Perfect Moments and Plans Gone Awry, Social Media and Promoting Poetry Now, The Jobs that AI Can’t Do, Spooky Season

Perfect Moments and Plans Gone Awry

Perfect moments—Sunset, Mt Rainier, Hot Air Balloon (from a pumpkin farm)

This photo on the left was the result of a perfect photo moment that started at one pumpkin farm (McMurtrey Farm) as I watched a distant hot air balloon draw closer. After that farm closed, we crossed the Sammamish to see the progress of the Sunflower Maze at JB Family Growers Pumpkin Farm a mile or so away, where, as we pulled in, the hot air balloon lit up in the sun with Mt. Rainier in the background. I have had some great sunset shots of Rainier at JBs, but this one is maybe my favorite.

Double rainbow at the start of the storm

But speaking of unperfect moments…I had planned to take my poetry group this weekend to a pumpkin farm, for writing and fall inspo, which was foiled by a sudden thunderstorm, but we instead managed to write and enjoy pumpkin-themed treats cooked up by Glenn and get caught up on life. We talked about the state of publishing, the job market, and our ambitions as writers. It was a good reminder to the thankful for the good things, that we can remain optimistic about changes for the good for the arts and our country even in the face of drastically reduced funding and fewer opportunities.

Social Media and Promoting Poetry

Patches the kitten in pumpkin patch, McMurtrey’s Farm

Another thing I’ve talked about with writer friends recently is how much less time we’re spending on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Sometimes the interface changes, or the ownership, or the ease of use, or the tenor of the conversations. In the beginning of social media times, I found a great writing community on all of those platforms. Now? I think it’s better for my mental health to see friends in real life or talk on the telephone (a friend who lives across country and I had a great catch-up talk this afternoon, and I am so grateful for that friendship—and that the phone is just better than Facebook or e-mail for some things). Or spending time in nature, with kittens, pumpkins, sunsets—especially as the days grow shorter, those chances to spend time outdoors become fewer and farther between. What about you?

Posing with farm kitten Mittens, McMurtrey’s

I’ve also noticed that social media’s not as good a place to promote poetry as it used to be. Do you find that to be true too? I still buy books from reviews I read on blogs (thanks to Dave Bonta’s blog roundup, I found a new poet to love in England from a review someone write—mini-review to come soon). But either all my feeds are skewed, and poetry books aren’t coming up, or they have become less useful for selling books. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

The Jobs that AI Can’t Do

Me in dahlias

Meanwhile, while AI is threatening all mankind and jobs, I’d like to point out that AI is not yet able to give us a diagnosis, give us good legal advice, help us recover from an injury (physical therapy), help us recover our mental health (regular therapy), I don’t want to buy a lipstick or a pair of shoes from AI, and I don’t want to read books written by AI. I wouldn’t want my kids taught by AI, either. Robots aren’t really that good at things that require a human touch—including fixing a hot water heater, helping a kid who’s broken their arm, or creating art.

With pumpkins, McMurtrey Farm sign

In fact, I’ll say right here that AI will never take all the jobs, as AI CEO’s keep claiming, and yes, they may cause great harm (more than any benefit) but will probably not by the end of humanity as we know it, I mean, not any greater risk than nuclear war or an asteroid hitting earth or any other number of possible calamities. (Although, I would really like mandatory implementation for Asimov’s Laws of Robotics—geeze, have these AI CEO geniuses never read Asimov? Get educated, dudes!) Also, comedy—AI can’t write jokes to save their virtual lives.

Spooky Season is Great for Poetry

Glenn and I at sunset, with pumpkins and dahlias

I’m teaching a class at the upcoming Skagit Poetry Festival, a class titled Thinning Veil and Poems inspired by the Spooky Season. I’d taught a smaller version of the class, but now I’m expanding it, and I find this season to be so inspirational—Edgar Allen Poe, sure, but I’m also featuring early poems by Sylvia Plath and Louise Gluck. Some of you may know that some consider me a writer of horror poetry—it may not be the main thing I’m known for, but I’ve done it enough to be in some anthologies.

And let’s face it, mythology and fairy tales and pop culture are full of terrific and terrifying tropes perfect for the seasonal poetry. Persephone in the underworld? Check. Cinderella and those bloody shoes? Yes. Children being tossed into the woods to die? Absolutely. In the pop culture world, shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, X-Files, Twin Peaks, and even lesser-known jewels like Reaper and People of Earth, as well as movie franchises and the tropes they’ve created, like the Final Girl.

