Sometimes things happen that tend to put petty problems in perspective. Yesterday, I went out of my house to go to a dentist appointment, and there were about eight fire trucks in my and my neighbord’s driveways – my next door neighbor’s house and deck were on fire. Their house was saved and I don’t think anyone was hurt, thankfully, but still, quite the big deal. Then, I heard about a friend’s wife who was in the hospital on a respirator. She’s really young and has a small baby girl. Terrifying stuff.

So I was praying for my neighbor and for my friend’s wife in this hospital (because what else can you do at times like that) and being thankful for the good things I have every day and don’t notice. There’s a very apt line from Aimee Mann’s song “I’ve Had It” that goes something like “Cause when things are really great…it just means everything’s in its place…”

I am very thankful, thankful, thankful, for the health of my family, for their love, for the surplus of freelance work I’ve been complaining about but will make the holidays financially feasible, and for the good poetry news I’ve had lately, for all my supportive friends, for the sunny October days we’ve been having. I gave my husband an extra hug this morning.

And as for small good news, the new issue 4 of the poetry journal 88 is out today, with my poem “Breathing In the Asthma Capital” in it – the issue looks great, full of poets I admire. Here’s where you can read more about it and order it if you want: http://members.aol.com/hollyridgepress/88_4.htm

Putting together my reading list for the second semester of school as well, and I’m trying to come up with contemporary women’s poetry books, since I’m not well read after, say, the 1950s. Any suggestions? Please leave them in the comments section, it would be most appreciated. Here’s the kind of poets I’m thinking about including: Margerat Atwood, Joy Harjo, Mary Ruefle, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Denise Duhamel, and Olena Kaltyiak Davis.

I knew that reading comic books would pay off for me someday…

My chapbook, “Female Comic Book Superheroes,” has been accepted for publication by Pudding House Press and will be out sometime early next year. So I will finally have something to bring to all my readings 🙂 The very cool people at Top Cow comics have given me permission to use a silhouetted version of my fave comic heroine, Sara Pezzini from Witchblade, for the cover art and I just wanted to say thank you thank you thank you. I wrote to another contest to withdraw the chapbook from consideration, and the very kind editor there wrote back and said the chapbook had done pretty well in their competition, too! Which was a nice pick-me-up. But since I would miss submitting to chapbook contests too much, I’ve put together a new one to start circulating to the presses.

Strangely enough, I was looking through an online mag called Pedestal Magazine, just browsing through the poetry in their political anthology, and found my name there – what a surprise that was! So I’ve put a link to the poem on my poetry page – but be warned: there may be irony ahead. In fact, I think it’s a very bad idea to write political poetry at all, unless there are liberal (no pun intended) amounts of irony. I make an exception for one or two really good non-ironic political poems (“Dulce et Decorum Est” is still one of my favorite poems about war.)

I really need to update my poetry page, maybe make it its own mini-site, but I just haven’t had time yet. Still busy with work and work and then reviewing and homework. And, for some reason, my voter registration has been caught in a terrible loop – first, for months they claimed they hadn’t received my registration, though I sent it in three months early, then, that they received it but it wasn’t signed (it was!) and that I’d have to make a hundred mile drive out to correct it, etc. I sent in an extra, completed, signed form last month, just in case, and I’m going to fax in a corrected version with extra signatures too. I’m determined, but it’s like the forces are working against me being able to vote! When I think of what a pain it is, I think of what must happen to people who are much less enthusiastic about the political process than I am. I mean, I’m enthusiastic about voting, not necessarily about the candidates. I really wouldn’t trust either guy with five bucks, much less the nation. Hey, when are we going to get some candidates who are neither stupid nor dishonest? I’d vote for that ticket…Vote for us – we are neither dumb nor evil! And when is there going to be a woman running for the big office, anyway? What are we, stuck in the fifties? political rant> Anyway, I’m used to this kind of bureaucratic problem – last year I happened to check my credit report before buying a car, and it turned out they had me listed as “deceased.” What a surprise that was for me, living and breathing! It took me six months to get listed as un-deceased. Six months of almost weekly, long, boring, repetitive telephone calls. Who says the system ain’t working?

Much to be thankful for, either way. Sun is shining over the island, I just had a friend (a terrific poet) land two poems in Prairie Schooner, and I have a wonderful husband and family – my little brother is the one helping me design the Top Cow cover art for the chapbook. Plus, pumpkins everywhere!

I am working simultaneously on an article on upscale bar food in Seattle for Northwest Palate, my homework, writing a review for NewPages.com, and trying to remember what I know about the Web Services Policy specification. Sometimes it seems I live in too many worlds at once. Did I mention I’m also doing ad copy for yet another company?

