Jeannine Blogs

noreply@blogger.com (Jeannine) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 16:49:00 +0000

On the nets:

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

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

Kelli Russell Agodon details how to make a book trailer. Very helpful! Her follow up on the process is here.

Ron Silliman blogs about women in poetry.

Not poetry related, but very funny: Google apologizes for privacy breaches with eerily specific apology. My favorite part:
"The company has also encouraged feedback, explaining that users can type any concerns they may still have into any open browser window or, if they are members of Google Voice, "simply speak directly into [their] phones right now."
Either way, the company said, "We'll know."

noreply@blogger.com (Jeannine) — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 20:15:00 +0000

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

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

noreply@blogger.com (Jeannine) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 18:47:00 +0000

Books (and a movie) to recommend

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

The other book I'm recommending is a Young Adult book called When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. It's a book the author said was inspired by L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, which was all I needed to hear to read it, and it involves a young girl coming of age in 1970's New York City and time travel. It's not as good as A Wrinkle in Time, but it's the kind of smart, emotionally engaging book I wish had been around when I was a kid. Issues of class and race are addressed, as well as the confusing transition between childhood and adulthood. The best time travel book L'Engle wrote, in my opinion, was not A Wrinkle in Time, but A Swiftly Tilting Planet, the third in her trilogy.

The movie I saw was an independent film called Haiku Tunnel, about an aspiring, depressed novelist working as a temp in a law firm. The writer/actor/director is charming and funny, and a lot of the scenes reminded me of the Kafka-esque cheer of showing up to work as a temp and how work can actually help writers stay connected to the world. At least, that's what I think it was about. It was a fun movie of the genre "movies about writers." I wish more of these movies were about women writers, but there you go. Maybe I'll become a famous screenwriter writing the exciting life of a poet. Probably not.

noreply@blogger.com (Jeannine) — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 04:32:00 +0000

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

Sometimes these kinds of articles depress me. Besides the fact that I'm a fan of people outside a tiny circle on the East Coast writing and publishing poetry, I'm an optimist who wants to believe that the poetry world is a meritocracy, even when on the inside, I know it's probably pretty corrupt - as easily corrupted, for instance, as environmental science (which recently experienced an embarrassing uproar about top scientists faking or mis-stating data about global warming in order to make their theories stand up) or politics. When I studied biology, and I actually researched papers - on genetic engineering, on carbon dating, and on tissue culturing, to name three topics where I went back to original sources - I was surprised to see that many papers that were used as references were later withdrawn or discredited because the data was corrupt and the scientists who wrote it exposed as cheats. Which depressed me then, maybe enough to keep me from going into research after graduation. Because, really, if you can't trust your scientists and your poets, who can you trust?

It reminds me the orca who killed a Sea World worker today (and had previously killed two other people. This is one mad whale!) I used to think whales were sweet, because there are documents of whales saving people, and I personally love seeing them in the ocean, but then I found out sometimes they beat up other whales and dolphins too. I actually watched a bunch of orcas beating up a smaller whale of a different species. And dolphins themselves act like gang members, beating up smaller, lonlier dolphins. And I love seals, but a little while back a seal attacked and drowned a girl, a marine biologist who was my age at the time. Animal nature, human nature, both a little darker than we'd like to admit? I guess, once again, it's up to the individual. Not all poets, scientists, or seals can be trusted.

Even if the poetry world is fairly corrupt, you've got to keep writing, keep sending out, keep believing that someone, somewhere will stand up for you even if they don't owe you a favor. Am I too naive? I just read for a chapbook contest and didn't think about anything beyond: "Which one is the most interesting and the best written?" Is it possible there are lots of judges out there doing the same thing?

noreply@blogger.com (Jeannine) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 04:54:00 +0000

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

I think I was going to say something interesting here about judging the chapbook contest for Concrete Wolf, something about how there are so many good writers out there, all the finalists this year were wonderful, and how the decisions come down to - "These are equally well-written but I'm more interested in this subject matter" or "this type of writing is more interesting to me than that kind" which makes you think about how relative judgement about poetry really is. It could be all about the mood of the writer at that moment, about how much they like prose poems or narrative poems, about how they feel like they haven't seen enough of blank and blank should be celebrated this year.

I'm also thinking about chapbooks, about how I might want to do another one.

I think I like Lost because Lost is about the struggle to understand suffering in life, to understand justice, to understand mystery. Lost is a lot like the Bible that way. You're interested in the characters, but you're more interested in the mystery.