A rare (for me) Gray Jay

Anyway, in this class I challenge you to try to write a spooky season poem of your own—you may already have written some great horror poetry and not realized it. Anyway, as the sunsets come earlier, you start to crave dishes and apples, pumpkin, and corn (corn pizza anyone? A pumpkin farm treat that we adapted at home—based on street corn. Delicious! Pumpkin creme caramel or pumpkin flan – also amazing!) You may be sleeping more, looking with trepidation each morning at the weather forecast, and digging out throw blankets and sweaters you’d put away months ago. Just remember fall is a great time for inspiration, reinvention, and retreating into a great book.

Skagit Weekend with Pumpkins, Gardens, and Amazing Light, Owls and Coyotes for Spooky Season, October Moods

Glenn and I in sunbeam at Roozengaarde

Happy October! A Trip to Skagit with Bulbs, Pumpkins, and Perfect Light

Well, another October is here! We took a trip up to the Skagit Valley and it was wonderful and gave us all the fall feels. The perfect golden light! Cute kids and cute dogs at the pumpkin farms! A gardening wonderland at Roozengaarde (giving me spring ideas—pink daffodils, pink frilled tulip bulbs—now for some digging lol!) The changing leaves on the drive up! Herons, owls and snow geese! Not to mention opening our door at night to hear coyotes yipping it up! Spooky Season indeed!

Gordon’s Farm Fox Sign

We stopped by a produce stand (and got Italian plums, which I love) and at Roozengaarde with its amazing fall dahlias and tremendous daffodil and tulip bulbs (all pink this time!) and enjoyed strolling around—it’s free this time of year, as opposed to April when there are lines of tourists, and we had a seventy-degree sunny day, also rare in April.

Down the street is the working farm, Gordon Skagit Farms, which during October, becomes an out-of-control pumpkin farm. Old farm equipment? Check. Produce from their orchards and farm? Kettle corn? Fox signs? Check, check, check. And an amazing array of pumpkins. We had a great time walking around, we saw a barn owl in the barn (I know! Its natural habitat—but still, pretty cool!) And we got armfuls of orange tulips to take home.

Migrating Snow Geese on Fir Island

Random dahlias behind a church in Skagit

October Moods

What is your mood going into October? Right now, I’m cooking pumpkin goat cheese pasta and Glenn is putting up Halloween lights (he goes all out for Halloween decor!)

Since I was sick for several days last week it was nice to get out on a really perfect fall day (not too hot, blue sky, a chance to enjoy the fall leaves and flowers before they’re all knocked out by our usual October wind/rain storm).

I also am happy to report I have a poem upcoming in Uncanny, which is a really cool magazine I had never submitted to because of its “hard sci fi” reputation. I spent September sending out work, and I’ve already had a couple of acceptances and rejections from that. October is seeming a little more productive, with me finally thinking about the next book after Fireproof, writing new work in a little but more of a playful vein instead of sticking to a theme or pattern. I’m also thinking about writing in other genres a little bit more—there’s no rule that poets can’t try other genres, and I think I like the challenge that other shapes and rules give me.

Our porch with pumpkins and zinnia

I’m also looking forward to more friend and family gatherings as the holidays are getting closer. (Remember to get your flu and covid shots—those illness levels are already going up in my area—never a fun takeaway from a gathering.) I hope to gather with friends at a local pumpkin farm, maybe getting together for a movie, and of course Halloween is always fun—we have one of those neighborhoods kids love to trick or treat in and the neighbors tend to gather and catch up that night as well. I’m picking up the house (which honestly gets more neglected in the frantic summertime) and putting up some cozy autumn decor (mostly glass pumpkins and throw blankets) but I’m not Martha Stewart. I hope that whether you celebrate Halloween, the Harvest Festival, Samhain, or any other rituals of the season, you give yourself some rest and comfort, open the door and listen to the coyotes, and check out the night sky on a clear night, maybe some apple cider or hot chocolate. Fall’s beauties are different than the spring, with its feeling of renewal, instead of moving into a season of more darkness and cold, but cozy, days ahead. It’s a good season for reading, too—I just got a couple of new books, Sophie, Standing There and Exit Party, to start after finishing The Witches of Cambridge, which was our wine and book club pick. It’s also a good time to give yourself some writing goals, like writing fifteen minutes a day before sleep, or sketching, or whatever feels creative and restorative to you. Wishing you a good spooky season!

