Jeannine Hall Gailey's Blog, page 76

Black Friday Poetry Sales?

The only sane kind of shopping to do today is online shopping. Better still, online shopping for poetry! It makes a thoughtful gift, especially combined with, say, some other down-time-appropriate accessories, maybe some fancy coffee or tea and a nice throw. In that vein…

If you live near Ireland, check out my third book’s publisher, New Binary Press, and their holiday sale! My book Unexplained Fevers is available for 8 euros, which is about $10.80 American. 

And, if you want signed copies of all of my books for yourselves or for friends, I’m doing a package deal of all three of my books (Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, and Unexplained Fevers) for $30, plus $3 for priority shipping. You’ll receive a little something extra too, like an art card or bookmark or something fun! It’s the holidays, after all.

“Click here to order – available for seriously a limited time only, and I even made a special Paypal button for it! If you want me to sign one or all of the books to you or someone special, put that request in the “Add Special Instructions to the Seller” popup comment field.

As for me, I’m going to spend “Black Friday” decorating for the holidays, organizing, and enjoying delicious leftovers, maybe doing some poetry work. And maybe even getting on my exercise machine…we have some snow in the forecast, so I guess I better for real start wearing a coat and a sweater. One good thing about living near the ocean is usually our winters are pretty mild, but we have some very chilly temperatures in the forecast (so dress accordingly if you’re planning to visit!)

Some Good News to be Thankful For – a Relief, a Finalist Announcement, a B12 warning, and More

So, this week of Thanksgiving, I definitely have some things to be thankful for.

After several neurologist visits and a barrage of tests, though they did find some neurological permanent damage and some other oddities, the consensus seems to be that I most likely do not have MS (though I’ll probably need another MRI down the line to make sure.) I hadn’t realized how much this news lifted a dark cloud over my head that’s been there for a few months, kind of weighing down my thoughts, trying not to think about the bad stuff ahead. I was so exhausted from the many tests that I didn’t even register the good news at first, it just kind of felt like the sun was out. Which, also, the sun was out in Seattle in November, a small miracle in itself (even if our air quality is in the tank! Ha! Can’t have everything!) I even wrote a poem the day I found out, which I hadn’t done in a while.

The other news was that I not only had a very good conversation with a lovely, kind and witty small press publisher about my fourth book manuscript The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and that the manuscript is also a finalist for this year’s Brittingham and Pollak Prize. So I am hopeful that good things are happening in that direction.

I would like to take a small moment to give you all a little bit of info and a warning about the seriousness of B12 deficiency. The first time I was tested for b12 deficiency was 2007 in Port Townsend; my symptoms then were frequent sore throats, mild intermittent buzzing in my hands and feet, and severe neck pain, which I thought was injury-related. The doctor was pretty smart for even thinking for look for a vitamin deficiency with that set of symptoms, I think, and sure enough, the blood test revealed very low b12. He started me on b12 shots monthly, which I took for years, and oral supplement drops. Unfortunately, I don’t absorb b12 through food or even through the shots very well, it turns out, and years of severely low b12 (starting probably years before 2007) have left me with some permanent neural damage, and I will always have to stay vigilant about getting tested for b12, even while getting shots or my current regimen of twice-weekly nasal spray b12. Some of the symptoms, like the neck pain, numbness and tingling in my hands and feet, clumsiness due to motor skill damage, and some memory issues – may stick around my whole life, I’ve been told. B12 deficiency, if it is severe enough, can damage your nerves’ myelin sheath in much the same way MS can. Now you know! Because I didn’t!  This is why, during a few days of holiday cheer and down time, and if you have some spare time to get to a doctor, I’d encourage you to get some of your basic vitamin levels tested – including the B’s and maybe D, especially if you feel tired, or low, or especially numb, clumsy or ache-y. (My husband, by the way, who eats a fairly healthy diet and has no food allergies like I do, who had been complaining about feeling tired, and because of my insistence, got tested and turned out to be mildly deficient in Folic Acid! A surprise! So you never know until you get your B vitamins tested what you might not be getting through your diet.)

Now, I’m off to a physical therapy appointment followed by a date with my husband to see Catching Fire! It’s a glamorous life all right, and I am feeling thankful for it today. Merry Thanksgiving to All!

