Poets and Artists, Biker Bars, and More Prep for the Book Release

First of all, I want to say that I have really felt blessed to spend time with interesting people in the last few days. I had a good talk with my poet-friend-in-the-Bay-area Natasha (featured in this article on a 14 Hills reading in SF Weekly, with amusing results) and then had a coffee meeting with artist Deborah Scott who talked in a fascinating way about the artistic process of her paintings (see a few of them here) which reminded me of all the ways that poets and artists work in common. We looked at Tarot cards and talked fairy tales, which was really fun.

But Natasha reminded me that she had been reading my blog and didn’t see the full title of my upcoming second book anywhere! Egads, PR disaster! She Returns to the Floating World, due out officially at the end of July, has arrived in ARC (advanced reader copy) form. Contact Kitsune Books (contact at kitsunebooks dot com) for a copy! You can pre-order it now too. I got a copy of the ARC and have become so excited about the physical artifact of the new book – I mean, I can’t imagine getting so excited about the launch of an e-book, can you? Seeing the cover, the back, the little ISBN number…yes, I’m a paper-book-geek all right.

And those of you who’d like to know what this second book is all about? Well, one of the Tarot cards I picked up while visiting with Deborah was a picture of a young woman holding a lion by the mouth. One of the interpretations of the card is about how a person interacts with their animal nature, especially a woman – the being inside us that is instinctive, fierce, blood and lust. That is one of the themes of the new book – one of my abiding interests, including how to be heroic, is the idea of the transforming woman, in between states, from fox or willow tree or seal or dragon and back into a human body again. The book has a series of poems about little brothers and big sisters, another about the frustrations and beauties of married life, and a third about the dangers to our earth, the apocalypse. It is also a book about the intersections between Japanese and American folk and pop cultures.

Good news in tough times

At May 24, 2011
By Jeannine Gailey
In animal mortality, good poetry news on a bad sad day
3

The Good, The Bad, The Sad, and the Ugly…
This week is the last week of the class I teach at National, the week with the most intensive work, and my elderly blonde cat (a little over fifteen) has stopped being able to eat well though the vet couldn’t find any reason. We’ve been feeding her tiny amounts of chicken, which she seems to be able to keep down, and give her plenty of petting, brushing, all the stuff she loves, so in case these are her last days, they’ll be as pleasant as possible. But it makes it hard to focus to anything else. Urgh. You’d think with me growing up on a farm – my first experience with death was finding my beloved gray kitten half-eaten by a local dog when I was about five – would make me better about dealing with animal mortality. But no.
Along with that, my injured ankle – the same foot that I broke a bunch of bones in two years ago – seems to not want to heal – the tendon keeps healing and then re-inflaming with the slightest provocation. It’s frustrating being on and off crutches and a cane months after the original injury.
So, I was feeling a bit down, a little cranky/overwhelmed, and then I received word about a poetry acceptance that is pretty exciting for me – at a magazine I’m going to be really proud of being a part of. (I’ll reveal the deets after I get the contract.) And my publisher is sending me ARCs in the mail, and just sent me a cute little box of bookmarks – aren’t they sweet? I was thinking about the fact that I received word about my Dorothy Prize a few years back the day I got out of the hospital for a horrible respiratory infection and my landlord at the rental house we were in at the time had neglected to pay his propane bill for so long that they repossessed it so we had no hot water or heat in the house.
So what does this all mean? It seems there is never good news without a little balancing badness, and yet, we are never allowed to be utterly miserable because then, that moment when you’re ready to throw in the towel, is when someone will call with the news of some unexpected blessing.
So I’ll go back to taking care of my sick cat and injured ankle with a slightly lighter heart. (I’d give you a reading report on Billy Collins recent SAL Seattle reading, but you know, it was a regular Billy reading, though he seemed a little more tired, with a bit less of a twinkle, than the last time I’d seen him in California. Maybe it was that party at the White House with Aimee Mann and Common.)

A little LA Weekly Style…A California Poetics

Hey readers! A quickie: I just thought you might like to see my poem “Introduction to California Poetics” which was featured today on LA Weekly:
http://blogs.laweekly.com/stylecouncil/2011/05/poem_introduction_to_californi.php

Looking Forward To Launch

Not the space shuttle, but the second book. The “advanced reader copies” or ARCs for She Returns are heading out of the printer this week. I’m scrambling to make summer plans for places to stay for June and July mini-trips, as well as fall plans for readings in multiple cities – at least Portland, OR and Cincinnati, OH for sure.

I was thinking and wondering what I’d be doing differently this time around with my second book, what I’d learned from the first book, that might be useful to you all. Here are some things I learned:

–Since my last book came out, things like Facebook and Twitter have been invented. Crazy how technology changes in six years (and that’s not even touching the e-book issue.) It’s true that in some ways it is easier to get the word out about projects…but you’re also competing with lots of other people who are also virtually shouting at the top of their lungs about their own projects. Take advantage of new media, but don’t spam people to death.