Adventures at the Ballet and Some Over the Top Pumpkin Harvest Fairs, the Field Guide to Writing the Lyric Essay, Harvest Moons and Looking Forward

Glenn and I with pumpkins

Adventures: the Ballet and Some Over the Top Pumpkin Fairs

This week brought some adventures with it. We were given tickets to the opening night of the Pacific Northwest Ballet, three short ballets separated by long intermissions. The first was Serenade, a kind of monotonal, plotless group dance with blue costumes and blue background, with music by Tchaikovsky (Serenade for Strings in C Major, Op. 48). The second was a premiere of a pretty grating piece called Pages, with atonal repetition of terrible performance poetry, followed by equally grating sound (non-music), and the poor dancers having to wander around stage with a chair suspended over them. I started to wonder if I actually hated ballet! Then the third piece was charming: Pictures at an Exhibition was based on the original piano-solo concerto by Mussorgsky, with the dancers dressed in color block, which I believe was supposed to represent the joy of painting?

Me at Swan’s Pumpkin Farm

Then Saturday we decided to try a new pumpkin farm. We drove way out along the Snohomish River, along the beautiful Cascade mountains, past three gigantic fairs with slides and carnival tents, horse farms, and we even saw skydivers! Then, finally, Swan’s Trail [Pumpkin] Farms, which was enormous and swamped with people—and this is still October. There was an animal barn area, which didn’t seem to be well-supervised, a gigantic trampoline area, a bubble area, huge lines for cider doughnuts—and U-pick apples and corn which required a tractor ride to get to. So, we quickly decided this was definitely a place for kids, not kidless adults, went swiftly into the Country Store and bought a candle, missed the last bit of corn, got run into by a very rude but sizeable young boy. We sped the twenty-minutes back to the much-more our speed Bob’s Corn and Pumpkin Farm, where the employees are all friendly, the children adorable and angelic, plenty of Pazazz apples and new sweet corn, and we bought another pumpkin.

Pumpkins at Bob’s

Harvest Moon and Looking Forward

We wanted to explore further on Sunday but one of the pumpkin farms isn’t open ’til October 3rd and the other closed early on Sunday, so we just toured our local farms again (JB Family Growers and McMurtrey Farm), bought some kettle corn and a gourd or two and went home and made roast chicken with autumn vegetables and apples.

The Harvest Season naturally makes us think about the changing of time and seasons, what we want to learn, what we want to leave behind, what we want more of in our life.

This season I am looking forward to working more (and hopefully making a little more money to cover my expensive hobbies, like poetry and having MS,) to making more friends, to being a little more adventurous—although with the time change, we often start spending more time indoors and less time meandering around outside. Here’s to a fun and productive fall/winter season, with more reading, writing, and more time with friends around coffee and cake. (And yes, I still can’t share my good news with you yet, soon though!)

Literary Kitten Charlotte with The Field Guide to Writing the Lyric Essay

Field Guide to Writing the Lyric Essay

Very happy to say I am honored to have an essay in Field Guide to Writing the Lyric Essay, with some powerhouses, like Diane Seuss, Brian Turner, Kimiko Hahn, and also some friends (who are also powerhouses), like Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Oliver de la Paz, and Julie Marie Wade. I am looking forward to reading all the essays because the form is very interesting to me, and I like the idea that writing essays can follow the body or breath as form, that it can be experimental or traditional, that it does some things that poetry cannot do. My essay is called “When Poetry Gets Mutated: Writing Lyric Essays, Haibun, and Other Hybrids.” (Gotta represent the mutants!) Each essay also has a prompt, so it lends itself to teaching as well as just personal education. Check it out from Rose Metal Press! Also shout-out to the editors, Lee Horikashi Roripaugh and Heidi Czerwiec.

Wishing you all a good Harvest Moon Week!

Happy Fall! And How Many Pumpkin Farms, Social Week, and Good News to Come!

Kitten with Pumpkins, McMurtrey’s

How Many Pumpkin Farms

Hello and Happy Fall, everyone! It’s almost the Fall Equinox and I am here for it. How many pumpkin farms can you visit in two days? How many is too many? I don’t think there is such a thing! In the last several days we visited Bob’s Corn and Pumpkin Farm in Snohomish (from which we brought home caramel apples and fresh corn as well as yes, a pumpkin—I also recommend the frozen apple slushies, though I didn’t get one this time around) and then went the opening day of JB Family Grower’s Pumpkin Farm and Puzzle Patch, down the street from our house, where the sunflower maze wasn’t quite in bloom yet, but the corn maze was very high and we also took home a few pumpkins.

