86º~ clear skies, nothing but sun and the tiniest hint of a breeze, heat, heat, heat, no rain in sight

In the midst of our cat crisis, it turns out that reading journals is a good fit.  I tried reading a few complete collections, but my mind wandered or it was time to give another dose of medication or I just got tired.  Being able to dip in and out of a journal, to absorb one poem and let it sit for a bit, has been great.

This morning, I finished Issue Four of Grist, a journal that was kind enough to publish me a few years ago, and is rapidly becoming one of my favorites.  This is an annual journal and meaty, weighing in at right around 200 pages.  A lot of bang for the buck.

While I did try on the short fiction and essays, I wasn’t as good about finishing each one.  (Sometimes I wonder if poetry is killing my ability to read sustained prose.)  I was, however, drawn to “Bloody Feet,” a brief essay by Ira Sukrungruang about connecting with his ancestral homeland of Thailand by becoming a Buddhist monk there for a month.  The piece kept my attention because Sukrungruang discussed landscape and how we often flit about on its surface.  Only after having to walk barefoot in the streets of Chiang Mai, Thailand, did he really begin to understand his connection to the country where his parents were born.  By the end of the essay, I was dreaming up a scheme to walk some miles in Black Hawk County, Iowa, the next chance I get.  And to walk those miles with the careful attention of spiritual practice.  Probably, I will wear shoes.

As for the poetry, well, that’s where I fell in love again and again.

First, Matthew Nienow’s “After the Earthquake, the Great Operatic Singer Tests His Voice” provides a persona poem from the SF earthquake of 1906.  One passage:  “Screams punctuate / the dawn.  How quickly life becomes a cinematic / undertaking– / clipped reels stuttering…”

Hats off to the editors for finding a way to print several poems with lines too long for portrait alignment.  So, as I turned the page, I found a poem printed in landscape and simply turned the book 90º to read it.  As someone whose lines can get a bit lengthy, I applaud the effort to hold true to the poet’s vision without shrinking the font or wrapping the lines.  John Anderson’s “Imminent Domain” is one such poem.  The lines are amazing exercises in merging form and content.

Jason Schossler’s “Letter to Daniel LaRusso, Karate Kid” uses popular culture to shine a light on class issues in America and does it well.  Schossler has three poems in the issue. The other two use pop culture icons as well, for those who gravitate in that direction.

Another highlight is James May’s persona poem “Esteesee,” which begins “I have also mistaken strong desire / for talent….”  Oh, my, one of my deepest fears about my own work!

“Trespassing in my Childhood Home” by Johnathon Williams makes my heart beat in kinship with the speaker.  In the pasture, “Wrecked cars bleed rust / into iron-sick earth” and the once fertile land bears “a scrap yard no harvest.”

Chelsea Rathburn’s “Small Deaths” draws images of that “terrible beauty” of death and the body, in this case, the body of a young possum and later of a baby bird in formaldehyde.  Shivers throughout.

For fans of landscape lyrics, Adam Clay provides “Nocturne for a Flock of January Crows.”  One  passage:  “A starting point always distracts // the vision in such a way that the weather / has changed, and we are suddenly dressed poorly // for the occasion.”  (There’s also a transcript of an email exchange between Adam Clay and Timothy Donnelly in this issue that shouldn’t be missed.)

The issue ends with several poems by Adonis, translated by Khaled Mattawa.  Three of the four poems are brief and delicate, but packed with a super charge.  The fourth is a longer meditation, no less powerful.

This is just a glimpse at what the journal has to offer; there’s much more than I can mention here.

For full disclosure, several of these poets are my friends or they’ve published me in their journals.  Several of them are not known to me beyond the page. 

97º ~ sun setting, low humidity keeping us all somewhat sane, a good wind keeping life bearable out there, have resorted to watering the lawn

Today has been quite a roller coaster dealing with the sick cats, and while I promise not to make this a “tending for your sick cat” blog, I think it is important to acknowledge that we don’t write/work in a bubble. 

After a rough morning, I sat down on the couch with Jeannine Hall Gailey’s new book, She Returns to the Floating World.  While I only read two of the five sections, I can already recommend this book without hesitation, as we say when writing student recommendation letters.  As I read through some of Jeannine’s haibun, I paid special attention to her craft, given that I’ve recently written three and the form is new to me.  By chance, the poem exchange I mentioned several posts ago included the three haibun.  I received my friend’s comments on my poems during the height of the cat crisis and the thoughtful responses have been lingering in the back of my mind, even while I was too exhausted to work on the poems.  Today, as I read Jeannine’s book, I was called to get up off the couch and go back to my computer and work on revisions.  It is not often that I feel this calling, a force almost outside of myself propelling me to the desk, perhaps because I keep a more regular schedule, so there’s no reason to be called.  Regardless, I’m in Jeannine’s debt because her poems lit a fire under my butt and I put it back in the chair.

