Julie R. Enszer's Blog, page 39

Anniversaries and Convergences

Today is my sister’s eighteenth yartzeit. Eighteen years ago today, in Depoes Bay, a small town in Oregon, my sister died in a car accident. We did not know of her death until the tenth of December. It took some time for the details to be sorted out in Oregon and then some time for family to be notified. My father called and left a message for me around eleven in the morning on December tenth. It was a Sunday. I mark this day with a candle for Lara.

Until this year, I have also marked this day with a phone conversation with my mother. These conversations with my mom took many forms. A few years, we didn’t speak of Lara’s death, just talked generally; or at least my mother talked to me. My conversation with my mom mirror those that Alison Bechdel recounts with her mother in her graphic novel, >Are You My Mother? Sometimes, we spoke directly of Lara, mostly of her death, reliving the process of learning that she had died, then wondering what might have been. This year, my mother didn’t call me. She died in March; ironically, on Lara’s birthday.

The telephone has not been silent today, however, and email has been filled with nice messages. No one specially writing to me because of this day, but I find their messages particularly special on this day.

All day, I have been thinking about the memorial tomorrow for Nelson Mandela. I do not know if the condition of being on the verge of tears is the eighteen years since Lara’s death or if it is this new loss that makes me feel so sad, so vulnerable, so exposed. News of Mandela’s death came to me after a few other deaths close to home. Not people in my family, but respected colleagues. People I cherish in the world. I remember hearing Nelson Mandela at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. I went with a group of women from the Women’s Crisis Center. Anti-apartheid activism was huge at the University of Michigan when I arrived as an undergraduate in the fall of 1987. I remember going to rallies about university divestment from South Africa. Then, a few years later, seeing Mandela (free!) filled me with awe. This, I thought is what people can do. This is how people can remake the world. Sitting with a group of a half a dozen women with whom I felt an extraordinary political camaraderie, I imagined, this is what I want my life to be like. Now, over twenty years later, I remember that young woman in her first trip to Tiger Stadium. Then, I did not know I would live just a block away in the first house I owned in Detroit. Then, I did not know how activism would shape my life, what other transformations were possible. Then, I did not know my sister would die. There was so much I did not know and so much I wanted.

The anniversary of learning that my sister died converges with the memorial service for Mandela. This past week, with it’s many deaths, makes me think that there must be many large, inspiring, charismatic leaders emerging in our world. Last week, this world became too small to contain so many great ones. It released three from its gentle grip. Hold tightly to those who are hear, my friends. Hold tight.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Two New Poems in Contemporary Jewish American Poetry

I am very excited to have two new poems in the fantastic anthology, The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry. Edited by M.E. Silverman and Deborah Ager, The Bloombury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry is a fabulous collection of beloved and new poets. This weekend, I enjoyed leafing through it and reading poems by Jacqueline Osherow, Joy Ladin, Hila Ratzabi, Hilda Raz, Rachel Barenblat, Ellen Bass, and many other fabulous poets. I do encourage your to check it out – and let me know what you think of my poems, “Eliyahu HaNavi” and “Cruelty.” A copy of the book cover and link for ordering are below.

I read the new graphic novel, Blue is the Warmest Color, just translated from the French while I flew to Cincinnati for the National Women’s Studies Association Conference. I always am looking for new graphic novels to teach, but I was underwhelmed by Blue. Many people I know were looking forward to seeing the film, which was apparently a winner at the Cannes Film Festival. Then I read Eileen Myles‘s live tweets while watching the film. They are gathered here. I am in no rush to see the film now.

That is what is happening here. We are all hunkering down for Thanksgiving. I hope it finds you happy and spending times with ones you love.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Countdown to Publication: Publication Day + Four

My intention was to write a blog post on the actual publication day, but I spent last weekend at a conference, then was completely exhausted on Monday and Tuesday. Tuesday was the official publication day and as I recall I spent most of the day in meetings and doing quiet things. Nevertheless, publication day is always exciting and Sibling Rivalry Press posts the nicest Facebook announcement for authors. That felt fantastic.