Sunflowers and Blue sky

On Sunday, we visited with my little brother and went to McMurtrey Farm, where we visited with Jana and her farm kittens (there were two, but only one was camera-cooperative) and checked out the beautiful pumpkin displays under construction, and still gorgeous sunflowers and dahlias. It was a perfect bluebird day.

Then we came home for a roast duck dinner with veggie rice pilaf and new sweet corn from Bob and the caramel apple we saved (enormous perfect apple FYI). Pretty fun! It was even more fun walking around the pumpkin field when I got good news that I can’t share yet…

Find the kitten!

Social Week with Book Group and Poetry Group

I had just been talking to a friend about how our social habits changed during the pandemic, and how I was so much less social than I used to be. Well not this week! Besides visiting with my farmer friends at the various pumpkin farms, we also had our J Bookwalter Read Between the Wines book club, where we discussed Tracy K. Smith’s Life on Mars. People were really taken by it, and I noticed this time around (I hadn’t re-read in a little while) the huge Bowie connection in the poems and listened to the songs that were referenced. I was aware of Bowie as a kid, but I think I mostly remember a couple of his later songs, but of course my main crush was Prince, who wasn’t quite as interested in space. Then the next day we had our poetry group, which was wonderful as usual and we talked about submission opportunities and shared poems and Glenn’s gluten-free red pepper and goat cheese pizza, and pumpkin cheesecake, and I ate more than my share of Witch’s Finger grapes (another seasonal favorite!), and we’re even coordinating a pumpkin farm visit and maybe movie get-together. After being so sick back in 2016-17 and then the pandemic, this feels more like my life used to be. Did I mention I have updated my resume and will be job hunting as well?

Good News to Share…Soon

Do you hate when people in the writing world tease good news they can’t share? Me too. That’s why I’m definitely not saying that I got good news that I can share soon, and I have to say that after a period of discouragement with the poetry world, it’s nice to have a little good news in a while, right?

I’ve also been writing more poems and sending out more work. That’s September’s magic—unwrapping new pens, setting up new spreadsheets, a little more motivation to keep going, especially on the days when it’s in the sixties and sunny and the hummingbirds are still busy at the last burst of September blooms. Anyway, happy Equinox and Fall to you! I encourage you to take advantage of the nice weather when you have it, because there’s really nothing better than a day with sunshine and apple trees, not too hot, seeing friends and family. It’s a good time to jump start your writing, submitting, and socializing!

Submissions, September 11, Setbacks, and the DMV

Submissions, September 11th, and the DMV

Hello friends! I hope your week was productive and full of good moments. I usually love when September arrives, but this week has been challenging, because of a couple of injuries (throwing out a rib and spraining a toe (?) which who even knew you could do that?) I’m covered in medical tape now and been sternly told to rest.

Before the injuries I had a visit to the DMV for one of the updated driver’s licenses, which require more than a normal share of paperwork—I brought a passport, my birth certificate, my wedding certificate (because my legal name is not my birth name, ugh), several other documents, but didn’t have my tax return, a mortgage payment or a bill that proves I live where I live. Ridiculous? Absolutely. Did I have a panic attack and never want to return to the DMV again? That’s right. I updated my driver’s license without the new whatever proving I’m who I say I am, just a regular one, and left thinking about how some of our government’s forcing of security over freedom really impacts each of us in weird ways. Trump wants us to have to bring all those documents for women just to vote, FYI. Another reason to vote Republicans out in the midterms!

One of my injuries I got because I have been hiking around local farms, and I wore skimpy shoes to a big farm full of loose gravel in the rain, and that’s how I got hurt. Watch the loose wet gravel, kids! Otherwise you, like me, will spend four hours in an urgent care getting xrays because you can’t move your toes.

Submissions this September Have Been Frustrating…

If you, like me, have been saving up poems to send out in September when lit mags tend to open, albeit briefly (onto that in a second), you may have noticed a frustrating trend: the day the magazine opens for submissions, it hits its whatever cap on Submittable—and closes the same day. I spent two hours this week trying to submit but finding every place that advertised being open actually closed because of this “cap.” A terrible way to run a lit mag, and an institutionalized way of making writers feel powerless and worthless—and believe me, we already feel that way without lit mags charging $5 to reject us after six months if we are lucky enough to get in the three-hour window (East Coast time, of course). I almost gave up submitting poetry for good. I know I get discouraged with the poetry world, the lack of acclaim, money, respect, etc.—but this new hurdle is so rotten for any working person, caregiver, or West Coast person, honestly, I thought I needed to raise the issue.

The Negative Repercussions of September 11 on Our Country

This is a post that I put up on Facebook.

Next Week Will Be Brighter (Probably)