Poems on the Moon, Going to Book Club, and How to Try to Do Good and not Despair

Cat musicians and a seal at a local nursery

Poems on the Moon

First of all, a thanks to Escape Into Life for including me in their issue on the moon: Lunacy. There are poems by my friends Kelli Russell Agodon, Erica Goss, and Kristen Berkey-Abbott as well as beautiful art work. (And you can read my previous Escape Into Life feature of moon poems here in case you missed it.)

This week’s news did not get better after my last post (heartbreaking shooting yesterday of  11 people at a synagogue reminded me of a bombing when I was in fifth grade at a friend’s synagogue’s child care center – I remember it was the second time as a child I’d encountered incomprehensible hatred – the first was watching klansmen walk down my street in Tennessee when I was seven.) We have a President who literally irresponsibly whipped up hate at rallies against the very people who were threatened with bombs this week, the week people were shot in grocery stores and their places of worship. This government is shameful and propelled by the very worst impulses of Americans. It’s very important to vote for people who do not encourage hate and racism. You are responsible for your own government – so don’t forget to vote! (And there have been reports of voting machine irregularities, so double-check if you can vote with a paper ballot in your state.)

Yesterday I went to a local farmstand and then visited a nearby nursery and saw this charming display of cat musician and seal fountain statues, and thought you deserved to see them too. Ah, for a yard full of musically-inclined cat statues. I’m itching to plant an apple tree, too.

Going to Book Club

Today I’m going to get up early and get ready for a “virtual” book club visit to talk about Field Guide to the End of the World. It’s a good opportunity to talk about poetry with other people who care about books, which is always cheering. One of the ways I cheered myself this week despite rejections and relentlessly terrible news was turning off the television and computer and reading books. Books remind me of how I developed my own set of ethics as a kid – how The Lorax helped me develop into an environmentalist and Horton Hatches a Who a reminder of keeping promises. How reading books by different authors from different countries helped me imagine what it was like to live in a different country, speak a different language – how The Diary of Anne Frank and Elie Weisel helped me understand the horrors of what people did to Jewish people just because they were Jewish, how reading Cry, the Beloved Country helped me know the evils of apartheid, all the dystopias I read about as a kid – from Handmaid’s Tale to Brave New World to 1984, from Ray Bradbury’s Illustrated Man and Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone stories – illustrated the possibilities of evil, and how to stand up against it. Madeleine L’Engle’s Swiftly Tilting Planet and the nuclear fears of the seventies and eighties. Books changed who I was and how I saw the world, how I saw right and wrong, and this gave me hope. Maybe by writing something – we can help others understand and empathize and connect with a world not their own. We should fight for libraries and help teach books that reach beyond out own experiences and encourage others to read and talk about books as much as we can.

My two watchful guardians

How to Do Good

If you, like me, have been struggling with despair in the face of horrific hate, racism, and evil, think of what we can do to bring light. Yes, books – reading and writing and encouraging others to read them. Yes, voting – even if you feel like it’s a pain and you’re worried your one vote won’t make a difference, it can. Yes, giving money to charities – from fighting diseases to fighting childhood poverty to support for causes like the environment or ending racism or rights for the oppressed and refugees – and if you can’t afford to give money, as I couldn’t for some years, you can volunteer, which always helps you to connect to your local community, which can lessen a feeling of alienation. I had a dream last night where I was asking famous women about how to do good, and they sat down and talked to me about practical ways to put good into your world instead of evil. Spreading a little kindness – I talked in my last blog post about telling writers who have inspired you about how they’ve impacted you, but calling a lonely relative or friend who’s been going through a hard time, standing up for those who can’t stand up for themselves – all work. I woke up feeling less despairing – the brief blue sky that appeared this morning didn’t hurt – and maybe I’m naive, but I still believe – just as much as when I was a kid – in facing evil and fighting it with the resources we have.

As October comes to an end, I hope you get a chance to see the moon through the clouds – and the light, even as the darkness seems to stretch out and overpower it.

Resilient, Cheerful Chipperbot Me Refuses to Reboot: a Week of Mostly Terrible Things

When the Inner Chipperbot Will Not Reboot (AKA When The World Seems Like a Trash Fire)

The rain has returned to the Pacific Northwest. That’s normally not something that depresses me, I’m a lover of fog and mist, but somehow, with the news cycle full of evil hate and poetry deaths, a week of being sick (and that feeling that I’ll never be well again), and seven (!!) rejections in as many days including one from a press of my new book that I was pretty hopeful about, has meant – well, the inner chipperbot in me refuses to reboot. The cheerful, resilient me – the me that looks at the bright side and makes gratitude lists – is noticeably absent.

