Language that Doctors Use and Toughing It Out For Poetry

There is a certain language that doctors use that makes one nervous. Once such type of language was uttered at one of my (multiple) specialist appointments this week: “You’re so brave.” When doctors start calling you brave, you start to worry. In the television movie of the week, that is never a good sign.

So, some health problems (involving, among other things, ultrasounds, EKGs, emergency room trips for loss of vision, and such fun) have been inconveniently interrupting my summer schedule of readings and gatherings. But we still managed to pull it together for Wednesday night’s Cincinnati Review reading at the Richard Hugo House, where I got to read with Don Bogen and a bunch of Seattle poetry glittering literati – Martha Silano, Carolyn Wright, Rebecca Hoogs, Megan Snyder-Camp (whom I’d somehow managed to have never met before that night,) Kelly Davio, and Priscilla Long (all pictured below.) What a great group, right?

I had a wonderful time and it was a beautiful night – that kind of 70-degree sunny evening that has been rare this year. Driving back over the bridge, the full moon was yellow and had cloud wisps over it, and a bald eagle on the bridge was silhouetted against it in the half-light. Those kinds of moments – moonlight and eagles and the water of Lake Washington – those are what make living in the Northwest worth it.

When you think about what is worth doing in life – what is worth sacrificing for, what is worth doing with your time – I rarely dream of living more hours of hospital visits and doctor’s offices, tests and record-searching. I don’t like focusing on the part of me – that is, for me, mostly the physical body – that doesn’t always work correctly. When I’m told that I’m so cheerful for someone with the problems I have, I say “what’s the alternative?” and I mean it. You either embrace what you have and keep driving, or…what? Dissolve into melancholia? Bah.

Again, in between doctor’s appointments this week, I’ve been working on an essay about speculative poetry, a review of a really good poetry book, a presentation for Geek Girl Con that I’m hoping I’ll be well enough to give. I wrote a poem. I even tried to plan some Redmond Poet Laureate stuff, wrangling budgets and meetings and contracts. This is the work I’d like to do, the me I like the focus on. I’ve had a bit of a setback as writer in the last few months too, some bad news that I can’t share yet but has really punched me in the gut with disappointment. You can’t avoid the sad or bad or hard things about life, or about being a writer, how transient everything is. I keep being reminded. You just keep doing the work.

We don’t get to choose much about lives, but we can choose what to do with time we’re given.

Where I’ll be in the next ten days…

If you’re looking to catch me around the Seattle area in the next next ten days, you’re in luck!

First: Tonight, 6 PM Pacific/9 PM Eastern, I’ll be the featured guest at Collin Kelly and Deb Ager’s Twitter #poetparty, so show up, ask questions, etc!

Wednesday night, 7 PM, I’ll be reading a couple of poems at The Richard Hugo House as part of the “Greetings From Cincinnati Review” reading, along with wonderful local poets like Kelly Davio, Martha Silano, Megan Synder-Camp, Caroylne Wright, Rebecca Hoogs…anyway, it will be super fun! So a great place to hang out, meet Don Bogen, The Cincinnati Review‘s Poetry Editor, and hear some poetry from some wonderful poets!

Then, next weekend, during Geek Girl Con, I’ll be giving a presentation on Geek Girl Poetry: Monsters, Zombies, and Superheroes, at 10:30 AM on Sunday August 10. The whole con takes place downtown, and it sold out last year, so get there early for tickets! I’ll be book-signing afterwards and the most fun part is hanging out and chatting with folks like Gail Simone and Jane Espenson and all the heroines from your pop culture obsessions etc…(Last year, I was mistaken for Jane Espenson by a television reporter. I had to break the news that I was not, in fact, Jane. But I do love her!)

What Does Success Mean to a Poet? What Does it Mean to You?

“Do what you love, and the money will follow.” I’ve heard this time and time again. But is it really true? Is it an expectation we should set up for today’s young people who, let’s face it, are going to be lucky to get any kind of job? Should we make them feel like failures for taking a regular job that pays the rent because it’s not something they love? It’s a quandary I struggle with when I’m giving younger and beginning writers advice. Boomers and Oprah – they love to say, “follow your bliss.” But I cringe when I hear that advice. I’m much more likely to tell a young writer to go be a technical writer for a few years to get health insurance and enough money to pay their rent. See? Maybe I’m a non-romantic, but…for most people, the “Do what you love…” works if they love doing something that makes a lot of money, and you’re one of the best in the world at it, you know? For Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and Meryl Streep, that advice works. But what about the rest of us?

I saw a job advertisement on one of my job lists today: “Unpaid Editor Needed for Online Journal.” Unfortunately, that is the norm in the writing world today; very few paid editor-ships, very few tenure-track jobs, and even the journalism world, that last Bastion of the Hemingway-type-writer/worker, as it shifts from paid professionals to unpaid bloggers, is no longer a shelter of paid work for the writer. Same goes for advertising writing – it’s been a quiet shift, but there are fewer and fewer copywriting and copyediting jobs lately. You’ve probably already read about how universities are choosing to employ many underpaid, overworked adjuncts rather than hire full-time teaching staff for whom they have to provide a salary and benefits, and that trend isn’t going away.