A number of other things happened this week for the book. The interview that I did with my colleague Christopher Hennessy appeared at the Huffington Post. I blogged at the ProsenPeople, the blog of the Jewish Book Council. Three different blog posts at the ProsenPeople; you can read them here, here, and here. Writing these posts was great fun; I hope you enjoy them!

If you haven’t already, I invite you to purchase Sisterhood. You can order it directly from the publisher here. If you would like a signed copy, you can order one through my website here.

This is the weekend of theatre in my household. Tonight we are seeing Idina Menzl in the new show at the National Theatre. Tomorrow, Mies Julie at the Shakespeare Theatre.

Some days, my life is a celebration of riches.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: blogging, Jewish, NWSA conference, Publication Day, Sisterhood, theatre

Countdown to Publication: Book Party Planning

The last party that we had at the house was also a party to celebrate something that I had done: my graduation party in May of this year. It was a fabulous party. The beloved and a dear friend did an amazing job with it. I have to confess though, I was not my usual party self. My mother had died two months earlier; I was on auto-pilot just getting through the semester and getting to the ending point of graduation. Now when I look back at it, the details are a bit hazy. I know it was fun and wonderful. I remember greeting many people and celebrating, marking the event, but still I was in a bit of the fog of grief.

For that reason, I probably would not have even planned a book party to correspond with the publication of Sisterhood, but I surround myself with amazing people who always ask more of me. So talking on the phone to one dear friend, she said, well, choose a date and I will help you with the party. I said, OK. That is the issue for me: once I say, OK, it is a commitment. I will do it and I will try to do it in the best way that I can.

So now we have this: an evite invitation for the party. I am emailing all of our friends. We will have books available. I will sign them. We will have cocktails and some holiday treats. I put the invitation together during a week that has been just crazy and very stressful, but I am glad to have it done and ready. Now I have time to email it out to folks; to invite many people both generally and personally. The best part about organizing a party is reconnecting with people in meaningful ways.

So if you are reading this and are nearby, please think about joining us on Saturday, 14 December from 4-6:30 p.m. to celebrate the holidays and to celebrate the publication of Sisterhood. If you are not close enough, you can do what a friend emailed me on Facebook: “I’ll have to content myself with buying your book and reading it on the day, instead.” That seems like a good way to celebrate the day as well.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: book publication, Books, party, poetry

Countdown to Publication: Mailing Review Copies

I have been involved with book publishing long enough that I know that much of the work leading up to a book publication is mundane. As I have written about previously, the way to combat the mundane work is to be deeply engaged in writing the next project. I am doing that, but I am also, of necessity, doing some of the mundane work involved with publishing a book.

This weekend, I started the process of sending out copies of the book. There is a lot of joy in this process, of course. When the two boxes arrived at the house, I was deeply excited and energized by the beauty of seeing the books present in my life.

So was our cat, Liza.

My first few author copies go directly to friends who have been helpful to me through the process of working on the collection (though this friend insists that I not incur the international postage.) It is a delight to sign books for friends. I appreciate their love and support, some over many years, so sharing the small book is a great joy. I try to be mindful of my love an appreciation while I sign the books, put them in padded mailers, write out addresses and prepare packages for the post office.

After sending out copies to friends, there is still more work to be done. In addition to the publisher mailing out review copies, I order a few extra to mail to people that I would like to know about and hopefully write about the book. I always have a little  trepidation mailing these copies. I know first hand how much work writing book reviews is, and I know that all of the book reviews will not be positive. Even before the book is out, I know my ego will have difficult moments during this process.

I still have more mailing to do. Lists of people who need to receive a copy of the book. Promotional work to think about in conjunction with the fabulous people who run Sibling Rivalry Press. This work will last through the end of the year, but it is good and important work. Not the glamor of publishing a book (though really I wonder if there is much glamor in book publishing), but the important work of have a conversation with people through books.

The other day, I was emailing with another friend who has a new book out this fall and I reminded him, and myself in the process, if we don’t do the work to promote our own books, who will?

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: poetry, publishing

On Graduate Education

This morning I had the great pleasure of speaking to the University of Maryland Board of Trustees. Dean of the Graduate School, Charles Caramello, organized a presentation which included three graduate students. The three of us ranged across disciplines, Brandon Bush, an aerospace engineer (who worked on the incredibly cool human-powered helicopter at UMD), Rajanath Sankaran, an engineer with a PhD in public policy, and me. Here are the comments that I put together for the occasion.

