Reading with Kelli in Shoreline, Goldfinches, Hummingbirds, Woodpeckers, and Losing Things

Kelli Russell Agodon and me

Reading with Kelli in Shoreline, WA

I had the pleasure yesterday of being of the opening reader for Kelli in Shoreline at the new Ridgecrest Books, which kindly sold my Flare, Corona alongside Kelli’s brand-new Accidental Devotions. The bookstore folks and the larger than expected crowd (they ran out of chairs! Hadn’t seen that happen since an Open Books reading in Wallingford!) were very welcoming. And they bought books! I also saw some old friends I hadn’t seen in years, which was nice. One of them noted “You’re not in a wheelchair anymore!” which made me wonder when they had seen me last—six years maybe? Anyway, Kelli did a great job, it felt like a great night of really nice people. It almost, somehow, felt like a pre-Covid reading.

Goldfinch in fountain with flowers

Backyard Birds and Managing Loss

I was a little down physically this week treating a bad tooth and a hurt rib, but I got a great show from my goldfinches, hummingbirds, and woodpeckers. And, I sent out my book manuscript to a few new places I hadn’t tried before.

Even in the middle of family drama and my body being a little broken-down, I try to be aware of the little beauties around me, the cherry tree that rustles with little squirrels throwing cherries and chittering at me, the woodpecker and goldfinch that are no longer afraid to land next to me outside.

We had some family stuff that happened that reminded me that life is not steady, that change is the only constant, and sometimes, those changes are not the changes we’d choose. Parents getting older, our worrying about them, and my own body, struggling with what can be several debilitating problems at once, realizing we don’t have forever, and neither do those we love. It can push us into depression or push us to try to make the best of every day we have. It’s also realizing that although right now is hard, we’re not having as bad a time as we had in the past—reading from Flare, Corona always reminds me that I had some of the worst news and the worst health of my life when I wrote that book, and I survived a terminal cancer diagnosis and an MS diagnosis and severe flare almost a decade ago now. We lose things in life—our memories, our ability to run or walk, our balance, money, security, loved ones—and we have a choice, to continue on or to stay in mourning or lament our inability to trust and secure our lives exactly the way we want them to be. Sure, the world can feel like it’s in constant apocalypse right now. But we have a choice in what we do every day with that. What do you do with your last day on earth? Why, write another poem, of course.

Rough Week with Blue Minimoon, Baby Foxes, Tooth and Rib Drama, and Summer Approaches

Red fox triplets

Rough Week with Blue Minimoon and Baby Foxes

Well, I was supposed to spend the last week on the San Juan Island at a writing residency. The first day was glorious – beautiful warm sunshine, seal heads bobbing in the water, and my first ever real-life encounter with baby foxes! The second day was cold and rainy, but I got a lot of reading and some writing done. The third day, sadly, I woke up with my jaw swollen from a tooth infection (root canal next week!) with fever and it was determined that I should probably get home so I could rest, get antibiotics and move up my root canal.

Me and Glenn getting ready to leave for San Juan Island with mountain in background, pre-tooth

So we had to leave the island early, rapidly throwing everything back in our bags and catching the last ferry out of town. I was pretty down for a couple of days, and yesterday was the first day I felt good enough to go out – for ice cream and Blue Moon pictures – and promptly threw out a rib sneezing and coughing (it is definitely crazy allergy season – visible pollen was floating around our drinks while we saw outside with our dessert.)

I felt very lucky that I saw any fox kits at all, on this trip, honestly, because I’ve been to the island many times and though I’d seen otters, seals, eagles, whales, and adult foxes, this was the first time I got to see baby foxes cavorting among poisonous hemlock flowers in bloom (which smell very good but even the pollen can cause neurological symptoms, note to people not familiar with this plan which is everywhere on the island, along with beautiful pink and white flowering laurel, also considered a noxious weed on the island, but not quite as potentially harmful.

Blue Micromoon

Here is the rising of the Blue Micromoon of May, which is slightly smaller AND a rare second full moon of the month. Apparently, all weird moons are signs of health doom for me, so I should really pay more attention to them (see many blog posts where weird supermoons coincide with unexpected trips to the hospital.) Should have paid attention to that horoscope!

Anyway, one thing I did get to do during the residency besides writing a new fox poem was look over my manuscript, and you know what? I had the strong feeling that, at this point, I could make it different, but I could not make it better. I definitely had the feeling it was time to send that manuscript out and start on a new project at last.

