Jeannine Hall Gailey's Blog, page 118

Very excited to have a poem in the "Dossier" section - on...

Very excited to have a poem in the "Dossier" section - on the 1970s - of the newest issue 7 of Court Green, a magazine that, like MARGIE, I feel proud to be a part of. The poem right before mine is by Adrian Blevins, "The Hospitality" (I love her work!) and selfishly, I couldn't ask for a better poem to sets up my poem, "Knoxville 1978: The Girls Next Door." You can tell a lot of thought went into the order, and a lot of the poets are kind of the famous/hipster variety (except me, of course :...

One of my poems is up - as a podcast and a "readable" poe...

One of my poems is up - as a podcast and a "readable" poem - at qarrtsiluni today, for their "Health Issue:" "Advice From the Robot Scientist's Daughter."

And, it's congrats in order for the girls today! January O'Neil, Nin Andrews, and Allison Benis White all had their books nominated for the Foreward's Book of the Year Award in Poetry! Nice!

Are you worried that your poetry is boring? If so, read this post from Martha Silano!

Happy St. Patrick's Day and some congrats to a few blogge...

Happy St. Patrick's Day and some congrats to a few bloggers...

Eduardo C. Corral's wonderful poem, "To a Jornalero Cleaning Out My Neighbor's Garage," is up on Poetry Daily today.

Say congrats to Charles Jensen and Brent Goodman who were both nominated for the Lambda Literary Awards.

So, to borrow the words of a song, "Let's Hear It For the Boys!"
Seriously, all three of these guys are great writers, and I'm happy to see them getting accolades.

As for me, I'll try to wear some green and avoid mali...

In celebration of Tim Burton's new Alice movie:Alice in D...

In celebration of Tim Burton's new Alice movie:

Alice in Darkness

Forget tears. Chasing
white animals with timepieces
in this drug-trip landscape
can only lead to more of same.
Hedgehogs, playing cards, paintbrushes:
full of undisclosed danger.
Didn't your mother tell you
not to kiss strangers?
That Cheshire smile shouldn't fool you.
Pull your skirt down.
Your nails are growing so fast
you're hardly human.
Alice, fight your version of Bedlam
as long as you can.
Sleep the sweet dream away
from that gooey loo...

Just read After the Workshop by John McNally, a novel abo...

Just read After the Workshop by John McNally, a novel about a writer twelve years out of Iowa's MFA program struggling to finish his book and support himself as a freelancer and "media escort" - someone who drives around visiting writers. The writer is very funny - I laughed out loud at a couple of things- although the story is very, in some ways, "macho" - there's a lot of drinking and all the female characters women are portrayed as sex objects and nothing else. Once again, it'd be nice to ...

On the nets:In the "Why didn't I think of that" category,...

On the nets:

In the "Why didn't I think of that" category, a female writer nets seven figures for YA book trilogy retelling Helen of Troy and Persephone's stories...Dang! If only I'd written Becoming the Villainess in prose...and made it more of a love story...and more cheerful...

Amazing interview with one of my favorite poets, Dana Levin. She always manages to sound so much smarter in interviews than I do. Sigh! (By the way, her book, Wedding Day, is a perennial favorite of mine.)

Kelli Russel...

Interview with the Husky Herald in which I reveal secrets...

Interview with the Husky Herald in which I reveal secrets about poetry and give advice about putting together a manuscript! Thanks to Patricia El Koury - who was an amazing student I got to meet a few years ago - for doing a great job with the interview.

I love the name of the newspaper, because I keep picturing a basket of husky puppies. Is that wrong?

Books (and a movie) to recommendI just finished Allison B...

Books (and a movie) to recommend

I just finished Allison Benis White's Self-Portrait with Crayon, a wonderful book (my mini-review of it will appear in the next Crab Creek Review) of crystalline prose poems that present a puzzle and a glimpse of how loss and art work together. The thing I'll say here that I didn't get to say in my review: this is a great book for people who are looking at 1. how to build and organize a manuscript, because her organization is meticulous and very clever and 2. h...

This article from The Chronicle of Higher Education combi...

This article from The Chronicle of Higher Education combines the usual "too many poets, too many journals, too many MFA programs are ruining poetry" argument with Foetry-esque accusations of too much corruption and cronyism in the poetry world.

Sometimes these kinds of articles depress me. Besides the fact that I'm a fan of people outside a tiny circle on the East Coast writing and publishing poetry, I'm an optimist who wants to believe that the poetry world is a meritocracy, even when on the ...

Do you know why I like blogs more than Facebook? I can't ...

Do you know why I like blogs more than Facebook? I can't lose myself in someone else's perspective on Facebook, but on the right blog, you get to lose yourself. You get inside someone else's head. That is what I like about writing in general. Facebook is like seeing a bunch of people at a party; a blog is like going for coffee with someone you're really interested in.

I think I was going to say something interesting here about judging the chapbook contest for Concrete Wolf, something about how...