Jeannine Hall Gailey's Blog, page 103

Flavorpill Seattle, the lessons of a cracked diamond, and other universe messages

Flavorwire's Flavorpill did a nice write-of my new book (She Returns to the Floating World) and my upcoming Sunday reading at Open Books:
http://flavorpill.com/seattle/events/2011/9/25/jeannine-hall-gailey
Thanks Elissa Ball! I hope all my Seattle friends will come out for Sunday's reading! Plus spend money at Open Books - we've got to keep our all-poetry-bookstore going!

Sometimes life can just get you down. Here on this blog, I try to document both the ups and downs of a poet's life. I've been feeling sick the last couple of weeks, I got a couple of poetry rejections, got turned down for a job I really wanted, and...my wedding ring's diamond literally cracked down the middle! A big old split! I was trying to think about what the universe was trying to tell me, what with the run-downness and the hardest stone in the world breaking...that even the world's hardest stone breaks when exposed to enough stress? That even one vulnerable spot in a ring setting can lead to a disastrous crack? I don't know why I was so distressed about it...Anyway, if you can solve the lesson of the cracked diamond, let me know! (And also, shame on Tiffany's for selling us such a weak-ass diamond! So much for trying to avoid blood diamonds and, you know, being deceived into the 'quality is worth the extra cost' and all that...The manager there was all like "we don't have warranties on our diamonds..." The ring is less than ten years old! Shame shame shame!) Did I mention my first wedding ring was stolen while I was having surgery seven years ago? I do not have good luck with jewelry!

I've been reading (poetry and fiction) and reviewing at my regular rate this summer, but haven't felt my usual inspirational spark. I think I'm going to clean out my closets. (This means I am avoiding working on something else...probably another job application!) I notice I have about four different sizes of clothes in my closet right now. I need to only keep clothes that are my actual size in my closet, and also, only shoes that are appropriate to my, ahem, persistent ankle problems - so no heels. That makes sense, right? (I'm also sizing down my wedding ring, since I had to surrender it to get the diamond fixed anyway...who knew losing weight would have such an effect on my fingers?) Fewer things to search through, less stress when getting dressed in the morning! Right?

New issue of Crab Orchard Review plus my 2 cents on the MFA ranking debate

So, week 2.5 into my persistent summer-weather-induced head-cold-throat-thing, I haven't been doing as much creative writing as I'd like, but I finally finished up a book review for the Rumpus that had been hanging over my head, and working steadily on that job application for a local academic job that would be a perfect fit for me (at least I think so.) I sent out some poems and even entered a fiction contest (shhh, don't tell! Secretly practicing fiction over here. It's tough stuff.)

I got the wonderful new American South issue of Crab Orchard Review (Summer/Fall 2011, for those of you keeping track.) It's really a wonderful collection, with three poems in it from my "Robot Scientist's Daughter" manuscript (Thanks Crab Orchard editors!) and poems from Amanda Auchter, Stacy Lynn Brown and Erika Meitner, among other familiar names.

