Poems Up at WordGathering, Woodinville Wine Country, and a Day at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance

Hummingbird with sunflowers

Poems up at Wordgathering and Thanks

First of all, thanks to everyone for their kind comments about my poem “Fairy Tale Redacted” up on Verse Daily! It’s part of my new book manuscript that if I have any luck will find its publisher soon!

And thanks to Wordgathering for putting up two of my previously published poems, “Shorting Out” about my first symptoms of multiple sclerosis, and “Cesium Burns Blue.” WordGathering specifically focuses on work by disabled writers and is run by very interesting people I got to meet at AWP this year, fortunately.

This is a hummingbird perched by our new plantings of sunflowers. I am hoping to attract some goldfinches. I even planted a “Cherry sunflower” that is supposedly pink! I guess we’ll see.

Glenn and I at the Alexandria Nicole Cellars winery, with roses (on National Rosé Day! With hair to match!)

Woodinville Wine Country in June

Speaking of pink…I spent a lot of time at doctor’s offices and in labs this last couple of weeks (and still not done – have a few more in the next few weeks) but I finally felt well enough today to go out a bit in the nice weather and explore Woodinville Wine Country on National Rosé Day! I even had hair to match.

The roses and lavender have just started blooming and we even went home after Glenn tried a wine tasting with a bottle of wine (for the next time we entertain friends!) We had rabbits running around the yard and birds chirping and it felt like beautiful spring – even if we are on the cusp of summer. I’ve been seeing herons and eagles flying home in the evening.

Glenn and I with stream and roses blooming

A Day at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance

I spent almost a whole day going to my hematologist down at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. My doctor there I have known for fifteen years. The last time we talked it was when we thought I might be dying of liver cancer, and we talked about safe biopsies and chemo and surgery obstacles. This time I brought her my newest book and we discussed my mild anemia (she’s worried about it, but I’m not) and MS drug risks and pain drugs and pain clinic consultations. I sat in the reclining chairs watching the beautiful Puget sound blue by all the people getting chemo and waiting to get chemo. I wound through the blood lab around patients much worse off than me. It gives you perspective, these kinds of visits. The doctor, which was very unusual, gave me a hug at the end of the appointment. It felt like a blessing, a sort of hopeful encouragement. I walked out into the rainy early evening, feeling the ghost of my previous experiences, of the fear of death, and the gratefulness of feeling alive. (Also, PS: If you have anemia, having your blood drawn does not make you feel less tired. Sigh.)

Anyway, I’m looking forward to having some friends over for a visit next weekend and hopefully on the upswing from the latest bout of MS-related pain, and a few less doctor appointments if I can help it! I am hoping to remind myself that I can’t take being alive for granted, even when it is a struggle, and not to forget to live, whether that’s going out and taking advantage of a beautiful day, or watching a bird, or planting new flowers, or reading new poetry that might inspire or going to a concert or a gallery showing. I may not be able to do everything I want every day, but the days I can, I want to live as fully as possible. Wishing you a happy (and vibrant) mid-June!

 

 

A Poem up at Verse Daily, and Unexpected Wildflowers

 

Hot pink lupines, my garden

  A New Poem Up at Verse Daily!

I’ve been feeling a little discouraged with the poetry world lately, so it was so nice today to get an acceptance in the morning – and find out in the evening I had a poem up on Verse Daily today! It’s “Fairy Tale Redacted,” from the literary magazine Redactions.

Here’s a sneak peek:

Verse Daily, Fairy Tale Redacted

Wildflowers in Woodinville

I felt well enough today to take a longer stroll, and saw a lot of baby rabbits hiding around blackberry hedges, and found this beautiful wildflower field at a local farm. Some days the world is full of hidden beauty. I was inspired to get some sunflowers to plant in my own back yard.  I wish you some good news, sunshine, and unexpected wildflowers this week.

New Poem Up at Gingerbread House, A Reading List for Chernobyl fans, and a Little Nature-Loving Photography

 

Swallowtail on Pink Lilacs

New Poem “The Year I Became a Witch” up at Gingerbread House!

Thank you to Gingerbread House literary magazine for publishing my new poem “The Year I Became a Witch” – complete with wonderful art work – in their new issue! This is from a series of poems my new newest book manuscripts, having to do with nature of women and witches. Check out the whole issue, which is magical. I am in very good company. Here’s a sneak preview but go check out the real thing at the link:

A Reading List for Chernobyl Fans

So, if you’re not already hooked on the fantastic HBO series Chernobyl, it is gripping, well-written, well-produced, and not only all that, a real-life horror story that happened when I was 11. I have always been interested in the disaster, because of my life-long interest in nuclear contamination and disaster (growing up in one of America’s Secret Cities will do that to you.) But if you are looking for good poetry reading to accompany your binge-watch, let me recommend a couple of books. One is Lee Ann Roripaugh’s terrific new book from Milkweed Press, Tsunami vs the Fukushima 50, another is Kathleen Flenniken’s Plume (about her childhood and work as an engineer in Hanford, and the Green Run), and the third is my own The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, about growing up in Oak Ridge, and some of the repercussions of that.  Do you have some more poetry books about nuclear history, anxiety and disaster? Please leave your recommendations in the comments!

