Fall Arrives Early: A Failed Surgery, Visiting with my Nephew, and Applying for a Big Grant

Late multi-colored sunflowers

Fall Arrives Early in Seattle

Fall seemed to blow in early this week with colder temperatures and a bunch of thunder and wind storms. It was a bit of a rough week for us because Glenn’s vocal cord surgery was a failure, and he arrived home bruised and swollen.

The good news was the scope he had did detect some slight movement in his paralyzed vocal cord, so instead of more surgery they are recommending vocal therapy. Still the week began on a down note. I’m not used to being the caretaker – but I wasn’t a total failure at it – we had to eat soft food for a couple days while Glenn’s throat recovered and he had to ice his neck where a few needles bruised him (ouch!), but I did figure out the perfect recipe for mac and cheese without using a flour-based roux – the secret is combine cream cheese, American cheese, mozzarella, and goat cheese – and I grated veggies into it to make it healthier but still easy to swallow. Anyway, it turned out terrific! Glenn is usually the cook of the family but I guess we could survive a few days with just me cooking. (To be fair, we ate a lot of frozen yogurt and sorbet.)

A field of cosmos in Woodinville – late blooms

Applying for a Big Grant

While Glenn was recovering, I managed to apply for a Guggenheim grant, which is very difficult, demanding, and just generally harmful to my self-esteem. For instance, if you do not work for an “institution” they have approved by putting in their pre-made drop-down box in their form, it’s really hard to move forward from the first page of the application. Just as an FYI, approved institutions listed did not include Microsoft (where 100,000 people work, ahem) or the City of Redmond, where I worked as a Poet Laureate. So that’s fun.

There’s also the intimidating and humiliating fun of asking for four people to be your recommenders, and you need so much personal information about them – I mean, info I wouldn’t know about a good friend – that it’s ridiculous. You also have to write a narrative of your entire writing life – they want every grant, all your education, but make it succinct (!) and track down all your publications, but not a writing sample, which seems like it should be the most important component, right? Ah well. I don’t make the rules. It just seems to get harder every year applying for this bad boy.

Me and my little nephew (He’s 6 foot 5 now!) at Chateau Ste Michelle

Visiting with a Nephew

The good part of the week was that one of my nephews from Tennessee visited, with an eye towards possibly moving out here. I do not get to see my nieces and nephews enough, as they mainly live in faraway places like Cincinnati and Knoxville, so it was really nice to have some one-on-one time with Dustin.

Dustin and Glenn got along really well (of course Glenn couldn’t talk much, but they bonded over the grill) and my little brother also hosted him on the other side of the water so he got a chance to see all kinds of beautiful scenery. It’s a nice reminder that 1) my nephew is surprisingly not 10 anymore and 2) I really do like my family members! He seemed to really enjoy the Seattle area and we are hoping he finds a job out here so he can move out here for real. The more family here, the better, I say!  He’ll be visiting again in the spring, hopefully with his older brother, so that will be something to look forward to.

An unusual backyard visitor for us – a lovely Scrub Jay!

Considering Changes in the Air

Besides the changing temperatures and sudden deluge of rain, there’s change in the air metaphorically as well as physically. I am losing a lot of my mainstay doctors (another one quit – so much burnout in the industry, which I understand) and so I’m rethinking how I manage my health.  I’m also considering applying for more things – not just grants, but jobs and residencies that I might have thought before were too hard for me – energy and health-wise. Have I been setting myself too many boundaries, I wonder? Shutting down my own horizons? During the pandemic, I’ve had repeated dreams about traveling to Paris. I don’t know exactly what this symbolizes but I think I should pay attention since it keeps coming up. Paris could represent art, literature, a life of the mind, maybe?

Rita Dove just announced she was diagnosed in the late nineties with multiple sclerosis, which made me feel more hopeful about my own future – after all, she was the United States Poet Laureate and still does public readings. I just got ahold of her Playlist for the Apocalypse and am looking forward to reading it. Rita Dove has been one of my favorite poets since I first read “Parsley” in a Norton anthology when I was 19. She is an inspiration.