So, the recent issue of Poets & Writers included creative writing school rankings for MFA and PhD programs. Then, a bunch of professors signed a protest letter saying creative writing programs can't possibly be quantified and ranked, etc. (The New Yorker has a bit on it here. And Poets & Writers printed a response here.) Then, on the Sunday twitter poetparty, people complained about being judged by having an MFA (people with MFAs are snobs! Or "You're just an adjunct hack," one person noted being called) or not having an MFA (one of my good friends being told he is not a "real poet" because he doesn't have an MFA, etc.) Hrmph. So much ill will and complaining among writers, it doesn't seem right.
Here is my opinion on the issue: the MFA is expensive for most people, because most people cannot afford to set aside the money or time for a graduate program that doesn't really lead to increased income potential (the way, say, an MBA or MD might.) Does an MFA make you a "real" writer? There is no Pinocchio effect that I know of. When I signed up for my MA at the University of Cincinnati, I was a few years out of school, working a full-time job, and got a free ride courtesy of their generous grant program at the time. I learned a lot of literary criticism terms (that come in handy when I am reading poetics) and, at times against my will, a lot about formal poetry. I went back to more years of working at various corporations. Then again I started really wanting to move forward with my writing, to get regular experienced feedback. I attended some writing conferences, started going to a local writer's group, and started reading more literary magazines, books on poetry, books of poetry, etc. This is when I started thinking about the MFA again. My husband and I talked and decided we did not want to move for my degree. I looked at the low-residency options available. At that time - not that long ago, after all - there was little information to be had about how good/bad/indifferent/well-funded different programs were. Not only were there no rankings, any info I had about any of the programs was based on gossip (what little there was) and guess work, because the program's web sites were not very informative and a lot of programs didn't respond to e-mailed questions. So, deciding to do the very thing I had been counseled over and over not to do - go into yes, student loan debt to get an MFA - I made my decision on where to go (Pacific University) based on friendliness of e-mail responses and faculty that I liked (and a bit of what is called "geographic attractiveness" - whether or not the place was within driving distance.) I was accepted at several places that I applied to (and I only applied to a couple of places, not knowing back then that you're supposed to apply, like, ten or fifteen places as a time.) Whew! Lucky I survived the experience! (And, really, you don't lose going to any program where Dorianne Laux is a teacher. She rocks!)
I think the rankings may not be that important, but surely, it doesn't hurt prospective MFA students to know a little bit more about each program - whether they offer scholarships, whether the listed faculty actually teach there, etc. I think the rankings don't do all the footwork - you still have to try to talk to alumni if you can, communicate with faculty if possible, definitely visit at least once - but I guess I don't understand the vim and vigor of the hatred of rankings, except that creative writing people are all against rankings in general for artistic study? But we all know the best schools for visual art - I mean, visual artists and musicians know which graduate schools are best for their kind of work, typically, and the reputations of the programs do impact where people apply. So, I guess, my stand is: more information is better. And rankings aren't the devil. These rankings may not be perfect - but who are they hurting? One person's number one school - like, say, Iowa - is not going to be a good fit for someone else, I think that is obvious. For instance, Iowa wouldn't have been my number one choice - I didn't want to move to Iowa, but I had also heard (perhaps unfairly - remember that gossip thing) that Iowa was competitive and unfriendly, and while I don't mind the usual amount of competition, I was definitely interested in a friendly environment. So, if they were doing rankings customized for me, Iowa would not be #1; but in terms of selectivity and reputation, everyone thinks of Iowa as #1 already. Surely the conversation can expand, get bigger, the rankings could start accounting more for, say, how alumni do in their writing after graduation, whether the big name writers actually spend time with students, what the atmosphere/craft classes/workshops/residencies are like, instead of focusing so much on funding. And Poets & Writers could profile programs in more detail for interested folks, which would surely benefit everyone (why is everyone so tight with information?) But maybe condemning the person trying to start the conversation (ahem, Seth or ahem, Poets & Writers) isn't the right methodology for getting a better picture of MFA study to the world at large. (and I promise I'm not just saying this because my alma mater happens to be well-ranked.) So instead of criticizing, maybe people could come up with better rankings, better methodologies, maybe programs could be more transparent about costs and funding and scholarship and who teaches when. More help, more opportunities, more open conversations, more offers to collaborate and share, not less, is needed.
Also, there is a bit of class warfare in the background of these discussions, too - someone who can afford to send themselves to, say, an expensive program like Columbia without worrying about the cost - is going to be pleased with their experience at Columbia, and so would say they don't deserve their lower rating, but someone who can't afford it needs to know up-front that they probably can't afford it - and so the rating is useful to someone who needs the funding. For me, the decision to go into student loan debt may have been - well, optimistic (naive?) - but, life is short, and attending was a wonderful experience, and I enjoyed it and think my writing benefited from it. I haven't gone on a real vacation in ten years, my husband and I split the use of one car, and we don't have a lot of extra money even when I do get adjunct work - and this quarter, I don't have a class, so it's a little tougher financially. The fact is, it's really tough out there to get creative writing teaching jobs, even adjunct jobs. I tell my students this when they start my classes in the MFA program, as I want them not to be discouraged but to have realistic expectations. Maybe be prepared to make ends meet by doing freelance work, or copyediting, or teaching community groups...
Also, no one "needs" an MFA. (And I say this as someone who really loved getting her MFA and encourage those who have the time, energy, direction - and can realistically take the hit financially.) I think you can do the things that an MFA lets you do - pay focused, directed attention to your writing, learn from writers you respect - outside the MFA system. You can ask a writer you admire if they do private coaching - hey, it's probably less expensive than school would be. You can buy that "book list" you've been putting off, and actually make time to read those twenty books that might change the way you think about writing. You can go to conferences and make friends with other writers, find a local group and workshop. Many fine writers became fine writers outside of the MFA system. And the only thing that makes anyone a "real writer" is writing.
Let's stop looking for reasons to fight, and start trying to help each other out. It's a mean cold world out there for writers and would-be writers, after all. Let's find ways to lift each other up, to share information, to encourage each other to be better.