Things to Get Done Before the End of the Year

Yes, it’s the end of November, and we’re counting down til the end of the year. For me, this means a flurry of doctor’s appointments and tests, important to schedule them now because if I get anything done after January 1 our deductible goes back to zero, and everything is out of pocket for the first few thousand dollars. So: blood draw yesterday, neurologist today, thyroid ultrasound Saturday, and yet another couple of doctor’s appointments to schedule that I just haven’t had time to get to…Phew! I’m exhausted, or maybe that’s just the blood draw talking. I’m off to downtown for today’s appointment in a few minutes.

I checked my “gift box” and noticed that I have already done a lot of my Christmas shopping, which I did really early this year, picking up gifts I thought were thoughtful when I saw them at a good price throughout the year. This makes me a little relieved that I don’t have much left to do shopping-wise. Every year we have fewer grown-ups who want to exchange gifts but more children, thanks to my super-procreative brothers and brother-in-law. For Glenn and I, we usually do our gift exchanges after Christmas, which was a tradition in my family growing up poor – we always shopped the after-Christmas sales with my Dad’s January 1 paycheck. It’s actually a nice way to extend the season and not stress out the bank account – I recommend it! As a child it was hard to wait, as an adult it just seems logical!

It’s been freezing cold here (lower twenties at night) which means I had to unearth my box of heavy sweaters, which with the usual winters here I can leave in storage, because our winters are typically rainy, gray, but in the fifties-range during the day. Not this year! I’m also trying to locate a warm-enough coat – most of my “coats” are thin jackets, which, once again, work most years…

And what about poetry and writing, you ask? Well, it’s the end of the year for that too, so I’m taking stock of submissions still out, looking at any recent poem and short story drafts and considering which are worth keeping, thinking about where I want to send work (if anywhere) for the rest of the year. My fifth manuscript is getting into good shape, finally – it took some more personal poems to make the apocalyptic-and-pop-culture-themed collection to find some resonance, but now it’s feeling closer to complete. My fourth manuscript is still…well, let’s just say there’s some movement on it but nothing I can announce yet. It’s in a liminal space, so to speak, between the worlds of creation and production.

So what’s on your list of things to get done before the end of the year? Which boxes are you taking out and shaking?

Interview with Renee Emerson, and a little bit about discouragement

If you’d like to know which poet I’d like to trade places with, which first books I recommend reading, and other sundry items, check out this interview with Renee Emerson at her blog:

http://www.reneeemerson.com/2013/11/interview-with-jeannine-hall-gailey.html

Thanks Renee!

I was just talking to another poet about how much of the poetry world is grinding our teeth, waiting to hear things, pondering whether or not we should continue to do blank and/or whether this or that is worth doing. I mean, it’s enough to put you in an existential crisis, right?

But the big thing to remember when you are going through a tough period – the loss of your job or your writing spark, the countless rejections, the disappointment of a grant not received or prize not won, is that the single most important key to success – and this is something I have heard over and over again from people who are very successful writers – is to learn to put that energy – the toothgrinding energy, let’s call it – into trying again. Writing another poem or story, sending out your work to another market, making plans to start your own magazine or publishing company.

I watched the movie Frances Ha and was reminded that sometimes when life feels like a bunch of rejections (in her case, by a boyfriend, a best friend, a job situation) that maybe it’s because life is pushing you in a different direction. Because she couldn’t stay in her in-between (jobs, partners, apartments) position comfortably, she was forced to do new things – in her case, she wanted to be a modern dancer, but instead accepted an admin job at the dance company and started doing choreography. I thought it was a charming way to talk about the artistic life – sometimes you don’t get exactly what you want, you don’t get to be the star dancer of the dance company, but you get to contribute and create in a way you didn’t expect. At 27, for a dancer an advanced age, you have to either give up or alter your goals. For writers, the age limit isn’t quite the same – many great writers started late and still ended up very successful – but at one time or another, we will all hit a wall in between our beginning lofty goals and what is realistically achievable. I am 40, and I feel I am eying that wall right now. What is it I want, and what can I achieve from here? We might not get the things we wanted, but as the Rolling Stones said, we just might get what we need.