Despite developing a fierce headache (lack of sleep, a bit of dehydration) as I worked, I kept going as long as the energy remained.  Between my friend’s solid comments and my inspiration, I feel like I’ve made good progress on all three poems.  WAHOOOOOOOOOOOO! 

Finally, though, I had to succumb to the headache and the exhaustion and I went back to the couch for a nap.  I don’t sleep well during the day, but I did close my eyes and rest in a quiet room for an hour or so. Toward the end of the hour, my brain began to mull over a title for this chapbook I’m working on.  The poems are newly created fairy, haunting, cautionary tales about a girl from the Midwest.  There is a bit of Grimm reference, but it doesn’t overwhelm the book.  I want to use the word “Tales” in the title, but I’m sorting through.  In the meantime, I read Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s Lucky Fish just before the crisis began, and in “The Soils I have Eaten,” she references a variety of state soils.  Imagine my shock to discover that there are state soils out there.  Me, a dirt girl through and through!  Sure enough, Iowa has one: The Tama Series.  After reading up on it, I bookmarked a couple of websites with information and let the words sink into the mush of my disordered brain.  Today, all of that might have come to fruition.  At the end of my not-napping, but-resting time, I wrote this down:

Black Hawk County Nursery Tales

I have no idea if this will stick, but it feels like a step in the right direction.  So, thanks to Aimee and Jeannine for their beautiful books, which inspired me today.

from creativecommons.org

87º ~ back to our regularly scheduled heat wave, with highs close enough to 100º to count, no rain in sight, grass starting to show signs of stress, crinkly & browning

This is not a poetry post, but a post to explain my absence this week. 

As the week began, we learned that Lou-Lou (3 years old, black & white kitty) had a high fever, accelerated heart rate, and anemia.  (She had been growing more lethargic with a lessened appetite each day over the course of two – three weeks.)  Blood tests showed some infection had “shredded” all of her mature red blood cells.  The good news: her blood does contain immature red blood cells, which means her bone marrow is working correctly.  She is currently on a steroid and an antibiotic to try to kill the infection and allow her system to rebuild its stores of mature red blood cells.  We test her blood again next week to see if the cells are maturing and thriving.

In the midst of this, as we waited for results for Lou-Lou, I thought Libby (7 years old, tabby kitty) was breathing funny.  I told myself I was being paranoid.  Then, when it didn’t go away in 12 hours or so, I took her to the vet.  She was in heart failure and will always be in heart failure for the rest of her life.  She has hydropthropic cardiomyopathy, a genetic disorder that causes some parts of the heart to continue to grow muscle when it shouldn’t.  I was able to see her heart on an ultrasound, and the vet showed me the part that was enlarged to twice the normal size.  In addition, one wall of her heart is barely contracting at all because it is so thick.  This is something that was happening her whole life.  On Tuesday night, her heart could no longer keep up and fluids built up on her heart and lungs, causing the breathing difficulty.  The vet put her on Lasix & a heart regulating med and sent her to an overnight clinic to stay in an oxygen cage until the meds could get some of the fluid off her heart and lungs.  The long and the short of it is that she may only have about a year left with us and she’ll need to be on meds for that time.  She is responding well to the meds, so we are hopeful.

According to multiple vets, nothing we did caused any of this, and with Libby, there was nothing we could have done to prevent it.  With Lou-Lou, we might have caught the infection earlier, but we did catch it in time, we hope. 

Today, I’ve caught up on my sleep and as both cats appear to be stable for the moment, I’m getting back to a sense of normal, trying to come to terms with our new reality.  My wise mother reminded me that we always knew that we would outlive our pets, and that is true.  Also, we give them lots of love and attention every day and they live a good quality of life here in the Kangaroo house.

I confess, I’m a bit angry with the universe/god/creator/etc. at the moment, as my precious kitties are true innocents, well Libby is anyway…Lou-Lou does have a bit of the trouble-maker in her, but she still doesn’t deserve this! 

83º ~ what’s this? not 95º by noon? storm clouds here and there, a good wind knocking down the trash cans, maybe, maybe a bit of rain to come

It’s been a tough couple of days, Dear Reader.  We have a really sick kitty and are waiting to hear back from the vet with a diagnosis.  We do not handle this kind of waiting well here at the house of the Kangaroo.  C. and I are both soft-hearted to the point of weakness.