Celebrating Artists - Beyond Book Covers

So today, I wanted to talk a little bit about some artists I love - and why I think as important as it is for writers to be plugged into a writer's community, they should also strive to connect to the visual art community. And it's not just so they have slamming art to use the next time they have a book cover coming up! (Although that is a positive side-effect...)

Tonight, I'm going to the reception for artist Yumiko Kayukawa, whose new show is opening at terrific Seattle gallery Roq La Rue. (She also graciously allowed me to use her piece, "Zen Cracker," for this web site.) You can see some preview art for the show here. So many people talk about the SAM, the Seattle Art Museum, or maybe they mention the Henry Art Gallery at UW, which hosts some kickin' literary events as well. Both deserve a visit, but this quirky downtown gallery always has something up on its walls that makes me wish I could afford to buy more art.

And soon, I'll be reading October 21 at a reception for local painter Deborah Scott, whose fairy tale series "Waiting for Prince Charming" is a combination of subversive pop culture wit and traditional stunning painting techniques. Check out this review of her show here. It starts today as well - click here for more information about viewing her work! You can see why I'd like her work.

I'm hoping to meet up with the cover artist of my first book (Becoming the Villainess) Michaela Eaves, at the opening tonight, and I just wish I could follow Rene Lynch (the cover artist of She Returns to the Floating World) around because her exhibitions are always in fancy places like Germany and NYC.

I think poets have a lot in common with visual artists, whose work necessarily taps into the subconscious, whose images are often drawn from the same sources (history, mythology, pop culture) as ours. Yumiko's work draws on old eighties record covers, Japanese anime, and ecological concerns; Rene Lynch clearly focuses a lens on fairy tale tropes, as does Deborah. Michaela's pop-goth-with-a-twist sensibilities might suit, say, a speculative writer. I think we can benefit from hanging out with each other; poets can be inspired to write based on the striking visual input, and artists (maybe, hopefully) can be inspired by our writing. (Well, like I said, we can hope!) I think about Frank O'Hara, who used to write for fancy art magazines as well as book reviews and poetry, who wrote the poem "Why I Am Not a Painter." I've loved this poem since I was a kid, and I swear I've actually had the conversation in the poem. "It needed something there." "There should be so much more, not of orange, of words, of how terrible orange is and life. Days go by. It is even in prose, I am a real poet." So today I encourage you poets to go out this weekend and find some local art and try to talk to a real live artist!

Interview with Annette Spaulding-Convy

This will be the last of my summer interviews, I think, with the very exciting editor and poet Annette Spaulding-Convy...and tomorrow I'll talk about art!

Annette Spaulding-Convy's full length collection, In Broken Latin, will be published by the University of Arkansas Press (Fall 2012) as a finalist for the Miller Williams Poetry Prize and her chapbook, In The Convent We Become Clouds, won the 2006 Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is co-editor of the literary journal, Crab Creek Review, and is co-founder of Two Sylvias Press.

http://www.crabcreekreview.org/

http://www.twosylviaspress.com/

Jeannine: Annette, I know you and Kelli Agodon are working on an e-book anthology of women's poetry. Can you talk a little about that project? Why e-books? Why now?

Annette: Last year both Kelli and I purchased eReaders (a Nook and an iPad) and immediately noticed that there weren't many contemporary collections of poetry available on electronic platforms, so we decided to utilize our skills as editors of a print journal and undertake an eBook poetry project. We invited our favorite women poets to submit and we were thrilled with the positive response, even from poets who had previously felt trepidation at the thought of their poems being distributed in an electronic format. This anthology, Fire On Her Tongue, will be available for purchase/download in the late autumn and it will be amazing—featuring over seventy contemporary women poets, ranging in age from thirteen to ninety-one, beginning and established poets, as well as women from a variety of careers and backgrounds.

Another aspect of the anthology that we are excited about is that the entire process from our first call for submissions to the sale and distribution has been "green" with a zero carbon-footprint. One of our goals for the project was for it to be entirely paperless and, so far, we've been successful, even having our poets sign electronic contracts.

