Warning: Health problem blog entry
Yesterday I had a revelation about, of all things, Kafka’s Metamorphosis, which I hadn’t read since I was about 15, but that I am rereading again. I enjoyed it then (all that teenage angst and alienation really helped) but I didn’t really realize what it was about. The last four months for me have been really hard, especially with my husband having to do so much for me, like drive me to my many dr appts because I couldn’t drive for two months or having to do all my trips up and down the stairs for me after the surgery. I spent four hours yesterday at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance Center (no, I have no cancer, but that’s where my specialists work) which is a giant facility with a gorgeous view of Puget Sound, where there are no one but very sick people from several surrounding states, Alaska, Oregon, Washington, some from even further. Probably fifty people in the waiting room at all times. Many people there were in the last stages of cancer. All the nurses and doctors were upbeat and friendly, which, I can assure you, is a rarity among specialists. I had a team of doctors, including one who specialized in rare bleeding disorders and immune system problems. They spent three hours with me in examination, discussing my records, and determining tests and treatment. Lots of talk over test results that were “funny,” trying to connect childhood illnesses, antibiotics, infections, bruising, congenital defects, dental work. One doctor put in calls to every doctor and technician who had received the strange resutls, asked for the circumstances of the test, their opinions. I felt like a patient on that show “House” (very addictive medical drama) – my favorite part was when one of the doctors said “I bet her kidney is just covered in lesions!” in a really excited way, like that might be a desirable thing, LOL. Yes, that would be great. But it made me think about how strange, how different the life of a cancer patient, or any “sick” person, is. All the doctor’s offices, the dosages, not worrying about relationships or clothes or work but how you will get through the day without something dramatically terrible happening.
And I realized that Kafka was writing about his health problems – becoming a tuberculosis patient whom his parents and beloved sister had to take care of, instead of him taking care of them. Becoming a giant disgusting cockroach in the story was a way of him expressing how alone and different and just, well, gross he felt, how he felt no one in his family understood him, how he hated having to be fed and dressed and all that. Maybe this was obvious to others, but I had never thought to research Kafka’s biography and just assumed that my teacher had been right – the story was all about the alienation of the modern world. Which it is, but also the alienation of being sick. Kafka eventually died in one of those sanitariums for tuberculosis, from starvation because his throat hurt too much to ear or drink. In “Metamorphosis” Gregor gives up and dies. I wrote a poem recently in which I referred to myself as part monster, and one of my friends wrote to me after reading the poem, “Sorry you feel like a monster.” But I feel that I have to embrace the inner “monster.” I mean, these days there is really no excuse to give up, what with all the strategies and treatments and medicines and all. And I don’t have cancer – just a bunch of weird stuff that could kill me but might not. I was told I might have to start wearing a medical bracelet, which was alarming because I don’t think of myself as sick, someone who has to wear an emblem of sickness. But I think I talked them down to putting a card in my wallet. Now I have a card in my wallet. It’s weird, the doctors, especially the women doctors, get this weird look of sympathy and tell me how smart I am, how healthy I appear, how I’m so marvellously upbeat. That tells me they feel sorry for me. I volunteered in hospitals for years, and I felt sorry for the children I worked with, for the heart patients on several machines, for the cancer patients being strolled down hallways. It’s very strange to be the one other people feel sorry for. I’m too well for that, right?
Anyway, blah blah blah not taking life for granted these days, blah blah blah not writing but reading a lot, trying to make sense of things, of my body, of those mornings when I wake up feeling bitter and angry and just “not like everyone else.” Like Gregor wondering where all those weird brown secretions are coming from, why his body won’t obey him.
/health blog entry

Readers, Writers, Editors

I am realizing there is a difference between the three groups above, how they respond to poetry, how willing they are to search for “something wrong.” Some students from a class on “Intro to Mythology” were assigned my chapbook, Female Comic Book Superheroes, and I get to interact with them for a few days on an online discussion board. Just reading their questions made me realize that what I do is worthwhile, that it is possible to connect with an audience, that it’s not just editors looking through their negative pince-nez glasses at sheets and sheets of my work. (Not that all editors do this, but it can feel that way to us.) Oh yes, I remember, this is why I write, why I bother with the whole publishing thing. So, if any of you Intro to Myth students are reading, thanks!

Had a wonderful visit over coffee with the lovely Jennifer Drake Thorton, who also contributed to my more positive mood about writing. Did I mention that my MFA program seems to be going through death throes and that I received a record number of MS rejections in the last two weeks? So I haven’t exactly been miss cheerful poet lately. It was great to talk about literary magazines, music, poetry and just life stuff. Among the topics: the influence of science fiction reading on the vocabulary of poetry. Thanks Jennifer!