–Do as much ahead of time as possible. I didn’t know what to expect with the first book, but this time, I asked my publisher a lot of questions about how I could make this easier on them, what I could give them that might be helpful to promote the book, and started asking for readings six months ahead of the book’s launch. FYI: Six months is still probably not enough lead time. (Or readings are harder to get now than they were in 2006.)

–Do not go bankrupt trying to promote a poetry book all across the USA. This means being excited – but judicious – about reading in other cities. Think about where you have a good audience, maybe family or friends, places you might like to visit, conferences that might be worth attending, and pick a handful. Do not try to hit five cities in five days for readings unless you have an immune system (AND nerves) of steel; know your limits. Traveling for readings can be tough and expensive. It’s hard to sell enough books to make an overnight trip pay for itself, but everything within driving distance is worth doing. You never know if you might meet a new friend, or find out about a magazine/great bookstore/awesome co-reader. I personally get a huge kick from visiting high school classes and college classes, so those, for me, are always worth doing.

–I know some things are out of my control. I can send out review copies, but that doesn’t guarantee a review; and I know now that even if you get a review, it doesn’t guarantee anything about book sales. I can’t control who likes or doesn’t like the book. I can’t control if it gets picked for an award or something like Poetry Daily or Garrison Keillor or a big anthology or other people’s college classes. Those things would be great, but all you can do is put your book out there and hope it gets into the hands of people who will be kind to it. (The corollary of this: don’t freak out too much about a bad review on Goodreads or Amazon. It is not the end of the world. )

–Be gracious, be grateful, and enjoy the good. In the larger scheme of the world, my little poetry book is not that big a deal. I will try to enjoy the little things as much as I can and try to be kind along the way. (Also, avoid obsessing over Amazon ranking or etc.) I will try to return as much love as possible to my publisher, Kitsune Books, who has championed my quirky manuscript and made me things like bookmarks and is kind enough to send out my book to reviewers.

Please post your own wisdom in the comments! I’d love to hear from folks what they’ve learned (from their first, second, third, fourth…books) and their suggestions!

Reading Reports, haibun and Seattle Adventures

At May 16, 2011
By Jeannine Gailey
In C. Dale Young, Jeremy Halinen, Matthew Thorburn, Maya Zeller, Qee art series, Rae Armantrout, Roq La Rue, Seattle sunshine frenzy, Yumiko Kayukawa
1

A few little reading report details and Seattle adventures. Needless to say I am drowning in new books!

I was so happy to get my copy of American Poet (The Journal of The Academy of American Poets) Spring 2011, which contains a wonderful article by Aimee Nezhukumatathil on haibun, featuring some sample haibun…including Basho’s from The Narrow Road to the Interior, Aimee’s “When Mountains Fang the Sky,” Kimiko Hahn’s “Untitled,” Lee Ann Roripaugh’s “Inquiline” and my haibun, “The Fox-Wife Describes Their Courtship” from She Returns to the Floating World. A great article if you teach haibun! Thanks Aimee! I feel honored to be in such great company.

So a few notes from my four days of whirlwind readings:

C. Dale Young’s poetry reading was funny, dark, moving…Torn is a completely great book. My husband says it was some of the best poetry he’s heard at Open Books. I also got to see Tacoma poet Jeff Walt and Rick Barot, who says he is working on both another book of poems AND a book of prose, so yay for that!

Rae Armantrout read some from Money Shot, and I clocked references to True Blood, Buffy, the financial scandals, Little Red Riding Hood, pornography, and that was just in the first couple of poems! Her poems are full of little inside jokes and references to pop culture, which can seem difficult, but when she reads them, just seem like the natural progression of her thoughts. Glenn also got to catch up with Rae’s very sweet husband (another supportive poetry husband – got to love those guys)

Maya Zellar’s new book, Rust Fish, (http://www.amazon.com/Rust-Fish-Maya-Jewell-Zeller/dp/0984451099/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1305555769&sr=1-1)captures a girl’s coming-of-age in the Pacific Northwest. One of my favorite poems from the book involves an argument about using Round-Up.

I also got ahold of a few other books, Jeremy Halinen’s What Other Choice (who, among other things, reconstructs the story of the garden of Eden in interesting ways) and a totally charming chapbook about travelling through Japan by Matthew Thorburn called Disappears in the Rain. I also got Eaven Boland’s A Journey of Two Maps, which has a whole essay about the underworld and the character of Nausicaa, so I had to buy it.

In the few spare minutes in between going to poetry readings, we managed to visit Golden Gardens park, going to the beach and pier and seeing the beautiful snowy mountains against the ocean, Pike Place Market (acquiring some giant pink tulips) and my favorite Seattle art gallery Roq La Rue, that was doing an exhibition of tiny sculpted cities and another of Victorian daguerreotype of family members posing with, say, yetis or a giant squid. That was mostly during our four hours of sunshine on Saturday. It’s been a cold and nasty spring, as I think I’ve mentioned, so when the sun shines at all, all of Seattle goes crazy to get out in it. Oh, and a quick fundraiser during Capital Hill’s Art Walk for the Japanese earthquake disaster, at which I got a crazy cute art toy designed by Yumiko Kayukawa and two of her posters.