Peach flower field

I’m also reading a fascinating book about women in an experimental program for middle-aged “gifted” women in the sixties called The Equivalents by Maggie Doherty. The book focuses on how friendship, camaraderie and institutional support made a huge difference in the lives of five midlife women: Anne Sexton, Maxine Kumin, Barbara Swan, Marianna Pineda, and Tillie Olsen – in the 1960s. (They called themselves “The Equivalents” because the program required a PhD or “equivalent” artistic achievement.)

What do women need to succeed as artists now? Well, things haven’t changed all that much – we still struggle to get institutional support, to get paid and respected, to get our work reviewed and in the public eye – and to make friends with women who can inspire, support, and push us forward. I know a lot of men my age with fewer books/accomplishments than me who walked into tenure-track jobs without much effort. A lot of the people doing the hiring, the grant-giving, and the publishing are still men. How can we midlife women put change in the air in the literary and art worlds? Definitely something to think about.

Anyway, change isn’t always a bad thing.

The End of the Residency, Re-Entry, and Prepping for Surgery

Sunset from the ferry, leaving the San Juan Islands behind

The End of the Residency

Like all good things, the residency at the Whiteley Center on San Juan Island had to come to an end. This picture is a view of the sunset on the ferry home form the San Juan Islands, maybe the most beautiful sunset we experienced the whole time. The last few days included multiple seal sightings – and seal pups – and a visit to an alpaca farm where I was sneezed on by an overly excited alpaca, and an incident getting stranded at the bottom of a very steep gravel hill in a wheelchair at English Camp – which was getting ready to close for the year, unbeknownst to us – and a rescue by an elderly woman who was a volunteer park ranger from East Tennessee in an ATV. Also, many hours gazing at beautiful vistas, visits to farm stands, and writing on my latest manuscript. Do I have pictures of all that? No I do not. But I do have at least two pictures of the baby seal!

Re-Entry Can Be Tough

Underwater harbor seal

Just like this beautiful harbor seal represents a creature that lives both below water and above it, we writers have to re-enter regular life after spending a week just devoted to nature and writing, going to sleep when the sun goes down, no internet or television or social media to distract you…and then coming home. Not that I hate coming home – fluffy cats and hummingbirds awaited – but it does take a little while to shake off the glamour of small-town island life. Unpacking, getting ready for Glenn’s surgery on Monday, responding to a ton of e-mails, catching up on what’s been going on in the news – well, it’s not exactly the stuff of sparkles and rainbows. But in a way, being a writer during regular life is a more important practice than doing it under special circumstances, right? Because that’s most of life.

Prepping for Surgery and Our Welcome Committee

Glenn and I at Cattle Point, American Camp

So now we’re home and shopping for soft foods and trying to clean in advance as Glenn has to have soft foods and not lift anything heavy for three days (sorry, 17-pound Shakespeare!) after the surgery on his paralyzed vocal cords. We’re so used to me being the one going through these medical things and not Glenn, so it’s up to me to be the caretaker for a few days. I’m just glad Glenn had a week completely away from work (though he still managed to mostly attend his virtual grad school) to rest and recover before the surgery. That can only help a person’s immune system, right?

The cats and hummingbirds were both very glad to see us at home, which made the re-entry to regular life a little less painful. Also, I had the pleasant surprise of having a poem appear on Verse Daily a few days ago. And my nephew from Tennessee is visiting, with an eye to moving out here eventually this coming week. So we’ll hope for Glenn’s treatment to be successful so he can get his voice back, and things to get back to relative normalcy, I mean, plague years notwithstanding. (Month 20 of the pandemic, did you guys know that? I’m hoping that we mostly reach its end by Month 24…we’ll see. I hate making predictions of this sort anymore.)

New Poem “Meltdown” on Verse Daily Today

Thanks to Verse Daily for featuring my poem “Meltdown” from Sugar House Review today! (And which may be part of an upcoming collection to be announced soon…)

Here’s a sneak peek at the poem:

A Week Away at a Writing Retreat in the Pacific Northwest – with Foxes!

Lighthouse on San Juan Island, Cattle Point

Need to Get Away? To a Writer’s Retreat?

