Did you know there’s going to be a panel on superheroes and poetry at AWP – I would love to be there! If any of you go, please give me a full report!
(Of course, this is the first AWP I actually planned not to go to – I was supposed to be giving a reading up in Pasco, Washington instead – which my broken foot/sprained hand combo have thwarted. And they have a superhero poetry panel!! Maybe they’ll have a similar thing next year, one hopes?)
Steve Schroeder is on Verse Daily today! And Jericho Brown was up yesterday – check them both out! I’m going to try to do a quickie review of Steve’s Torched Verse ends here soon…
Quick PS: Does anyone know how to interpret this? I got a SASE back but the envelope hadn’t been sealed, so it’s empty, and the post office never stamped the stamp. Ah, sometimes I love the poetry game and the post office SO MUCH!
So, what with the broken foot, the sprained right hand, and various bumps and bruises from another (!!) fall this weekend, we decided it would be best to cancel our journey northwest-ward for now and my reading up in Pasco for Columbia Basin College, which I really regret. What timing to have an accident or three!
I blame gremlins. Sneaking around, tripping me up…just in time for my trip! Boo! I will miss you Gwen, Felicity, and Seattle-friends! But I do plan on rescheduling a trip up to Seattle soon…
Trying to think of places to send a review-essay, and gearing up to write a conference proposal, another review, and some course-work for my upcoming class in April. Lots of work to do, and without the distracting use of my right hand and foot, well, I should be able to squeeze it in. Another week or two til I can do weight-bearing exercises on my foot! I’ve never been in such a hurry to progress to the next step of physical therapy before! I’ve been getting lots of good advice from my little brother, who broke his foot a number of times (among other things) in his quest for Shaolindo-black-belt-hood. His advice? It takes four weeks for a bone to set. Until then, rent lots of engrossing tv shows on DVD, and maybe play some video games. You can only read so many hours of the day – I go cross-eyed after about four hours these days. Also? There are a lot of nerves in the foot. Which is not such a good thing when you break a couple of bones. Like the opposite of reflexology. LOL.
Got my contributor’s copy of Redactions in the mail yesterday and looking forward to seeing Sentence’s new issue soon too (if they got my new address…it’s hard for lit mags to keep up with my many, many moves…)
Of interest…
Alicia Ostriker discusses the psalms on the Poetry Foundation site…
Tim Green wonders about gender bias… (and I make a comment there.)
Update: John Stewart had a robot scientist on his show tonight – who name-checked Astro Boy! I’m geeking out! Catch it on repeats tomorrow!
A little more than a week until our trip up to Seattle and Pasco, Washington, where I’ll be reading and teaching at Columbia Basin College (and making a brief appearance at RadCon) and Glenn will be putting in his time at the Redmond campus. Despite the fact that I’ve finally graduated to foot exercises (toe curls and ankle spins, exciting stuff!) I’m still not able to put much weight on my right foot (the doc said some tendon damage where the break happened is slowing me down – tendons take longer to heal than bones, apparently) and the right hand is still really painful (tendon damage there too, they said) but the rest of me is healthy so as long as I can get around, wheelchair or crutches or whatever, I’m planning to go do regular poet stuff as much as possible – including, hopefully, visiting a few friends, Open Books, and other fun Washington stuff. Of course, it probably won’t be seventy and sunny up there the way it is here, although I can always keep up hope for unseasonably warm, dry weather up there…
I’ve been trying not to be too discouraged about my situation, but it’s pretty tedious being stuck in the wheelie-chair with a cast on my arm – I want to run and jump around!…I’ve been keeping a steady stream of library books coming and going by the bed. Yesterday I read my review copy of Denise Duhamel’s new book, Ka-Ching! I just love her work. I’ve been reading Seven Days in the Art World, which I also loved, an exploration of MFA programs and art auctions and studios with a great chapter on the studio of Takashi Murakami. Also I read two books from the Gossip Girl series. That’s not improving my brain, I know it. And I have two Haruki Murakami novels on hold. I should be getting my online class materials ready for my “Advanced Poetry Workshop” in April, but the class development software doesn’t work with Vista, which is what my laptop runs, unfortunately. I’m sooo looking forward to Windows 7! I want to install the beta pretty soon. Of course, I’m looking even more forward to walking and having a regular working right hand again! Two to three more weeks for the bone, they’re saying…and another month or two for the tendons. Until then, feel free to send me lengthy comments, e-mails, letters, poetry news, etc…I can’t type a ton, but I can read all day long!
Well, today there was good news and bad news. The good news was, I got a couple of leetle checks in the mail – one a check from Ninth Letter for my poem (thanks Ninth Letter!) and the other a royalty check from Steel Toe Books (Thanks Tom!) Considering this is the third year of the book’s being out, I’m happy the book is still selling! Considering the economy (and other expenses, described below) every little bit helps.
The bad news is, I can no longer get up and down to my apartment (for the first couple of days I did crutches, but then I hurt my hand and now can’t do crutches at all. (Poof!)
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.