The Last Day to Vote for Unexplained Fevers in the Goodreads Choice Semifinals and a Rough Week for Poets

It’s the very last day to vote in the Goodreads Choice Awards Semifinalist round for Unexplained Fevers in the Poetry category! So please, if you want to help a small press (New Binary Press) gain some exposure, and help cheer up an injured and sick poet (me!) then raise your poetry karma and vote! I do feel lucky to even be on the same page with poets like J.R.R. Tolkien, Billy Collins, Mary Oliver, and my friend Victoria Chang. Here’s the link below:

https://www.goodreads.com/choiceawards/best-poetry-books-2013

I’m not going to lie, for me it’s been a rough week for poetry. (I had a somewhat grumpier post up, but decided to take it down.) Let’s just say that I lost my voice at two reading events, received some rejections (par for the course for poets, of course), sprained my ankle getting to a poetry event while nearly getting run over by a car in downtown Seattle, and generally felt a little rough around the edges. I felt a little chewed up and spit out by the poetry machine, such as it is.  I can recognize the signs of needing some down time, some time reading and writing, and some quality time with friends and family, I think, at the end of this year. It’s at least partially my own fault for prioritizing doing over being, poetry events over doctor appointments, duty over fun and inspiration, results over the process. Therefore, I am resolving to do more things that remind me of what I love about writing, less of the things that lead to burnout. I will celebrate the good, I will remember my blessings. I will watch videos of an elderly man blow drying a fox.

In that vein, check out this fundraiser for victims of Typhoon Haiyan, sponsored in part by my lovely poet friend Aimee Nezhukumatathil and her ideas on how to help. Once again, instead of feeling powerless in the face of destruction, you can make a move towards good.

I Gave My Life to Crime…Er, Poetry

The quote above is from eighties mafia comedy Johnny Dangerously, but it sprang to my mind this week as I had several occasions where I thought about how much of my life I devote to poetry “volunteer” work – that is, unpaid labor – and how to achieve a better sense of balance in my life. Especially with health stuff taking a bigger chunk out of my pocketbook (thanks, Obamacare! You’ve made my health care plan way more expensive, complicated and time-consuming!) and my time, I need to think harder about when to say yes. And I’m afraid I’m going to have to say “yes” to fewer things, and I hate disappointing people, I hate saying no.

But if you give your life to crime, or poetry, and end up disappointed and bitter, with nothing to show for it except a bad attitude, no one wins. This last year, I’ve done very little writing or submitting of my own work, which has demoralized me. Our finances have taken a hit, so every unpaid reading with gas costs, extreme commute times, ferry tickets, bridge tolls, has added up, and I wasn’t able to travel much to promote Unexplained Fevers, or at least as much as I wanted to. I took on probably more than I should have for various reasons (all good things, like the Redmond Poet Laureate job and the Jack Straw writing program, not things I could necessarily know were going to be tough on me health-wise) which is totally my own fault. So I’m forming a plan for the next year that will hopefully be a little easier on me physically, emotionally, and financially.

I mean, there are worse things to give your life to than Poetry. But like any optimistic and altruistic impulse – working with sick kids, saving kittens, working for your various faith-based charities (all kinds of volunteer work I’ve indulged in in the past) – poetry can be a pretty bad life plan, all by itself. It’s depressing to give away your work and time for free – when you’re lucky enough to get published by literary magazines, or be invited to read. It can feel like poetry is a bad friend, like a vampire boyfriend who takes and takes without as much as a ‘Love you, babe.’ This last week, I gave two readings during which I literally lost my voice – it seems like a symbol of something, doesn’t it? And yesterday I sprained an ankle getting to a writer’s craft talk that took place way across town at rush hour, resulting on lots of frustration and nearly getting in accidents. Are these signs from the universe? I’ve been putting off necessary doctor appointments in order to fit in literary activities, and that seems like maybe a case of me getting my priorities wrong. I know every writer struggles with the strings of rejections, to the damage to our self-esteem every poorly-attended reading does, to looking sadly at our Amazon book sales ranks.