Mountain (I think Rainier?) from San Juan Island lookout

And what about you? You say your week was drama-free? Well, enjoy it while you can. The summer is coming with all of its accompanying pleasures and risks (wildfire season, anyone?) We’re supposed to plan for summer by 1. getting together your reading list for summer, 2. maybe planning a big trip, 3. preparing for ever-increasing food prices by starting your own organic farm. As a writer, do you find you write more or less in summer? I was looking back and seeing patterns, that I do not write as much in the summer as I do in fall or spring. Part of this might be because the heat and MS do not mix, and I tend to have a lot more fatigue and neurological symptoms in summer. But I am committed to sending out the old manuscript so I can work on some new work. The kit foxes – a sign of new life? And another first – though the rabbits have not returned since being wiped off all the San Juan islands a few years ago by a contagious plague – I saw quail here which I never have before.

Green Herons and Goslings, AI Lit Mag Scandals, Planning for Writing Residencies

Green Heron (!!)

Green Herons and Goslings

It was a wonderful week for bird watching – we saw goslings, ducklings, Great Blue Herons, a Green Heron (much rarer!), more Goldfinches. We had a couple of perfect sunny days to see flowers blooming – roses, peonies, clematis, azaleas, even lavender in some places already.

The Pacific Northwest, and specifically, Seattle is doomed, say some, with their new millionaire tax. Yes, why would anyone want to live here? I mean, there’s no state income tax for anyone but millionaires but… a millionaire tax? I’m out! Just kidding.

Me in Kirkland with roses and Lake Washington

Planning for a Writer’s Residency

I’m planning for a writer’s residency and thinking about what makes for a successful residency – crunchy snacks? comfortable pants and shoes? Inspiring reading material? A set of goals? I want to work on my book that I’m still sending out and write some new work – either essays or flash or poems. I haven’t felt very creative the last few months for some reason.

So I’m hoping this time away will give me some new perspectives, some time away from social media, television, and the routine.

This pair of barn swallows is gossiping about AI writers

AI Lit Mag Scandals

This pair of barn swallows is gossiping about the latest AI lit mag scandal – that a very prestigious fiction contest at Granta was won by an AI story possibly written by an AI company. The prize came with some pretty good money attached so the human beings who were rejected are pretty steamed, understandably.
Then there’s other scuttlebutt: if AI writing can only be judged by AI tools, um, isn’t there a snake biting its own tail or something? Is the author even a real person or just some AI collective hoping to scam the system? If the writing was boring and rote, is that what the literary community prize system rewards? Is this the end of human writing??

Okay, probably not. But it does point out that now we literary writers – basically making a couple of dollars a year – are now competing not just with human writers, but with AI. I mean, can’t they just leave us alone?

Okay, wishing you all a good week, with very little scandal, a lot of late spring moments of wonder, and time to write and be inspired.

Personality and Poetry, Hummingbirds and Goldfinches and Butterflies, Surviving Root Canals, and Melancholy Seasons

Admiral Butterfly

Personality and Poetry

Hello my friends! I survived my Novocain-less root canal thanks to some serious drugs that knocked me out for a day or two this week. Later in the week we had our poetry group meeting, and one of the things we talked about was personality types, and I was surprised to find many of the group had very different personality types than me. Do you think that personality type affects our poetry, or what kind of poet we become? If I’m achievement-oriented and extroverted, that already makes me a little different than a lot of poets. I told the group I probably would have stayed in corporate life—or followed my original plan of becoming a doctor—if my health hadn’t interfered at various points in my life. My health has necessitated a dampening of my natural ambition and love of social activity, no time more than during the pandemic in the last few years. But a lot of writers were required to spend a lot of time indoors because of health troubles—maybe even a majority of them? Maybe we become artists and writers because our energies have been bent into a different shape than “normal” people, because of lots of time spent alone having to entertain ourselves. Fate shapes us in ways we can’t really anticipate—like marrying a certain person or being born into a certain family shapes us in ways we can’t anticipate. Money also exerts more pressure than we like to admit—being born without it certainly places barriers in the way to art, and being born with it makes it easier to go to a top university or not spend hours on the corporate ladder if we don’t feel like it.

Anyway, just something I’m thinking about. Also, the first butterfly sighting of the season!

Rufous at Fuchsia

Songbirds, Sorrow, Springtime

It is spring but it has felt more like winter this week, with highs in the early fifties and lots of rain and wind. And maybe it’s the root canal talking, but I’ve struggled with feeling a little more melancholy lately too. Have the little things in life felt a little harder lately for you? It’s not just the relentless bad news or worry for my family members—or I can’t say it’s just those things.

I tend to take pictures of beautiful birds and flowers because I want to remember the things in life that make life joyful, to appreciate the small things. It’s why I garden, too, though I’m not a natural gardener by any means. I generally am in good spirits in the spring—it’s my birthday season, and a lot of happy moments have happened in the spring for me. But this spring has felt a little different. Melancholy, sorrow, even depression aren’t necessarily things to be squashed down, ignored, or fixed—different seasons of life are going to involve more of those feelings than others. Maybe I’m in one of those seasons now. Things aren’t going easily, I haven’t had a ton of good news to share, I’m struggling. I worry about those in my life who are going through hard times. I worry about finances. (With “The Economist” announcing “Employment Apocalypse!” on its front cover, and paying $6 a gallon for gas, who wouldn’t be?) And although I’m generally an upbeat person (I think,) I can say that the weight of the world—I’m feeling it. Philosophers like Kafka and Kierkegaard bring me more solace in these seasons than some more upbeat personalities. Yes, friends, natural beauty, even a small thing like a bouquet of peonies or a peach shortcake can bring a day a moment of joy.