I’m tired of hearing a non-stop news cycle that includes a student athlete being shot by an ex-boyfriend she had tried to get protection from but of course everyone failed her so she’s dead, a racist shooting people in a Kroger too close to my old hometown of Cincinnati (in Louisville), and even more disturbing –  some asshole sending pipe bombs to anyone Trump has ever publicly encouraged violence towards which is 100 percent the fault of the President even if he didn’t physically send them, and political attack ads on every second (I’ve already voted, television, stop playing those ads!) I am tired. I am sure you all are tired too. Feeling angry, feeling helpless. At least we can vote – so make sure you make your voice heard. But sometimes even that can feel too small.

Appreciating Writers Before They’re Dead, and Trying To Stay Happy (or at Least Balanced)

I was reading the essays praising Lucie Brock-Broido in the latest issue of The Writer’s Chronicle – which were nice, but I thought, wouldn’t it have been nice if she had had this kind of tribute while she was still alive? Then Tony Hoagland died, of pancreatic cancer. Lots of posts on social media about how much he meant to different people…we’ve been losing poets at a fast rate. It seems to me that if you like a poet go write them a note immediately, write a review of their book – write that essay while they’re still alive to appreciate it! Go buy their book and ask them to sign it. Life as a poet is tough. (Don’t I know it!) So if you love a poet, show them their value now. You never know what they’re going through.

And I went to the hospital last week with a surprise attack of violent vomiting, where I apparently picked up a bug that’s left me feverish and achy all the rest of the last week. With the fever, comes the inevitable MS symptoms – weak legs, dizziness, mood swings. I’ve been sleeping a lot, only waking up to receive rejections and see the terrible news get even worse. I had a specialist visit where the doc expressed some skepticism about the latest MS drug I’ve been assigned, which – I mean, sorry to say this to my fellow MS-ers, all the treatments really suck both in terms of effectiveness and scary, terrible side-effects. With my other issues – the problems with surprise vomiting attacks, the liver tumors, my allergic reactions – it’s tough to find a drug that doesn’t make you worse rather than better. Sigh. Because they don’t really know how MS works, they don’t really know how to treat it, cure it, or even make the symptoms better. Some of my MS friends have had great results on their MS drugs – for ten years or more – but others have had miserable side effects and had to quit them all.  That’s why I support charities that specifically work for an MS cure, like Accelerated Cure Project for MS.

I’ve tried some of the things recommended by my MS-therapist and others: trying to rest, draw pictures of birds, write poems to express my feelings (mostly GAH), gentle stretching, listening to music, watching only classic movies and kitten videos. None of these things has worked to alleviate my overall bad feelings. One thing – and I’ll be honest – that gets me down after twenty years of banging on doors in the poetry world is still getting them slammed in my face. No, I’m not good enough for that press, this grant or fellowship, that journal, whatever. Ugh. It just makes me want to give up. If you’ve ever given up on a job or a dream, I will not be the one to throw judgement at you. Life is mostly hard, and when obstacles keep getting thrown at you, sometimes you have to pick and choose what you want to continue to really pursue.

The Importance of Your Support Network

One thing I’ve thought about is the importance of a good support network – friends you can count on to listen and not just talk about themselves and their problems, family that will go the extra mile, former students and mentors – and the importance of nurturing that network. Because you can’t expect friendships to run on nothing – you have to put in the love and encouragement and little things that make a relationship good. When something like a chronic illness or political upheaval or a work reverse in fortune hits, it’s important to have friends to help you navigate, to help remind you the world isn’t a vast curtain of pain and chaos. Someone who will listen to you when you’re in a bad mood, maybe play a game or invite themselves over for coffee and a visit. I have some really lovely friends that don’t live nearby who show me love – whether by sending long letters, flowers, cards, donations to an MS charity in my name – and those people really make a difference. It might seem small to you, but it probably isn’t small to the person you’re thinking of. You are probably making a difference and you don’t even know it, to someone who really needs it. Right now the world really needs a little extra sunshine, love, candy, and kitten videos. I know this post hasn’t been at all upbeat, but I am grateful to the people who go out of their way to be kind – thank you.

La Conner and Woodinville Fall Scenes, Seattle Poetry Readings, and MS

Mount Baker sunset in La Conner WA

La Conner Autumn Scenes and MS, the Least Wanted Visitor

I ended up in the hospital after this day trip, but it was an absolutely gorgeous visit to La Conner, so I thought I’d post some of the photos anyway.
That’s MS for you – it acts up when you least expect it, it kind of messes up your holiday plans and fun, and is basically like a really unpleasant friend or relative that shows up when they are least wanted. (To be fair, this hospital trip, the MS could have been combined with a food allergy reaction, so…) I was so sad that Selma Blair announced she had MS today, but she’s being very brave. Her experiences sounded shockingly similar to mine – vague symptoms for about ten years, the clumsiness, the memory problems, worsening things like legs and hands not working – and an MS diagnosis at 46 – mine was at 44 – when the average age for women to get diagnosed is much younger, usually in your twenties and thirties. There is no cure, and the treatment options are scary, full of unpleasant side-effects, and not very effective (typical effectiveness rates hover in the 30 percent range, and all of the side effects resemble chemo.) I’m not saying this to frighten anyone, or to trumpet self-pity, but I hope to encourage more awareness about MS so we can get more funding for research, treatments, and cures.

