Happy Mother’s Day, A Week of Birds, and Thinking About Our Poetic Mothers and Influences (and Who Will Parent Our Books?)

Two red-winged blackbirds, one in flight

Happy Mother’s Day, and A Week of Birds

Happy Mother’s Day to all you mother in any way today. Even if, like me, you only mother books and cats. Take some time for yourself, go out and visit some flowers and birds – you deserve it!

This week has been a little reserved, cold, moody and rainy for May, a little downbeat after a sunny, late-blooming April. But it seems the birds have all appeared at once, and are not at all bothered by cold rainy days. I stood out in the rain to get these shots of red-winged blackbirds – there were three mating pairs that I counted, plus two sets of goslings and about nine ducklings on the lake. By the time I was done taking pictures, I was so cold I had to take a hot shower to warm up, but it was totally worth it. Around the feeders, hummingbirds and black-headed grosbeaks as well as goldfinches have been appearing. I tried to capture as many magical bird moments as I could because: 1. Birds are little dinosaurs. 2. Birds are like little poems unto themselves, right?

Mother Goose

Poetic Mothers

Since it’s Mother’s Day, I thought I would talk a little about poetic mothers – our influences. I’ve been reading The Writer’s Library with my mother (as part of our quarantine book club project which you can read about here on Salon) which includes terrific interviews about influential books by Nancy Pearl with great writing influences like Siri Hustvedt, Lorrie Moore, Jane Hirshfield, and Louise Erdrich. It’s wonderful to find that you have so much in common with writers you love and the books they love. Certain books come up over and over again in the book – Agatha Christie, The House of Mirth, childhood sci-fi binges – and the fiction writers talk a LOT about poetry, which was surprising. Anyway, a great read, and I bought it as an Audiobook as well, because listening to the writers is fantastic (for the most part, they voice their own interviews.)

Goslings entering the water

The other book I’ve been reading that made me think about poetic foremothers and influences is Three Martini Afternoons at the Ritz, all about the friendship/frenemyship of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. It provides a lot of background and context for their relationship. Besides making me jealous that I having been meeting anyone at the Ritz for martinis, it made me think about the poets we read and pay attention to in our own lives, who we are secretly competing with (even if subconsciously,) who we read and let influence our own thoughts about poetry and poetics. I realize I am very lucky to be friends with so many wonderful poets, but I don’t really have a nemesis, per se. But maybe that’s okay. Do we need someone to compete with to reach our own potential? I think this is a very interesting question, because, especially as women are pressured NOT to be too competitive, at least in my generation.

But it does make me think about how writers need to encourage and push each other out of their comfort zones, and one way to make sure that happens is to make diverse friends from all kinds of backgrounds, some who are editors and publishers, who are full-time writers, who run their English departments, who are best-selling novelists (hey, it happens!), who have many different ways of writing and publishing, and many different voices. It reaffirms that we can all grow and learn and build our own unique paths. We don’t have to sound alike, or go to the same conferences, residencies, MFA programs, etc. There’s space for all of us.

Orange Azaleas

It also made me think of publishers and their role as “parents” of the book – not the author, who created it, but perhaps more like mentors or stepparents, who create the book’s look, help find it’s audience and marketing niches. I’ve been sort of picky about who I’m sending my manuscripts to, which slows down the publication road, but I’m hoping to find the right home – the right people who will help my books become the best versions of themselves. And I always hope – and so far I’ve been lucky – that my publishers will become friends as well.

Maybe I’ve pushed my mother’s day theme as far as it will go now. But I do hope you all find something good to do today for yourselves and your loved ones, spend some time outside with some lemonade and maybe a scone and read and write and have a magical moment with birds and flowers. It is springtime, and we have to appreciate its brief flare of beauty while we can.

Wisteria in bloom – your Mother’s Day Postcard

Birthday Celebrations with Spring Flowers and Friends, Kelli’s Book Birthday, Book Giveaway Winner Results, and More Re-Integration into Society

Me posing with cherry blossoms and sparkles for my birthday

Birthday Celebrations with Spring Flowers

Yesterday was my 48th birthday, which we celebrated with homemade black forest cake, a duck dinner, a trip around Woodinville to look at everything that was blooming (and found a brand new baby bunny always a sign of spring), and a trip to a bookstore.

It was a day that started cold, with wind and rain, and turned sunny and warmer. Glenn got me two rare books and some beautiful flowers -a book of Sylvia Plath’s art work and a signed first edition of Siri Hustvedt’s first book, which was an out-of-print book of poetry. I felt very loved on the day with messages from friends, phone calls from my brothers, and generally, while still feeling very much like another pandemic birthday, as good as it could be.