I'd also like to know about any good superhero poems by female poets, if you've written one or have a favorite one by another poet. I'm always excited to find out about these kinds of things, but I'm trying to put together a good diverse sample of poems for my WonderCon paper.

noreply@blogger.com (Jeannine) — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 19:03:00 +0000

I was so sorry to hear about Lucille Clifton passing away. She was one of my favorite poets, and her use of persona has always been terrific - she uses the voices of everyone from Leda to Satan. I like almost everything in the Book of Light, but here are two great persona poems:

adam thinking

she
stolen from my bone
is it any wonder
i hunger to tunnel back
inside desperate
to reconnect the rib and clay
and to be whole again

some need is in me
struggling to roar through my
mouth into a name
this creation is so fierce
i would rather have been born

eve thinking

it is wild country here
brothers and sisters coupling
claw and wing
groping one another

i wait
while the clay two-foot
rumbles in his chest
searching for language to

call me
but he is slow
tonight as he sleeps
i will whisper into his mouth
our names
won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

noreply@blogger.com (Jeannine) — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 16:17:00 +0000

I've always thought of Barbie as a sort of totem for girls. This new one, computer engineer Barbie, just made me so happy for some reason:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35372184/ns/business-retail/
She has a pink laptop and she wears glasses. That's my kind of doll. She is still very blonde, but she makes up for it by having binary code on her t-shirt.
(PS, if you haven't read Kinky, Denise Duhamel's book of poems on Barbie, go and do it.)

noreply@blogger.com (Jeannine) — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 19:01:00 +0000

Yes, it's been a week of doctor appointments, phone calls from doctors, and sometimes uncomfortable tests that doctors have ordered, but I'm back to thinking about poetry - and back to the blog (no, I haven't figured out how to migrate the blog yet, though time is ticking down on how much longer they're going to support this blog...stay tuned for the new link.)
I was thinking about the things that get us through difficult times. The belief in something larger than oneself. Our spiritual yearnings/faiths, for example, our loved ones, and the things that just keep sticking to us, giving us hope when times are hard. The big bunch of daffodils that Glenn just brought home for me that are blooming brightly in their vase by the window. So hard to be depressed, looking at daffodils. And it doesn't hurt that the weather report, after weeks and weeks of gloomy, blow-y cold and rain, is saying we're going to have some sunshine and sixty-degree days coming up.
It's really hard to write poems about hope without sounding cheesy, much as it's difficult to write about love without sounding sentimental or sappy, isn't it? (See this article for more on the difficulty of the happy love poem.) But they are neccessary. And I find my poetry tends to be on the hard, colder edges rather than the comforting side most of the time. After all, many of my favorite poets tend to be on that bitter edge - I prefer Gluck and Atwood to Oliver. I usually prefer humour to sweetness. What about you? Do you have any favorite "hopeful" poems?

noreply@blogger.com (Jeannine) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:17:00 +0000

Once in a while, you get to be on top of the world; other times, it feels like life is kicking your ass. This last week was one of those second ones.
I have never had food allergies, but Sunday I had an anaphylaxis allergic reaction to a cup of tea and half a cookie. I wound up in the hospital, on an IV, and then for four days had purple hives and couldn't eat anything, even chicken broth or ginger ale, without my mouth and throat swelling up. Good times. It was very scary and not something I'd like to repeat. I now have an epipen and a big old bunch of allergy tests to take. It might have been the bergamot in the tea, but I'm also getting tested for everything else: vanilla, tea, milk, eggs, wheat, citrus.
Anyway, I've had so many health setbacks lately, I just thought - wow, I had better get going with this poetry thing. No more wasting time!
On top of the 1001 doctor appointments, I'm going to try to read some chapbooks for a contest and be an excellent thesis advisor. And try to remind people that I love them more often. And send out more poetry. Do the stuff that I need to do. Because in the end, it's poetry and people that matter to me.
It looks like I'm going to have to port my blog as well, as blogger is no longer supporting people like me who use the FTP option, Dang! Just what I needed to mess with, along with my taxes and surprisingly complicated and expensive physical therapy bills. (California has the worst system for billing, it's way worse than Washington where insurance billing was fairly simple, and my insurance doesn't cover all the PT here I've needed like it would in Washington. Yes, one more reason I'm considering relocating to the wild wet Northwest.) See, that's all the junk I don't want to worry about, but the stuff that keeps getting in my face and taking up my time.

noreply@blogger.com (Jeannine) — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 23:58:00 +0000

Wow - in the mail today, a cornucopia of poetry! Three books from the Mississippi Review Poetry Series, Issue 7 of Sentence, and Poetry Magazine with a long winded but amusing German essay in it, which I read out loud to Glenn while we were waiting for my orthopedist. It's about the three questions poets get asked at readings, and also Proust.