Anyway, we don’t get that many beautiful sunny days in October, and it was a good day to remind ourselves of some of the unique beauties of the Northwest.

We saw herons, bald eagles, deer, seals, and snow geese! We visited a ton of farm stands and stopped into the Roozengarde Gardens (off-season, it’s empty and gorgeous.) Wish you were here!

Local Poetry Readings

Seattle never lacks for poetry readings, but since I was basically in the hospital overnight that knocked out a whole day of doing anything besides recovering. Tomorrow (Sunday, the 21st) there are three readings at the same time – a Raven Chronicles reading, a staging of Claudia Castro Luna‘s Killing Marias, and the Floating Bridge winners reading. I’m sad to miss the first two, but excited to go see my good friend Natasha Moni who’s reading from her Floating Bridge prize-winning new chapbook, Nation, tomorrow at Elliot Bay Books at 3 PM (a wonderful bookstore, but not very handicapped-friendly.) I haven’t socialized much since the latest flare, and even now I’m kind of worried about how normal I’ll seem, if I’ll have the energy to have a conversation afterwards, or stand long enough to chat with folks normally. I’m a very social person, so I’m excited to see my friends, but still a little anxious. It is funny how many things happen here on the same day – you can’t complain there aren’t enough choices for literary events here. Anyway, I hope to see you there!

Woodinville in the Fall

Since I’ve been taking it easy, I haven’t gotten out much since the hospital, but I wanted to document some of the beauty of ordinary fall days in Woodinville – local wineries, visiting deer, and changing colors. The one thing I didn’t snap but should have? A vineyard walk of a fully-costumed Wookie holding a wine glass.

Anyway, even with the bad things that happened this week, I couldn’t help but notice how beautiful the place I live is. I am thankful for that. I am thankful for poetry readings and deer and changing leaves, and for nice EMTs and ER nurses who know how to put in an IV the right way. I am thankful for the good days, and well, on the bad days, not as thankful, I’m just hoping to have as few of them as possible as I learn to manage my crazy health issues. I did write poems this week, send out poems, and even voted in the midterms! I started reading Murakami’s new novel, Killing Commendatore, at the hospital, and Glenn and I played Murakami bingo with the first two chapters: a missing wife, cats, mysterious dreams, pasta cooking, too many descriptions of women’s breasts, a preternaturally charming 13 year old girl: check, check, and check. I’m noticing the new poems I’ve been writing don’t go in the sixth book – they have a different tone, different subject matter, different mood. This means I have to start thinking about organizing the new poems pretty soon…

Escape Into Life Moon Feature Poems, Autumn Scenes from Seattle

Japanese Garden closeup of red leaves

Escape Into Life Moon Feature

Thank you to Escape Into Life for including a  art and poetry feature containing my poems about the moon and some gorgeous art work. And I promise you, these are not your old run of the mill moon poems. There are universes being torn asunder, menacing Blood Moons, magical nightflowers, and some gorgeous art work. Here’s the link and a sneek peek:

Escape Into Life Moon Feature by Jeannine Hall Gailey

Here’s a sneak peek (and isn’t that art beautiful?)

Glenn and I post with changing leaves at the Japanese Garden

Seattle Autumn Scenes – the Japanese Garden’s Turning Leaves

Seattle’s warm temps and sunshine have allowed a little more autumn exploration than usual, so we visited the Japanese Garden for the “Maple Festival.”

Usually by the time the leaves change, there’s a terrible wind gale storm and all the leaves are down, so it’s kind of nice to have this unusually sunny warm stretch.

Also, I was describing on Facebook how every time I have a bad stretch (like my long illness and multiple hospitalizations recently) I focus on a list of things that I want to do when I get better – going to the pumpkin farm, visiting the Japanese Garden and Arboretum, visit the zoo to see the new red panda babies (they’re not out yet, but I can’t wait) and visit La Conner. I was thinking about how focusing on the good things you want to do motivates me to do things like eat healthy, take vitamins, do my physical therapy exercises so I can get well enough to walk in aforesaid places.

