San Juan Island Interlude, Aimee Mann and Poetry Wisdom, Northwest Bookfest Reading
- At September 17, 2012
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In Blog
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Thanks to Seattle Met for calling out our very fun poetry reading in Kirkland wine bar The Grape Choice (7 PM on Saturday September 22nd) that we’re doing for Northwest Bookfest as one of the Bookfest’s highlights! Readers will include David D. Horowitz, Greg Bee, R.R. Seitz, Jeannine Hall Gailey, and Jack McCarthy. Wine does make poetry better, they say.
Just got back from a weekend away from the television, the internet, and cell phone service in San Juan Island, communing with seals, porpoises and eagles (and even baby alpacas, camels, and black foxes.) This time, we happened to have nice weather all three days and even though I was slightly unable to hike thanks to the usual ankle issues we were, surprisingly, able to visit all the good stuff: American camp with its hares and foxes, English camp with slap-happy barking seals, the alpaca farm and lavender farm, watching sunset from Lime Kiln Point while schools of porpoises hopped around the horizon. The time away allowed me to finish the Seattle-based farce of wound-too-tight mommy-and-former-architect Bernadette, in “Where’d You Go, Bernadette” by Maria Semple. Though, in my opinion, the book got a couple of things wrong about Microsoft, Seattle, etc…the main tenet, that artists who don’t create become menaces, could be true. I note that when I am forced into a world of less fulfilling practices (say, a lot of doctor appointments, long meetings, and spreadsheets/forms/taxes) I become, let’s say, more grouchy, less sunny-poetry-girl. Lately I have been thinking of ways to live, not to be too Oprah-esque, a more fulfilling, authentic life – how to enjoy life more, spend more time with people who improve our hearts/minds/etc, and, in the poetry world, less time worrying and doing unproductive, stress-inducing stuff. You know, more baby alpacas and beach combing, less traffic, bureaucracy, and BS.
To segue, I read an interesting interview today with one of my musical heroines, Aimee Mann, who is releasing a new album called Charmers. The interview (click here to read) focuses on something many poets will understand, “The perils of publishing something no one wants to buy.” When we go to unpaid readings with a blank audience where no one buys a book…or a treasured book project gets sunk by unforeseen circumstances, or you bring out a book and no one notices…it can feel like a futile mission, being a poet. My favorite quote from the interview is Aimee’s response to why release an album: “It’s probably as simple as, “Well, this is what I do, so I should just do it.” You have to take a leap of faith.” Not only does a fulfilled life as an artist involve continuing to create, it involves continuously telling ourselves that our work is worth doing in a world that tells us it isn’t.
No one will ever force you to write a poem, paint a picture, or try to live a better, happier life. Guilt, strife, anger and sadness abound, and believe me, there will always be someone asking for your time, money, and energy. You are the one who has to take steps to be saner, more joyous, to appreciate the things around you and embrace the creator inside you, not the destroyer.
Jeannine 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.
