Happy New Year! I mean it!

2009 was a hard year on a lot of people I know. Including me. That is why I'm happy to be waving goodbye. At the end of the year, my husband and I always listen to an old song by the Counting Crows called "A Long December" whose chorus goes something like "It's been a long December/and there's reason to believe/maybe this year will be better than the last."
There's always something hopeful about the beginning of the new year, even with all the bad news of 2009 pounding in our ears (terrorism! the economy! swine flu!) Hope is harder than fear, more delicate, more quiet.

My hopes for 2010 (as some of them are not so much resolutions but hopes) include:
--Walking without crutches, preferably sooner rather than later!
--A great (and enthusiastic) publisher for my second book.
--Put myself out there more. Apply for things I think are beyond my grasp. Be more assertive about asking for things like readings or work opportunities.
--Connect with people more. Be more social and attend more writing-related activities such as readings, parties and workshops. (Maybe even AWP? I've been unable to attend the last couple of years because of health problems, but I'd really like to go to Colorado...)
--Taking more nature trips - the woods, the ocean, etc. I definitely feel more myself when I'm not surrounded by apartments or buildings or lights or parking lots.
--Find some way to increase my paying work, and decrease my non-paying work. This isn't so much a hope as a necessity, as living in California is insanely expensive.
--Try new things. Be more adventurous. Appreciate the good things around me as much as possible.

On that last one: I have always been very achievement-oriented, from a very young age. Always looking to the next goal, what I should be doing, how to maximize efficiency. One of the good things to come out of this year of health craziness was the ability to slow down and appreciate what I could do, what I could enjoy. When I had an amoeba and all I could eat was rice broth for weeks, well, I could still go out and feel sunshine on my face. When I broke my foot (and now with my ankle problems,) I realize that there is so much to enjoy from a new position - resting, reading, writing. With every setback, I felt that I was still appreciative of what I was able to do; when I was in the hospital with pneumonia this summer, I thought each morning: well, I'm still alive, and I'm going to leave the hospital and get better. And I did. I am thankful for the five poems I wrote this month, for my wonderful husband and fluffy cats, for the hummingbirds outside my window, for the fact that I can eat solid food right now and breathe without coughing even if I am experiencing other technical difficulties. I am hoping that 2010 brings more love, more joy, more hope, more health, to you and to me.

Labels: A Long December, appreciating the little things, Happy New Year, hopes and resolutions

- posted by Jeannine @ 9:40 AM (8) comments

 
Happy after-Christmas, everyone! Hope you all got your wishes from Santa!
Well, I asked Santa for two working ankles, but he must have thought I said two matching ankles, because I sprained my other ankle on Christmas Eve. Now I have one mildly sprained ankle and one severely sprained ankle with tendonosis, which means I've got a degenerated tendon. I always thought part of me was degenerate. And I threw my neck out using my crutches, so, generally, feeling a little physcially discombobulated. The person I saw at urgent care (an area that doubles as the local ER - mercifully, both empty on Christmas Eve) for my sprained ankle and neck basically told me there was a lack of good doctors (especially primary care doctors - he had to solicit from his patients to find one himself, and he said it took him awhile!) and physical therapists here in Napa Valley - a conclusion I had already come to through experience. It's weird when medical resources must be accounted for when deciding on where to live. I should be better at it by now, anyway.
I missed my Midwestern-dwelling family, but was able to connect with almost everyone on the phone, and besides, what fun would a girl with no working ankles be on the holiday? LOL. A lot of the family - or their spouses - were sick, with stomach flus and colds. I've actually been homesick for Seattle, although one of my good friends reminded me, "Think about all the reasons you left Seattle." But all I can remember is how much I loved it there. Sigh. Well, and the rain - I do remember that.
It's rainy and chilly here in Napa today, and although our Christmas dinner (thanks to husband G) was mightily delicious I just can't think about eating the leftovers yet! We had plans for ham-and-cheese omelets and ham-and-bean soup, but for breakfast I'm eating plain rice, no ham. Maybe some carrot-ginger juice later.
I have a wonderful set of books to read, lots of pretty shiny things to look at, thanks to my family, and am generally not as freaked out as I could be. But I'm hoping for better luck and health in 2010.
On the plus side, plenty of excuses for reading and watching DVDs...