Alas, the robin’s nest is empty.  One fledgling has been spotted learning to fly in the back yard, hopping around after whichever adult is still tending it.  It’s a mad squawker.

Well, now that I’ve violated my poetry-only rule not once but twice, let’s get down to it.  My hours at the desk have been spent in two ways this morning.

1.  I read through and made initial notes on a set of poems from a good friend.  We exchanged drafts yesterday.  Ah, the luxury of summer, to have the time to recreate the camaraderie and support of a workshop without all the BS.  Reading this person’s work always makes me want to write, and that’s a wonderful bonus!

2.  I prepared a query to send to a publisher for In a World Made of Such Weather as This. 

desk sprawl

I have a bad habit, Dear Reader, of printing information off the computer or receiving it in the mail and then setting it aside “to do later.”  The result of this is a sloppy pile of bills, letters, books received, calls for submissions, rejections, &etc. all tilting and slipping beneath my printer (which is raised up on a shelf meant for kitchen cabinets so that this sprawl doesn’t take over the entire surface of the desk).  Today, I grabbed the stack and started at the top.  I refused to allow myself to set anything aside.

About three tasks down, I came to the folder for this particular press and a new set of submission guidelines that I’d printed out, which included detailed instructions about what the editors wanted to see in the query: a letter explaining the book, a current CV, and a writing sample.  I must admit that when I began the task, I thought it would be a snap.  I suppose I thought this because submitting to contests is so easy: manuscript, check, SASE, done.

Two hours later, I saw the error of my supposition.  How to summarize this book in one paragraph in a query letter.  I know, I know, this is one of the top five things you are supposed to do when you think the book is ready to be published.  I’ve read this on countless blogs and sites:  write a one-paragraph narrative about the book’s subject and themes.  But it is so much simpler to just print the manuscript out and shove it in an envelope!

Now, I’m so glad that I did this.  It really helped me clarify my own thinking about the book, and when I was selecting the sample pages to include with the letter, I kept checking them against the paragraph.  I opened the complete file of the book and then scrolled through each poem, highlighting the ones I thought would make a good sample.  As I did this, I asked: Is my description honest and accurate?  Do I really understand my own motivation for ordering the book the way I did?  Do these poems matter?  Do they offer music, image, and wisdom?  Is reading this book worth the precious time out of someone’s life?

While I received yet another no-go yesterday, the process today was a huge confidence builder.  It helped me reconnect with the book and the poems.  It gave me a little bit of faith in the long process at work here.  So be it.

91º on our way up to 100º, though we’re supposed to drop down to highs of 90 or so by mid-week, bright, bright sun, a good breeze, and branching fledglings

Our baby robins are fledglings!  There are three chicks.  One has made its way out onto a branch quite far from the nest; one hops out of the nest and back in; the third is still nest-bound.  I’ve tried to get some pictures, but the quality is poor, although I’ll share the best of them.  This busy day in the tree is providing a bit of distraction to the poetry work going on (explained below).

Oldest fledgling, wandering a bit far from the nest

Two chicks left in the nest

 I’m not patient enough to learn to use a quality camera, but on days like this, I wish I were!

I’ve been away from the blog for a bit, helping to celebrate the marriage of two close friends and then having them as house guests.  A true joy.

Now, I’m settling back into my routine.  I’ve been fussing over the old manuscript, In a World Made of Such Weather as This, as I received the no-go news from two presses over the past week.  As most of you know, there was a massive reorganization of this manuscript last fall, and that reorganized version is still out at ten presses, so all my fussing could be for naught.  I’m good with that.  Knowing that if the book is picked up at one of those ten presses I’ll be overjoyed, but also knowing that maybe there is something about the order that is holding the book back, I read it through cover to cover again today with an eye to organization.

The result, I added four poems that fit the themes and don’t fit where I’m going now.  I titled my sections as a way to clarify why I have sections and as a way to think about the order.  Finally, I switched section one and section two around and might have moved one poem out of each established group.  I also switched the order of a few poems within section one. 

In other words, I fussed.

Of course, I still have the old order saved on my computer, so if I regret these decisions tomorrow, no harm no foul.

Perhaps I just needed to do something with this angsty state of mind.

Interestingly, a few days before I got the call from Anhinga about Blood Almanac, I’d pretty much gutted it and reorganized. Will history repeat?