So, I assume no one goes into poetry for the money, anyway. So how can we measure success? Number of books sold, classes taught, editorships taken on? Prizes? Grants? Fellowships? Residencies. In a way, yes, these are all solid, measurable means of seeing where we are on the sliding and slippery scale of success. But in a way, they tell us nothing about who we’re affecting, who we’re really reaching, whose life we might change in a way we won’t ever know about. Money does not equal a true measure of success for writers, or any kind of artist, I don’t think.

So what kind of goals do we set? When do we pat ourselves and our friends on the back? When do we know we’re reached…whatever bar we’ve set for ourselves. When I started out pursuing poetry seriously after twelve years or so of being a technical writer, editor, and manager, I gave myself three years to publish a book. That was how I measured success then. But I’m not so sure now that is a yardstick anyone should use. I’m struggling now to learn how to build a poetry community in a town that isn’t necessarily known for its burgeoning arts scene, and it’s tough. How will I know when I’ve done enough, when I’ve made an impact? How can we nurture our inner artist and produce good art of any sort and make a living and make an impact on the world around us? It’s certainly a challenge…

What about you? How will you know when you’re “successful?” What makes a poet a success in your eyes anyhow? What advice would you give younger writers in this economy?

An Anthology for Fukushima from Japan and Finalizing Proposals

I was so pleased to find this in my mailbox – a contributor’s copy of the beautiful anthology from Japan in English and Japanese, titled “Farewell to Nuclear, Welcome to Renewable Energy: A Collection of Poems.” I was happy to contribute to this project, and proud to have my poem “Cesium Burns Blue” next to Alicia Ostriker’s “Gaia Speaks” in a small section of the anthology called “Poems for Fukushima from Poets Overseas.” It really is a beautiful book, too, and I love to be able to read the poems in English, then flip the book and see all the poems in Kanji. Interestingly, I wrote “Cesium Burns Blue” about the real experiments they did burning Cesium in Oak Ridge, which is where I grew up, a few years before the Fukushima disaster. One of the editors and translators, Yorifumi Yaguchi, and I have been corresponding for months talking about translations, and I’m happy to have discovered another poet I might never have encountered otherwise because of this venture.

I’m finalizing my Poet Laureate Proposal this week, so I’m booking venues for readings for myself, for other poets, trying to put together a panel for this fall, trying to figure out what will attract audiences and balancing budgets and trying to “measure results”…generally doing everything but writing poetry, which I need to get back to one of these days. I’ve been getting acceptances and I noticed I don’t have a ton of poems to send out left on my Excel spreadsheet, always as sign I need to get writing again.

How is your summer going? I can’t believe it is already almost August. We’ve barely had a handful of days over 70 or any sunshine yet…We had a coyote sighting near our house and picked our very first blueberries from our tiny backyard garden. Seattle in the summertime is so beautiful, I just want some more time to be out in the mountains, out in the wild…it’s my own fault for overcommitting, but I’m longing for some lazy outdoor summer days…

Sometime Even Ferries Get the Blues…

So sorry for the terrible losses for those affected by the Colorado shootings. The most moving story about that news for me was the young man, Matt McQuinn, who dove into bullets to protect his girlfriend and her brother, who both survived. For every example of evil, there is an example of an even higher level of heroism. I hope that young man’s name remains more famous than the shooter’s.

Home from Port Townsend after what I think is my worst ferry/places to stay experience ever – a series of logistical nightmares over the whole weekend with places to stay had Glenn and I practically living out of our car, scrambling for lodging an hour away from the conference and places to make food, while in between I tried to attend readings and teach classes and at least see a little bit of Port Townsend. We left at 9 PM last night and arrived home (after being turned away with no warning from Kingston’s last ferry, and getting home on a super-late-running midnight ferry from Bainbridge) last night at 2 AM. I never want to even see a ferry again. I can’t believe I ever lived on an island for a year. Don’t romanticize traveling by boat.

I lived in Port Townsend for a year once, and it felt strange going back this time – so much has changed. The streets look different, the galleries I loved, the coffee shops. I thought the classes went well – everyone seemed really engaged – and it was great to see old and new poet friends. I really loved seeing a coyote versus stag face-off, an otter climbing into someone’s canoe, the seals who always bob their heads up when I sing on the beach (for real – don’t know why, but this has been true for me for years – if you sing to the seals at dusk on the beach in Port Townsend, they will pop up their heads. I think they particularly like Scottish ballads.)

Here are a couple of pics from the conference – the wonderful Kim Addonizio, who was the workshop leader for my very first visit to the Port Townsend Writers Conference many years ago, one of my favorite poets, Dana Levin, conference artistic director and VIDA girl Erin Belieu, Kate Lebo, and me on a cliff by the beach at Fort Warden during a brief stint of sunshine.