Jeannine Hall Gailey's Blog, page 54

Danger, Stress, Rejection – a Recipe for Happiness? Plus a New Review and a New Home

The last few months have basically involved me running a gauntlet of danger, stress, and rejection (you can read a bit about why starting at this post in Feb.) I was told I had malignant stage 4 cancer – multiple times, and after multiple tests. Some of these tests involved injecting me with multiple kinds of stuff that could basically kill me to help the docs figure out whether I had cancer or not (and I dodged a liver biopsy that several docs really pressured me to get.) I went to so many specialists that I can’t even list them all. During that time, I also unsuccessfully hunted for a house with many turned-down offers in a super-hot market AND had a record number of poetry rejections. The universe was handing me a lot of not-great stuff. 2016 was feeling like it was set up to be my worst year ever.

But here’s the strange turn in this story – yes, I was for sure miserable and grumpy during parts of the last few months. But I also started noticing small happinesses I had been ignoring or maybe even bypassing in favor of doing the practical, the business-like, the normal. I took more pictures of flowers – the cherry blossoms, the tulips, the lavender. I went on more walks and took more notice of the cool breezes and warm sun as the seasons changed, the smells of herbs and the birds that wheeled above me. I kissed my husband more. Even when I felt completely terrible and fearful, I woke up to the small kindnesses of those around me. I received notes from family and friends that I still have pinned to my wall, and remembered that love that is many miles away is still love. When some doctors drove me crazy with what turned out to be wrong diagnoses and bad medical advice, I felt so thankful when other doctors were extra thoughtful, put in more effort to be empathetic, and didn’t give up on what turned out to be a fairly complicated and difficult case. When my ankles and other joints worked, I felt grateful to be able to walk. When my stomach wasn’t acting up, I felt grateful for the delicious food – a cherry muffin, a cheesy omelet, a good avocado – I was able to eat. I flew on a plane for the first time in six years to go present a panel at AWP LA – and had a great time. I feel thankful for the encouragement and friendship I’ve been shown, and as a writer, despite the repeated head-thumping rejections, I feel like I’ve also been extraordinarily lucky in my opportunities thus far.

As we hid the mid-point of the year, we’re set to close (finally!) on a great house in our dream neighborhood at the end of the month. Although I’m still going through rounds of tests and specialist visits, the consensus from the doctors now is that I don’t have cancer, but a rare sort of tumor that we have to observe to make sure it doesn’t grow or turn into something malignant – but that’s a turn for the better. And I’m starting to turn my attention writing-wise, as we get ready to launch my fifth book Field Guide to the End of the World this fall, to new writing projects – what’s going to come next? It’s a good feeling, to be hopeful, expectant and looking to the future – instead of an end. But the past few months have taught me that looking at the end is sometimes a good way to sweep out of the way the doubt and fear, the ennui and annoyance that keep us from grasping tight to every good moment that comes our way.

In other news…my review of C. Dale Young’s The Halo went up today at The Rumpus! Young’s narrative involves surviving medical trauma and sprouting wings, so definitely worth a read!

http://therumpus.net/2016/06/the-halo-by-c-dale-young/

Atticus Review Feature (Plus Lavender Fields and Art Walks)

Thanks to Michael Meyerhofer and Atticus Review for this feature of poems from my upcoming book, Field Guide to the End of the World. I hope you enjoy this “sneak preview!”

I’ve been a little under the weather since the Skagit Poetry Festival but managed to try and get a little inspiration. The Woodinville Lavender farm has one field that just came into bloom – no bees yet, just the sweet clean smell of little purple flowers (and lavender lemonade in the accompanying shop!)

After a doctor’s appointment downtown I got a chance to stop by Open Books and then to a quick tour of the Pioneer Square Art Walk, to my old favorite gallery, Roq La Rue. They had a new one-artist show up by Meghan Howland called “Your Magic is Real.” This was the piece I liked the best – a woman who seems to breaking through a wall of wings called “Forager.” Sadly, Roq La Rue is closing on September 1, so if you get a chance to visit before then, do it – they have two more shows to go before that.