I'm not sure why many of us feel an initial resistance to electronic reading platforms, perhaps because as writers and readers we love the tactile, visual nature of printed books and we fear they might be endangered by this new technology. I believe both can co-exist peacefully. It is my hope that Fire On Her Tongue will inspire poets to ask their publishers to make their collections available in eBook format in addition to the traditionally printed book. And, for some poets, electronic books are an economical way to self-publish. Lastly, I am excited that the production of this anthology has prompted Kelli and me to start our own independent press, Two Sylvias Press, which will primarily publish books written by women.

JHG: And your book has been selected for publication by University of Arkansas Press, due out in Fall of 2012. Tell us a little about what that book is about and how it came together.

ASC: I received a surprise phone call this past Valentine's Day morning—Enid Shomer, judge of the Miller Williams Poetry Prize, calling to tell me that my manuscript, In Broken Latin, had been chosen as one of three finalists and would be published in 2012. Just the week before, I had decided that the ten year process of writing this collection and sending it out to contests had cost me enough money, time, and disappointment—the manuscript would be retired to a hidden folder. I guess the writing process is about both perseverance and letting go.

In Broken Latin is inspired by the five years I spent as a Roman Catholic nun in the San Francisco Bay Area. The collection took me nearly eight years to write as I often found it challenging to articulate how I simultaneously loved and disliked my time in the convent, how the contemplative life gave birth to a non-traditional view of divinity, how the line between what is sacred and what is profane is sometimes extremely thin. The poems are critical of the Catholic Church as a patriarchal institution and attempt to show the human, generous, and compassionate lives of the women who have devoted themselves to an ideal in a religious tradition that disregards the feminine (in my opinion). That sounds so heavy and didactic—but, really, there is also nun naughtiness and humor!

I think I began writing these convent poems as a catharsis. I soon had a small collection, which I submitted to the Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Contest here in Seattle. They chose my chapbook, In the Convent We Become Clouds, as the 2006 winner, and this encouraged me to create a full-length book based on my experience. I'm finished writing about nuns for awhile and now I've moved on to cowgirls.

JHG: You're also one of the editors-in-chief of Northwest literary magazine Crab Creek Review. What has that been like? What's your favorite part of being an editor? Your least favorite?

ASC: I came aboard Crab Creek Review with some editing experience, but not a lot. I learned very quickly that the production of a literary journal takes hours and hours, and is basically, a labor of love. I co-edit CCR with Kelli Russell Agodon and we are part of a strong production team. The two of us are in charge of the journal's finances, fund raising, PR, website/blog, release readings, proofing, distribution, and giving the final ok to the poems, fiction, and creative non-fiction chosen by the genre editors to appear in a given issue. I think my favorite part of editing (aside from cracking open a new copy of the journal just off the press) is having the opportunity to read through the poems and stories that our wonderful editors (Lana Hechtman Ayers, Jen Betterley, Nancy Canyon, and Star Rockers) have found to be the strongest in the bags and bags of submissions that they read through. There is nothing more exciting than finding a new, unpublished poet or receiving a submission from a huge literary name. The least favorite aspect of editing for me is the behind-the-scenes-housekeeping details that need constant attention and the large subscriber mailing—the local post office clerks grimace when they see me. There are two CCR staff members who help us tremendously with all of our editorial tasks: Carol Levin and Ronda Broatch, CCR's editorial assistants. Crab Creek Review is a fantastic literary journal—everyone should subscribe!

JHG: What advice would you give a new poet just starting out?

ASC: I would say these things to a poet who is just beginning to write and submit:

Read as many other contemporary poets as you can. Read collections that are just coming out and find the poets who inspire you and study their work. Also, read literary journals and find out what poetry editors seem to be choosing in terms of style and content. And, pick up a dead poet once in awhile, too: Shakespeare, Dickinson, Eliot, Sexton. Write about your experiences and/or the aspects of life that fascinate you. Be free with your poems and write them in any voice you want. Poetry is not non-fiction. You can write a poem with conviction about your aunt's house burning down, even though you have no aunt and the event didn't happen. Find a writing group made up of people with whom you "click". A writing group gives you an opportunity to receive valuable critique and teaches you to read with a critical eye so that you can offer insightful feedback. You will be amazed at how much you will grow as a poet by simply being in the company of poets. Put your writing first. This is difficult, especially if you are busy, but sometimes it is better for you (and for your world) if you shut yourself away and write a poem rather than do the dishes. Find a writing routine that allows for a slice of quiet time: early morning or after everyone has gone to sleep or escape to a favorite coffee house.Submit your work constantly. Begin with local publications and branch outward (there are great lists on the Internet of journals and what styles they publish—Poets & Writers online has a terrific database). Continue to submit even if you only receive rejections. Talk to other poets about their submission experiences and exchange ideas for places to submit. Occasionally send your work to big name journals that seem out of reach—you might be surprised!Go to local poetry readings, listen to famous poets read their work (the Internet is a great resource for both audio and video of poets reading), and read your own work aloud to yourself. Write a few lines and read them aloud—your ear will catch a bump that your eye may not.Submit your poems to Crab Creek Review. We love emerging poets!

