Speculative Sundays Reading Tonight, a Video on How to Read a Poem, Celebration vs Obligation

Speculative Sundays Reading Tonight, Sunday, 7 PM Pacific

I’m doing a reading and Q&A tonight at 7 PM Pacific with Speculative Sundays. Tickets are free and available below. I’ll be reading a little from my newest book, Flare, Corona, and a little from my previous book, Field Guide to the End of the World.

Speculative Sundays Poetry Reading Series presents Jeanine Hall Gailey Tickets, Sun, Nov 19, 2023 at 7:00 PM | Eventbrite

Photos of Charlotte and Sylvia at the request of my mom. She likes to see proof of cats!

Edited: I missed this reading somehow by two hours and never got the correspondence the organizer sent. I’m so sorry if you showed up and I didn’t. I was having breathing trouble tonight (MS-related? asthma?) but I had my outfit and makeup and even practiced the reading (for no one, sadly.) Boo hoo.

Canadian Geese in flight

A Video on How to Read a Poem

Last week, at our Reading Between the Wines book club, we talked about Louise Gluck’s Meadowlands, and I was asked to give a talk for beginning poetry readers on how to read a poem.

I talked a little bit about this in my last post, the fact that I hadn’t really ever given a talk on how to read a poem, rather I was used to teaching people how to write a poem. Here it is on YouTube, though the lighting is less than flattering. Caveat: it’s fairly short, people may not agree with everything I say, and I use Meadowlands’ poems as examples throughout the talk. Canadian geese in flight at a winery down the street from my house.

Sylvia holiday

Celebration vs Obligation

I had the good experience of a salon with Tatyana Mishel Sussex on the subject of celebration, and then talking about how holidays, birthdays, writing news can be seen as obligations and celebrations. You may have heard the “magic” of the holidays is mostly created by the free labor of women. I am a big holiday person, though I hate Thanksgiving (pretty miserable childhood Thanksgivings probably the source) and love not just Christmas, but all the yuletide-type celebrations of light—Hanukah, Dewali, the New Year, etc. Anything that celebrates lighting a candle in the dark. My husband, when we got married, was not much of a Christmas person but loved Halloween—so we started a tradition of spaghetti dinners on Christmas Eve, chilling out, watching movies as well as me embracing a much more Halloween-y Halloween.

This has been a rough week for me—a close relative was diagnosed with cancer (and I’ve already got a list of good friends and relatives—mostly youngish—battling it) and I had a mini-flare (or exacerbation) of MS caused by mystery reasons—I did have a mini-flare at this time last year, so maybe something about the time of year—the cold, the lack of light, allergies, time change, the stress of the holidays. Anyway, it meant I couldn’t sleep, read, I had trouble swallowing, I kept tripping and I had to take emergency medication. A lot of my friends and family have covid right now. Glenn had a restaurant event with work, he got a flu shot but the Novovax won’t appear in our pharmacies until next week. Have you read it’s a record year for norovirus too? Martha Stewart, that icon of home-and-holiday-celebrations, had to cancel Thanksgiving because too many people called in sick.

Me at Cranberry Cottage in Bothell

We’re just trying to stay as safe as we can—while still trying to connect with friends and family, doing the celebrations that are important to us. This picture is from a little excursion to a new-to-me corner of Bothell—a neighboring town—with a cute shop called Cranberry Cottage, which has got to be the most Hallmarky-name of a shop like this in the universe. I got some presents for my mom and surprisingly, my oldest brother—who both have birthdays coming up in the next couple of weeks, I talked to some of the employees, some of whom made candles or ornaments that were on the shelves. I admire makers—writing is a kind of making—and once again, just like at the farm, it felt like small connections to the world around me, from which I mainly hide or communicate by Zoom, phone, or e-mail.  I’m looking forward to spending Thanksgiving with my little brother this year—a small but manageable celebration, and mostly very chill (although Glenn is still making his extravagant plans for roast duck, stuffing with apples and cranberries, roasted sweet potatoes and carrots, probably some amazing appetizers as well and dessert, which he has been doing experiments for the past couple of days).

All this is just to say, we have to remain in balance—safe, but still connected—celebrating, but not out of a sense of obligation, but real, well, thankfulness, at a time of year when it’s cold and dark. Here’s wishing you and yours a safe and happy holiday season.