All-Poetry, All-the-Time, or Why I’m Glad to Be Back in Seattle
Some things make you feel really feel like you’re back “home.” Like when the sun comes out in February, and you can see Mount Rainier (or a big full moon.) Like going over to your friend’s house for a poetry group meeting – a group that’s been meeting regularly for almost eight (nine?) years – and listening to your poet friend’s war stories and poems, hearing their good news and discouragements, shared over hot tea and plates of snacks. Like going back to a poetry reading series I used to help with – the SoulFood Books series – and seeing Lana and Michael. The guest poet last night was Tom C. Hunley, publisher of my first book. He’s a funny, laconic deliverer of poems. He also said that Becoming the Villainess is Steel Toe Books’ bestseller (Yay! that warmed my heart!) I’m also going to participate in another Seattle ritual tomorrow, and attend a poetry reading at Open Books – Mary Ruefle is in town!
All the socializing and poetry-izing is wearing me out, but in a good way. I feel like my life’s pace has quickened from the gradual, laconic heartbeat of California life to a caffeine-buzzed doubletime here in Seattle. More people to see, more stuff to do. It’s a poetry-stuffed town! In fact, I missed two readings this week already! But I wrote a new long poem, I sent out a few subs, I heard back from some lit mags, and Glenn is still dusting up his poetry submission database system we’ve been working on since December. (Much more thorough than my Excel spreadsheet, I can say that.) I also know I need to get on the ball and start booking readings for my new book this fall and next spring. If you feel like you’d love to have me come out to your conference or college, to read a bunch of poems about love, marriage, Japanese anime, etc, please let me know! I am feeling bashful about asking this time around, but I’m not sure why. The ARCs should be ready in a couple of months…it’s getting so close!
Happy Valentine’s Day – News and Love Poems
Happy Valentine’s Day!
First of all, you may have already read about Eduardo C. Corral’s good news – he has won the Yale Younger Poets Prize! I’ve been admiring Eduardo’s poetry since I discovered his blog in 2005, so I felt really happy about this. A great Valentine!
A nice shout-out from one of my mythology heroines, artist and writer Terri Windling, here.
I was honored to be nominated not once, but twice, for something called a Memetastic Blog Award, once by Marie Gauthier and the other time by Kristin Berkey-Abbott. (I will post more fully on this later, but wanted to thank them both for the nomination!
Two love poems from my new book, She Returns to the Floating World (due out in July from Kitsune Books!)
Love Story (with Fire Demon and Tengu)
Maybe in this version you are a bird, and I have become an old woman. Maybe you ate a falling star. It’s hard to love someone in a castle—they always feel distant. I will open a flower shop and learn to speak German, take to wearing ruffled dresses and straw hats. You’d like to pin me down, but you could tell my feet weren’t touching the ground. I called your name over and over, but you couldn’t hear me above the din of the bombers. It was like movies of wartime Japan. I looked up and there were planes bulging with smoke.
The blue sky kept getting darker –
sometimes, I thought,
with your shadow.
In the end, I have a dog in my arms and a scarecrow for a friend, but I never make it to Kansas. The field is wet and stormy, I kiss three men goodnight for their magic. The door to your childhood is opening for me. It allows me passage into a brick wall, my fists full of shiny black feathers, the shell of an egg, the howl of cold wind against a mountain. Don’t worry, your heart is in good hands. Let me keep it a little longer; its blue glow illuminates everything.
The thick knife gleams under your strong hands,
slicing carrot, onion, garlic, pepper,
scattering slivers into the air,
staining your fingers with their gold juices.
You chop so quickly the definite line
between “hand” and “knife” dissolves.
You strew pieces into the skillet,
listen for the right sting and sizzle of oil and wine,
waiting to feed me the work of your hands,
that broken finger, the tiny cuts
that lace and scar your surfaces.
Optimism Despite…
I’ve been thinking about optimism, about how it applies to life as a writer. How we must remain optimistic despite…despite rejections, despite days when you despair of ever writing what you’re really meant to write, despite the long hours and low pay, despite the evidence that the writing world is still a man’s world, etc. We keep writing. We keep sending out our work.
