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.

Another Month, Another Random Update...

So now it's October.  (I always feel proud when I manage at least one blog post a month.)  In lit news, I got word yesterday that one of my poems, published in an online issue earlier this year, will be featured in The Medulla Review's second print anthology -- good times! 

Before long, I'll need to start work on Melusine's first print edition -- kind of a daunting task, I must admit, since I haven't dealt with the offline printing process since my college's lit magazine, and that was not self-funded.  But it will be kind of exciting.  I'm looking forward to starting the selections at the beginning of the year -- the fun part.  The new online issue is slated for late November, which has been the pattern for the past few years.

In more monumental lit news, I was happy to hear that Tomas Transtromer got the Nobel.  Yes, he happens to be Swedish, but he's a hugely influential poet, not just in Sweden or in Europe but the world over, and has been for some time.  And the man is 80.  Now is the time.  He fully deserved it, and I think it was a good choice.

Book Review in Lines+Stars

Now that it's September, and feeling like September, with the remnants of a hurricane cooling us with a week's worth of rain, a little news:  my review of Holly Karapetkova's debut collection, Words We Might One Day Say, appears in the new issue of the D.C.-based journal Lines+Stars.  Read it if you get a chance.  I seriously enjoyed and recommend the book in question.  The rest of the issue is worth checking out, too, with the theme of "Distractions & Amusements."  Now that it's September, of course, I'm wishing I had taken more vacations this summer.  But even though we mostly "staycated" this year, we did manage to get in some distraction and amusement.  Now it's back to business.  Mostly.

July

Well, it's been a little while again, despite the resolution to post here more frequently.  (Maybe I should just stop making resolutions -- err, I mean post more often ;)

But I've been keeping busy with a bunch of stuff, some of it writing-related.  I'm finishing up the final revision draft of my chapbook and hope to send it out at the end of the week.

And then I'll probably take a hiatus from poetry for at least a few weeks, maybe a month, so I don't get that awful feeling of, oh, if only this new one could have gone in there; it's oh-so-much better than the others -- a feeling that often turns out not to be true, fortunately.  No poem seems quite as perfect as it did the first moment after it was written.  A workshop instructor once gave the wise advice that there should be a cooling-off period, at least a counting-to-10 period before sending a composition that still has that "new poem smell" off to a journal (imagery mine).  Its imperfections will become apparent enough within 24 hours.

And I answered some editorial questions on behalf of Melusine for the "Six Questions For" blog, if you want to check it out here.

Well, until next month, I guess... enjoy the rest of your summer.  It is too dang hot lately, but then winter is too dang cold.  That's the way here in the Mid-Atlantic, anyway.  At least there is September coming, and eventually another May...

New Melusine

I have once again been burning the midnight oil working on a new issue of Melusine.  (It's still Friday somewhere—specifically west of Vegas.)  Melusine 3.1, the Spring/Summer 2011 issue is up for your reading pleasure, if you're interested.  I think it turned out pretty well.

In other writing news?  Hmm.  I'm writing, indeed.  Been sending stuff out here and there, including some fiction.  Starting to polish the final draft of the chapbook manuscript, which is exciting.  Despite the heat here in D.C., I love summer, but there's at least one reason I'm looking forward to Fall this year...