Some of my favorite poetry lines about April, courtesy of Edna St. Vincent:
“It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.”
Thanks for all your birthday wishes! It was even a teensy bit sunny today, but still not warm. And we saw majestic bald eagles, little deer in our yards, hummingbirds and goldfinches. Banner wildlife, Washington State, if not banner weather…
And C. Dale, I did love Virgin Airlines – especially on the way home, when we got bumped up to first class!
On the last day of April, here are the last two drafts on NaPoWriMo, or the April of 1001 poems…(Be careful. These poem drafts will self-destruct.)
Poof!
*
Poof!
Home to 48 degrees and the gray rain again….
But before we left sunny CA, we had the chance to visit Monterey Aquarium with the many species of river otter, spend some time climbing the soft-sand-and-jagged-rock beaches at Pacific Grove, where we witnessed a sea lion playing with its newborn baby, watch surfers, visit a mall and eat artichoke pizza (with really fresh artichokes,) buy strawberries for a dollar at a roadside stand and eat them right there. I also had lunch with a friend in San Jose. San Jose is kind of what Phoenix would be like if you dropped it in between San Francisco and Monterey – a flat, strip-mally, dry, warm city – functional, but not beautiful. Well, with less grackles than Phoenix (I do love those grackles!) I much preferred the part of Silicon Valley with hills and greenery – Redwood City, where Oracle lives, and Mountain View. And of course Pacific Grove, about an hour south of San Jose, with its quirky little bookstores and restaurants and Monarch Butterfly sanctuaries, seemed a lot like Port Townsend, with better weather and more dramatic beaches. I’m really sorry I missed the chance to go North of San Fran to Marin County, where I was supposed to visit this March but my health got in the way. I’ve heard lots of good things.
I like Seattle, but I have to say I was feeling whoever wrote this for the Seattle Times:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/living/2004371152_moeletter27.html
I’ve never moved away from a place simply for health reasons, but I might have to start this year. Hey, who knew living with so much drizzle could be bad for someone with mold allergies and asthma? I felt so much better after a few days in the sunshine and warmth. Plus, it turns out not sitting at my computer all day makes me feel a lot better.
Turning 35 tomorrow: where to go next, what to do next. What to do until the sun comes back to the Northwest?
Notes from California:
A sunny 80 degrees in San Francisco, got to visit the friendly swans at the Palace of Fine Arts, and walk around the Presidio and the Golden Gate Park’s Fort Point. Calla lilies and pink ice plants in bloom, and not a single cloud in the sky! Also, delicious kinds of food of all sorts. But who can eat when it’s so nice outside?
Friday night we went to visit City Lights bookstore, sandwiched between multiple neon strip clubs, and the fabled upstairs poetry room. Glenn was fascinated with a book on Sylvia Plath’s art work, and I finally got to see some of Ron Silliman’s books. His work (at least the books that were there – “N/O” and “Age of Huts”) read a lot more like someone’s journal notes than I expected from all his talk about the avant-garde and Language poetry. Hm! Beautiful cover of “Age of Huts.” I also found some books I hadn’t seen before, books by Amy Gerstler and Julianna Baggott, both of whom wrote collections with a lot of persona poems. Overall, I’m still an Open Books girl, I think.
The art galleries in San Francisco were fabulous. I discovered a new favorite artist – kind of in the same surreal mood as Yumiko Kayukawa, but without the manga/80’s-ad flavor. More in the eerily beautiful vein of a fairy tale illustration gone slightly awry. Here’s a link to Rene Lynch’s amazing Secret Life of the Forest…girls with swallows in their hair, a girl looking at the observer with an owl hanging overhead, girls running from wolves in the woods. Would someone like to buy me one of these? Swoon!
Off to Monterey tomorrow…spending the night in sunny suburbia, maybe checking out some neighborhoods in the Silicon Valley outskirts on the way. Passed enough company headquarters to make my former-techie heart pound. Yoohoo, Yahoo! How much is the median rent in Los Gatos? Watsonville? Pacific Grove?
I feel positively C. Dale Young-esque! I’m sneaking off to California for a few days with G to relax – and possibly check out some neighborhoods for rentals…and I’m even taking Virgin America Airlines! He is such a good advertisement for them. Plus, the tickets were super cheap.
Yes, I think I need a break from backhoes, rain, and temperatures below 50 degrees for a few days…I’m packing skirts and sandals, which I haven’t been able to wear in the Seattle area yet.
Anyway, you guys be good til I get back!
Happy Earth Day! And happy backhoe accident/morning explosions!
The bad news:
The contruction workers who’ve been tearing up the lot next to our rental house back-hoed our power, phone, and cable lines at 9 AM this morning, making our morning more exciting, causing several explosions on our front porch, and also burning the metal junction box – which got so hot that it welded shut. Calls to: landlord, rental agency, power company, phone company, electrician. Maybe fixed by tomorrow? No heat, no hot water, no light, no phone, no internet. And six hundred people digging up our rental yard to re-lay power lines.
The good news: Thank goodness for the Centrum residency cabin! So Glenn was able to come over and shower, eat a hot lunch at Centrum, save all of our frozen food in the residency cabin mini-freezer. We even found the internet at the Commons (thanks Peter!) The poor kitties may be a little cold, but at least Glenn has an escape from a potentially very disturbing day. The only downside? Because they are removing some creosote material from the Fort Warden beaches, there are closed parts and helicopters removing creosote-laden beach logs.
Note to self: Residencies can be very practical, as well as creatively helpful. Just mind those helicopters!
Other note: I have been painting a watercolor a day. I am not a very good artist.
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.