I promised a review of Juliana Spahr’s Ars Poetica, which, as the title promises, is a lot of poems about poetry—kind of a slim volume, not that many poems, and an unexpected large chunk of prose in the middle, talking about attending antifascist rallies where violence breaks out, being threatened by the ex of a friend with gun violence at her workplace and consequently going to the shooting range and thinking about a bulletproof vest—probably the most interesting part of the book. Juliana is seven years older than me but still in my age group (Gen X), started blogging and such around the same time I did, lived a large part of her life in Ohio (which I also did), and she’s a feminist who struggles with what that means. She also has some privileges—a lot of famous writer friends and a steady paying fancy academic job—that I don’t have, which she makes pretty clear in her acknowledgements, all ten pages of them (!). Is it worth reading? Probably. Is the best book of poetry I read in the last year? Absolutely not. (I would give it to Martha Silano’s Terminal Surreal, such a searing book about dying of ALS, or Lesley Wheeler’s Mycocosmic, such an intensely intelligent meditation on mushrooms and death. I think the people that choose the Pulitzer Prize are probably picking friends from their own cohort of academics, not reading too far outside their comfort zones, and boy, do they love poems about poetry. (Remember Diane Seuss’ frank: sonnets also had a lot of poetry talk, though her style is pretty different than Spahr’s.) I absolutely adored Marie Howe’s Pulitzer winning New and Selected Poems, which had a totally different flavor, which won the year before, so I guess it just varies by year. If I was a judge, I would have probably fought for a different book, but no one has asked me yet, LOL.

In the meantime, I have a residency coming up where hopefully I can get some of my writing enthusiasm and magic back. What do you consider important residency packing? Sunscreen? Inspiring reading material? Special pens? Snacks? Comfy clothing? Leave me your tips in the comments!

Wishing you a great spring week.

A Book Launch at Vermillion, a Desert Rat Poem in Assaracus, Spring Bird Appearances, The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

Rufous male facing in flight

A Week for Poetry: Book Launches and Pulitzer Prizes

This week saw my friend Catherine Broadwall launch her book Aftermath at the downtown gallery/bar Vermillion, the announcement of the Pulitzer Prizes, a new poem in the lit mag Assaracus, and the return of some favorite birds, like the Black-Headed Grosbeak and the Rufous Hummingbird.

Also, the Iran war continues and a hantavirus scare from a cruise ship. Plus, the Supreme Court continues to abuse the “shadow docket” in order to support an evil, racist regime. Is this all discouraging and apocalyptic? It is.

Catherine Broadwall at her book launch, with me and poet Erika Wright at Vermillion.

Catherine’s Book Launch of Aftermath at Vermillion

On Tuesday night Girl Noise Press (a local feminist press) launched Catherine Broadwall’s book of poetry, Aftermath, and I was one of the opening readers. Everyone did a great job, and the publisher seems really together. It was great to hear Catherine read. You should really check out her work for yourself, of course! Girl Noise Press also sells adorable collage journals with themes such as “Ina Garten” and “Gilmore Girls.” (Yes, I am still accepting birthday presents! Just kidding.) We parked by the Unicorn Bar, and it made me bizarrely nostalgic for an earlier time in my life and Capitol Hill, when I was still energetic enough to go out to bars with friends after readings. The crowds outside the bar were actually really nice, with one teen stopping me to comment that he liked “my poetry thing.” Heartwarming moments.

Charlotte poses with her copy of the issue

A Poem in Assaracus for the Desert Rats

This lovely journal from Sibling Rivalry Press celebrates Gay and Queer Poetry. I am part of it thanks to Jeff Walt and his wonderful Desert Rat Residency program for writers, which I had the pleasure of judging when it first opened its contest. We were meant to include a poem inspired by Palm Springs and the residency, and so here is a sneak peek at the poem which involves imagining Jesus and his reactions to the Palm Springs scene.

And Some Bird Photos…

No matter how bad the news gets, or how my health is (not great right now,) the birds outside my window cheer me up – and I hope they cheer you up too. This week, we have Rufous Hummingbirds, Goldfinches, Woodpeckers, and Black-Headed Grosbeaks.

The Pulitzer Prizes were announced this past week, and Julianna Spahr won for her book, Ars Poetica, which I’ve ordered and will be commenting on it here soon.