A little happy piece of poetry news…
Garrison Keillor will be reading a poem, “Spy Girls,” from Becoming the Villainess on the Writer’s Almanac on June 16th! So listen in and let me know what you think! I remember my Dad playing Garrison Keillor on the living room stereo when I was in high school. So this will be fun! Of course, I’ll be at school that week, so I’m not sure if I’ll sneak out of class to listen to it or what. Tune in to listen for Garrison Keillor to utter the words “shot with acid spray” and “blue wigs” in the same two minutes….possibly for the first time ever.
OK, back to my regularly scheduled pre-residency stressing-out-trying-to-get-everything done mode. Only one semester to go now!

PS I have a new enthusiasm for New Michigan Press – they’ve decided to publish chapbooks by a couple of my favorite poetry-bloggers, Paul Guest and Kristy Bowen. Congrats to them and to NMP for picking great poets!

Hey, this is what G and I discovered on our walking trail yesterday:
http://www.fs.fed.us/r6/centraloregon/wildlife/species/mammals/weasels.shtml#ermine
A short-tailed weasel, otherwise known as an ermine! I mean, yes, coyotes, heron, eagles, deer, sure, but ermine? This little guy was attacking a bird’s nest trying to get the eggs.
Lots of poetry news in the mail…Harvard’s Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion accepted two poems, describing one as a “midrash,” which I had to look up. I guess I was writing midrashes without knowing it! They took a year and a half to respond, but they included notes on every poem and a nice handwritten note. And 2 River View took a couple of poems as well. And a rejection with a nice note from Calyx after eight months. Also, G has been experimenting with podcasting software, trying to put up audiofiles from my various Becoming the Villainess readings. They’re not very good, right now, but at least it’s a start.
Last night I dreamed about rewriting the plot of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. I don’t know what that means.
OK, quiz for you X-Men fans: How many times did I reference the Dark Phoenix (who finally appears in this latest X-Men film) in my book? The winner gets a prize – the most recent issue of The Seattle Review!

No rest for the villainess, Part II: The Festival

So, back from the Skagit River Poetry Festival, which was a lot of fun…but now I’m completely exhausted. I loved talking with the 150 or so high school kids (I heard 500 were there, but that’s as many as I talked to) about superhero poetry and, for “Poetry on the Edge,” edgy feminist poets like Denise Duhamel and Dana Levin, and they seemed to respond pretty well to the poems I read them from my book. One girl told me she had been writing since the 6th grade and asked how to find her “style.” I told her to read as many contemporary women poets as possible, and wrote up a list of books for her. I felt useful! So yay for that. The reading with Tim McNulty, Gerald Stern and Lorraine Ferra I thought went well too – they were all wonderful performers, I thought, not a touch of poetry voice in the group. There must have been over a hundred people there, but I was less nervous than I had been for the Open Books reading. I had a weird sense after my fifteen minutes, that feeling of being wholly connected to other people, to yourself. OK, enough weird mystic talk. On the downside, I was so busy doing panels and stuff (which were simultaneous with my friends’ – including the lovely and talented Kelli Agodon, Peter Pereira, Kathleen Flenniken, Elizabeth Austen, etc – panels and workshops) that I didn’t get a lot of down time or time to see other writers – I saw a panel with Anne Marie Macari, Tess Gallagher, and Allen Braden on how to make a poem memorable, and a lot of good readings at night – Linda Hogan, who was fantastic, Tess Gallagher and Billy Collins, Gerald Stern (a lovable curmudgeonly Jewish-grandfather type? Although I think he shocked our PC Northwestern crowd with a few utterances) and a really beautifully-voiced slam poet named Sekou Sundiata. I did get to talk a little bit with Canadian poet Rachel Rose, who was great, and meet Nance van Winkel and her husband, and hear funny stories about Billy Collins. (Just don’t get between him and a case of wine! I’m just kidding…or am I?) Also, I stayed in a B&B that was really dusty and kept running out of hot water whenever I wanted a shower, and since I have a hot water fetish and asthma, I was pretty miserable there. Also I don’t think I slept at all last week, hence the two days of sleeping recovery before this blog entry. I have got to get less keyed up about these performances. The festival’s organizers were pretty great, keeping us fed and watered all weekend, which was really nice. There was always yogurt and fruit in a basket in the “Poets Lounge,” and they gave husband G. a volunteer badge so he could see my reading and panels and carry the 1000 pounds of books I kept needing. Sweet!
The last comment – one of the panels was in the Museum for Northwest Art, which had a really striking exhibit by poet Jeff Crandall, including one piece that looked like glass shards of an egg resting on pieces of slate, with bits of poems about breaking inscribed on them. Jeff, I couldn’t get over the high-school kids’ enthusiasm about this piece, about which they kept saying “How cool is that?” Poet-glass art. Cool.
Pop Culture Commentaries:
Notes on the Da Vinci Code: The movie was a dumbed-down version of the book, which wasn’t all that smart in the first place. They took out most of the art-history and math-cryptography parts, which were my favorite parts of the book anyway, which left the two main characters with very little to do. Here’s some interesting links on why Dan Brown, by making Mary Magdalene Jesus’ wife, may be downplaying her importance as an apostle: From Newsweek: An Inconvenient Woman. Also, a Slate article complaining about the historical information in the movie, especially re: the Gnostics (and, FYI, if you want a good Gnostic movie, just watch the Matrix trilogy.)
Notes on the Alias Series Finale: But they didn’t explain WHY Sydney’s mom suddenly wanted to destroy two cities and had become all power mad? What exactly was the Horizon? So many unanswered questions…Although Sloane’s beyond-the-grave punishment by Jack was very cool. Jack was always my favorite character, along with Irina. Best line of the night went to Sark: “Michael, it’s not exactly my dream to be participating in global destruction.” Does this mean the end for female superhero types on television? No Buffy, No Alias. Hrmph. I may just turn off my set for a while.

