Marie Gauthier

My second reading this week, this time without the 3-ring circus of my kids, was super.  Some friends who’d never been to a poetry reading before came, so it was fun to introduce them to the experience and demonstrate that it’s not that scary after all.  And I enjoyed the mix of themes and styles that resulted by reading with Kim Rogers.  (We’re doing it again in November, this time as part of the Green Street Poetry Series in Northampton.)  AND I sold a few chapbooks, to people I don’t even know, which is new and different and wild.

But all that public contact came at a price.  Starting to feel better today, definitely didn’t catch the worst flu bug around, but being sick and still having to be the mama doesn’t leave me room for anything else at the end of the day.  Especially when the kids zero in on my weakness and cling ever more, my pint-size personal Chinese handcuffs.

With a lot of luck I’ll complete a new poem this weekend along with some books.  And maybe that will prove to be not so far out of the realms of reality as it sounds.  Rain days are good for hunkering down and getting things done and we’re experiencing a monsoon of rain this weekend — some editor of some journal once said that every time it rained he’d end up with a slush pile of rain poems for days thereafter. So I guess the key is not not writing a rain poem, but holding on to it for a while and submitting it during a heat wave, when rain will seem like nirvana.