Thank you, Chuck. It is a real pleasure to be here this morning. Today I am going to talk about my work and why doctoral education is vital to the University of Maryland. In the past five years, I have been to eight archives, catalogued 18,000 photographs of documents, interviewed 25 people and submitted a 140,000-word dissertation with 866 footnotes. I have not calculated how many books and articles I have read in the past five years; I fear it will overwhelm me.

My research is on lesbian-feminist print culture during the 1970s and 1980s in the United States. Most of you will not read scholarly articles from my research in publications such as Frontiers, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Southern Cultures, and a new anthology called Outrageous & Dangerous. While I know the book, tentatively titled A Fine Bind, from my dissertation will be riveting, I am realistic: it is unlikely to be on the New York Times best-seller list.

This research, however, is the reason that I wake every morning and leap out of bed. Support for my research has come from the Coordinating Council for Women in History, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Cornell, Radcliffe, Duke, the New York Public Library, and the University’s own Flagship Fellowships. I say this not to praise myself, but to convey that my research matters in broad scholarly conversations.

While you may not encounter my work in scholarly publications, you may encounter it at the Poetry Foundation or the Poetry Society of America. Both organizations reach broad publics with the work of poets and scholars. You may encounter my work at the Lesbian Poetry Archive. There, I publish ebooks of lost chapbooks and promote public dialogue about lesbian-feminist print culture. Over 15,000 visitors come to the archive each year.

Finally, you may encounter my through Sinister Wisdom, a community-based journal publishing continuously since 1976. I am the tenth editor of Sinister Wisdom, joining in a long line of luminaries, including Adrienne Rich.

Thus, my work is both narrow and idiosyncratic, encountered in rarefied scholarly spaces, and outward looking. I think it is exemplary, but it is in fact deeply ordinary.

The University of Maryland is populated with scholars like me—from full and distinguished professors to first-year graduate students. We have burning questions and the drive to answer those questions through research, exploration, experimentation, and dialogue. Research is one engine that drives the University of Maryland.

Undergraduate students encounter my research and my passion in classes. Students learn about lesbian-feminist publishers: a lesbian published James Joyce’s Ulysses; a lesbian wrote “America the Beautiful;” the next Broadway sensation is (I hope), Fun Home, adapted from Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel about her coming out experiences. Students learn that they too can be creators of things: books, chapbooks, broadsides, journals, objects that live in the world and change people’s lives.

Questions, passions, and insights translating between and among scholars and students in a dynamic, engaged environment; this is the model of research at universities like Maryland.

Now, investing in research and graduate education sometimes requires faith. Faith in individuals to ask questions that have meaning. Faith in results achieved slowly, through modest milestones, in small increments. Faith in the ability of individuals and small groups of scholars to find transformative answers.

In addition to faith, research and graduate education require freedom and courage. In 1929, Virginia Woolf prophesied that a woman would write a great novel when “we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think.” Woolf inspired women throughout the twentieth century. My research examines how lesbian writers created freedom and material support for their imaginative projects; my research explores how we can recognize their work as valuable, aesthetically, literarily, and popularly. At seventeen, Woolf whispered to me, “so to work, even in poverty and obscurity, is worthwhile.” How my work and my words will changes the world is still unfolding, but passion, faith, and the University of Maryland gave me the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what I think. The work is worthwhile.

Thank you for your time.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: faith, freedom, higher education, passion, UMD

Sinister Wisdom October 2013 Newsletter

Dear Friends and Fans of Sinister Wisdom,

What a great year it has been for Sinister Wisdom! We published three issues of Sinister Wisdom, and are planning, with your support, to publish four (4!) issues in 2014, returning the journal to a quarterly publication.

To continue to grow Sinister Wisdom and have it be a vital part of lesbian communities, I need your help and support. The usual refrain I hear when I talk with lesbians about Sinister Wisdom is, wow, is Sinister Wisdom still publishing? Indeed! Sinister Wisdom is still publishing and has been publishing strong since 1976. You know our work because you are a current or former subscriber, a contributor, or just a good friend of the journal. We need you to continue to support Sinister Wisdom and tell others about us.