Anna’s Hummingbird

A Little Nature is Good for the Soul

I’ve finally had some relief from pain in the last week, enough to get out and about in my garden and some of the surrounding gardens in Woodinville, getting back to my usual routines, taking pictures and celebrating our beautiful late spring.

There have been some local tragedies in the news that were bothering me – a shooting of a woman and several children on a public Seattle beach on Memorial Day, and then the bizarre incident where the Bainbridge Ferry – one I have ridden many times – hit a juvenile humpback whale. A tornado caused a ton of destruction in Dayton, Ohio, near my family in Cincinnati. There’s been disturbing national news, politically, of course, as well. One thing that I try to remember and hold in myself when I get overwhelmed with the bad things, with the depressing or anxiety-provoking, is to spend time with the small things of nature. Like a hummingbird, a new flower, new goslings. I also finished up two book reviews I’d been working on for a while, which ends my reviewing for the summer. (I take time off in the summer, because the last couple of summers have involved a lot of hospital trips for me.) Reviewing two excellent books really makes me feel like I can shine some light in a positive direction in a poetry world that can feel unremittingly dark sometimes.  I’ll post the reviews when they go up.

I hope that you will feel some renewal this late spring, as we move towards the solstice, that you will feel some hope in the faces of flowers and the baby animals. Yesterday was World MS Awareness Day. I continue to struggle with my MS symptoms, especially because MS is a constantly moving target – a symptom I’ve never had before will wreck me for a while, and then I’ll just be left with plain old fatigue and clumsiness. But I try not to lose hope, in a cure, in better treatments, in a life ahead that’s filled with springs when I’m well enough to follow ducklings and butterflies.

 

New Poem in Redactions, Spending Some Time with Poets, and a Week of MS Pain Management

Sylvia poses with the new issue of Redactions

New Poem, “Fairy Tale Redacted” in Redactions!

I’m happy to announce my new poem, “Fairy Tale Redacted,” most fittingly appearing in the literary magazine Redactions’ new issue. Seems everyone’s been talking about redactions and how they affect the reading of things lately (cough, Mueller Report, cough), but I have been reading redacted documents since I was a little kid reading my dad’s research on nuclear safety. So I decided to give it a little spin with how fairy tales might look if they had a censor (which they often did!)

“Fairy Tale Redacted” in Redactions

Sarah Mangold and I celebrating!

Visiting with Poets Always Cheers Me Up

So happy after a rough week (more on that later) I was able to visit with wonderful local poet Sarah Mangold, to talk poetry and publishing and celebrate our birthdays (a bit late) with sparkling rose and cupcakes! Yay for Taurus Poets! There’s something so cheering about spending time with other writers, especially ones whose writing you admire, and not just talking shop but sharing stories about where we thought we’d be and where we think we should be. It was a great way to spend a rainy weekend day, especially because I finally felt up to smiling and talking again! Could not have had a better afternoon.

Smiling again

A Week Learning about MS Pain Management

So, I learned the hard way about managing pain with MS – specifically, I spent eight days almost unmoored by something called trigeminal neuralgia, which about 1/3 of MS people will experience, like the worst combo of TMJ/toothache/migraine. It kept me from smiling, talking, chewing food, or generally doing anything but curling up in bed for a week. During this time my neurologist tried a few different strategies – an anti-epilepsy drug that’s supposed to block nerve pain (that made me sick), an anti-migraine drug that helped me sleep but didn’t stop the pain, my first experiments with CBD oil (helped, but didn’t fix), and finally and most effective, the dreaded steroids, which calmed down not only the pain but the nausea, trembling, and fatigue that came with it. This was my first day smiling in eight days – I felt well enough to get my hair cut, visit with a friend, and take a stroll around the wineries. I know pulsing steroids is sometimes a necessary evil with MS, and I know they take a toll long-term, but I am so happy to be out of pain. I immediately wrote a poem and worked on my two in-process reviews with my renewed energy.

I also went out and I visited with this peahen (look at those neck feathers!) and a fantastic pink tree with a terrible name – the “Beauty Bush” in the “Pink cloud” varietal. It smelled wonderful and was indeed a pink cloud, even on a rainy day.

