Feeling very cheered since the last post, mostly because of time and perspective, and your cheerful posts and funny e-mails, and also by the visit of one of my younger writer friends from Pacific U who came out to our little seaside town by way of our temporary foot-ferry from Seattle. It was so much fun to talk about fiction, to stack up books to recommend, to celebrate her first acceptance at the (paying!) journal Asimov’s, to drink tea and discuss literature like actual serious writers. Ha! Oh, to be 26 again, and also a fiction writer! Anyway, thanks for the visit, FS, and good luck at the residency! I’ll miss the crazy Oregon ocean and all the fun writer stuff.
I also thought about Amazon reviews in general, about how many times we read a book and love it, but never contact the author, or leave any trace of our love anywhere. Amazon does let you leave a “hey, I really enjoyed your work” message to authors, which, whether they are small-publisher poets or tech writers or big-selling fiction authors, probably do read and worry over their Amazon reviews, just like I did.
Another Steel Toe author on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, “What My Father Believed” by John Guzlowski: http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/programs/2007/12/24/#friday
And, I’m doing my first Port Townsend reading at the Northwind Arts Center on January 10th with my friend Ronda Broatch. It’ll be nice to connect with a new poetry community. I miss my Redmond readings at Soul Food, but this will be a good group too, I can feel it.
Been reading the Sylvia/Ted biography, Her Husband. I’m reminded as I listen how many good things, how many successes, Sylvia had early in life. It’s easy to let small discouragements (and in her case, also a wandering husband leaving her with two kids in a cold English winter) overshadow all the good – think how much more Sylvia could have contributed if she’d stuck around.
Anyway, happy New Year and Welcome 2008! I hope it will be a better year for the world: more healing, more peace, more love, more celebration.
Hope you all had wonderful Christmas days!
We stayed home this year, so it was pretty uneventful, except my head cold turned into bronchitis, and…
Someone left a lump of coal in my stocking!
Casually checking my book on Amazon, I noticed someone had left me a nasty bad review of my Becoming the Villainess book…on Christmas Eve! It was just so hurtful. I know we poets ought to have thick skins, but you know, you pour your heart and soul into something…anyway, it was a bitter Christmas pill and just plain discouraging. And I was already feeling a little discouraged about the whole poetry thing. I did re-arrange and re-edit the Japanese fox-wife/folk tale MS, so it’ll be ready to send out again, but I haven’t really been writing or sending out work lately. Hmmph. What’s the use of writing poems if people are just gonna hate on them anyway?
It’s a Christmas Miracle – Sunshine on Christmas Eve in the rainy Northwest! Merry Christmas to all, and to all a goodnight. Don’t forget to track Santa with NORAD!
Happy Solstice from the Snow Queen!
For those of you interested in Snow Queens and tiny little letter-pressed broadsides…
Michaela Eaves (the cover artist for Becoming the Villainess) designed this 5×7 broadside and it is now available, signed, from me! The font is a little small but otherwise our experiment turned out beautifully. It’s a limited edition of 150 and Michaela gets 75 of those, so they won’t be available forever…
Available for free (signed by the author) with any purchase of Becoming the Villainess from me:
https://webbish6.com/poetry/villainess.htm
PS Some may receive copies from Santa in their Christmas cards if they’ve been very good. Or bad. I can’t remember how the Snow Queen works. Her morality is very ambiguous and her affections random.
The Solstice, the Holidays, and Your Nerves
It seems like everyone is a little down and anxious around this time…so many family expectations, the short short days, the colds and flus going around, the dark and gloomy weather (well, in the Pacific Northwest anyway) and the general unease that comes upon us during holidays. (Did I do blank? Did I get enough blank? Did the post office lose all my mail? Will little Johnny like his gift? Etc.)
Some good remedies include:
–hot chocolate, spiced hot cider, your favorite coffee or tea – in large quantities.
–telling friends and family you love them.
–Seeking out holiday lights, places that make you feel calm (for me, bookstores.)
–Wrap yourself in your softest, warmest clothes. Wear the comfortable shoes for once.
–Read something that feels warm, like Dante’s Inferno.
–Remember the days will get longer, the sun will come back, and that everyone is human, so show a little extra patience with their/your craziness.
–Please suggest your own comforts and coping mechanisms in the comment section.
Despite the stormy weather, we’re going out to the other side of the water to see Christmas lights, I’m going to get my increasingly shaggy hair cut, and perhaps some other fun things. Though my first instinct is to hibernate, I have the feeling that getting out and doing things is part of the key to not going crazy during five hours of dim daylight.
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.