Labels: all I want for Christmas are two working ankles, Christmas dinner and post-Christmas fasting, excuses for reading, post-Christmas

- posted by Jeannine @ 7:45 AM (0) comments

 
Merry Holidays Everyone! My Christmas shopping is finished, the tree is up and decorated, and tomorrow I'm buying a tiny ham (well, tiny is relative - only four pounds!) for Christmas dinner. I am wishing you all a lot of writing time under the tree. Speaking of which...

Thanks Mary for your "three poems before the end of the year" challenge. I've now written four! I don't think I would have done that without the challenge.

I also checkout out a boatload of books from the library. One was Gluck's new book, A Village Life. I loved it. I thought, while it contained her usual themes "Autumn, Loss, Death, Etc..." (that's an inside joke for you Gluck fans) it was more romantic and loose than her books have been in some time. The outer landscape of the village mimics the inner landscape of the writer. In particular, her poems about young love seemed touching and nostalgic. Some of the poems seem intensely personal - particularly " Walking at Night" as she talks about her body being invisible in the summer night as she ages and "At the River" in which she talks about her father drinking wine "with his friend the Holy Ghost." (Coincidentally, I was listening to Sarah McLachlan's cover of the "The River" at the time) Liked it a lot.
Still thinking about whether or not I enjoyed The Magicians by Lev Grossman, kind of a Holden-Caulfield-goes-to-Hogwarts-and-then-Narnia novel. I think I would have enjoyed it more without the main character - A "Bright Lights Big City" style ennui-filled narrator. Are contemporary authors not allowed to write characters who are engaged with the world anymore? I had the same problem with The Corrections.
I also got a book of essays by Michael Chabon. And reading Allison Benis White's Self Portrait with Crayon, which I like a lot so far.
I think there is a connection between reading for fun and writing. Can I get some funding for that study?

Labels: A Village Life, Allison Benis White, bored narrators, happy holidays, Louise Gluck, Merry Christmas, Michael Chabon, Reading for fun, The Magicians

- posted by Jeannine @ 9:26 PM (4) comments

 
I liked Stephen Burt as a critic before this - in fact, I've assigned his essays to my class before - but after this terrific essay on poetry and superheroes:
http://poems.com/special_features/prose/essay_burt3.php
I am even more of a fan. He talks about how poets can connect to wider mythology through superheroes, and also how they can be used as a kind of subversive accessibility:
"Poems about superheroes, famous or obscure, announce their divorce from expectations about high culture, antiquity, "academic" difficulty."
I was pretty excited that the essay mentioned two poems of mine as well.
I admit that when I was writing Becoming the Villainess, I was writing it for a specific audience - for an audience that perhaps wasn't that friendly with poetry, but definitely knew something about comic books, video games, and maybe even Greek mythology. I wanted it to be something a college student could pick up and understand, relate to. I wanted it to be something that might make a non-poetry-lover like poetry again.
Anyway, check out the article, and you might be tempted to pick up Rae Armantrout's new book, Versed, as well.

Labels: Becoming the Villainess, Jeannine Hall Gailey, poetry and superheroes, Rae Armantrout, Stephen Burt

- posted by Jeannine @ 4:34 PM (1) comments

 
The holidays are speeding towards us! So much last-minute holiday shopping, packing up, and shipping to do...But I love the lights, and the tree, and making egg-nog french toast and pumpkin bread and other weird foods we only make at this time of the year.

I owe you some little mini-book reviews, which will be coming soon.

