- At April 04, 2008
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In Ahsahta Press, Dog Girl, NaPoWriMo
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NaPoWriMo Day 4
Don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to keep this up, especially as I’ll be away from home tomorrow, but…
She Should Have Been in Politics
Poof!
Mini-review of the day: Dog Girl, by Heidi Lynn Staples from Ahsahta Press
Ahsahta’s books are always beautiful objects…I haven’t, in the past, I admit, been a big fan of Heidi Lynn Staples work – I saw it as being poetry so insistent on “interrogating the language” that it was on the edge of not giving anything to the reader, resolutely nonsensical and overly in love with its own puns. So, I was pleasantly surprised by this collection – perhaps I like wordplay more than I used to, perhaps the poems about marriage tempted me, the interest she has in Japanese forms that I share, that epigraph from Grimm’s obscure (but loved by me) fairy tale, Jorinde and Joringel – but something drew me in. Here are some playful and passionate lines from one of a series called “Prosaic:” “His hands touched me with a whole science…His eyes shined with hackers. I opened my codes.” There are some surprisingly touching poems here about the loss of a baby (“Not, You No” and “Arson” among them) that transcend wordplay and ring with emotional impact.
Day 3 of NaPoWriMo, and yet another poem…and also a mini-review!
I Forgot to Tell You the Most Important Part
Poof!
Mini-Review of Laurel Snyder’s The Myth of the Simple Machines, from No-Tell Books
It didn’t surprise me that Laurel has become a successful children’s book author, because this delightful book of poems is full of fanciful stories, narrating the life of “the girl.” Some poems describe eerie dreams, others comment on mundane life and mundane desires (from “I Covet Everything I Own:” “I covet every/ gone year, every wet summer, every early supper/ on a citronella porch…I covet drunk and tired and quietly,/ you. I covet my own thighs last year.”) All of the poems have a delicate melancholy, building up an imagistic daisy chain that collects fragments of memories, prophecy, faith and foreboding.
All righty, I said I was gonna do this poem-a-day thing, even though I’ve just been slammed with ten million assignments at once, right?
So I wrote a poem and debated whether or not to post it, because it’s fairly personal, and I don’t write a ton of this kind of poem. But in the spirit, here it is. It will self-destruct tomorrow…
Other People’s Children
Poof!
And because I don’t want you to get bored with all these poems, as a bonus, I’m providing mini-reviews of books from my review stack as well!
First up, Rebecca Livingston’s Your Ten Favorite Words!
(I usually dislike it when male critics use words like “saucy” to describe a woman’s book of poetry, but nonetheless:)
Rebecca Livingston’s collection (from Coconut Books) of flirtatious, saucy, edgy-with-a-LangPo-twist poems provides portraits of an American woman coming to terms with her country, her lovers, her culture, and yes, her words and herself. Read to entertain yourself, to take a look inside Livingston’s fun-house mirror, reflections of the tawdry and tender.
An excerpt from one of my favorite poems in the book, “Wifely Attempt at a Poem:”
“His poems only poemified my thighs and didn’t
mention I was trying to be a choice wife
while fists floundered, tongues clamped…
There was a poetry reading held in a boneyard that
onlookers mistook for a peep show
It should have been obvious
The aggrieved circled, fingered
my thoughtful frocks of fraught…”
I’m going to try to poem-a-day thing (otherwise known as NaPoWriMo) this April, but don’t quote me on that.
Here’s my first effort (note: this poem will self-destruct – I’m taking it down shortly.)
The Foxfire Books: In Case of Emergency, Learn to Make Glass
Poof!
In other Poetry-related news…
Amazon is acting very antitrusty, very monopoly-like, telling small publishers they’d better use their in-house (and lousy/expensive by reputation) POD printing service, Booksurge, or else loose their books’ “Buy” buttons. Holy crap, right? And, putting small publishers in a worse bind – Lightning Source’s (BookSurge’s main competitor) POD services include distribution through Ingram – Booksurge’s doesn’t. Looks like Amazon will lose a lot of good customers, and create a lot of ill-will among customers and authors, and for what – a few more pennies? More about this here, here, here, and here. Read this, and complain to Amazon about these lousy, non-small-publisher-friendly practices.
And, my April reading at Northgate has been cancelled. Sorry to all of you who planned on attending!
So, my dear readers, today is an interactive blog post! Any help is most appreciated!
Are there any journals you know of that pay for poetry book reviews? I have a stack of good books on my review stand…including Pattiann Rogers newest!
And, I’m working on a piece for non-writers explaining prose poetry. Do you have any suggestions about what they need to know? I’ve got all the usual background (French surrealism, Charles Simic, Frank O’Hara quote…) but am looking for more!
Also, I’m pleased that one of my friends (can’t say who or what contest) just got the phone call that told her she won a big poetry contest. I was so excited for her. Hopefully these things happen in constellations. I would love to have a phone call like that…
Speaking of good things happening to friends, what is Paul Guest talking about? That boy is such a big tease!
Have I mentioned already that we have to move again no later than September? Last night I dreamed Glenn and I were driving trying to escape hundreds of very dark tornadoes. Stress much?
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.