Blazevox Scandal Has Me Thinking About Poetry Sales (and Book Sales in General)

So yesterday this bizarre and frankly fascinating thing happened while I was out blissfully walking around giant cedars and gasping at local waterfalls (Weeks Falls and then Snoqualamie Falls) and generally ignoring all poetry-related business...

A little press called Blazevox sent out some letters telling authors their books had been accepted but they needed to pay a $250 fee for them to be published. Certainly not the first or last time such a thing had happened, but it rubbed some folks the wrong way, then those folks blogged about it, then there was a lot of fighting on Facebook, then Blazevox's editor (who, among other things, really needs to run spell check on his professional correspondence, if he learned nothing else from the blowup - really, poets are super bitchy about typos) announced on their web site that he was closing down the press.

So, my problem with the whole discussion was how the editor - and lots of other folks - made the assumption from the beginning that they can't make any money from poetry or poetry books, and that that's just a given. Hmph. I don't think it's a given. If maybe the press researches some marketing techniques, or does a little more PR work, maybe their books will sell better. Most poetry presses do very little in terms of trying to market their books. Those who make even a little effort probably have slightly better sales. Yes, I know Borders just went under - also from bad management decisions - and that e-books outsell paper books - and I know that poetry has never been terribly profitable. But there's some weird elitist undertones to the conversation, as in, "Those silly masses of people out there will never be capable of liking or understanding poetry, so we need to get our support from the writers," which really doesn't make any sense to me. Why do we assume more people can't or won't like poetry IF THEY ARE EXPOSED TO IT CORRECTLY. Which means, not by an English teacher who hates poetry already who grudgingly makes students write terrible sonnets and teaches them about some eighteenth century dead guy, but, you know, real contemporary poets who are fun and enjoyable to read and don't make you want to rip your own eyes from your head. I think Matthea Harvey is awfully fun to read, and would be for any random high school kid or college kid, and Denise Duhamel too. A lot of my friends write poetry that's fun to read, fun to hear, fun to perform. The question is, why aren't more poets (and poetry publishers) more ambitious about getting poetry out to more people who aren't already poets or poetry lovers? A non-poet friend of mine who was a former VP of marketing at a Fortune 500 company asked me, so what do poets do to, you know, get the word out about their work? Well, I answered timidly, we wait til a college asks us to come out and read, and sometimes we read for free at coffee shops and little bookstores. Needless to say, she was not impressed with this plan - it's not very practical if you want to really reach people who don't already love poetry. So what should we be doing?

Also, for the record, my two small presses (bless you, Steel Toe Books and Kitsune Books) never asked me for money to publish my books. If you are a beginning poet and you don't know this, there are publishers out there who will not ask you for money and will still publish your book. Yes, contest fees are a reality - but there are presses that still have no-fee open readings. And the way to help support them? It is to buy their books now before they go under. So, the rallying call is: if you like books and poetry, buy some books! From publishers who support their authors and don't ask them to incur expenses themselves! Encourage your friends and family to go to some poetry readings, fall in love with poetry, and buy books themselves. I took my seventeen-year-old brother (and his gang of scary-looking-punk friends) to a Louise Gluck reading once, and he still has his signed copy of Meadowlands. You never know what's going to connect with readers.

Holiday Weekend Bits

Open Books has a very kind write-up (plus a sample poem) of She Returns to the Floating World here.



If you are interested in reviewing She Returns to the Floating World, well, now's your chance - Rattle has a copy and is looking for a reviewer! Info here: http://rattle.com/blog/available/



Had a chance to entertain my poet friend N (newly arrived from the East Bay back the NW) and show her around Woodinville (including the two potbellied pigs at the Herbfarm garden!) during pitch perfect sunny-low-humidity-mountain-is-out Seattle weather. It was a beautiful day and lovely to visit.



