Of Lamb mini-review and exciting news at Hugo House!

Lately I’ve been fascinated by collaborations between poets and artists, and none that I’ve seen is as successful as Matthea Harvey and Amy Jean Porter’s Of Lamb. It started as a poetic erasure of a biography of Charles Lamb by Lord David Cecil and became a weird and wonderful midrash of the story of Mary and her little Lamb. Lamb and Mary go on adventures, fall in and out of love and asylums; the pictures bloom out of the few lines of poetry/story on every page. A sample scene to your left.

Amy Jean Porter’s colorful gouache and ink paper paintings have a bit of children’s book aesthetic mixed with a touch of Japanese “Superflat” cuteness and surreality. The tone of Matthea’s work goes perfectly with the paintings, and the paintings and text work together; each lends the other depth and nuance. The writing is surprisingly moving as well as playful; the true story of Charles Lamb’s troubled relationship with his beloved older sister, Mary, lies right beneath the Mary-Little-Lamb trope. I highly recommend this book! It definitely expands the idea of what a poetry book can do and can be.

Exciting news at Richard Hugo House here in Seattle! Tree Swenson is leaving her post as executive director of the Academy of American Poets to become the new director of our own Hugo House! I’m very happy to hear this, and look forward to seeing in what direction Tree will encourage the Hugo House in the future. Congrats to Hugo House and I know Seattle will be happy to have Tree Swenson in town!

A few cheerful January bits of news!

Had a couple of good bits of news today, the first of which was a really nice surprise to wake up to –

Prairie Schooner had one of my poems, “Knoxville, 1979” as their featured poem today:
http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/?q=knoxville-1979
It’s part of my “The Robot Scientist’s Daughter” manuscript, so that’s always a bonus. Did I mention that “prairie” is one of those words that my dyslexia makes really difficult for me to type?

And, my review of Steve Fellner’s The Weary World Rejoices went up on The Rumpus!

I had my first acceptance of the year this morning, and sent off a new project to a trusted adviser. I’m banging on my writing samples for these two grant proposals, and then off they will go! A little snow, flu, and other such petty discouragements can’t keep me down…well, not for long.

Cabin Fever

At January 19, 2012
By Jeannine Gailey
In cabin fever, grant applications, Seattle snowpocalypse
3

Yes, I haven’t left my apartment in three days due to Seattle’s Snowpocalypse 2012. I also had a light fixture shatter on top of my head and a giant computer crash that ate four days of writing work. Then it snowed again, then it iced up. I watched three different pickup trucks today try to drag a car out of a ditch beside a stop sign outside my apartment, and then only succeed in banging the car hard sideways against the stop sign, with the driver inside. Ouch. This was not, as you may understand, much encouragement for me to try to send myself out into the world. Did I mention a foot of snow with a layer of ice outside?

So, I also started working on two grant applications, which is probably the least life-affirming thing an artist can do with themselves. I have a stack of magazines, library books, bad television on the DVR, gluten-free blueberry muffins…but what I wish I was doing with all this spare time trapped in my apartment was writing up a storm. Creative energy has been lost in a net of trying to describe my last three years of writing projects in an intelligent and cogent way and learning about the difference between escrow and earnest money and corian versus concrete countertops. See why I haven’t been blogging?

Has January given you cabin fever yet? Any recommended cures? Tomorrow I’m hoping to actually leave the apartment complex, for real. I’ve got chains on my car tires and everything, so no matter what the weather throws at me, I’ll be ready. The fresh air will knock my brains back in order. And I got a look at Matthea Harvey’s fantastic new Lamb, which I promise to review here soon!

Eye to the Telescope, Indiana Review, burned out cars

I’m happy to announce the new Persona Poetry Issue of the SFPA’s online poetry journal, which I had the honor of guest-editing, Eye to the Telescope.
From my editor’s note: “The two most common complaints I hear about contemporary poetry are that 1. it is boring, and 2. it is too difficult to understand. I’m hoping that you, dear reader, find that these poems will challenge both of those assumptions. We have a Barbie doll speaking from Mars here, Alice from Wonderland going on a date with Frankenstein’s monster. These escapades are accessible, entertaining, dramatic—in short, they make poetry fun.”
So go check it out! Poets include Oliver de la Paz, Kelli Russell Agodon, Celia Lisset Alvarez, Lana H. Ayers, Mary Agner, Kristin Berkey-Abbott – just a host of fabulous poets, some already known to me, some brand new!

In other news of new issues of literary journals, Indiana Review’s new issue is out, called Winter 2011 (although it is already 2012…) which has one of my favorite “Robot Scientist’s Daughter” poems, “The Robot Scientist’s Daughter [in films.]” Possibly because it has killer shrews in it. It’s such a consistently fun journal to read, I’m proud to be a part of it!

I had a dream last night that involved driving a car that was “burned out” from the inside-out. Is this a metaphor for my current state of mind? I would like the metaphor of my life to not be a burned-out car. I think sometimes I get so revved up, only to get let down – I need to learn to use a bit of cruise control in terms of my energy and workloads.

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.