It is Monday, though I feel quite cheerful because I have a new computer that works (thank goodness, finally) and I wrote a letter to the editor at the Atlantic and I’ve never written a letter to the editor before but I thought it was for a good cause (to cheer Kelli and Pacific U) and this afternoon I am going to a very smart rheumatologist who may at last tell me why I’ve had a fever for two months and have albumin-anemia and high C-Reactive Protein. This I believe has been the cause of my fatigue and “down” moods lately – I was telling a friend that I feel my “down”-ness is in my body, not my head, that’s exactly it. I actually feel okay with my life, especially now that: a. I am wondering where to rent next (always an adventure when you’re picking a new town, even a new town in driving distance) and b. where/if/how I should work (teaching? publishing? more freelancing?) and c: I feel happy about the third manuscript I’m working on, and how I’m writing a lot of poems about sleeping women. It’s just that I have so little energy – like having lead weights on all the time. I always feel weird talking about my physical stuff here but it’s hard to explain my life without also explaining that stuff, if you know what I mean. So, it’s part of my life – like writing, like my husband and cat, like where I live – it’s part of the life environment – when you are sick, it affects everything else.
But enough about me! Here’s a neat link to an interview with one of my favoritest faculty at Pacific, Dorianne Laux, at the Smoking Poet!
And, apparently, a party run by the Poetry Foundation was shut down by police in Chicago this weekend. Look, poets are already paranoid enough that “the man” is out to get them – you don’t need to encourage that kind of thinking, fellas! Wish I could have been there to see it.
Aha! Solved the mystery of my grumpy computer…the hard drive died today and the computer would no longer boot up. I freaked out because I thought the whole of My Documents was lost- along with the 40 page third manuscript I’ve been working on but had no hard copies of – until I remembered I’d backed up two weeks ago. Then I stopped hyperventilating. I took it to a computer repair wizard (or as I call it, the PC Whisperer) and he said, yes, the hard drive is dying, lifted it to his ear and shook it, and got it to boot up one last time so I could copy the files over to a new laptop (goodbye, majority of grant money!) On the plus side, the new laptop is pink and superspeedy. If anyone wants a nice, three-year-old laptop with a dead hard drive, give me a whistle! Selling for cheap….
PS The PC Whisperer says the most common thing for 2-3 year old laptops to go is the hard drive. So remember your backups, all ye who bought laptops in 2004!
On the plus side, my father and brother made it through their respective eye surgeries swimmingly. Hoorah!
And, may tomorrow may be a less stressful day. Health and happiness to all!
PS May go see Hairspray tonight. Need an escape from reality for a bit…
- At July 19, 2007
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In Blog
2
Had the chance to see Peter Pereira and Nancy Pagh (author of “No Sweeter Fat” from Autumn House) read tonight in Redmond, and both did a terrific job. Peter read my favorite poem from his new book (Twenty Years After His Passing, My Father Appears to Us in Chicago, at Bobby Chinn’s Crab & Oyster House, in the Guise of Our Waiter, Ramon) Also had a fun poet-friend dinner beforehand, which was nice. I’m really lucky to know such supportive, wonderful writers.
I’ve been a bit grumpy lately, but hope it is just a funky-funk I will snap out of. I apologize to all who interact with me and who read this blog. I’m sure cheerleader levels of pep will return soon.
On the plus side, Heroes and Masi Oka nominated for Emmys!
Update: I know one of the contributing factors to the grumpiness is my three-year-old laptop computer, which has started giving me memory error and registry corruption problems, and now runs so slow I can barely open e-mail, much less a Word file, in 20 minutes. Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi – (I mean, shiny new Sony laptop on sale now) you’re my only hope!
To borrow from Ms. Loudon, My Glamorous Life as a Poet:
Well, after being 24 hours without power, we had to throw out the entire contents of fridge and freezer (except for what we saved via ice-chest and cooler.) That was expensive. Then go shopping to replenish: cheese, milk, frozen pizza/veggies and yogurt, salad dressings and sorbet (essential in heat) and other underpinnings of meals. Then, loads of undone laundrey. Then, host of unreturned phone messages and e-mails. Two members of my family, my dad and my older brother, are getting eye surgeries this week because of rare odd problems, so waiting for news of both. Managed to finally get two submissions out yesterday night (both online) and write and revise one poem. Got back to someone who was waiting on feedback for their poems. And had to attend to lawyer from x company that wants me to sign an affadavit that I am not the inventor of Y techology that I wrote about lo many years ago when I was a tech geek. Fun!
In between these little life crises, I managed to read the new book Japanamerica by one of the editors of A Public Space, a lit mag I love, which was a fairly shallow evaluation of popular culture in Japan and its relevance in America. Not bad, just not as in-depth as I would have liked, especially as it mentioned certain artists (Murakami the “Superflat” pop artist, and Murakami the novelist, and anime auteur Hayao Miyazaki) but didn’t really shed new insight into them for me. Maybe because I’ve already read a lot of books and magazine articles on these subjects.
Still contemplating move to an (Even smaller and further out than Bothell) small town at the end of my lease. Seems like the only way to live on my freelancer budget (even with husband G’s income) is to get the heck out of the Seattle area, where rents and property values just keep climbing. Poetry just isn’t that lucrative, and if I want to stay a poet, and not, say, a writer of vampire chick lit or corporate handbooks, it seems important to figure out a way to live on less.
Verse Daily, Three Cheers for Kelli, Power Outages and the top five low-res MFA programs
Okay, Verse Daily has my poem “The Husband Tries to Write to the Disappearing Wife” up today! (And by today, I mean Friday…please ignore the blogger timestamp.)
It’s from Redactions. Thanks guys! I’m honored. This is one of the few persona poems where I tried to write in a male voice, so it was a little risky for me. I hope you like it!
Immediately pick up the Summer Fiction issue of The Atlantic, which has a terrific poem by Kelli that won their student poetry contest! Hooray!
In this same issue, the Atlantic has an article that rates various graduate writing programs. I’d like to say my recent Alma Mater, Pacific University, made it onto the Top 5 Low-Res MFA Programs. Pretty good for a West-Coast newcomer to the scene, right?
It seems my power only goes out when the temps are below 30 or above 90. In that tradition, I’ve been hiding in an air-conditioned hotel room. Has this been a crazy week or what?
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.