And, good news from the orthopedist - no surgery required for the left ankle, and the right ankle is right on track to be healed in a week or two. That means there's still probably another month or so of physical therapy to go before I'm walking - but walking by spring sounds awfully good! I love my new PT office, too, and the new PT guy I'm working with. Now, if we can get my mystery stomach illness solved, I'll be ready to party! I think I will like Napa so much better walking than non-walking.

I also found out I have double the thesis students this quarter than I thought - there goes my free time for poetry submissions (not to mention writing...) Oh well. At least thesis work is fairly fun. I want to get some time to put up mini-reviews, too, of January's Underlife, Reb's God Damsel, and Allison's Self-Portrait with Crayon. Maybe I'll get a lull while the students are working on their reading lists...

Oh yes, and go read Jessica Smith's post here on gender and blogging...which includes a quote by Reb that I also found edifying...
http://looktouch.wordpress.com/2010/01/27/gender-and-blogging-redux/

noreply@blogger.com (Jeannine) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 05:29:00 +0000

Got my wonderful-looking contributor copy of MARGIE 2009 today, with so many names...just a few include Alicia Ostriker, Tony Hoagland, Annie Finch, my publisher Tom Hunley, and a multitude of others. I've always enjoyed MARGIE and this issue is no exception. Plus, it has my poem "The Robot Scientist's Daughter [morbid]" from the new collection I'm working on. I'm getting happier with the collection every day as I work on it, and even submitted work from the manuscript to the NEA.

I also got my MRI results for my left ankle: a torn ligament. Don't know if it will need surgery. The right ankle is healing up normally for a sprain, right on schedule. Still running a high fever for the third week in a row, but at least the sun was out today. Still very wintry outside, still too far from spring.
And, on the urging of several of my doctors, had a meeting with the local hematologist, a very nice and enthusiastic gentleman who was surprised and excited to get a patient with PAI-1 deficiency, as it's fairly rare. He even went back and called a hematology guy from UC Davis who has worked with a PAI-1 deficiency patient before, (who reiterated that my Seattle Hem-Onc is one of the best in the country with this particular kind of disorder - go Dr. Gernsheimer!) and called me at home with his advice. And when he talked to me, I was so thankful for those pre-med classes, so the scary stuff he said was all understandable. Sometimes having my rare disorders can make me feel lonely and scared; I mean, really, who can I talk about my fears and worries about? I took inspiration from Jilly and started a PAI-1 deficiency blog, just in case the other, like, 17 people in the world who have it are looking for a place congregate online. Treatments are all still basically experimental, since there's not many of us to test, but they do exist. Anyway, weird mutants unite! Or something.

With my two bad ankles and the long illness of feverish weirdness, I've been watching a lot of movies as I'm not much good for anything else lately. Tonight I watched "Bright Star" about John Keats, and I remembered how his poem "When I have fears that I may ceased to be" echoed in my brain when I was in the hospital with pneumonia last year. The fear of all poets, that they will die before they write everything they are supposed to write? And his fear was warranted; he was unthinkably young, only 25, when he died.

Ha! This post is too morbid. Just like my poem warned in MARGIE!

noreply@blogger.com (Jeannine) — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 18:41:00 +0000

I know AWP is the place for poets to be in April, but it turns out the universe has other plans for me: my presentation was accepted for WonderCon 2010, which is a few days earlier in April and much closer to home, in San Francisco. The presentation will be on something like this, I think: "From Buffy to the X-Men: Female Comic Book Superheroes in Women’s Poetry."
I have to admit to being pretty excited. There are supposed to be something like 34,000 attendees. Gail Simone, one of my favorite female comic book writers, will be there, as will Peter S. Beagle, who I had the pleasure of meeting in Seattle a couple of years ago. (One of my early literary heroes, as he penned one of my favorite childhood books, The Last Unicorn.) Plus, some tv and movie stars and comic book royalty and such. Squee!

I'm beginning to feel better after a two-week mystery virus had me bedridden with chills and on a fluid-only diet, and I started at a newer, fancier physical therapy place for my tendon problems/sprained ankles that have had me in a wheelchair since Christmas Eve. It's very shiny and has a recumbent stair-climber that I think I would like to have in my house, even after my ankle problems have cleared up.