Today I’m going to have tea with my doctor poet friend, Natasha K. Moni, (my second visit with a vaccinated person inside my home! So crazy! Still not used to it!) and hopefully have a movie night with Glenn, maybe the new Tenet (heard it’s incomprehensible, but I like time travel films).

Book Giveaway Results and Winner!

Goldfinch

Congrats to Patricia Valdata, who was the winner (from random number generator) of last week’s book giveaway of the now out-of-print Unexplained Fevers. Thank you to everyone who participated!

I still have a few copies of Unexplained Fevers for sale, and Open Books has a copy or two as well, available at this special link:

https://open-books-a-poem-emporium.myshopify.com/products/gailey-jeannine-hall-unexplained-fevers

Wisteria in late April

More Re-Integration

I was realizing on my birthday – though the CDC has said we vaccinated folks no longer have to wear masks outdoors or inside with other vaccinated people – that, because of cases rising here, it really doesn’t feel any different yet. The rest of the country’s cases are down, but here and in Oregon, it still feels like the pandemic is raging.

We don’t feel like movies, restaurants, bars, and even museums are totally safe yet – and can’t go, in some cases, anyway, since we are moving back to phase 2 here. I have gone to grocery stores and bookstores, but I didn’t linger in either place. And then visits with my vaccinated friends – those are great, but hugging and sitting around the table – which wouldn’t have been a big deal before the pandemic, still feel radical and strange. So I’m moving slowly towards re-integration – I’ve gone to the dentist, got an MRI, the tulip festival, seen two sets of vaccinated friends – but not running headlong into throngs of crowds.

There is also some question about how effective the vaccine is long-term in people with autoimmune problems and immune deficiencies – which means I really can’t ignore news about variants, studies about antibodies, T-cells, and B-cells, just yet. I really, really want to stop waking up to read covid news (after my meditation app leads me through a breathing exercise, naturally) sometime soon. Remember everyone who gets the vaccine helps protect vulnerable people like me (and children! since they can’t get their vaccines yet), so go get your vaccine! I got J&J and Glenn got Pfizer, and really, neither of us had bad side effects. And it means you can visit people – without masks!

Natasha Moni and me – birthday celebrating!

Anyway, my birthday weekend visit with vaccinated doctor/poet Natasha Moni – only my second post-vaccine in person visit with anyone – was wonderful. We realized we hadn’t seen each other in a year and a half! So we celebrated my birthday (yesterday) and hers (in January). It is so weird to see people in person, to sit around a table eating and drinking just like it was the good old pre-covid day. And Glenn made a terrific spread – chocolate cake, a wonderful cheese tray, crudités with avocado dip, goat-cheese stuffed baby peppers – he even sat down with us – briefly, if you know Glenn – for some poetry and grad school talk.

We talked about favorite poets, jobs, medicine, talked about how medical improvements made during covid might apply to other diseases after the covid pandemic has died down – like MS, cancer, lupus, and other conditions that have taken far too long to get good, effective treatments for. We talked about the benefits and downsides of Zoom doctor visits and Zoom poetry readings. We talked about Joan Didion, Haruki Murakami, Sylvia Plath, and Siri Hustvedt. Anyway, if you don’t have Natasha Moni’s poetry book from Two Sylvias Press, The Cardiologist’s Daughter, do yourself a favor and check it out.

Kelli’s New Book Birthday

Speaking of books and birthdays, besides being my birthday, this was also the week of the book launch (otherwise known as book birthday) of Kelli Russell Agodon’s new book, Dialogues with Rising Tides (see left, with Sylvia, who gives the book two paws up) from Copper Canyon Press. Happy to have my own copy and I’m sending one to my mom for Mother’s Day!

Looking Forward

I hope you have a good year ahead of you. I hope a better one waits for me too. One thing the pandemic highlights is that there is at once never enough time and so much time. (Also the theme of Tenet!) Stop and snip a bit of lilac. Get out in the May sunshine. Kiss someone you love. I am making my birthday wish. You make one too. Wish for another poem.

National Poetry Month, Lilacs, Apple Blossoms and Melancholy, Earth Day, Zoom Poetry Inspirations, and a Book Giveaway

A bower of overhead cherry blossoms

Cherry Blossoms, Poetry Month and Melancholy

This week, the world seemed to spring into bloom – crabapple and apple blossoms, lilacs peeked out, and dogwood bloomed. Finally, it seems Seattle has decided it’s really spring, and brought back it’s chillier weather and rain to celebrate.

One night I went out at twilight and took pictures – and got a few shots of flowers under the moon, which I thought was really cool.