Some writers go to writer’s residencies and retreats frequently. I am not one of those writers. I haven’t been to a writer’s residency in six years. The last time I went, I was working on the manuscript that became Field Guide to the End of the World. I’m coming to this residency to write poems, yes, and send out poems, yes, but also to wrangle three (!) unruly poetry manuscripts that need to get out into the world. This takes more time and concentration than I usually can muster at home. I just finished a first last week – my first ever Virtual Breadloaf (TM) and now I’m taking time to be a writer at a retreat for a whole week!

So what to do? Well, you pack up, get in a car and drive for an hour and a half, then sit in parking lot for the ferry for another hour, then ride the ferry over for an hour, and then, bam! You’re there! Your little cabin in the middle of a university’s marine biology lab center on San Juan Island is ready and waiting to be aired-out and re-cleaned (covid days, of course) and then safely entered into. The skies are blue. The ocean is literally steps away. You can hear crickets. There’s no television. And though many young marine biologists and other scholars crowd the grounds you barely even see any of them except in a distance. You literally interact with no one except a friendly biologist who points you in the direction of the cabin key on arrival.

Typewriter in tree, with ocean

What Makes the Perfect Writer’s Retreat for You?

What each writer needs is different, and when you’re me, boy, you are asking for a handful. Some residencies cook for you and cost no money. Some have nominal fees and/or tough entry applications. There might be one near you that might be a perfect fit. I’m disabled, so that counts out most writer’s residencies across the United States, including some of the most prestigious, I’m sorry to say. And I have food allergies. And I need to be able to drive to it, because, well, right now, immune-compromised and covid. So even though it might not be perfect for everyone, Whiteley Center on San Juan Island – a residency open to scientists and artists alike with its one handicapped-accessible cabin and gorgeous and interesting marine surroundings – ended up being my perfect writer’s retreat. So far, I’ve drafted five new poems, sent out three submissions, edited one of three books and started on another. The internet and cell signals are not robust but enough to get my work done most days. It’s quiet, private, feels fairly safe, and gazes out through big picture windows at trees and ocean. I have a laptop I bring from the reading nook to the kitchen table to the bedroom, along with the stack of reading material I brought for diversion and inspiration. (My husband, importantly, is able to accompany me to be my disability assistant – which is not the case with most residencies. Because lugging trash out 500 feet or laundry a half a mile is tough for disabled folks to do alone. Plus he’s good company and a good cook.)

Red Fox, at South Beach

Plus, I’ve visited Lime Kiln Point, famous for whale-sightings (though not right now – our Orcas seem to be elsewhere these days), American Camp, famous for its foxes (those did not let me down) and quaint Friday Harbor, which, in non-covid times, would be very attractive for its cute restaurants, shops, and galleries. (I’ve only ventured into the co-op for groceries and the drug store for, well, drugs. Because, again, covid.) And I’ve even had a repeat fox visitor here at my very own cabin! This is on top of eagle and heron sightings, seals, and I hope before the end of the trip, otters.  If you bring a car with you – which I’d recommend if you’re disabled, because getting to everything is quite a trek if you’re in a wheelchair, on crutches, or a cane – you can even find the farmer’s market (check) and farms like the lavender farm and alpaca farm. Are all of these things requirements for a good writer’s retreat? No. But might they help inspire you, and even better, make you feel for a little while like you’re in the wild and can really breathe again? You do not have to wear the right clothes or even put on makeup (but maybe a little sunscreen and bug repellent.) It’s so dark and quiet that even I, notorious night owl that I am, have trouble not falling asleep by 11:30 PM.

Sunflowers on the Island

Finding Beauty, Finding Time

And usually I’m an extrovert who loves 1. her routines and 2. infinite forms of diversion so this forces me to rest, focus, and generally regain my sense of wonder and respect for the universe. This last few years have been so stressful, I admit I had lost a sense of how beautiful some parts of the world truly are, and how awe-inspiring mountains and oceans or even just an encounter with a fox can be. I believe this to be good not just for my writing but my soul. When I go home I’ll remember that a place like San Juan Island exists again, which sometimes, when you’re holed up in your house for quarantine for eighteen months, can be a little hard to believe. Magical.