I’ve been reading Marvin Bell’s (my mentor this semester at Pacific U) book of essays and interviews, called Old Snow Just Melting. I’m enjoying it quite a bit. Sometimes reading books of essays about poetry can be just as inspiring as reading poetry. He has a great bit in there about Kierkegaard, who happens to be my favorite philosopher of the moment (not in the highest of highs, like Erasmus and Pascale, but still.) Every time I think of his name, though, I always flash back to that Monty Python sketch where the German philophers play the ancient Greek philophers for the philosophy soccer tournament. One of their best, I think.

Five rejections this week (they can’t all be three-acceptance weeks, I guess 🙂 but I’m still plugging away, trying to figure out where to send next. Have I mentioned how much harder, scarier, etc., it is for me to put my poetry manuscript in the mail to publishers and contest this year than last? Last year I was clueless yet optimistic. Now, I know a lot more, and therefore know my chances to be thin. I guess I should remember the old slogan, you can’t win if you don’t play.

Have to guiltily admit to reading Foetry again, this time a thread that argues the definition of Expansive poetry, which I am still trying to get a feel for. Do I write expansive poetry, I wonder? No, probably not. But still, it’s good to know these things, in case they come up in conversation with, say, okay, it probably won’t come up in coversation.

Nintendo seems to be doing a spate of hiring again. All you gaming fanatics, why not send your resume in?

All right, off to my Daily Show fix…

Well, the poetry gods must be smiling on me lately…not only did I get a copy of the new Pontoon 7 with my poem “The Taste of Rust in August” in it, but I received not one but two acceptences within one week – one from a journal called 88 for a poem called “Breathing In the Asthma Capital” and the other from Diner for a poem with the insane title “Allerlierauh Reveals Her True Self to the Prince.” This is the kind of a week that makes all of my stress over sending stuff out and all those evelopes licked and stamps stamped seem worthwhile. Plus, I attended an excellent get-together for the fine Washington publishers Floating Bridge, where I got to chat to a million fun poet-types, and I’m going to a reading tonight for Cranky magazine featuring my friend Natasha plus big-deal Ukrainian poet Ilya Kaminsky.

So, it’s been a poetry heavy week. It’s weird to get acceptances after what seemed like an endless series of rejections. Hopefully this trend continues. Here’s to thinking good thoughts…

Warning: There will be no technical jargon in this blog entry.

So, I have noticed a proliferation of poet blogs in the universe lately, which, generally, is a good thing. I like hearing from other poets, especially about the frustrating nature of the poetry “business,” such as it is. Here are some (non-comprehensive) links to some interesting poetry blogs: Kim Addonizio’s, Victoria Chang’s, Jeffery Bahr’s, Kelli Russell Agodon’s, and Oliver de la Paz’s.

I am reading some books for school right now, including Alicia Ostriker’s Stealing the Language, Galway Kinnell’s The Book of Nightmares, and A Donald Justice Reader. One of the chapter’s of Ostriker’s book is really interesting to me; it deals with violence and anger in women’s writing, and how she thinks women tend to write “victimization” poems where the women passively receive bad treatment from men/husbands/fathers/society etc or “revenge” poems where women are the ones doling out abuse. I have been thinking a lot about how women in my generation can transcend either of these none-too-desirable options – how to respond to violence against women, or to our own anger, without being a victim or an abuser? This is why I keep going back to comic books. For me, the best role models didn’t come from the Bible, or Greek mythology, or fairy tales, all of which pretty much had nothing but women victims and femme fatales. (There are, of course, certain exceptions: imagine my delight when I learned about the character from the Apocrypha, which I borrowed from a Catholic college roommate, of Judith. Don’t know why she didn’t make it into the regular old testaments.) My role models were the slightly alien race of women like Wonder Woman, and Batgirl (don’t ask me why, as a kid I just thought she was the coolest) and later, the female characters in X-Men and even later, characters like Sarah Pezzini from the Witchblade comics and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. These women were feminine without being meek and overly self-sacrificing, and there was no doubt they could fight and overcome villains. The idea of being able to directly confront evil, as opposed to waiting around for someone else to do it for you, has always been very appealing to me. So I write a lot of poems about female comic book heroines, and video game heroines, etc.

I am hoping to someday do an all-comic-book-heroine chapbook, maybe even with illustrations. Wouldn’t that be cool? Yah, apparently poetry book publishers are not clamoring for this kind of subject matter, sadly. Oh well, a girl can dream.