Skagit River Poetry Festival, Spring Flowers, And Getting Back into the Game (Slowly)

Roberto Carlos Ascalon, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Oliver de la Paz, and me

Just back from the Skagit River Poetry Festival up in La Conner, Washington, where I got to see tons of poet friends and visit the quaint town. Some wonderful featured readers, including Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Natalie Diaz and Naomi Shahib Nye. The best part of this thing is just seeing so many of your friends all in one place, which happens so rarely. (Sometimes just at AWP!) Even my local friends kind of live all over the place, so it’s hard to get us all together – except at events like this. Sadly, the town that just three weeks ago was covered in tulips was almost flower-free this time around! Saw lots of goldfinches and several bald eagles and herons up close, which made up for it.

sunset over the channel in La Conner

Trying to get back into the swing of things – including editing the Dwarf Stars Awards with Lesley Wheeler, writing poems, sending out work and getting things ready for the next book’s launch. I’m just taking it a little at a time right now, as I have doc’s appointments for the next two weeks almost every day – holdover from things the last three months cancer-scare crisis, like “how do we treat those rare liver tumors now?” and “what about your brain lesions” and such. I’m just trying to balance things the best I can for now. The iris are blooming near the rivers, in the Japanese garden, the water lilies are blooming. It seems much later in the season, flower-rise, than the date would indicate. Our lilacs and wisteria are already gone. Baby bunnies are appearing in the grass at the parks, and ducklings in the ponds. Despite our recent chilly rain, late spring has arrived, and summer is around the corner…

 

 

Happy May! Some Results, and Trying to Get Back My Mojo

Happy May!

I’ve been trying to process all my news, including the fact that (yay!) I don’t most likely have metastatic cancer (this, according to a conference of liver tumor specialists including radiologists and hematologists and oncologists) which is good! But I do have a bunch of irregular and rare kinds of liver tumors which they are calling adenomatosis – basically a rare/irregular presentation of an already rare kind of tumor. The bad news is they want to keep monitoring them every three months – because they can burst or turn into cancer sometimes – and they want me off the medication that’s been controlling my rare bleeding disorder for the last twenty years. Yikes! On top of that, I’m investigating (again) more stuff about the brain lesions, because of the new one that looks like it could be one of several bad things, so, more radiation second and third readings and second opinions from neurologists are ahead. Can’t I ever be just average or anything? I was joking with my friends that I’ve become “the most interesting woman in the world” – but only medically speaking. (My liver specialist said they did my case first at the conference, because it was so interesting and difficult!)

So, in the meantime, I’m once again trying to manage and balance all the health stuff with an ACTUAL life, like, writing and friends and doing things other than sitting in doctor’s offices and getting tests. It’s been unseasonably warm here in the Northwest, so, even though I would never wear shorts after 40, yes, I gave in and bought three pair. I’ve been out walking through parks and the woods almost very single day, and so far so good on the ankles and tripping/falling issues. I’m trying to get my strength back after back-to-back ankle injuries earlier this year. I’ve been eating tons of fresh veggies and fruits (cherries on the side of the road!) and bringing home flowers every week. This whole health crisis has made me even more aware of the necessity of being good to your body as much as possible.



And everywhere there are signs of spring – in the deep woods the trillium, ducklings along the Sammamish river, baby bunnies, yellow iris along the waterfront and our quarterly pilgrimage to Snoqualmie Falls and Ollalie State Park. It’s a reminder – life goes on, nature is ruffling itself with blossoms. It’s hard to be depressed with so much sunshine!

Now I want – despite upcoming doctor’s appointments, stresses, and even more tests – to move myself out of crisis mode and into writer mode again. I haven’t been writing or sending out as much as I usually do this whole year so far, and of course we’re still looking for a house in our insane East Side/Seattle market (record high prices! record low inventory! record..sigh.) I’m ready for my next chapters, with the whole “dying of cancer” scenario off the table, at least temporarily. (Everything is temporary, you remind yourself. Often.)

I’d love to know how you have moved yourself out of a tough time back into your regular creative routines. I know there’s an adjustment period, a kind of getting back into not just a “normalized” state of mind, but I want to start to look forward again, instead of having a fear that you shouldn’t even plan for a future that might not come true.

Birthdays, Uncertainty and the Cyclops, and Looking Forward

Thought I’d post a little update since my last post, though sadly I don’t have as much definite news as I’d like at this point. I also want to report on a pretty terrible week with a bright side – my birthday!