Oh yes, and being away from the television, and social media (unreliable internet again) and all that is probably also good for my brain and soul. It is very hard for me to do an electronics fast at my house – here, I barely notice it. Some writers are able to take a month off from job or family responsibilities – for me, a week or two seems like more than enough time away to get some actual work done – and I mean reading, writing, and even filling out a form or two. (Hate forms!)

My cabin visiting fox friend

And whether or not a residency looks good on your CV or is required for finishing a book, it is certainly something for writers (even writers who think they can’t because of money or kids or disability) to think about. There may be a perfect residency out there for you that affords you exactly the time, space, and awe-inspiring wonder to help you through a difficult creative time. And don’t forget the foxes!

Don’t Do Their Job for Them – More Breadloaf Thoughts and Rejections, Recovery, Rest, and Dahlias

Painted Lady Butterfly, Dahlia

Don’t Do Their Job For Them – More Breadloaf Thoughts and Rejection

So, a day or so ago I got a “big” rejection. A beloved publisher who had had my manuscript for over a year wrote a nice rejection note saying my manuscript had made it through several rounds of readers but alas, they were not going to publish it. And I couldn’t help but be somewhat depressed and discouraged by it. You’d think by this point I’d be used to rejection. But still, sometimes, they hurt. They make me feel stopped at a stop sign of the universe.

This is after a week of getting two regular acceptances (one for a place I’ve wanted to get into a very long time) and a regular rejection. All within a week of still trying to digest the two week extravaganza of virtual Breadloaf.

Someone – or maybe more than one someone – told me during Breadloaf, “Editors and publishers get paid good money to reject your work. Don’t do their work for you.” (On seeing my notes, this was said by Brenda Shaughnessy in her lecture.) That is, don’t pre-reject yourself. Another person told me “It’s a tough time for us to get our work published. Publishers are struggling and overwhelmed with submissions. You have to just keep sending to presses you love. Believe in your work. Don’t give up.” These messages are essentially the same message.

It is work to write, and to write your best work, and it is a different kind of work to send that work out into the world, maybe to be rejected and forgotten. This all while trying not to worry about the world, dying of covid right outside your door, or how to pay your bills, or why you are writing in the first place and not doing something to fix all the problems of that world. And yet, a butterfly outside your door appears, and momentarily, help and hope. And you feel you can write, and send out your work, again.

Red and white dahlia

Recovery and Rest and Dahlias

This week I’ve been recovering (I got sick during virtual Breadloaf, I guess through Zoom? Just kidding. I seem to always catch something during August, somehow – and yes, I took a covid test and it was negative) and been trying to enjoy the clear, cooler days, the last days of summer, the blooming dahlias, the waning August light, the two new piglets at the farm down the street. I’m trying to believe in the good in the world, and making my body healthy and whole by resting and eating fresh vegetables and getting some fresh air and sunlight.

My husband is recovering from a paralyzed vocal cord, a fairly serious and maybe permanent problem. We are planning to take some time off and spend nearby in nature, unplugged from the internet and work and news. (I am also going to my first residency in a long time – I think six years? Too long…)

It is part of a life, a marriage, to being a good writer or a good employee, to take time off, to rest. Especially if you’re in the middle of year two of the plague, if you have immune system problems that make the plague more dangerous that it would be to others, if you feel that you are trembling on the verge of quitting something, if you have become depressed, hopeless, unable to sleep because of anxiety, short-tempered, too angry. It might be good to spend some time with trees in a forest, with waves of a sea bigger than you, to spend time noticing the end of summer blooms, and animal life, around you. In a whirlwind of tragedies, each tragedy might become less real to you, and we lose a bit of our humanity, our empathy, especially when we are stressed and tired and have already felt enough tragedy has happened. (Unfortunately we do not get to control this.) Does the world need you to fix it right this second? (And maybe it does! Heroic actions during tragedies are always welcome.)  Or do you need time to heal yourself before you can do any good in the world? Listen to your self – what do you truly need? And go spend some time listening to the hummingbirds, the dahlias, whatever they’re saying.