready to move forward. Part of this has been because of some difficulties at work, some discouragement with the poetry world in general (so much work, so little reward…I know I’ve been doing this for over ten years now, but sometimes writing the checks and submission packets over and over and doing the balance sheets…) and the many little things like cars breaking down, encounters with unpleasant humans doing unpleasant things, long cases of unremitting flu, then the cell phone and refrigerator breaking – I mean, none of these things are tragedies, but all taken together, they certainly have taken the wind out of my normally (I think) perky sails.

The weird thing is that a lot of my friends have reported similar feelings. I mean, we are in the middle of a pretty darn terrible economy, the worst and longest I’ve ever lived through, and that financial woe can be wearing. The elections this year also seem tinged with ill-will and weariness (although I just filled my voter sheet out and felt very American and empowered.) The poetry world is full of stories of presses and magazines folding, universities cutting back, grants shrinking and opportunities overall less frequent. I mean, I still enjoy reading poetry as much as ever, but my own writing has definitely suffered in terms of time and energy in the wake of all the Poet Laureate work, and sometimes I feel like I’m making Herculean effort and ending up with very little to show for it. Is that a poet’s world, after all? Karen Weyant talked on her blog about starting to write short stories, and I admit that I too have been dabbling in prose, flash fiction and essays and non-poetry-book reviews, etc. The question I keep coming back to is: in the current world, is anyone paying attention to poetry? Should we keep at it or try to get our art out in a different medium? The current Poets & Writers talks about the future of poetry. I do believe in a future for poetry, but I’ll admit I’m not sure at this point what it looks like. Twitter haikus and e-books and textual poetry on Tumblr?

Monday I’m visiting a local high school to talk to kids about poetry, and then Wednesday running a book group at Redmond Library to talk about Kathleen’s fantastic Plume. I better get my energy up!

If you’re a poet and feeling discouraged, leave a comment! We should at least try to cheer each other on, right? I hope it’s okay to talk on the blog a little about the bad times as well as the good. At least it’s honest.

What I’ve Been up To…

What I have been up to, you ask, since I last posted.

1. I missed a really cool reading in San Francisco called “Flight of Poets” where I had a wine matched to my poetry and everything. The broken-down car, still non-working cell phone and a new nasty flu were all contributors to this sad missing of a great reading, along with being broke because of said broken-down car. (But this week is basically the Carnivale of poetry down in San Francisco, with events almost every night. It’s a great time to visit the Bay area, the time of LitQuake, if you can ever plan a trip like that for fun – it’s an every year occurrence.)

2. During fever-induced hallucinations (first a respiratory flu, then a stomach flu – pleasant, no?) dreaming of getting a job that pays me more than 10K a year. Any job. And also, not being too sick to work said job. Then being able to pay off not only things like broken cars but also student loans, described in my last post.

3. Got published in the really beautiful new speculative magazine Phantom Drift. They included a little check for my poem (from the Robot Scientist Daughter series) too (thanks guys!) It is really like an old-fashioned literary magazine, with heavy, glossy covers and artwork, lovely printing. Check it out if you’re into “fabulism.” I’m in “Issue 2.”

4. Speaking of fun poetry, check out my review, just posted at The Rumpus, of Juliana Gray’s book Roleplay.  Zombie poems, odes to Nancy Drew, the kind of poetry that is right up my alley.