There has to be a balance of what you give out and what you take in. And I think as the writing life goes on, people often assume we’re doing fine, that we’re immune to disappointment, that we’ve figured out how to weather the ups and downs – but often, the longer we do this, the time just wears on us a little more heavily, with the accumulated knowledge of  exactly what we have invested and what we’ve gotten in return. Of course, I encourage beginning writers to get involved in the literary community – often, yes, by volunteering for literary magazines, writing reviews, helping fundraising and marketing programs for non-profits. Of course, we want to be good literary citizens. But I have a lot of friends who have given a lot, and the giving has gotten out of balance, taken over. I want to think about how to build a literary life that rewards as much as it, um, crushes us under its thumb. Sometimes poetry can seem like a pyramid scheme – the people on top, say, your Billy Collinses, your superstar trendy hipster twins, get all the good stuff, the reviews, the grants, the exposure and book sales – and the rest has to trickle down, and there’s not a lot trickling down. Sort of mirroring the American economy right now.

Remember kids, crime – and poetry – doesn’t pay. (Here’s a puppy. Go out and do something nice for yourself today, something that encourages you, that makes you remember why you wanted to do this in the first place. I’ll try to do the same.)

Goodreads Semifinalist and It’s About Time

Well, thanks to your votes, Unexplained Fevers made it to the semifinalist round of the Goodreads Best Book of the Year Awards!
First of all, thank you! And second of all, if you get a chance, please vote in this semifinalist round to see if I can make the finals! (Much more competitive! Although I’m happy just to have made it on the same page as Tolkien, Billy Collins, Mary Oliver, et al.)

https://www.goodreads.com/choiceawards/best-poetry-books-2013

Remember, voting for a small press poetry book is like hugging kittens!

On other news, still sick (achoo!) and slowly, slowly adjusting to the Mac (I hate the “transparent” windows that make you not know whether you’re in Word or an e-mail file or what at a time – and I can’t figure out how to compare old files by date (like, say, versions of my book manuscript) without Windows Explorer – Apple’s pretty lame “Finder” does not compare. See? Little things, but things that are totally stopping me from being able to work!) Maybe I should just go the Windows for Mac route?

I’m trying my best to get well, and rest – today’s dry, warmer weather should help (we’ve had forty-ish rain for a week now) because Thursday I’ll be teaching twice – once, by Skype to East Coast college students at noon, and later, at 6 PM at Ballard Library for the It’s About Time series, I’ll be talking all Writer’s Craft-y about persona poetry.

I wish I had the video for you of the Bushwick Bush Club musician’s reading and song pairing, because I read terribly but Matt Price, the musician I was paired with, created a lovely song based on my Robot Scientist Daughter persona poems with a song that began with something like “My dear, you’re a lovely child/but you’re only a robot” and had a great tonal balance between sentiment and hilarity. You’ll see when I post it. There’s brain and heart dissections, rebooting children, and portals in necks. Good times.

And, of course, it is Veteran’s Day, and I’d like to take a moment to thank all who serve – including many of my former National students, my father, both my grandfathers, my nephew, and my older brother.

And if you are a writer struggling with hard times, read Kelli’s post on the importance of supportive writer friends. The only bad thing about friends is that you can’t see them when you’re sick, lest you get them sick, and I’m usually sick most of the winter! I need a robot self!

In Between Worlds

For the last few days I have been without a voice and without a working computer, which I found makes me feel very itchy as a writer – I’ve grown so accustomed to writing in multiple files at once on a computer, to answering e-mails or doing research or making submissions during my downtime, and then, when I don’t have my computer, I can usually at least talk to friends and family on the phone. But with a sudden onset of tonsillitis, bronchitis, and laryngitis – I hardly ever lose my voice, and I didn’t even notice I was getting sick, just thinking I was having the usual fall allergies – and my old laptop, a Lenovo, dying, and the new computer I ordered to replace it starting to fall apart within 24 hours of ordering it, I have been at a loss. I feel lost, between worlds, especially with a fever that makes me feel alternately way too hot and freezing cold, the dreary cold rain and mist outside gripping my chest.

So my husband, seeing my frustration and knowing I’d been told by the doctor to stick to bed rest,  went out to the mall and picked up a shiny new MacBook for me to try, probably too expensive for me to afford on my poetry salary alone, seeing me so frustrated (and having the fourth PC failure in four years.) Note that I haven’t worked on a Mac since I was 19 years old, so this will be interesting but I think it’s probably the right move. And probably, the laptop and PC as we have known it is probably on its way to obsolescence, soon to be placed by, goodness knows, smartwatches and smartphones and smartpets. Something device-y and tiny for a generation used to texting with its thumbs.