Tomorrow I’m reading at noon at Shoreline Center for the Shoreline Arts Festival, so catch it – if you can! I’d love to see you, I even plan to dress up.

PS – Aha! I have finally mastered both links and italics in one blog entry.
PSS – I took the Tarot card quiz, and I was the Moon card, if you’re interested.

Because I (heart) Deborah Ager, I will not reveal ten things about myself, but I will reveal two truths and a lie. This is a game I played in high school and college, where people try to guess the lie.
1. I was offered a basketball scholarship to a private college, which I ended up turning down. I am 5 foot 4 on a good day.
2. I am afraid of bees but neither needles nor snakes.
3. I love sushi!
Guess which is the lie 🙂

I have been working furiously on my book MS, Becoming the Villainess, based on very astute and specific observations by three accomplished and trusted friends. Pulling things out, reorganizing, rewriting old poems, adding new poems in. All week I’ve been doing this, the most concentrated effort I’ve ever put in to the MS, which somehow feels narcissistic in a way, spending so much time on my own book of poetry when I’d much rather be reading someone else’s. I think I’ve come up with two versions – one for more traditional publishing houses, which emphasizes the personal/fairy tale aspects, and another for more “edgy” pubilshers, which emphasizes the comic book aspects.

Kudos to my friend Annette Spaulding-Convy, who was a finalist for the Floating Bridge Chapbook Contest, and will be reading the night of the 28th at Hugo House. Her poetry is amazing, definitely worth checking out. She, in my opinion, is way better than the person that won. Well, I haven’t read that person’s book yet, but I’m still pretty sure what I wrote is true. Isn’t it weird when you read literary magazines, and the poetry all seems so mushy and bland, and the people in your workshop write such interesting, powerful poetry? It could be friendship clouding my vision, but I don’t think so – I just happen to be blessed with some kick-ass poetry friends. I am also usually happily surprised when I run into someone from the blogroll in a literary magazine – Laurel Snyder in Iowa Review, or Paul Guest in Crazyhorse, for instance, and you think – yes, this is the best poem in the magazine and I know who they are! I was reading Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s Medusa poem in The Cincinnati Review, and thinking, wow, this is amazing! SO, I feel lucky to know, even if only electronically, some of the best poets in my generation.

Thanks to Peter P for this quiz/Horoscope – I have to say, this assessment seems fairly accurate…try it out yourself!

Well, the weather here in Seattle has been unseasonably cold and dreary, much the same way I am feeling. I am craving warm drinks all the time now. I guess that’s why Seattle is a coffee capital.
I’ve been worrying over my manuscript lately, not wanting to send it out to any more publishers or contests before I get more feedback on it. The MS has poems written when I was 19, and some I wrote last week, so I’m wondering if its on solid ground, it’s changed a lot over the past 20 months or so, should I abandon it for the new MS I’ve been working on lately, etc. I’ve sent it out to a few friends for feedback, but if anyone else would like to volunteer, I’d be grateful for their thoughts. I’ve been feeling less like sending poems out, wanting to sit on poems longer after they’ve been written. Is this a function of being a little under the weather since the surgery in Feb, a little tired, a little depressed, or something else? I know that being in doctor’s offices just drains the energy right out of me. I’m currently scheming ways to stay out of the doctor’s offices longer, to make the weeks when I don’t have to go sit in some specialist’s offices more frequent. Vitamins, cranio-sacral therapy, more rest, yoga, supplements.
I was also thinking about blogging, the way it reminds me of how, when I was six years old, I would sneak into the basement where Dad kept a herd of TRS-80s, and I would sit and write into the computer (without a word processor, I don’t think we had them yet) and just make up stories or write how I was feeling. There is no record of all the stuff I wrote down there. By the time I was ten I was working on the family’s new little Apple computer in the upstairs spare room, writing poems before school. I can see how some people (that person in the latest issue of Poetry Magazine, for one) can think lots of negative stuff about poet bloggers, but to me, it seems like I’ve been creating solace and space for myself on computers my whole life, and blogging is just an extension of that. And now I can communicate and create with a group of like-minded people. I also thought, how very lucky my Dad always encouraged me to work on computers, how he never said that computers were only for my brothers, only for boys. I probably never would have learned programming otherwise, the fun of making your own little video games or pictures out of code. Since I quit Microsoft back in 2002 I haven’t done much in the way of coding for fun, just the spare technical article or two for $$ every so often. I think I was just totally burned out by a rapid succession of very demanding, 90-hour-a-week jobs. But I may be ready to jump back in sometime soon. You know, unless my poetry career, such as it is, suddenly takes off…