It’s still National Poetry Month for another week, and it’s also five days til my birthday. For some reason, I have felt less like celebrating and more melancholy than usual for spring, April, one of my favorite months. The pandemic year (and some months) perhaps has finally gotten to me? Or my MS is kicking up after last week’s excitement? I’ve also been really tired, going to bed earlier than usual. I got a job rejection that really hit me hard. It’s been harder to give myself the pep talks that usually keep me writing and sending out work. I can’t explain it.

The first goldfinch pair sighting

Birds and Blooms, Earth Day, and Pictures in Cherry Blossoms

It was Earth Day this week. Last Earth Day, I planted an apple tree and cherry tree in my yard, and over the last year, we’ve faithfully watered, fertilized them, and kept the deer from eating them, and this year, we were rewarded with a few leaves and a couple of blossoms on each.  This last year we planted a Strawberry Tree and another cherry (this time, a fruiting Rainier cherry) and we are watching them grow in containers on the back deck. The birds love them. All of the tulips are almost done blooming now – remember last weekend, they had just opened? It’s definitely been a week to celebrate that brief burst of bloom as much as possible, and attend to the garden, cutting back, planting, putting coffee grounds on the roses. Sometimes it’s time to plant, and sometimes it’s time to nurture what you’ve already planted. Maybe I should try this on myself!

I tried to attend to my own inspiration and sadness, and so I signed up for an early-morning Plath seminar (fantastic, and led to me buying several more Plath books) and went to a couple of Zoom poetry readings. (So many good ones are available right now – keep your eyes on Twitter and Facebook for announcements.) I subscribed to a few literary magazines (like most people, I can never afford as many as I want, but I try to mix it up this time of year.) I also tried to capture as much of the magic of our brief spring flowering as possible with my camera, including typewriters in surprising places. Even when I’m not writing, I can practice photography. I can rest, read, and pay attention to the small beauties around me.

A Book Giveaway

Anyway, wishing you a happy last few days of April. Hope you can enjoy some flowers and poetry.

And since the publisher of my third book, New Binary Press, has closed due to health problems, I’d like to give away one signed copy of Unexplained Fevers (now unavailable anywhere else – I still have a few copies) to someone (in the Continental US) that leaves a comment on this blog post. It can be a comment about anything – a book you loved, a flower that bloomed – but make sure to include your e-mail contact info so I can get ahold of you if you win! Good luck!

Post-Vaccine Visits with Friends, A New Poem in Chestnut Review, and a Zoom Reading

Pink Puffball Cherry Blossoms

Spring Has Arrived and Post-Vaccine Visits with Friends

This week spring finally arrived in Seattle, with warmer temperatures (yesterday we got up to 80!) The week started with me getting two crowns (ouch), a book rejection, a poem published, and flowers starting to bloom, and ended with meteor showers and a first in-person visit with friends – unmasked and partially indoors! Two weeks before my birthday and now my re-entry/birthday month has included a haircut, a visit to a real-life bookstore, two visits to grocery stores, a tulip festival visit and day trip, and now…visiting with friends!

Kelli Russell Agodon and I had not seen each other in over a year and she and her husband Rose came over. We were all fully vaccinated and so happy to be able take one more step towards re-entry to a normal life. Hugs! Unicorn sprinklers! Pink cupcakes and sparkling rose for my birthday AND to celebrate Kelli’s new book from Copper Canyon, Dialogue with Rising Tides.

It was great to talk poetry, gardens, hang out on the back porch on rocking chairs with hummingbirds, and just goof around. And we had a lovely day for it – the warmest day of the year so far. The tulips in our gardens bloomed while our visitors were here, which seemed like a sign of something good.

A New Poem in Chestnut Review’s Spring Issue

I was very pleased to have a poem in Chestnut Review in their Spring issue, “I’ve Been Burned.” It’s from my “Fireproof” manuscript. Here’s a sneak peek:

A Zoom Reading Today with Tamara K. Sellman and Emily Rose Cole

Happy to be reading this afternoon at 4 PM Pacific with Tamara Kaye Sellman for her new book, Intention Tremor, and Emily Rose Cole. I’ll post the Zoom link when I get it. (Will post the YouTube video of the recording soon…)

On Re-Entry, MRIs and Tulip Fields, National Poetry Month – What Are You Doing?

Purple Tulip Field, La Conner, WA

On Re-Entry, Week 2: MRIs and Tulip Fields

So this second week of April, after my two week past-vaccination date, I have been experiencing gradually the pains and pleasures of re-entry into what most people would call “life.” Last week, a Zoom reading, a doctor’s appointment, a haircut, a visit to the gardening store.

This week, a little more challenging: MRIs and the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival.