My patience appears to be lacking in book publishing as well as in learning photography.

Finally, in the time it took me to write this post, that second chick abandoned the nest altogether, although it is stationed quite near, in a secure nook.  I’m pretty sure I can see the first one, out there on the thin limb, growing as I type.  This world is AMAZING!!!

81º ~ a bit of a reprieve for the next few days with highs in the low 90s and a slight chance for some rain, predictions that we will rise back to the upper 90s by early next week, all here is sun washed and bleaching ~ the feeding frenzy continues at the nest, climbed the desk to see what could be seen, alas, the thing is titled outward, grow baby birds, grow, so I can see you

Oh Happy Day!  A new draft!  Wahoo!  I can’t help it; I still get a lovely thrill when I’ve written a draft, an upsurge in energy and possibly a brief release of endorphins.

Without pushing it, I’ve had the idea of a few more fairy/cautionary/haunting tales in the back of my mind for the past few days.  Somehow, everything just clicked from the get go today.  Wish I could bottle that magic!

I opened the journal and took a quick look at my list of Midwestern icons and when I hit the word “hawk,” the line was already forming.  I flipped as quickly as I could to a fresh page and wrote:

Once there was a girl who knew the hawk’s eye was always on her…

The rest unfolded from there, but two curious things happened.

1) I felt the need to go directly to the computer rather than drafting more of the poem by hand.  That’s new for me.  I remember when the lovely Mary Angelino read at the Arkansas Literary Festival.  Her MFA is newly minted and she’s a bit younger than me, but I was still surprised when Mary mentioned that she drafts all of her work on the computer, no handwriting at all.  It hadn’t even dawned on me, I suppose, that this was a way of writing.  Still, I’ll take it any way it comes. 

2) My girl in this poem does not come out on top, she is not empowered by the end of the poem and she has not made her own choices.  Tied in with this is the fact that the hawk is the ‘bad guy’ if you will, and I LOVE hawks; they are my second favorite kind of bird.  (FYI:  1 = great blue heron, 2 = Cooper’s hawks b/c they are the species I grew up observing most in my part of Iowa, but I really love all hawks)  Normally, in these tales I’ve been telling, the elements of the land & air are the ‘good guys’ who aid the girl in discovering her true nature, even if that includes some violence, and the adults, usually fathers but some of the mothers too, try to make the girl conform to a ‘normal’ way of Midwestern life.  Hmmmmmm… a new direction.  And I’m glad for it, since I’ve looked at the poems as a chapbook and don’t want them to get boring or all run together.

For now, the poem is titled “Cautionary Tale of Girls and Birds of Prey,” but I’m not settled on that.

An immature Cooper’s Hawk, courtesy of Creative Commons

83º ~ reaching for 98º today, then a bit of a drop off into the low 90s for the rest of the week, whew, lots and lots of feeding activity going on in the robin’s nest, no rain in the forecast for the next four days at least

Today, with great delight, I received the four pieces of art that I purchased from Matt Kish, who created one piece of art (often pen and marker drawings on found paper) for every page of Moby Dick.  Matt’s website contains all of the art from this project and several others.  This fall, Tin House will release all of the drawings in a book, and I cannot wait to buy that book.  As I’ve said before, I’ve never been able to finish the novel, but perhaps, with Matt’s book in hand, I’ll give it another go.

Here’s one of the four pieces that arrived on my doorstep today.

Page 428 : In 1778, a fine ship, the Amelia, fitted out for the express purpose, and at the sole charge of the vigorous Enderbys, boldly rounded Cape Horn, and was the first among the nations to lower a whale-boat of any sort in the great South Sea.

Before the mail arrived, I spent my desk time today working on submissions.  I’ve had June 1st on my radar because that’s when Barn Owl Review opens their reading period. In the past, journals with summer reading periods have been difficult for me because I haven’t been able to keep up with writing new poems during the school year.  I am so happy to say that I had five poems ready to send out, poems that haven’t been sent out before this, or were only sent out a few weeks ago.  Thanks to yesterday’s big time revision work, submitting today was a piece of cake!

With the one journal firmly in mind, I did glance through the lists of journals reading this summer to see if anything else clicked.  Sure enough, I found three others that opened on June 1st as well, or were reading year round and enough time had passed since my last attempt for me to try again.

After submitting, I went to check the mail, where I found the above mentioned art.  For anyone who thinks the acceptances just keep piling up, alas, there was a rejection envelope as well.  And so it goes….  I must admit that the art helped soften the blow.  Thanks, Matt!