No rest for the wicked…

The reading at Open Books, Seattle’s poetry-only bookstore, was wonderful. The owners, John and Christine, provide the most gracious atmosphere one could wish for and John did outstanding introductions – truly moving – for Martha Silano and I. We were both a little nervous about being recorded for a possible local NPR show, but I think we did okay. The place was packed and the audience was terrific. Anyway, I can only say positive things about this experience, and if you get a chance to read at Open Books, you should. And now they have some signed copies of our books, if you stop in. Thanks to everyone who came out – I loved seeing your faces!
Husband G. and I are picking up the lovely and talented Kelli Russell Agodon on the way to the Skagit River Poetry Festival today, which starts Friday morning (I’ll be talking with high school kids all morning) and then readings that night and the full-on, everyone invited festival all Saturday, from sunup to sundown. I’m a little nervous about reading with Gerald Stern & co. on Saturday afternoon (4:15) but excited about meeting a poetry hero of mine, Anne Marie Macari, who reads right before that. Tess Gallagher, Billy Collins, Nance Van Winkel, Elizabeth Austin, and the aforementioned John W. Marshall from Open Books, along with a bunch of other famous poets, including friends like Peter Pereira and Kathleen Flenniken, will be there. After this I’m declaring a one-week poetry sabbatical. Did I mention that Silk Road is going to print next week and all of my MFA end-of-semester materials just came due? Oh, the fun, the madness!
Someone mentioned on Tuesday night how much healthier I am than just a year ago. What a difference a year makes! I’m hoping for the health thing to hold up a little longer…come on, immune system – and I’m grateful for all these fun opportunities. I just need a week of sleep to catch up. Then to school on the 10th on June!

Tuesday, May 16th, 7:30 PM
Jeannine Hall Gailey and Martha Silano read from their new books, Becoming the Villainess and Blue Positive!
Location: Open Books in Wallingford
I hope to see you there! And for margaritas afterwards!

In the everything happens at once newsbin:
Stanley Kunitz, who was 101, passed away.
I had a lovely late birthday party/workshop over on Bainbridge Island with my poet friends there. The cake had rasperry filling and pink roses, we wore leis, the weather was perfect – the yard was full of palm-sized squirrels and chipmunks.
One of my very favorite poets, Annette Spaulding-Convy, just won Floating Bridge Press’s Chapbook Contest. Her chapbook is going to be fantastic.
The lilacs are blooming everywhere.
I interviewed retiring Seattle Review editor Colleen McElroy for a feature Seattle Woman Magazine is going to do on her. Always a fun conversation.
I just got contributor copies of the new 2006 Evansville Review, with my poem “Becoming the Villainess” and poems by poets like XJ Kennedy and my former professor Andrew Hudgins, and the Spring/Summer 2006 Seattle Review, which had two poems from my book and a poem by blogger-and-friend Peter Pereira.
Of course, just to make life exciting, my dear husband G. had some bad clam chowder while I was with the poet friends so I was up most of the night last night bringing him ice chips and gingerale while he was pretty miserably getting read of said toxins. Yawnn…hope I get some sleep tonight…must be alert for the reading…after that, it’s on the Skagit River Poetry Festival – a busy week ahead…