I had an MRI I had put off for a year, this is to check that the tumors in my liver have not grown or spread, indicating cancer or other bad things, so really not good to put off too long. Wearing a mask for someone with claustrophobia in an MRI tube while having to “Hold your breath” for extended amounts of time is something I will add to my list of “do not want to do again.” Even though I’ve been vaccinated for a while, I still didn’t really feel comfortable in the waiting room (and they were running an hour behind) so I kept walking out of the building and walking back in. So, that was something I tried and didn’t feel comfortable with, but I don’t know how comfortable I was before with MRIs, frankly. Think good thoughts for the results for me.

Me in red tulip field

Skagit Valley Tulip Festival

So, last year they cancelled the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival because of the pandemic, so we were really looking forward to attending this year. However, we woke up the day we had made reservations (you have to make reservations and pay ahead of time this year, new irritating feature) and it was spitting snow. On April 10! All day long we were followed by threatening clouds, cold winds, spitting snow, hail, and rain.

And yet, we still soldiered on. This was probably the most challenging thing I’ve done people-wise, and body-wise, although a lot of it was outdoors, and people weren’t pressing in as close as usual. The traffic was knotty getting up – I guess we weren’t the only ones anxious to see some signs of spring. Everything wasn’t blooming yet – even the weeping cherry at Roozengaarde wasn’t blooming, and I would say more than half of the tulips weren’t up yet.

Glenn and with tulips and forsythia

After the MRI, I had a sore throat, tummy troubles, and my ankles were acting up (stress and/or giant magnets sets of my autoimmune problems,) so along with the cold, we maybe should have rescheduled, but we were anxious to get some spring flowers into our eyes, if not our nose (because in the gardens, even though we were vaccinated and outdoors, everyone’s still required to wear masks, which seems a little like overkill to me science-wise even as an immune-compromised person, but… So all the pictures without masks are either outside the official gardens or in an area without other people, just to clarify.)

We saw a pair of nesting bald eagles and a few herons, as well as horses, sheep, chickens, and peacocks, but missed out on seeing seals and otters, which we usually see. We did find a new piece of sculpture we really liked celebrating the annual Snow Goose migration to the Skagit Valley. Here are a few pictures. Even on a day spitting rain and snow, and everything not quite in bloom yet, it still managed to a good day for photos.

So we had an adventure! By the time we got home, we were exhausted and crashed into bed. Every time I go up there, I’m inspired to buy a small farm and start being  an organic flower farmer, or perhaps a miniature pony farm.

Me in pink with pink tulips just opening

National Poetry Month – What Are You Doing? How Are You Doing?

In years past, as I read past blog posts for April, I noticed I would attend about three readings a week, give a couple of readings, attend a conference or a ‘con, get together with friends for their book launches. It was so much it was overwhelming even to read about!

This year feels quieter and more muted. So how are you still celebrating Poetry Month during the pandemic? I managed to squeeze in a couple of Zoom talks this week, one by Dana Levin (who talked about strangeness in poetry) and C. Dale Young (who talked about rhetoric vs the image among other things) – two poets who would be hard for me to see in person, so that was cool.

Glenn and I with tulips and threatening clouds

I’m giving a Zoom reading on April 18th (I’ll post more when I have the link) and I’ve been reading more and trying to write more (although I haven’t been able to do a poem a day this year.) Too many in-person re-entry things to do! It takes more energy than it used to to do simple things, like go a store or the doctor, in person. This is part of the re-entry pains. My favorite all-poetry bookstore hasn’t re-opened yet for shopping in person, but soon, and I’ll enjoy browsing there again – it’s a great place to run into poets books you might not have heard about anyplace else.

In personal poetry news, I’m feeling a little discouraged, by not getting a big grant I applied for, or a job I applied for, or individual rejections, or the fact that I can’t find anyone excited to publish my new manuscripts, which may be slowing down my writing and submitting. It may be that the re-entry is more anxiety-producing than I’m admitting or aware of. It’s certainly not “life back to normal” here in the Seattle area, yet. Will it ever be? Life post-pandemic seems fraught with questions we don’t yet have answers for. I’m an introverted extrovert but not being able to interact with others on a regular basis is also still kind of a bummer. I’m hoping to have actual in-person contact with friends and family soon…

Pair of bald eagles with nest

Anyway, I want to wish you an April full of health, happiness, flowers, vaccines, and a gentle re-entry. I hope you read some poetry you enjoy and maybe even discover a new writer to love or lit mag you’re excited about. Hope you can get outside and listen to the birds and enjoy the outdoors and that it doesn’t spit snow on you. I really want to hear about how you’re celebrating a modified  National Poetry Month.