This Year's Resolution

Change everything.
That's all.
No, I don't mean that literally.
Of course.
I mean it, though.

New Melusine...

... is out.  And I'm posting about it absolutely everywhere, including here.  And then I'm going to get some sleep, I hope, after eating a salad and maybe some ice cream.

Update:  I was apparently so tired last night that I forgot to actually include the link in question.  It's here.

December

It's been a really tough couple of weeks, but one of a handful of bright moments came when I received two literary goodie-packages in the same day:  the new issue of Tiger's Eye with three of my poems in it, and The Medulla Review anthology featuring one of my poems.

I feel a strong need to write something in the way of poetry to help me work through some really sad recent news, and I did start on a piece last week, but I know you can't rush these things.  In the meantime, I'm working on the new issue of Melusine, hoping to launch it by Sunday night.  This one has a photo essay and some fun cover art by a promising new photographer, so I'm looking forward to seeing it take shape soon.

Review of Judith Skillman's The White Cypress

My review of Judith Skillman's new collection has been published in The Iowa Review's blog -- very happy to be featured there, and I've become quite a fan of Skillman's work over her last few collections, so it was a pleasure to be able to delve into the particularly rich material she covers in this one.

And that's about all the news for today.  Late autumn still has me feeling a little drowsy and a little taciturn.  I think some humans still have a gene for some vestigial form of the hibernation instinct.  If I were a scientist instead of a poet, I would check into that hypothesis.  But the very fact that I would posit it is probably sufficient proof that I am not a scientist.

In the Book, So to Speak

Daylight Savings Time hasn't even ended yet and there are still plenty of green leaves on the trees, but I'm already feeling that late autumn melancholy.  Maybe it was the freak October snowstorm last week, which was just an annoyance for me in that it reminded me winter's going to insist on coming around again this year, but it knocked out my parents' power up in Pennsylvania for almost a week, which was pretty scary.

And maybe I drank a few too many jack-and-cokes last night because I was feeling stressed about various non-writing-related things that just haven't been going so well lately.  But at least on the writing front, life has been kind lately.  It's good to have at least one area of life going one's way at a time.  At the least.  More would be OK, too.

So here's my entry in the Poets & Writers directory:  http://www.pw.org/content/janelle_kihlstrom

Blue Trajectory (My Chapbook) is Now Available...

So October has been a good month, lit-wise.  I now have some really exciting news to share.  My chapbook, Blue Trajectory, is, as of today, available from Dancing Girl Press and can be purchased here.

I can't wait to see my copies.  Dancing Girl's editor, Kristy Bowen, did such a beautiful job with the cover.  I'm really proud of how it looks, and I hope anyone who checks it out will enjoy what's inside.  I think the poems sort of cohere; for the most part, they feel like they belong together.  Some of them started out as part of another chapbook project with a slightly different theme, but they ended up following a different, well, trajectory, and I'm happy with where they ended up.

Two Posts In One Week

This one is just a short note about something I was excited to learn, that a book review I wrote will be appearing in The Iowa Review's online series.  I am excited because it's a great journal and because, at the risk of sounding mercenary, as I'm not exactly flush with cash, the compensation they offer is welcome.  But I'll be even more honest and admit it's really more the idea of being compensated for a piece of literary writing than the check itself.  It just doesn't happen too often these days, and I can completely understand why.  We can't afford to pay at Melusine.  No independently funded small journals or presses can.  There was a time, oh so long ago, when all creative writers were paid for their words, and those times have been fading faster and faster.  I'm not really here to lament that fact.  As long as there are day jobs or university positions and writers' retreats/workshops/conferences or coffee shops, writers who want to write and need to write will find a way to write and earn a living as well — as long as there are people who read, even if those people are solely other writers.  But the people who read do have to continue to exist, in order for the writers to continue writing.  Long may they.  We, that is.