The miracle of good wishes, sunshine, and very heavy-duty antibiotics mean that I am feeling much better today and not downing the last of my inhaler every ten minutes. Hope that improvement continues, as husband G is going out of town and my mother is coming in for a visit tomorrow! Reminder: do not ignore bronchitis symptoms. Especially if it is something that requires antibiotics!
Good news today – Redactions literary journal decided to nominate my poem, “Why I Write About Japanese Mythology” for the Pushcart Prize. Thanks guys!
In good news not pertaining to myself, my poet friend Natasha was the featured poet today at Rattle:
http://rattle.com/blog/2009/11/it-is-fair-to-say-by-natasha-kochicheril-moni/
- At November 06, 2009
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In cough, fever, lungs
6
Woke up in the middle of the night with an asthma attack. Went into the doc this morning with 101 fever and they did a pulmonary function test and an albuterol breathing treatment. Doc heard a rattling in my chest which he thinks is bronchitis, not pneumonia. Possible flu. Think good thoughts for me, because the last time this happened, I wound up admitted to the hospital with double-pneumonia and pleurisy – and that was less than six months ago. I do not want a repeat.
Well, I did that thing to my latest manuscript last night – that thing where you print out all the poems, lay them out on the floor, and try to decide how they fit together, abandoning previous plans and careful sorting, trying to see if you need one or two or six sections, seeing if there’s actually an arc to the groupings. I re-did the manuscript this morning (put in four new poems, took out two or three old ones, and moved almost every poem around) and sent it out into the world in its new form.
I also ignored my teaching work for a bit (it seems to suck up all my time for some reason, and I feel guilty for not constantly checking in!) and applied for a fellowship and for California Poets in the Schools. I’m thinking it would be fun to work with high school students again. I worked on a new poem, sent out a packet, you know, all that stuff that seems to get away from you if you let it. It was nice to spend some time doing creative work, and even the relative drudgery of looking up Excel spreadsheets, figuring out which poem to send where seemed fun to me, so I must not be doing enough of it!
It’s November and the night is coming in so fast these days – it was cloudy and it seemed by 5 PM it was completely dark. The moon that was so bright and clear a couple of days ago has disappeared. The trees are shedding their leaves. Grrrrggh. I’m not ready for winter! Not ready I say! Hope that Napa’s winter will be kind to us.
Thanks to Suzanne for this link:
http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/to_the_whiting_award_winners_2009/
to Margaret Atwood’s speech at the Whiting Awards. My favorite bit was this, because yes, I went pre-med for my first degree, and yes, my parents – even though I am 36, had a decade-long career in business before I devoted my time to writing, and am currently teaching poetry at the university level – still tell me to go get my MD:
“Be vigilant – there are ambushes everywhere. On one side lurk the critics, getting ready to sneer and denounce, or worse, to praise for the wrong reasons; on the other side your parent figures, who always wanted you to be doctors, and who have furnished themselves with a list of writers such as Checkhov who were writers, yes, but doctors too: why can’t YOU do that? This is not helpful.”
I was also happy to see Jericho Brown on the list of recipients. Congrats, Jericho! But also interested to read at Steve Fellner’s that unfortunately, the Whiting Awards haven’t been that kind to women lately…Come on, Whiting Award mystery list of nominee-makers! Isn’t it about time women writers earned one half of the big, money-granting awards?
Another beautiful sunny day today as we wind towards the end of October. We carved a huge pumpkin last night, and I’ve been craving pumpkin-related foods (pumpkin seeds, pumpkin pancakes, etc.) We’ve been in Napa almost a month now. I can’t believe it!
I’ve been remiss in announcing a couple of publications:
–A few poems and a review in the new “Gender” issue of Poemeleon
–A new poem, “The Robot Scientist’s Daughter Journeys West,” in issue 6 of The L.A. Review. (I don’t think the poem is available online, only in the print version. Sorry!)
Lots of good writer friends in both journals, including bloggers like Kelli R. Agodon, Deb Ager, and Diane Lockward.
In other writing news, I got an acceptance from a speculative journal I really like, and two more well-written, personalized rejections. I don’t know what’s up with all these personal, positive rejections – do the editors have more time to do this these days? Are editors getting nicer? I like getting notes on particular poems – it makes me feel like someone is really reading them, as opposed to the form rejections, where you don’t know if anyone really did.
Still haven’t gotten to San Francisco – one, because I’m on crutches, and two, because I’m still fighting back against the mother of all tummy bugs that’s been bothering me for almost two months now. (I’ve resisted taking the scary antibiotics for it, because of the listed side effects such as hallucination and numbness of the hands and feet – and oh yes, nausea and vomiting, which are exactly what you want more of with a tummy bug – but my resistance is crumbling…) On the plus side, the ankle shows encouraging signs of improvement, and hopefully the stomach will soon as well!
In reading news, I discovered a new, California-based journal called The Normal School, which has a magazine-like layout and some really funny stuff, including an essay by Ander Monson on his wikipedia entry and self-googling habits. I might look for some funny poems to send them…
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.