Yes, the day of the test came and went, the tests themselves weren’t super fun but no crazy reactions, and pretty much the two days straight afterwards, I was tense, waiting for reports, then doctors to give me insight into reports. I was getting about twenty messages from different specialists a day for a couple of days in a row.  They gave me tentative diagnoses, made plans, then other test results came in, and then they decided to scrap their plans and diagnoses. So for now, I’m still waiting, until an “Interdisciplinary Board” reviews all my results on May 11. It is a stressful process. I didn’t have an anaphylactic reaction to the test itself, which the docs were worried about – so that’s good, right?

Anyway, I didn’t plan much for my birthday because I didn’t know what state of mind I’d be in, which turned out to allow me to do multiple fun things. Glenn went out in the morning and got me flowers (peonies! In April!) and made brunch, then we went down to the Seattle Japanese Garden where I ran into an old friend and great poet, Kathleen Flenniken, and got to admire the beautiful wisteria, which smelled exactly the way it looked. After a quick walk around the park, we drove down to Seattle’s International District and the very cool Wing Luke Museum, where Michael Schmeltzer was launching his first full-length book, Blood Song (and my friend Natasha Moni was reading), and got to say hi to Annette and Kelli from Two Sylvias as well as other poets I don’t get to see as often as I like. Natasha and I got to go to the famous tea house at the Panama Hotel down the street and catch up. It was far better than sitting at home listening to sad music and c rying (which, um, was probably what I would have done if my husband hadn’t encouraged me to go and get out of the house) – I’ve been having nightmares about cobras and radiation (nothing to do with those scary medical tests, I’m sure) and basically thinking about all the BAD stuff the doctors have been presenting to me as options.

I was thinking about the mythical curse of the cyclops. The cyclopses (cyclopses? cyclopsi?) were super angry, mostly because they were cursed with knowing the exact time and circumstances of their deaths. You know, you never actually want to know the way you’re gonna die. Let it be a surprise, you know? The more info I get about my weird malfunctioning human self, the more I want to be an android, or at least a slightly more ignorant human, who didn’t have the information.

Anyway, I’m determined to look forward, not sit around chewing my nails until I have all the answers. I want to focus on the positive – the blooms around us appearing and fading (hello and goodbye, cherry blossoms! lilacs!), my upcoming poetry book, sending out and writing new poems. Saying hello to my 43rd year, saying goodbye to April and National Poetry Month and hopefully less time in hospital rooms and specialists’ offices.  Focusing on each day and embracing the good things around me.

PS: Check out my entry on Orion Magazine’s Poetry in the Wild feature on Tumblr here.

Pre-Ordering My New Book, Montaigne Medal Finalist, and Surviving Medical Tests

Hi all! Survived the latest round of medical testing (no results yet) and came home from the hospital to a flurry of literary news!

First of all, you can now pre-order my latest book, Field Guide to the End of the World, from Moon City Press (and distributed through University of Arkansas Press.) It’s also on Amazon already, squeee!

The other news was that the finalists for the 2016 Montaigne Medal have been publicly announced and The Robot Scientist’s Daughter is on the list, along with poet-friend Maggie Smith’s latest book. It’s nice to have poetry books in a list of finalists for a prize on “thought-provoking books” of any genre.

The third is to keep an eye on Orion’s social media feed this week for a post from me on their visual series “Poetry in the Wild,” curated by their poetry editor Aimee Nezhukumatathil.

Part of how I survive so many medical tests is a plan to have good things going on right before (also, the doctors wisely gave me a generous portion this time of pre-medications to prevent any allergic reactions – good work, doctors!) A few days before the test, we had an early birthday celebration with my little brother and his wife, which was a lot of fun, and Glenn took me to an Aimee Mann/Billy Collins concert down in Tacoma’s beautiful antique Pantages theatre.

Here’s a picture of Aimee laughing at Billy Collins’ reading and check out this little bit of video of Aimee turning one of Billy Collins’ poems into a melancholy breakup tune:

http://webbish6.com/aimee-billy-france/

If Billy Collins and Aimee Mann can’t cheer you up, I don’t know what will!