I like my routines – don’t know if that is a Taurus thing or a writer thing – and it wrecks my creative energy to have to adjust, to spend all my time and energy trying out a new system. But I think in this case it’s important to adapt, because I’ve noticed that for things like grant and job and conference applications, we writers are now required not just to write and provide samples of our writing in Word format, but to edit videos of ourselves, produce mp3s of our readings, produce photos for different media. Yikes! No PC software I’ve found has been really great at any of those things, and Mac is supposed to have great and easy-to-use software for all those kinds of things. My artist and graphic designer friends have been using Mac forever, and so, maybe I have just accepted the inevitable – that poets must now be jacks of all trades, or at least knowledgeable in multimedia. And these Apple computers have always struck me as a bit elitist – so much more expensive than any laptop I’ve bought in the last five years – but I guess if they last longer than two years, they will earn out their higher cost. Anyway, next time I post, it’ll be from a new Apple! There’s something I’m probably missing here about voice and delivery system, about the connections between human and machine, between the writer and the representation of the writer, between spoken voice and written word. But who knows whether this computer will stay live long enough for me to write about that stuff? It’s on its last legs, after all.

I’m supposed to be reading tomorrow night at the wonderful collaboration between the Jack Straw Writers and the Bushwick Book Club, where talented musician Matt Price will be putting a musical spin on my poem “The Robot Scientist’s Daughter [in films]” I’m just hoping I have enough of a voice to read the poem in question loud enough for the crowd to hear it!

All Around Social Media – Goodreads and Reddit

It’s that time again, when I ask you to help me with a grassroots effort to get Unexplained Fevers on the main page of the poetry voting at Goodreads! It’s Opening Round right now, so once you click the link, you have to sign in first, then find the “write in vote” at the bottom of the page and type in “Unexplained Fevers” and then my book should be a choice from the drop-down box. Thanks so much for any votes! Small press books have a hard time getting publicity, and I’m up against big poets like Billy Collins and Mary Oliver, so every little bit helps!

https://www.goodreads.com/choiceawards/best-poetry-books-2013

The second is today’s AMA on Reddit, where I’m still not completely sure what I’m doing (which you can probably tell from my answer’s lack of formatting) but I’ll be happy to answer your questions all day today. A lovely and thriving poetry community there: http://www.reddit.com/r/Poetry/comments/1pi1z5/jeannine_hall_gailey_poet_laureate_of_redmond_wa/

Windstorms, a Jack Straw Seattle Library Reading, the new Redactions and a Reddit Interview

Yesterday was the (almost final) Jack Straw reading – the entire crowd of us, 12 writers of poetry and prose, read in this giant auditorium at the intimidatingly large downtown Seattle Library. The only drawback was that we had a windstorm so extreme it left 150,000 people out of power (ours was flickering most of the morning) and the bridge we use to go to Seattle was closed (because of waves and wind?) until…just before we rolled onto it at 1:15. So we got there safely. When Glenn dropped me off at the downtown corner where the library is located, the wind was blowing so hard I couldn’t see in any direction and it was pretty tough walking even a short distance – I mean, some serious wind, not like usual when they say “Windstorm” and it’s like, 20-30 miles an hour. This was, you know, Virginia-post-hurricane wind, or Ohio pre-tornado wind. Serious.

So, this slightly blurry footage is from that reading. The lights made recording difficult, but I think the library will have a podcast of it eventually as well.

Also, my contributor AND subscriber copy of Redactions came in the mail. Besides Redactions being a reliable favorite of mine for some years, I have several friends in there (Susan Rich, Michael Meyerhofer, Mary Biddinger) and my poem “Epilogue (a Story for After)” is, well, it’s one of my favorites from my new apocalypse manuscript. And a bonus surprise – on the last page of the journal was an ad for Unexplained Fevers! It made me feel like the book was real all over again.

In other social media, I’m appearing on Reddit for an interview! I’ve never done this before, and I’m grateful to Ryan Tullis and his gang there for their invitation. It’s happening on November 5. Here’s the link if you’d like to ask a question, I’ll do my best to answer it! I haven’t done much with Reddit yet but it seems like an interesting forum.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Poetry/comments/1pi1z5/jeannine_hall_gailey_poet_laureate_of_redmond_wa/