Aside from that, I'm trying to fix up my taxes, apply for the NEA grant though I have a discouraging feeling about it, and send out poems/book manuscripts, which I also have a generally discouraged feeling about. I don't know if the discouraged feelings have anything to do with reality, it's just something that happens and I don't want to send anything out, though I never ever stop writing. Discouragement keeps me from submitting but not from writing, isn't that odd? Anyway, as a segueway, let me introduce you to this lovely post about rejection from Kelli:
http://ofkells.blogspot.com/2010/01/notes-from-beneath-covers-why.html
that will remind you that rejection is really not all about you, which is pretty comforting, actually.
Also, check her blog for a recent call for submissions for Ekphrastic poetry for Crab Creek Review.

noreply@blogger.com (Jeannine) — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 15:37:00 +0000

I've been inspired to post this article I wrote, "The Bad Wives Club," by several things:
--This story about a journalist who ran her own piece after it was accepted, then killed.
--The recent discussion about Zucker's newest book, Museum of Accidents, by Stephen Burt and others on a variety of blogs, focusing on her poetry about motherhood.

I wrote this article last year about Rachel Zucker's The Bad Wife Handbook and Beth Ann Fennelly's Unmentionables. I really loved both books and thought that they had something important to say. The article was accepted by a well-paying org, then killed.

Here is a teaser. Click on the link at the end for the full article.

"If we were to plot out the trajectory of American women’s poetry on wife-hood, from Anne Bradstreet to Sylvia Plath to Louise Gluck to Rachel Zucker, what would that look like? Even the word “wife” seems freighted with connotations of motherhood, domestic chores and duty. What does it mean for a woman to be a wife in contemporary society? How can one be a “good” or “bad” wife? These are some of the questions posed to a contemporary reader in Rachel Zucker’s The Bad Wife Handbook and Beth Ann Fennelly’s Unmentionables.

Zucker and Fennelly question the guilt and the societal expectations in an unmerciful, sometimes piercing light. Can a contemporary woman keep her individuality, her art, her erotic self, alive in the face of the expectations of being a “good” wife, a “good” mother? What do those words even mean?

The two poets use different syntactical strategies while addressing similar subjects – Fennelly’s poems simmer and stir, bursting out of their narrative structures to include as much of her inner turmoil and messy, robust sexuality as possible, while Zucker’s tease and bemuse with their constant shimmying of pronouns, subjects and verb tenses."
Rest of article here.

(If you like it, help support a poet - consider ordering my book or asking your local library to carry it. Thanks!)

noreply@blogger.com (Jeannine) — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 16:41:00 +0000

My French teacher, Abner Genece, was not only a great teacher but a great influence on me as a lover of literature. (We read French poetry, Victor Hugo, and Andre Gide in his class.) He spoke with great love of Haiti (and spoke with great passion about the political injustices there) and even taught us a little Creole, the language most commonly spoken in Haiti.
It has been just awful watching the images coming in from Haiti. Please give, if you can, to one of the charities helping in Haiti. My choice is usually Northwest Medical Teams (now Medical Teams International,) which has an excellent record of actually using funds for helping people, unlike some charities. Here's a link:
https://www.medicalteams.org/NetCommunity/SSLPage.aspx?pid=320&fund=17
Husband G's work does matching funds for disasters, so check into your workplace and see if that is a possibility.

My folks are coming in town, which would be better if I wasn't running 101 fever and was able to eat solid food. I just had, I think, all of my blood taken out at the hospital lab yesterday (or at least it felt that way) to figure out what's going on since I've been pretty sick for a week already (both arms! Multiple sticks! Not my ideal lab visit.) Think good healing thoughts for me. I fear I will not be a very good tour guide in my current state. However, husband G did stay up last night baking them biscotti for their visit. So at least they'll have that!

In poetry news, had a poem, "She Returns to the Floating World," in the speculative journal Goblin Fruit:
http://www.goblinfruit.net/2010/winter/poems/?poem=floatingworld
The speculative poetry world is in a parallel universe that I don't visit enough; the editors have a lot of fun, the readers do too, and a lot of times, they actually pay for poetry. I also notice more friendly correspondance from editors and fellow poets in those journals. I had an article on this topic in the Poet's Market 2010, but basically, if you write poems about fairy tales, science fiction, or science, you owe it to yourself to check out the world o' speculative poetry. Some of my favorite journals for poetry in this genre are Lady Churchhill's Rosebud Wristlet, Mythic Delirium, The Magazine of Speculative Poetry, Star*Line, Cabinet Des Fees, and Goblin Fruit. I'm probably leaving out a lot of good ones with that list, which is a mix of print and online journals.