In my “real” life, I sometimes encounter a similar…intractability…with my health situations. I can do one of two things – I can despair, weep, shake my head, give up and lie in bed and not try to do anything, or I can embrace life, try different treatments, try to research and come up with better answers than the doctors give, and do the things that make life worth living, having fun, etc. Keep breathing, keep living every day and make every one as full as you can possibly make it.
This week I embraced optimism in both my regular life and my writing. I sent things out. I took a ton of benadryl and went ahead and went out with other writers. I put blonde streaks in my hair. I bought jeans that fit – a smaller size than I’ve been since high school, thanks to food allergy testing and those darn elimination diets – instead of walking around in old clothes that were too big. I requested a review copy of a book I’m absolutely loving. I received some tentative good news. I applied for jobs I might not get, but at least I will know I tried. I made reservations for a reading down in Southern California in two weeks, which I probably can’t afford, and tomorrow I’m having two friends – an artist and a writer that I rarely get to see – over for a visit. My house is full of pink tulips and pink lilies, because in February, we need to remember spring is almost here.
And you know what? These actions are the things I want to define me, not my rejections or my weird sporadic health problems. I choose fun, friends, pink tulips, and poetry, along with a little bit of chocolate. (See? I’m even cheating my elimination diet a little. But what is life without a little dairy-free, gluten-free chocolate? And it’s almost Valentine’s Day!)
In other literary news you might find interesting…more recaps from AWP, Claudia Rankine’s letter on race and poetry, and my friend sci-fi writer Felicity Shoulder’s Asimov’s story on Escape Pod…
Even more numbers trouble…
So, AWP is over, and the talk of the literary town is some new “numbers trouble:”
Vida shows women’s books aren’t being reviewed equitably.
The New Republic says, not only are women not being reviewed, they’re not being published equitably either, even by independent presses. (And PS – the gatekeeper (male) editors at the top lit mags aren’t publishing women equitably, either. Except, surprisingly, Poetry.)
The thing to keep in mind when looking at those percentages is thinking about the fact that more women than men buy books, so sensibly, we should be running the joint!
This kind of thing can be discouraging for a young woman writer. I know it is for me. I think about the actions I can take: buy books by women, review books by women, support magazines and publishers who publish women equitably, etc. In the classes in which I have a say, I teach a 50/50 mix of men and women, or pretty close. If I had unlimited funds, I would totally start a press. But it kind of hurts when you’re trying to psych yourself up to send out a poetry packet, or a book manuscript, or a review query, and you let yourself think: these folks publish less than 25% women. And those women are usually already famous. Dang.
What do you all think?
A quick update: Jeanne Leiby from The Southern Review looks at her numbers compared to her submission percentages – eye-opening! Clearly, this is a complex issue with more than one problematic aspect…
Even more updates: Editors take on the numbers here, here and here. And the inimitable Jim Behrle’s take.
How to Survive Not Going to AWP DC
How to Survive Not Going to AWP DC
So, for whatever reason, money, health, job, family, you find yourself not going to AWP this year. If you want to cheer yourself up, my advice is to try to simulate the experience as closely as possible. Please include your own suggestions in the comments!
–Throw some dirty snow on yourself. Maybe roll around in it. Stand outside in whatever inclement weather your neighborhood provides. Make sure you’re carrying something heavy, like a bag full of books.
–Make yourself an awesome name tag (you don’t have to use your real name) and try to sell books to passers-by on the street. They don’t even have to be your books!
–If you’re lucky enough to live in Seattle, Boulder, or Boston, go to your local poetry-only bookstore and complain about how you can’t afford to buy everything you want. Pick up several obscure literary magazines you’ve never heard of, just to mix things up. If you have no poetry-only bookstore, any independent bookstore will suffice. Flirt with the person behind the register.
–Pick a bar in your area crowded with weary conventioneers – it doesn’t matter what kind, software sales, concrete machinery, whatever – and try to start your own drunken poetry reading. Bonus points for getting others to join you!
Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and SFPA’s Elgin Award, Field Guide to the End of the World. Her latest, Flare, Corona from BOA Editions, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She’s also the author of PR for Poets, a Guidebook to Publicity and Marketing. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and JAMA.