Below is a full update on all of the activities of Sinister Wisdom this year, but if you don’t read all the way to the end, would you please consider making a contribution to Sinister Wisdom to support our fall fundraising campaign? We need to raise $3,000 to make our publishing dreams possible for 2014. Your support today makes a different. Go here and give generously: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sinister-wisdom-2014

Then tell your friends!

And let me know what you think of the video – it was one of my very first attempts.

In case you missed it, please make a gift to Sinister Wisdom at our fall fundraising campaign: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sinister-wisdom-2014
Any amount helps and means so much to me.

Tell your friends to subscribe and to support us. Here are all of the great reasons why:

Sinister Wisdom 88: Crime Against Nature by Minnie Bruce Pratt

In March 2013, Sinister Wisdom, in conjunction with A Midsummer Night’s Press, published a new edition of Minnie Bruce Pratt’s Crime Against Nature as the first book in our Sapphic Classics series. The new edition of Crime Against Nature featured an introduction by Julie R. Enszer, a new afterword by Pratt, a reprint of Pratt’s speech at the Lamont award ceremony, photographs of Pratt and her family, and a bibliography. Crime Against Nature was the 1989 Lamont Poetry Selection from the Academy of American Poets, which recognizes a poet’s second collection of poetry, and had been long out of print, until Sinister Wisdom intervened, bringing Crime Against Nature back to print for lesbians of all ages to discover, re-discover, read, re-read, savor, and enjoy.

Missed getting a copy of Sinister Wisdom 88: Crime Against Nature? Perhaps your subscription lapsed? You can renew your subscription quickly and easily online here: http://www.sinisterwisdom.org/subscribe

You can order a copy of Sinister Wisdom 88: Crime Against Nature here: http://www.sinisterwisdom.org/crimeagainstnature

Sinister Wisdom 89: Once and Later

In July 2013, Sinister Wisdom 89: Once and Later mailed to subscribers. Lesbians raved about it. Sinister Wisdom 89 featured our shiny new design for the journal, excellent new poetry and fiction from lesbian writers, an interview with Joan Larkin, a profile of lesbian activist June Arnold by her daughters, an interview with filmmaker Catherine Crouch, and a remembrance of Julia Penelope by Merril Mushroom. And more!

Did you miss Sinister Wisdom 89: Once and Later? Pick up a copy here: http://www.sinisterwisdom.org/sw89
and be sure to renew your submission! http://www.sinisterwisdom.org/subscribe

Sinister Wisdom 90: Catch, Quench

This issue just went in the mail to subscribers – you may not even have it in your hot hands. Let me tell you though, it packs a punch with speculative fiction by Susan Levinkind, memoir by Ellen Orleans, poetry by Diane Solis, Cara Armstrong, Tara Shea Burke, and more, and a deeply moving tribute to Sinister Wisdom founding editor and publisher, Catherine Nicholson.

You’ll want to read this issue and share it with your friends! Order a single copy here (though these are extremely limited – so don’t dilly-dally): http://www.sinisterwisdom.org/sw90

And subscriptions are still available here: http://www.sinisterwisdom.org/subscribe

Wow! That was a lot for 2013! What’s up for 2014?

Sinister Wisdom will publish our second Sapphic Classic: Living as a Lesbian by Cheryl Clarke. Clarke’s Living as a Lesbian will be Sinister Wisdom 91 and it will go in the mail to subscribers the first week of January 2014.

Sinister Wisdom will publish three more issues of Sinister Wisdom in 2014, including a special issue on Lesbians Health Care Workers, edited by Elizabeth Hansen, and an issue on Southern Lesbian-Feminist Herstory, put together by a fabulous group of women from WomonWrites with organizers Rose Norman and Merril Mushroom prodding the group along. We have other great special issues in the works: Joan Nestle and Yasmin Tambiah are working on an issue titled Lesbians and Exile and Nívea Castro is editing an issue titled Out Latina Lesbians. I also have a full open issue that I am putting the finishing touches on as well. Our publishing keeps getting better – more meaningful, more provocative, more insightful, more beautiful, and more often!

And beyond 2014? Are you even thinking bigger?