My review of Kim Addonizio's Lucifer at the Starlite is up at the Rattle blog. They are one of the few places that want you to personalize your reviews a little bit, so it's a different experience writing for them; you don't have to be so stuffy.

Finally wrote a new poem! It's all about the trope of mad scientists and their daughters in fifties sci-fi movies. Even when I try to stay away from pop culture in my poems, as I have for this latest manuscript, which is based on growing up in Oak Ridge - it sneaks back in!

And I applied for one job and sent in two book queries. Fairly productive for a gloomy December day! We've had a cold front that has freaked out the Californians - high of fifty during the day, freezes at night, how crazy! - and I've heard a lot of people say "This isn't what I moved to California for!" I want to point out to them that it is still twenty to thirty degrees colder everywhere else. I admit to breaking out my special-used-to-be-reserved-for-snow-shearling boots, though, at the first sign of forty-degree-weather. I used to wear shorts when it hit fifty - now I'm all shivery. The West Coast had made this former midwesterner weak, I tell you!

Labels: cold fronts, Kim Addonizio, Lucifer at the Starlite, weird holiday food, writing again

- posted by Jeannine @ 6:28 PM (0) comments

 
I haven't written anything in a couple of weeks and it's making me a little...scratchy. I'm not a poem-a-day person, but I like to at least write one every two weeks!

I got two rejections and an acceptance today. After weeks of nothing. Isn't that always the way.

A poem of mine is out in the new issue of The Cincinnati Review. It's one of my "element" series, called "Cesium Burns Blue." It's one of my husband's favorite poems. The issue also has poems by Nance Van Winckel, Chase Twichell, and Sherman Alexie.

Speaking of Alexie, he went on The Colbert Report and talked about how the local media doesn't care about books any more. I don't know if you noticed, Sherman, but it's not that they don't care, it's that local media doesn't really exist any more. Little newspapers - and big ones - are drying up and blowing away. Local news and radio shows are getting swallowed up by big conglomerates.
And, tell me what you think, but the local radio shows and newspaper stories don't really sell books - or not any more than say, a blog or a web site might.

Labels: poetry mail, poets on the Colbert Report, Sherman Alexie, The Cincinnati Review, writing spells

- posted by Jeannine @ 5:09 PM (2) comments

 
Because my last post about the 2000's first decade might have been too depressing, I present this:

Labels: not depressing, surprise kitty

- posted by Jeannine @ 8:47 PM (2) comments

 
Happy post-Thanksgiving! I've had a cold and been grading. I know, too much fun - you're jealous!

Ring in the new...

Peter put up a post about the first decade of the 2000's being the "decade from Hell." Although there have been some good things to come out of it, I'm going to go ahead and put it on my "not favorite decade" lists. Now, the 90's - there were some good times. The music was loud, everyone was optimistic, and I remember that I always had too many job offers on my hands. (Of course, I was a techie-type then and not a poet-seeking-teaching-positions.) Plus, I was healthier!
I haven't been so excited to see a year end in a loooong time. In 2009, I must have had a dozen trips to the hospital, my first ever broken bones, a no-exaggeration near-death experience with pneumonia, some other unpleasant firsts involving viruses and an amoeba, and the fact that I spent about ten months, between broken bones and multiple sprains, in crutches. Yes, it's been a bit depressing. I don't want to complain, but Universe, if you're listening, I could use some good news and health in the new year! Let's hear it for 2010!

Trying to shop local for Christmas this year (except for poetry and obscure books.) Locally-made Napa Valley candy, honey, olive oil, etc. Haven't put up our tree yet, but hoping to get a chance to do it soon. I'm ready for some Christmas cheer! I'm in the mood to sing carols, watch sappy holiday specials, and rattle some noisemakers.

Labels: 2010 can't come soon enough, Christmas cheer, post-Thanksgiving grading, the crummiest decade

- posted by Jeannine @ 12:09 PM (2) comments