You never really know a town til you’ve been to its ER, I say. I got to visit this weekend. A new town, a new set of health challenges, this time, stomach trouble, sigh. More blood to draw, more scans to schedule. The hospital also confirmed that I had had pneumonia while I was in Port Townsend, probably for a long time, without knowing it. My lungs still have blockages! I have been breathing easier since I’ve been here, but apparently I’m not all the way better from that year-long trip to lung-trouble land.
On the plus side, I’ll be joining the reading for Poetry International on Nov 1, where Li-Young Lee will be reading as the feature! Fun stuff. As long as I can walk and talk, I’ll be there, baby!
So, yesterday I was discouraged because of the cancellation of a project I was really excited about and invested in. It was a surprise cancellation, the worst kind.
But then other things happened that put it in perspective. I literally took a day off from everything, reminding myself that not only had I just finished the difficult project (that got cancelled after months of hard work,) I’d moved into a new apartment in a new city in a new state, started a new job, and have been working very hard to stay, well, fundamentally healthy and also able to pay our power bill (higher in CA than WA, surprise surprise.) Everyone, in poetry, in life, experiences rejections, set-backs, money-crunches, health challenges. If we all just closed up shop every time a door was shut in our face, well, there would be a lot fewer successful writers. You can’t succeed if you stop trying. Right? Right. So it’s back into the saddle for me. Also, bad things happen to everyone, all the time, without warning. Rebecca Loudon had a really good interview online and talked about the nature of life and suffering. Her poetry is all about a kind of defiance. One of the powerful things about poetry is the ability to share with another human being and say “Hey, you’re not the only one who has ever gone through something like this. Hey, those dark nights of the soul may not be endless.”
And also thank you to all the kind folks who sent me encouraging e-mails and comments. More than a few of you brought tears to my eyes. No joke. So, thanks.
In an unrelated note: No Half Price Books stores in southern California. Not one! How do people survive without Half Price Books? Ohio, Virginia, and Seattle were crawling with them. This is the first hard evidence that there really is very little reading going on here in SoCal compared to other places.
- At October 23, 2008
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In discouraged
7
Do you ever have one of those really discouraging days where you just feel like quitting poetry altogether? I’m having one of those days. I’m thinking of giving up poetry and maybe taking up something useful, like restaurant hostessing.
Things you can learn from Billy Collins and the power of gold platform sandals…
Last night I went to a BC reading in La Jolla. When it came time to sign my book, he sang me a song called “Jeannine,” which is apparently an old jazz standard. (“Last time, last time I saw Jeannine…she looked like a movie queen.”) Had Billy Collins done this before? I don’t remember him singing last time I saw him, but I do remember finding out that his collie was named “Jeannine” as well. I found versions of the song on itunes. See what you can learn at poetry readings? Then I found another song on itunes by David Bowie called “Jeanine” that I really liked (“So take your glasses off, stop acting so sincere.” Hee!) Apparently all the Jeanine characters in songs (any spelling) are troublesome women. That makes sense.
I also got to meet Steve Kowit, who was very charming and friendly. The reading itself was so crowded Glenn and I had to temporarily retreat to the next door coffee shop, Pannikin, where the young coffee shop workers were talking about how Eliot’s work was good only because of Ezra Pound’s editing, and there were German surfer girls warming their sandaled feet by the fire. (It was about 60 degrees outside, chilly for here.) They invited me to join them because I was also wearing sandals, which I thought was very friendly.
In fact, I was wearing three-inch gold platform strappy sandals, which is very unlike me. However, the waiter AND the maitre’d at the restaurant we stopped at for dinner chatted us up and talked about the local food scene and then sent us a free dessert, a melting chocolate something with salted caramel and buttermilk sorbet. Plus, the whole Billy Collins singing to me thing…the mysterious power of strappy three-inch gold sandals? Or maybe people are just friendlier here in San Diego. I never ever wore heels in Seattle, so it must be the creeping influence of SoCal on an easily-influenced soul.
Here’s a pic of the shoes for Rebecca Loudon:
http://img.nextag.com/image/Guess-by-Marciano-Women/1/000/006/006/733/600673341.jpg
PS They were fairly comfortable.
Also, check this out: a poem by my Steel Toe Books publisher, Tom Hunley, from his new book, will be on Writer’s Almanac this week:
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2008/10/26
I’m convinced that though Garrison Keillor always calls “Steel Toe Books” “Steel Toe Boots” on this radio program, that he actually really likes Tom Hunley.
So, I’ve been accumulating a mental list, as one does when they move from one city to a new one, a list of differences between cities, in this case, the burbs of Seattle versus the burbs of San Diego.
San Diego Versus Seattle: Let’s Rumble!!!
–The burbs of San Diego have big, expensive libraries, which have no books on display, and the librarians seem unfriendly-to-hostile. The librarians do not know about advertised readings nor can they help you find a particular book. (This is my experience thus far with North County libraries. If you are a San Diego librarian, please do not be offended.) In Seattle, even the smallest towns have expensive, well-stocked libraries, friendly, helpful librarians, book displays for librarian-recommended fiction, non-fiction, young adult, and “topic-of-the-week.”
–The new doctor I went to for my b12 shots, who must have been at least in her mid-forties, had nary a line on her face, was a size two, had a deep fake tan and long bleach-blond hair. There was an ad for botox in the exam room. Does this inspire confidence? No. In Seattle, my doctor was mid-fifties, had many wrinkles, like a normal fifty-year-old doctor, was a size two, and had dark hair and no fake tan. The ads in her exam room were for diabetes check-lists and domestic abuse awareness.
–The burbs of Seattle have better shopping options than the burbs of San Diego, though San Diego proper has better shopping than Seattle proper. Many women here dress like Hooters girls all the time. Without being paid. My all-black wardrobe is definitely out-of-place. On the plus side, I’m not the only woman here who walks around with an umbrella up when the sun in shining.
–Independent bookstores? Seattle wins this one hands-down. Same with coffee shops. And so far, the burbs of Seattle win the restaurant contest too. I’ve only tried a handful of places here, yet, so maybe I’m shortchanging San Diego. Maybe this is why all the women here are so thin.
–San Diego has sunshine every day. Seattle has rain every day. Despite the occasional giant fire, it is much more pleasant to wake up and go outside in the morning here, go check the mail, run errands, etc. The walking trails here have “Beware of Snakes!” signs everywhere, though, which is a little unnerving. I’m told the warning signs are for rattlesnakes. Hmmm. I don’t remember encountering any rattlesnakes in the Seattle environs…
Conclusion: I miss my poet-friends, my poetry-only bookstore, my coffee shops, and the many wonderful libraries. Also my doctors. However, San Diego does have meerkats, palm trees, new hummingbird species, and an abundance of blooming flowers year round. Plus, I have met a few poets here (Hi Lorraine!) so it’s not totally poet-unfriendly. And it has way more universities and teaching opportunities than Seattle did. I guess we’ll call it a draw…
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.