 

 

Think good thoughts for me as I’m on this road to recovery. I was in the hospital again last night after 1. eating something I was allergic to and having a pretty violent reaction or 2. having food poisoning or 3. overdoing it with the sunshine and then the MS acting up but anyway it was a pretty miserable night and I am once again on a liquid diet for safekeeping. Ugh. I hate the up and down nature on my health stuff, some days feeling fine and then slam! A hammer reminder that my body isn’t always going to cooperate with me and my lofty goals of walking through parks with pumpkins etc. I hope you are all taking good care of yourselves. Take a little joy in the good days.

October Adventures, Playing Catch Up, Art Gallery Openings, and Autumn Downtime

Pumpkin Patch, Woodinville, with scarecrow

October Adventures

It’s been shockingly beautiful, cool and sunny. We entered October a bit worn out, honestly, so besides playing catch up from a month of illness and hospital trips, we decided to try to spend some time taking advantage of the good things going on around us. This shot was taken at the local farm stand that we get our apples, squash, and hatch chilies (!) from, with sunflowers, scarecrow, and pumpkin patch (if you squint you might be able to see Mt Rainier in the background too.)

My neighborhood is truly pretty ideal for autumn downtime. I even got Glenn to stop in a local winery and do a teensy bit of wine tasting! These shots of the dahlia garden at Matthews Winery.  And Glenn used some gorgeous delicata pink squash and local apples to make this ginger-maple pumpkin-apple bread. Perfect for the slightly chilly nights we’ve been having. And we got the chance to see the Chateau St. Michelle peacocks again, too, along with swarms of Canadian geese eating the grapes off the decorative vines in front of the winery.

Roq La Rue Re-Opens

There were a lot of wonderful things going on this week but one of them was the re-opening, after two years, of pop-goth-surrealist art gallery Roq La Rue. Glenn and I got dressed up and made our way downtown, checked out the art, and then went to some cool shops and a boutique ice cream shop, Salt & Straw, where Glenn tried their strawberry balsamic black pepper. The people watching at Roq La Rue, on top of the art, is fantastic, but it’s almost like Comic-Con in that no matter how I dress, I’m always a little bit underdressed. I almost came home with a very Halloween-appropriate black cat lamp with light beams coming out of his eyes. I tried to get a pic of us dressed up before we left because it’s so rare and the two of us dress up for an outing any more! Anyway, I was very happy one of my favorite Seattle art galleries is back.

Heartbreaking Storms and Climate Changes and Mid-terms

It was heart-breaking watching Hurricane Michael hit the East coast. My thoughts are with all the victims who are still struggling to get power and get rid of debris. There was also a very apocalyptic climate change report this week to remind us that things are not normal, and more violent hurricanes are supposed to be coming more frequently. With an administration rolling back protections for air, water, and radioactive pollution, remember to vote (and make sure you are registered to vote) in the midterms as more is at stake than just our present problems, but future problems caused by this government’s reckless behavior. (By the way, the most hilarious (and heart-stopping) thing for me as a science person on the new EPA web site is that “a small amount of radiation can be good for you, sort of like exercise.” This is absolutely 100 false balderdash, FYI. There is no end to the lies this government will push on its unsuspecting audience.)

Playing Catch-Up

I was also determined, since I lost a little over a month of writing and submitting time, to get back on track, so I sent out a couple of submissions, but I notice that the way my brain functions since the MS, I’m a little slower putting together submissions, making sure I’m following the guidelines of different journals…what used to take twenty minutes takes more than two hours now. My reading times have also slowed, although my vision didn’t get worse – it just takes my brain longer to process a poem, a page of prose. I should send my book manuscript out some more as well. I had to catch up on e-mails and phone calls, too. If I owe you something, a blurb or an e-mail, please send me a note to remind me. It’s also possible I’ve lost a lot of time watching Rita Hayworth movie marathons, planting things, watching hummingbirds and flickers and woodpeckers fight around my back deck, scanning Netflix for Halloween-appropriate programming, and well, just sleeping. I’m still waiting to get my “bounce” back, to get through the stack of books by the bed. My legs are still a little weak (I can now stand for a grand total of fifteen minutes at a time) so I’m taking short walks each day that I can to build them back up before the rainy season is upon us…which will probably be upon us sooner rather than latre. In the meantime, please go out and enjoy as much sunshine, leaf-turning, dahlia-strewn birdwatching as you can. Autumn downtime seems so decadent, to me – a time supposed to be a flurry of business, returning to school, coming back from vacation, paying bills, rearranging closets to reach coats and scarves and boots – but it feels the most necessary, too – extra sleep, extra vitamins, extra consumption of pumpkin and apple. It seems like good poetry-writing time. My own recent poems, I notice, have been full of death and dahlias.

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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