Now we are considering going to visit one of the local waterfalls. (It was either that and ick, clean up the house and work. Not appropriate activities for Labor Day Weekend, especially with this kind of weather.)



And I've set up a reading in October with my artist friend Deborah Scott and her latest exhibit. I'll post more about her fairy-tale-themed exhibit soon!



And in case you missed it the first time, Escape Into Life calls my poems "heat sparking" - go check out their digest!

Say Anything Thursday

September 1, or Say Anything Day!



Well, for all you folks who are still in love with Say Anything, Cameron Crowe has posted new deleted scenes from the original script on his blog. I love this movie more now than I did when I first watched it, because I understand some of the subtext of talking about success in blue collar, Boeing-dependent Puget Sound. (This was pre-Microsoft-taking-over-Redmond, of course.)



It's September, so no more "it's August, the last summer month in the Northwest" procrastination is allowed. In the last 24 hours, I revised my "Robot Scientist's Daughter" manuscript, updated the acknowledgments page (three accepted poems since last month!) and sent out a packet of poems. This makes me feel like less of a slacker and more like a real writer.



I am still working on my gigantic job application for desired academic job #1, and I've gotten into a sticky wicket where I'm wondering whether the sample syllabus should be my actual syllabus from classes I've taught or something else? (Anyone out there with advice, I'd be grateful to hear! Like, do they really need all of the grading and ethics information on there, or just the content stuff?) It also requires a writing sample (do I use poems from both books, or new work?) and a letter of something called a "commitments to creative writing and poetics" statement (no idea what something like that is supposed to contain. And I call myself a book critic!) Whew! My tech writing job applications are way easier to do.



I've been angsty about whether I'm doing enough to promote the new book, and how much is too much, and how many readings to schedule and where, and I realized that though having a book come out is something to celebrate, it can also provoke a lot of anxiety. My first Seattle reading will be on the 25th of September at Open Books, my very favorite bookstore of all time, so if you're my friend and will be Seattle that day, come by and wish me luck! Or better yet, stay for the reading (at 3 PM.) I'm putting together the reading list for that, too, and practicing the new poems out loud. I heard Obama will be in our fair town that day, and I told him it would only be a 45 minute reading, and afterwards we could go out for gelato, so I hope he shows :) I think it would be good for poetry and for presidents if presidents went to more poetry readings. Plus, I'll read about politically important subjects like nuclear environmental challenges. Fun for everyone!



Today I'm nervous also about going to the dentist for multiple fillings (ouch!) and excited about seeing my friend N who is back in town tomorrow. It's always good to see old friends. Not sure I can say the same about the fillings!

Tuesday Confession: In Which Things Don't Get Done, Feminisms, and Closed Doors

You'd think, after my last post, full of go-get-em-ness, that I would have gotten a ton done this weekend. Sadly, I spent the last several sunny, beautiful, 80+ degree days sleeping off a summer cold, with, I'm afraid, a bad attitude on top of it. Grump grump grump. The dog days of summer indeed. (The dog days are over, the song goes in my head, the dog days are done...)



Confession #1: I've been trying to write some fiction. It's slow going, much slower than poetry, and harder to feel happy with what I've been doing - you don't get that feeling of completion, and I'm much less confident in my prose skills than my poetry skills. So I wrote a couple of paragraphs, that I'll probably have to re-write. Blech.



Confession #2: Sometimes I feel that as a person with lady-parts, I am just dealing with worse odds, not just in the poetry business, but it all the business of my life, over and over again. Celia makes some good points in her blog post here. Some parts of this feeling may have to do with several books I've read in contemporary poetry and fiction that were highly overpraised by "people in charge" and were just miserable, sad, boring, and un-fun reading - and they all happened to be written by men.



Confession #3: I haven't sent out poems lately. This may have to do with #2: the feeling "why bother when they're just going to publish somebody in their clique/coterie who is probably more, you know, male than me?" Jeffery Bahr said something kind lately in one of his posts - about why the Dickman twins were getting so much attention - "OK, I think that Seth and Tricia and Elisa and Jeannine and Rebecca and . . . write better stuff than these guys. But, I also think that most of the 50 Best New Poets do too. I really don't get how this works." The whole post is here. I agree, and his confusion is also mine - especially after reading hundreds of poetry books for book reviews for five or six years now. In a fair and logical poetry world, based solely on quality of poetry, Rebecca Loudon would be getting as much attention as Ben Lerner, and Kristy Bowen and Elisa Gabbert would be getting the awards, grants, and praise as often as the twins. (Let me point out, I also love Jeffery's poetry and think it is under-appreciated, and he is male. So. It's not just a girl thing.)