noreply@blogger.com (Jeannine) — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 18:14:00 +0000

If you just can't get enough of interviews with me, check out my new interview at Public Republic:
http://www.public-republic.net/i%E2%80%99m-attempting-to-connect-poetry-and-science.php
The interviewer, Bob Baker, really liked the poem "In the Faces of Lichtenstein's Women" so I put up a recording of it on my sample readings page here in case you are interested:
http://www.webbish6.com/audio.htm

Plus, my artist friend Michaela Eaves (who did the cover of Becoming the Villainess) is doing her yearly "sketch a day" up on her blog - check it out:
http://corvida.livejournal.com/

noreply@blogger.com (Jeannine) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 20:33:00 +0000

How is your new year going so far? I was feeling a bit discouraged yesterday, but was helped by getting out into the watery sunshine in nearby lovely Yountville, where I can't afford to eat at the many fabulous starred restaurants but I can afford a loaf of bread and lemonade from one of their bakeries.
I finally got my contributor copy of the Fall 2009 The LA Review, which was really fun to read - particularly the poetry - many of which were playful and refreshingly non-downbeat, including those by Deb Ager and Kelli Agodon.
I've also got a new poem up at the very intriguing online journal Prick of the Spindle called "Sleeping Beauty Loves the Needle." Isn't that a great marriage of poem title and journal title? I enjoyed reading the poetry in this issue as well.
Also got the anthology for the nominees for the Dwarf Star prize anthology, which included poems by editor Mike Allen and Seattle haiku poet Michael Dylan Welch. I was honored one of my own poems was nominated as well! Thanks Poemeleon and SFPA!
Rain is coming back to town, which I guess I can't complain about, since most the country is in some sort of deep freeze. Ready for spring yet? When do the days start feeling longer?

noreply@blogger.com (Jeannine) — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 17:40:00 +0000

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.

noreply@blogger.com (Jeannine) — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 15:45:00 +0000

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...

noreply@blogger.com (Jeannine) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 05:26:00 +0000

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?

noreply@blogger.com (Jeannine) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 00:34:00 +0000

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.

noreply@blogger.com (Jeannine) — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 02:28:00 +0000

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!

noreply@blogger.com (Jeannine) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 01:09:00 +0000

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.

noreply@blogger.com (Jeannine) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 04:47:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Jeannine) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 20:09:00 +0000

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.

noreply@blogger.com (Jeannine) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:50:00 +0000

Almost Thanksgiving...

If this causes you to think about holiday shopping, then check out Kristin Berkey-Abbott's excellent list of poetry books to buy:
http://kristinberkey-abbott.blogspot.com/2009/11/books-with-spine-for-your-holiday.html
and poetry chapbooks:
http://kristinberkey-abbott.blogspot.com/2009/11/chapbooks-make-great-stocking-stuffers.html

If you're thinking about applying for a residency, Susan Rich give some tips at her new blog:
http://thealchemistskitchen.blogspot.com/2009/11/artist-residencies-what-you-should-know.html

And, if you want to know what I'm doing, we're celebrating quietly as our families are out in the Midwest and most of our friends in the Northwest. I've ordered some duck, as there's no point roasting a turkey for two, and I wanted to try something different. (Probably serving with a cranberry-cherry sauce on top.) Also on the menu: cornbread stuffing with dried cherries and pine nuts and maybe a little duck confit, a delicata squash baked with cranberries, and a mini pumpkin-cheesecake. Probably that's already too much for us, and I haven't even counted a potato or green veggie dish!

Remembering what to be thankful for. I love seeing the trees with their orange and red leaves against a sharp blue sky - I missed fall while I lived in San Diego (too sunny and desert-like - plus a lack of trees) and Seattle (where we'd have one day of fall, then a rainstorm knocked down all the leaves, then we'd start nine months of rain.) I am thankful for a steady stream of sunny days in between rain showers here. I'm thankful for all the kind back-channel notes I received about my post on being childless, from people with children and people without. I'm thankful for poets and for people who read poetry. I'm thankful for friends who don't forget about me even though I keep moving away, and for friendly gestures from new acquaintances. I'm thankful for writing, thankful for some employment, thankful for my husband who has been an extra super-superhero as I've been on crutches most of this year (broken foot, sprained ankle, then another sprained ankle after that...) and he has been on housekeeping, cat-caretaking and grocery-shopping duty. I'm thankful I survived the scariest bout of pneumonia I ever had this year. I'm actually really thankful that a new year is about to begin, hopefully a better, healthier year, a year full of promise and opportunity.