How did you guess? A great Sapphic Classic for 2015 in the works and WomonWrites is putting together a special issue on Land Dykes. I’m also eyeing the 100th issue of Sinister Wisdom which will be published in the spring of 2016.

To do all of these great things, we need your continued support. First, be sure your subscription to Sinister Wisdom is up to date and paid in full. Second, think about making an extra gift to our fall fundraising campaign to support the important work of Sinister Wisdom. You can make a gift here: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sinister-wisdom-2014

Fall Fundraising Campaign

I work for Sinister Wisdom for free because I love it–and I believe in building and promoting lesbian literature and culture. The printer and the mail shop, however, need to be paid with US currency. Sinister Wisdom has a core of subscribers, but subscriber contributions don’t cover the full expenses of producing three print issues of the journal each year. So we turn to the community to support Sinister Wisdom. Our goal is to raise $3,000 between now and November 30th to support Sinister Wisdom‘s work in 2014. Your contributions will help us do a number of things over the next year:
Publish our next Sapphic Classic, Living as a Lesbian by Cheryl Clarke in January 2014.
Produce three additional issues of Sinister Wisdom in 2014.
Participate in at least two and possibly three writer conventions and publisher showcases around the United States.
Give free subscriptions of Sinister Wisdom to women in prison, women with limited incomes, and women in mental institutions.
Most importantly, your gift to Sinister Wisdom helps to ensure that Sinister Wisdom continues to be an important part of the lesbian community. Sinister Wisdom is a multicultural lesbian literary and arts journal. We’ve been publishing since 1976 through the generosity of women like you.

Sinister Wisdom needs to raise $3,000 to support our work in 2014. Click here to contribute: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sinister-wisdom-2014

Please share this campaign with your friends, especially people who might not know about Sinister Wisdom (or not know that we are still publishing!). We need to build our base of subscribers and supporters to continue the important work of Sinister Wisdom.

Sinister Wisdom Blog–special note for Contributors, Friends, and Supporters of Sinister Wisdom

We’d love to have updates from contributors for the Sinister Wisdom blog (www.SinisterWisdom.org/blog). Published a book of interest to lesbians? Contributed to an anthology? Reading in your local community? Launching a new project? Sinister Wisdom is happy to post news and information about folks in the Sinister Wisdom community. Send the announcement (preferably in a format that can be easily cut and paste) to sinisterwisdom@gmail.com. I will post it and send you a link as soon as we can.

How to Help Sinister Wisdom

There are lots of ways that you can be involved and support Sinister Wisdom. Here are a few simple ideas:
Sell Sinister Wisdom at local lesbian events. We’re happy to send you issues on consignment to sell in your local community.
Ask your local bookstores or other lesbian-owned establishment to stock Sinister Wisdom with a standing order.
Organize a benefit for Sinister Wisdom in your local community. We’re happy to talk about how to do that and give you ideas and support.
Share Sinister Wisdom subscriptions with family and friends. More readers build our community. It’s fast and easy to order gift subscriptions on our new website: www.SinisterWisdom.org/subscribe
Most importantly, right now, we need folks to contribute to Sinister Wisdom through the indiegogo campaign http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sinister-wisdom-2014 to help us meet our fundraising goal of $3,000 to ensure that we can fulfill our ambitious publishing goals for 2014. Please give today, as generously as you can, and share this campaign with family and friends. Encourage them to give. Every dollar helps.

I meant to send along more frequent newsletters, but this is the first one since last fall. Perhaps 2014 will feature a little more news and information in your email box from me. Either way, be sure your 2014 includes all issues of Sinister Wisdom, by keeping your subscription up to date!

In Sisterhood,

Julie

Julie R Enszer, PhD
Editor, Sinister Wisdom
www.SinisterWisdom.com

www.JulieREnszer.com
www.facebook.com/JulieREnszer
@JulieREnszer

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: editing, fundraising, Sinister Wisdom

Sad that I am missing the Split This Rock event honoring Eliza Griswold – but YOU can attend!

Next Friday night, I’ll be in New York seeing this play, but if I were in Washington, DC, I would be at the event organized by Split This Rock awarding the inaugural Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism to Eliza Griswold. I’ll put the full press release below about the event to encourage you to attend if you are in the area.