Living in the Liminal Spaces – Birthdays, Flowers, Finding Space, More Tests

I’ve had to get used, lately, whether I like it or not, to living in the liminal spaces – in other words, the in-between. We have sold our house, but haven’t yet found a new one (lost the 18th or 19th bid – I’m starting to forget how many we’ve lost in this crazy market.) I’m turning 43 at the end of the month, a month which has gone mad with flowers – cherry trees, iris, dogwood, rhododendrons, azaleas and lilacs all blooming at the same time – and with heat – three days above 85 out here in the supposedly chilly and damp Pacific Northwest has made us all wilt a bit, even the sunlovers. And I’m getting another (hopefully definitive but slightly dangerous) test next week, a couple of days before my birthday, that hopefully will give us more answers in the mysterious world of the scary health stuff. I am trying not to talk as much about the cancer scare going on, but I notice when I don’t talk about it when I’m awake, it shows up when I’m asleep. I literally had a dream in which I spoke the line “I can’t do that, I might have cancer” – an unspoken background in my mind right now that’s leading me to only making tentative future plans, because…well, we don’t know yet.

Except I AM thinking of the future in a positive way – visiting the Skagit River Poetry Festival in May, making our annual pilgrimage this summer up to Port Townsend, even thinking about AWP 2019 in Portland. I’m thinking of my book launch in September, at least a little, already (Where would it be fun to read this time? Should we have a party?)

But I notice I’m pickier about what I commit to. I’m quicker to throw down a book if it tries my patience, if I’m not really enjoying it. I’m conserving my energies each week for one outing that’s good for my spirits – a visit to Open Books to talk poetry, or down to the Japanese gardens to watch the different trees and shrubs open up to bloom.

I spend more time photographing light and color, especially birds and flowers.

I’m making small efforts to be healthy, too – eating the most beautiful produce in the stores – asparagus, strawberries and blueberries, new lettuces. I’ve been making a tremendously delicious soup out of barely-cooked fresh peas, fennel, and a little honey and salt thrown together and immersion-blended into a bright green shot of spring flavor and eating (drinking) it almost every night with dinner. (So different than the dim brownish split-pea soups of our seventies childhoods.) I’m reading old poetry books I loved in the past at night, finding the poems I loved the most when I first started writing.

Is this how you live within limits, within a space where your end goal is no longer clearly defined? You throw yourself into the things that make you feel the most alive, not just happy, but the most “you.” What would you miss if everything were going to be taken away? That’s what I’m trying to hold onto right now.

Cover Art and First Blurb for Field Guide to the End of the World!! Plus a new review…

Here’s the cover reveal for Field Guide to the End of the World – now upcoming in September 2016 from Moon City Press! The artist is Charli Barnes, and I told her I wanted a combo of vintage science-y field guide books and graphic-novel-sci-fi-futuristic – I think she did a great job!

And here’s the first blurb for the book, from one of my poetry superheroines, Matthea Harvey:

“In Field Guide to the End of the World, Jeannine Hall Gailey allies herself with the mutants of the world—from zombie stripper clones to teen girl vampires—but unlike them, she is haunted by the possibility of the world and the self coming to an end. Wry, heartsick and shot through with black humor (Martha Stewart’s “Guide to Apocalypse Living” dispenses advice on “storing munitions in attractive wicker boxes”), these poems about transformation and extinction mournfully remind us via post-apocalypse postcards, notes and instructions, “we were not here first, we will not be here last.”

Also, a review of The Robot Scientist’s Daughter on Strange Horizons by John Amen might be my favorite review yet. Check it out.

I’ve been a little under the weather (did I finally get a bug from my AWP trip?) the last couple of days, but still managed to put in another offer on a house today (this one a little bit of a fixer-upper, which we may still lose to an all-cash offer, because that’s the market these days.) Our spring has been so beautiful it was tough to spend a day resting indoors, but at least I got some poetry judging done for an undergrad contest and had some reading time. Wishing you all a wonderful week!

