Signs of Spring, a new Microreview, and More
- At March 15, 2014
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In Blog
- 0
Thought I would remind you that spring is around the corner. I’ve seen it! Pink hyacinths we planted last fall are blooming in a row in front of our house, jonquils in the back, and in downtown Seattle, where it is slightly warmer, I’ve seen the following in bloom: cherry blossoms, camellias, plum blossoms, rhododendrons, redbud, magnolias and crab apple.
Sorry I haven’t been here much, I caught some evil stomach flu at a wonderful reading I went to last Sunday, and I’m hoping to be almost done with it soon! I managed to get out and wobble in the sunshine on Thursday, which is when we got some photos to prove to you and to myself that yes, spring was on the way.
And to show that I haven’t been completely slacking off, here’s my microreview from Rattle of Evan J. Peterson’s The Midnight Channel, a chapbook on final girls and horror tropes.
And I was very happy with a poem acceptance from Mid-American Review, which, growing up in Cincinnati, was one of the few literary magazines that showed up in local bookstores. Hooray for the Midwest! After AWP, I also got the emotional energy to actually send out work again, which I hadn’t really done since last November, so that was good. I hadn’t realized what I had been feeling was discouragement – maybe just low-level, but enough to keep me from writing much or sending out much – until after AWP and I felt a surge of desire to do both again. It’s a good thing about these kinds of conferences, going out and looking at physical journals and talking to actual humans who work at journals and publishers, reminding you there are real people out there, not just a nameless, faceless rejection machine, as it sometimes seems.
A lot of my friends have mentioned being physically or emotionally down lately. Could be the time-change, or the stars, or just bad luck, but I know I was feeling kind of disgruntled over the whole “broken arm three weeks before AWP, pneumonia two weeks before AWP, head cold/stomach flu after AWP…” Seemed like a lot, but some of my friends are going through even worse health crises. How to have the faith or grace to push through? I read Conversations with Flannery O’Connor, who said something like “good thing I write with my head and not my feet” when asked if being on crutches for her severe lupus affected her work. We can’t get caught up in politics (The VIDA count still seemed sort of depressing to me, although I guess there’s been some improvements, the NYC versus MFA debate which mostly seemed like a resounding “it’s hard to make a living as a writer either way” answer) either. Sometimes we just have to put our heads down, read what inspires us, spend time writing and then sending your work out into the world. Something about spring, about rebirth and flowering in the face of cold and ice and mud.