Eliza Griswold Wins Inaugural Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism

Griswold to be recognized for project collecting folk poems from Afghan women at award ceremony November 1, 2013

Split This Rock, the DC-based national organization dedicated to the poetry of provocation and witness, is pleased to announce that Eliza Griswold will receive the first Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism on November 1, 6-9 pm, at the Goethe-Institut, 812 7th Street, NW, Washington, DC. Tickets to the reception and award ceremony are $25 and can be purchased at www.SplitThisRock.org. Made possible by the support of the CrossCurrents Foundation, the award recognizes and honors a poet who is doing innovative and transformative work at the intersection of poetry and social change. The event is cosponsored by the Goethe-Institut.

The Freedom Plow Award, judged by Martha Collins, Carlos Andrés Gómez, and E. Ethelbert Miller, carries a cash award of $3,500 and is being given for the first time in 2013. The judges were deeply impressed by Eliza Griswold’s project, for which she traveled to Afghanistan and collected two-line folk poems called landays – some ancient, some brand new – from Afghan women. The poems were published in a special issue of Poetry Magazine in June and are forthcoming in book form from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Finalists for the 2013 award are Jorge Argueta, Elana Bell, Tim Z. Hernandez, and Wang Ping.

Eliza Griswold received a Guggenheim Fellowship for her ongoing work on water and poverty in America. Her first non-fiction book, The Tenth Parallel, was awarded the Anthony J. Lukas prize and was a New York Times bestseller. Her poetry and reportage has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, among many others. She’s held fellowships at Harvard University and the New America Foundation. The collection of reportage and translations of Afghan folk poetry, I am the Beggar of the World, will be published in the Spring of 2014 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux with a second collection of her poems to follow. 

In 2012 Griswold began traveling to rural Afghanistan with the photographer Seamus Murphy to collect landays, two-line folk poems written and recited by Afghan women. The landays, Murphy’s photos, and Griswold’s writings about the experience have introduced rural Afghan women – an otherwise invisible population, despite the more than 10 years since the US invaded – to American readers and television viewers. Poetry Magazine, in addition to devoting an entire issue to the landays, published Griswold’s long essay on the documentation project, with photos, on their website. 

Split This Rock calls poets to the center of public life and fosters a national network of socially engaged poets. Its programs integrate poetry into public life and support the poets of all ages who write and perform this essential work. Split This Rock anticipates that the Freedom Plow Award, like its signature biennial poetry festival, will become an essential, enduring part of its mission to promote the growing field of art and social activism on a national level. The award is named for lines from a poem by Langston Hughes:

The plow plowed a new furrow

Across the field of history.

Into that furrow the freedom seed was dropped.

The CrossCurrents Foundation promotes social, environmental, and economic justice, focusing where it believes private funding can make a strategic difference to public education campaigns about critical issues. Effective and socially relevant public art is part of its overall effort to increase civic participation. 

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: events, poetry, Split This Rock

Friendship, Lost and Found

This spring my mother died, somewhat suddenly. She had an illness the summer of 2012, but was recovering and doing much better. Then, on March 27th, she walked upstairs after watching a movie, wasn’t feeling well, sat at the top of the steps, and when my father came upstairs a few minutes later, she said she wasn’t feeling well, but wasn’t in pain. Those were her last words. He called the ambulance. She had a “bleed” in her brain stem and never regained consciousness. She died on March 28, 2013.

I have told many people in my life that there will be a veil of grief after their mother’s deaths. Giving this advice to others, I never thought of it for myself, but then my mother died and I experienced it. I am only now, stepping out from behind that scrim of death. One thing that I have also told other people when their mother’s died is that this is a moment when you will realize and assess your friendships, your intimate relationships, and discover what mettle they have. Again, I didn’t expect this to be the case for me, but it was. It was.

In the days and weeks after my mother’s death, an important friendship in my life completely unraveled. Objectively, I knew that the entire situation was very painful while it was unfolding, but one of the benefits of the veil of grief, of the scrim that falls in your mind, after a mother’s death, is that the emotions of the situation never penetrated for me. I even joked at the time that in years to come, I would not remember losing this friendship as one of the events of the spring of 2013, all I would remember is the death of my mother. As the months progress, I see very clearly the truth of that statement. (I also, I should note, barely remember graduating with my PhD, which seems to me right now like the greatest loss of the spring, after my mother.)