It does feel that so much of the poetry world, the awards and attention given by the folks in charge, is coterie and cliquery and some mysterious old-boy network. Some writers would say we should take away their power by creating our own power structures - I know Kristy, and Collin, and Reb Livingston have all written about this on their blogs - but without power, time and money, how is that a realistic goal? It all feels to me like climbing some slippery ice mountain. With a blindfold.

Positive Movement Versus the Whirlwind

As a gigantic hurricane whirls its way up the East coast (which was also recently rattled by an earthquake...) I am thinking about movement. Specifically, movement we can control and movement we can't control. Positive momentum that spins us up to where we want to be... After your book comes out, if you're anything like me, you can't help but sneak peeks at your Amazon rankings, depressed if there is no movement, willing the numbers to go in the right direction. Amazon's Author Central has made tracking your book's sales depressingly accurate. And yet...what can we do about these things? How much control does an author have over her own book's sales? I want to promote it, display it like one of those tantalizing pink cupcakes in the store, I want people to love it...but ultimately I have very little control over what other people do. (Right now, for instance, it's in the top 100 bestsellers of Kindle books of poetry, but the paper version's rank hasn't moved...)

So instead I try to make headway on my projects at hand. Having no classes this quarter, I'm applying for part-time contract work and teaching jobs. I'm working right now on a bear of an application that requires pages of statements and samples. I try to make a little headway each day. I'm also working on a book review of a difficult book. Yesterday I wrote two paragraphs of the review, not too substantial, I'm afraid, but enough to say: I made some positive motion on it. I finished a poetry consult project. I'm trying to create a sane reading schedule this fall, but of course all the readings want to fall on the same weekends, invitations to read out of town inevitably all come for the same three day period. I'm excited for the upcoming readings - the chance to finally introduce my new little book to the public, officially - but of course, nervous as well. How will these poems play to an audience? Which poems should I choose for which reading? I'm trying to design afternoon workshops for teenagers, a talk for community colleges on superheroes and mythology, and something on speculative poetry for a general audience. I'm trying my hand at a little fiction, and I'm still writing poems on radioactive elements (apparently, I thought I was done, but I actually wasn't. The news on Fukushima makes it seem alarmingly relevant and demanding all over again.)



If I try to do all these things at once, I will fail. If I make headway bit by bit, and keep track of what I've accomplished each day, instead of feeling overwhelmed, hopefully I'll just feel productive enough. And it will keep me from checking my Amazon rankings too often ;)

Tuesday Confessions about the End of Summer

Since the last time I posted, I've hosted a party at my apartment and went to a summer concert in the zoo. A social whirl, and it was the hottest weekend (of course!) of the entire year! Sorry, those who came, that it wasn't a pool party - and that I lack an ice vodka bar!

Here's a pic of me doing my best Sylvia Plath impression pre-party. Not the suicide part, the part where she rocked being a domestic-goddess-type-in-cocktail-dresses. (Glenn is actually the talented sushi-and-cupcake maker. I'm just appearing in frame.) My favorite thing about the party is that I got to see my artist friends and poet friends and fiction-writer friends all in one place. I wish that happened more often!



We also saw Aimee Mann at the Seattle zoo which was fun, as it had settled down to a comfortable 77-with-breeze by the time we arrived at the zoo, and we enjoyed the meerkats and ocelot cub and other beasties pre-concert. Aimee Mann is a consummate performer - I've seen her a bunch of times in a bunch of different venues. She always wears the same kind of outfit - what I call a "cool poet" look - skinny jeans, cool jacket, knee-high boots, and black glasses - and gets up, performs, chats in between songs a bit, and thanks the audience. She's professional, laid-back, lacking the drama that might usually be attached to pop stars (or poets.) I wish I could pull that off at my own readings. No big whoop, no drama, just get up, perform, thank everyone, get off stage. Note to self.



In poetry news, my book She Returns to the Floating World is now available for $3.50 on Kindle. An e-book! That Kitsune Books is a progressive publisher. I don't have a Kindle myself, so if you pick it up and see it, let me know how it looks!