Tulips! An April Respite

Since AWP hit us both like a truck, and we jumped right back into the stress of work, high-pressure house bids (losing, sadly, a dream house in a dream neighborhood) and scheduling medical tests as soon as we got home, we decided we needed a bit of a real break, so we took a day to go up and visit the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. We also got to visit one of our favorite towns, La Conner, WA, where you can find a cute sunhat and a gluten-free cookie (thanks Seeds!) in between trips to the tulip fields. We saw bald eagles and my beloved snow geese in flight (no pics this time, sorry, but they are just amazing!)  We got to play tourist in a place we could definitely see ourselves living someday. (Did you know National Geographic listed the Skagit Tulip Festival as one of the top ten spring trips in the world this year? Yes, it’s that good. I missed this more than anything when we lived in California.)

The weather has been just beautiful, in the seventies and sunny. It makes every day feel a little bit like a pleasant respite. Today we had nothing scheduled so we slept in. I got to walk slowly and notice the rustle of hummingbirds in the flowers beside me, the scree and flap of stellar jays and red-winged blackbirds, rabbits in the grass, a heron overhead. When the Northwest hands you sunny weather in April, so you can actually see the blooms and mountains that hid throughout March and February, you pretty much have a pass to go out and enjoy it. Plus, I have my 43rd birthday AND a scary medical test coming up at the end of the month, so I thought it’s a good time to shore up my reserves.  I am looking forward to coming back to town (hopefully!) to visit the Skagit River Poetry Festival in May. The tulips will be gone but the town will be full of poets!

AWP Recap Part II: The Reckoning (and a panel recording!)

Back in Seattle from AWP, and time for the post-AWP reckoning! Here are a few pics from my first day back in my hometown, during which an osprey hung over my head for a few breathless moments, and the pink cherries came out to say hi. It was a very nice welcome back. Tomorrow we might sneak off to see some of Skagit Valley’s tulips before they’re gone.

First of all, I wanted to let you know that thanks to my husband Glenn there is an audio recording (with visual cues like the panel slides and photos from the panel) available from the AWP Panel “Women in Spec” (with me, Lesley Wheeler, Sally Rosen Kindred, Margaret Rhee and Nancy Hightower talking about women in speculative fiction and poetry publishing, inspirations, and more ) available now on YouTube.

Second, the AWP 2016 reckoning: how do you decide if a conference like AWP is “worth going to?” For me, I’ve been paying my own way since the first AWP I went to (ahem, over 15 years ago,) so there is a financial cost (usually around $1500 for tickets, meals, hotel, registration, etc.) and there’s a personal cost, for everyone – we all have limited energy and time – and for me, due to my health and mobility problems, a little bit of an extra pain factor there. For instance, I woke up with yet another respiratory thing yesterday, probably picked up on the plane home, and my physical therapy eval yesterday indicated being on my ankle so much – mostly from springing up and down to hug people – probably set that sucker back at least a week in terms of healing. I’m under strict orders to put the ankle up and ice it and wrap it. (But will I stay wrapped and prone long? Probably not!)

What is worth it? I was so enthusiastic about this particular panel (watch to see why) this year I probably would have tried to make it there even in worse circumstances. I was happy to meet and say hi to many of my publishers and lit mag editors – it’s good to actually meet the people publishing your work in person.  I think one of the main reasons people go to AWP is to see old friends, friends from other parts of the country you’ll never see otherwise – and I did, which was great. I was really happy to be invited to so many wonderful parties (I made it to only one, due to travel snafus on both ends of my journey to and from LA, but I got to hang out with some of my favorite people and have actual conversations there, which was really nice.)  And I’m familiar with and like (parts of) LA, which makes the trip a little less onerous. (I always recommend people get out in the city they’re visiting for AWP at least once – a museum, the local food, a cool neighborhood with galleries and shops to visit, and in the case of LA, the blue sunny sandy ocean.) I actually wrote a poem at this AWP, which might be a first.

Here’s things I wish – I wish I’d been able to say hi to more people, spend more time in the bookfair and pick up more books (and how is the bookfair always so exhausting? They need fifty times more hydration centers than they ever have, like iced coffee fountains, maybe), go to more readings. There were a few panels I wished I’d attended. I wish I’d had time to visit more galleries (LA’s art scene is actually pretty cool) and spent more time relaxing on the beach.  Was it perfect? No (See previous recap.) But I think it was worth it, after all, as Prufrock would say.