What I did not realize at the time, that I am coming to realize now, months later, is that within the loss of a friendship is the possibility for new friendships. I have always know that time is a limited commodity. Time spent with one person is time not spent with another. I remember because I feel as though I have realized this in the past that emotional engagement is also a limited commodity. Not in the same ways as time, of course. Everyone has the same amount of time; not everyone has the same capacity for emotional engagements. There is, though, an upper limit to how much we can engage with friends; time is one limiting factor of our friendships, but emotional capacity is another. Losing one friend, choosing to end one friendship after my mother’s death, opened time and emotional capacity for me to engage with other people in new and interesting ways.

I have new friends in my life, and I have new friends on the horizon. That is, there are people that I have the time and emotional capacity to engage with more deeply, more meaningfully. I find this incredibly gratifying. By losing a friend, I increased my willingness to go out into the world and build new connections, build new friendships, explore new emotional terrains.

I wish that I had known this in April and May when things were unraveling. That is why I am writing this blog post now. This post is simply a reminder to myself that when friendships are lost, new friendships are found. Sometimes to make space physically, emotionally, temporally, in our lives for new friendships, old friendships have to go away or move farther into the recesses of our minds and our lives. For this reason, I am grateful for the friendships of this year, lost and found, and for finding space for new connections, new friendships, and new insights into this life we all share.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Countdown to Publication

My second collection of poetry, Sisterhood, will publish officially on November 12, 2013. (There are advance copies out though – and a luscious photo of these copies is here. If you want to order an advance copy, go here or here. The second link will get you a signed copy shipped directly by me!) I am doing a number of things in preparation for this book to be out in the world. First, and most importantly, I am working like crazy on new poems and editing the next book of poetry. Why is that most important? Well, I learned during the publishing process of my first book that focusing on the new work, the next work, was incredibly affirming and nurturing while the new book was making its way in the world. Poets and all writers have anxiety about books being published. Will people like it? Will people review it? Will anyone buy it? Will it be noticed in ways that are meaningful? These are all good and important questions, but they are difficult and anxiety provoking. I found that I thought less about them if I was thinking more about generating new work and thinking about the next book alongside doing all of the requisite promotional work on the first book. So I am continuing that practice with the second book. I have been working away on what I think is the third book, including getting feedback from fellow poets (including the author of this phenomenal book), and generating some new work, most of which is so new and so delicate that it is just sitting in my journals at the moment, unable to even survive the world of being typed up and printed. So that is one thing that I am busy with as I prepare for publication.

I also have solicited blurbs for the back cover of the book. I was thrilled to get lovely and generous words from two poets I admire enormously. Alicia Ostriker, author of the forthcoming new collection of poetry, The Old Woman, the Tulip and the Dog,  said of Sisterhood:

If we ever forgot that sisterhood is powerful, Julie R. Enszer’s poetry reminds us–with frank wit, grief, compassion, and a clear sense of the joy and burden of love.  Enszer is a poet of the body, of family, of “the sighs and bellows of the heart,” of music, of travel, of breast cancer, of the plague of AIDS, of black stockings worn to funerals.

As the elegist of her lost sister, Enszer writes, “She should be telling this story./ she was more descriptive than I.”  As celebrant of the revolution that opened our society to the pleasures and realities of queerness, she writes of “the look of defiance in our eyes” and remembers “Once we were the match/ Once we were the flames.”  Sisterhood gives off a good heat.

Minnie Bruce Pratt, author of most recently, Inside the Money Machine, said:

Julie R. Enszer returns to the dream of sisterhood and explores its far reaches–from moments of domestic intimacy with her wife, to the death and estrangement of her blood sisters, to solidarity with Jewish revolutionary Ethel Rosenberg and Palestinian women longing for a homeland. Journey with a sister poet through these her forthright conversations with the 21st century.

These words of praise thrilled me!

This week, I am working on a Reader’s Guide for Sisterhood. I’ll have some reflections about that process next week. Meanwhile, keep an ear to the ground for Sisterhood. I am excited to share it with you!

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: lesbian poetry, poetry, publishing, Sisterhood