And while I was out of it in lots of pain, I did see a wonderful movie, Ladies in Black, about a young Australian girl who wants to be a poet and works at a department store set in what I think was the late forties. It had a really wonderful and timely message about the enrichment that immigrants bring to a country (I didn’t realize there had been so much anti-immigration feeling in Australia after WWII but apparently there was a lot – I also learned there was a war between Australia and New Guinea at some point? Americans learn literally nothing about Australia in any history class), and I might have been pretty out of it but I’d love to hear what you thought of it if you get to see it. I’m looking forward to seeing girl-friendly teen comedy “Booksmart” (I was a real nerd in high school who never went wild so it speaks to me) and “Late Night” with a killer combo of Emma Thompson and Mindy Kaling, soon. After my disappointment with Game of Thrones, I decided I wanted to give myself more female-empowering entertainment, written by women, with main characters who are women, with empowering storylines. Am I just kidding myself? Is there enough of this to actually go around?

Anyway, wishing all of you a wonderful and pain-free week ahead. And lots of poetry. And pink cloud flowers.

Getting Real About MS, Spring with Butterflies and Flowers Etc, and Writing Practices for Summer

First Swallowtail Sighting on Rhododendron

Getting Real About MS

It’s lovely springtime here but I’ve been stuck in bed with some terrible MS-related nerve pain called trigeminal neuralgia. I want to keep it real here, including the MS stuff, and I know I post a lot of happy pictures looking fine, but the last few days, I was decidedly not fine. It was the first time in a while I had to pick up five different nerve-pain prescriptions in the hopes that one of them would work. I couldn’t write, I couldn’t read. I had TCM on constantly (along with Netflix comedies – Wine Country and Unicorn Store – the first is inspo for X-ers turning 50 and the second for millennials seeking their inner unicorn.) I couldn’t chew food because of the pain so I had an impromptu involuntary juice fast. While I was stuck in bed I did manage some pictures of the first Tiger Swallowtail of the season, a towhee on my flower box, a hummingbird on the neighbor’s lilac. But it was no fun. I missed a couple of friends’ literary events I’d wanted to go to. That’s kind of how my life is now – I’ll be fine, or have minor symptoms, and then WHAM! I’m out of commission. Hard to plan around, hard to manage. I’m getting another MRI next week to make sure there hasn’t been more brain damage or spine damage. Think good thoughts for me.

Spring with Flowers, Birds, Etc.

Well, of course, it wouldn’t be a real post from me without a few pictures of birds and flowers. I continued getting rejections this week, along with the MS stuff (and this week also featured a trip to the dentist and my regular doc for a sinus infection, so all around fun times) but we did manage to sneak in one afternoon at the Seattle Japanese Gardens where all the flowers seemed to be blooming at once – azaleas, rhodies, wisteria, even lily of the valley. I was feeling a little depressed this week even before the horrible MS pain thing acted up, feeling like, “Oh, I’ve got a degenerative brain disease that has no cure, and oh, no one wants to publish me, and our country hates women (as do the Game of Thrones writers, but that’s another story) and…” Well, that was enough to make me feel pretty bad. There are no magic words that take away those feelings, but putting myself around nature always helps. That’s probably why I spend so much time photographing all those birds and flowers when I’m able to. Even from bed, I can take pictures of the flowers and birds on my back deck. Being able to recognize beauty in the midst of a bad week still matters. And baby animals. I have faith there are better days ahead. Which leads me to…my summer writing plans!

Writing Plans for the Summer

It’s the middle of spring, but I’m already thinking of my writing and reading plans for the summer. Summer can be a tough time to stay focused, a tough time to submit (as many lit magazines aren’t open for submissions during the summer), and it can be hard to get together with writer friends if you’re not on the residency/writing conference circuit. The days get longer and sitting inside with a good book can be less appealing, the heat can cause health problems (MS gets worse in sun and heat, so good thing I don’t still live in San Diego I guess!). and it just takes more discipline.

What do you do to keep on track during the summer? I find my writing slows down a bit, and I definitely submit less. I’m thinking it’s a good time to try new modes of writing, a little dab of essay, or fiction, or memoir, or just new forms of poetry. Maybe I’ll work on my two book manuscripts or even start a third! I’ll have more indoors time (ironically, for me it’s the season where I have to avoid midday sun or stay indoors on especially hot days) so maybe I’ll start some inspiring new books (still reading memoirs and letters by female writers, but maybe pick up some “for fun” fiction. I’ll try to set up a few friend dates and maybe even try a few day trips to Bainbridge, Port Townsend, and other places we don’t get to visit as often as we’d like in the rainy season. This morning it’s cool and the birds are singing outside. I’m feeling almost back to normal and ready to respond to e-mails, maybe write some poetry and send out some work.

Tell me your plans for the summer! What are your goals and tricks to keep on your writer path?

Jeannine Hall Gailey

Jeannine Hall GaileyJeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and SFPA’s Elgin Award, Field Guide to the End of the World.  Her latest, Flare, Corona from BOA Editions, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She’s also the author of PR for Poets, a Guidebook to Publicity and Marketing. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and JAMA.

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