Here in Upstate New York, spring has been a particularly wild, unsatisfying ride. Sun and warmth just hasn’t been able to get its shit together. According to local weather folks, we’ve had more than 2X the normal amount of rain in May and only six or seven sunny days for the entire month.
The rain, which was accompanied by cold, cold temps, is part of a larger pattern: As of the writing of this post, we’ve had 29 rainy (or snowy) weekends in a row. Even as I write this post (the weekend of May 31-June 1), I’m still wearing fleece and fuzzy slippers. I’m still wrapped in a blanket.
As a lover of summer weather and summer weather only, I’ve been struggling. My seasonal dark mood, which typically starts in November and goes through March, extended an extra two months. It’s been really difficult. Thankfully, things still turned green and bloomed, and I got outside to run a few times every week.
The weather compounded my rage about all the things. Democracy. Climate. War. White supremacy. Patriarchy. I’m always grateful when writers and artists give me something that rallies me. Recently, it’s been words from Joanna Penn Cooper and a song from Taylor Swift.
Like many of you, I subscribe to and read lots of Substacks. Of course, there’s an equal number of Substack subscriptions I fail to read, LOL. Anyhoooo, I get a little something out of most posts in those subscriptions, and once in a while, I read one that really moves me. On Pleasure and Being Fearsome, an essay published by Cooper in her Muse With JPC Substack, is one of those.
Cooper and I share a fascination with documentaries about artists (and writers and musicians, etc.). Aside from having an insatiable curiosity about the lives of other creatives, I wasn’t entirely sure what was so alluring about them for me. Cooper has an idea about that. She says,
“I enjoy watching documentaries about artists making their work because — in addition to the ASMR quality they can take on — there’s a certain stubborn perversity that leads a person to devote her life to art. Or maybe I mean perverse stubbornness.”
YES. 100%. Artists’ obsessions with their work, the sacrifices that accompany it, and the pleasures it delivers are not only inspiring; they’re also subversive. At least a tiny bit. And sometimes a lot more than that. Women (and mothers) are among the groups of people for whom this is especially true. Cooper writes,
“Denial of women’s pleasure (and of the pleasure of the arts, play, and learning for its own sake) are tightly bound up with maintaining white supremacist, patriarchal power. Why? Because it is uncontainable. Unmanageable. Because such pleasure runs counter to the idea of self-abnegation and staying in your lane. Of being a good worker (and/or unpaid laborer, for many women).”
And I do want to be uncontainable and unmanageable. Even if only in my art and writing. Even if only in pursuit of my art and writing.
It’s not lost on me that this consideration of pleasure coincides with the difficulties of this particular season. Maybe I’ve been looking for a bright spot. Maybe I’ve been seeking reasons to keep going. Regardless, in the type of spring we’ve had (and the world as it is and the state of my poetry manuscript as it is — more on that later), finding any pleasure at all can feel impossible. It can also feel selfish. Cooper’s essay has an answer for that, too:
“So, being in the middle of the Venn diagram of woman, mother, artist— it’s a recipe for people to remind you how selfish you are to pursue your strange, playful, think-y impulses that are not of any immediate ‘service.’ … How do we feel our way? How do we trust our pleasure and inner knowing, and also trust that this is part of what we have to offer? By being perversely stubborn, even if it just means writing poems while the baby sleeps, writing poem lines in your head while you walk with the baby, or what have you. Claiming our own pleasure in art and in our lives is fierce and fearsome.”
“Fierce” and “fearsome” offer the perfect segue to the Taylor Swift component of how I’m channeling my rage this spring. Ever since hearing “Look What You Made Me Do” in the opening scene of the penultimate episode of The Handmaid’s Tale series, I’ve had it on repeat. I’ve been loud about it. Very loud. (Sorry not sorry!)
I’ve declared it my twisted summer anthem of 2025. Or my anthem of twisted summer. Or the summer of twisted me. Let it be a season of retribution. A season of reclamation. Let it be a season of taking back our power. A season of kingdoms crumbling and artists rising.
Here are the lyrics I’m currently shouting (in addition to the chorus):
But I got smarter, I got harder in the nick of time
Honey, I rose up from the dead, I do it all the time …… The world moves on, another day another drama, drama
But not for me, not for me, all I think about is karma
And then the world moves on, but one thing’s for sure
Maybe I got mine, but you’ll all get yours
I’m happy to say I’ve also reached the defiance stage in what has been a season (or seasons) of rejection for my poetry manuscript. Over the last three years or so, my Gertie manuscript has been rejected dozens of times, while also receiving a handful of finalist nods.
The most recent rejection — which came with a lovely note from the editor about making the final round of consideration — arrived in early May, a couple days after I returned from a writing retreat at Mass MoCA. The press that had it was not only one of my dream presses. It was also the last one to respond from a big submission push I did last spring and summer. And since I had paused submitting and revising after that, it meant that Gertie was no longer a contender for any reading period or contest anywhere.
It also meant that if Gertie was to get published, I’d need to jump back into the whole process, which I wasn’t sure I wanted to do. I spent some time entertaining the fear that the last and latest rejection signaled that book publishing wasn’t ever going to be for me.
I indulged the idea that there simply wasn’t a place in the world for my work, but I took lots of deep breaths, gave myself a good talking to, and consulted my writing community. And … wait for it… 🎵
I got smarter, I got harder in the nick of time
Honey, I rose up from the dead, I do it all the time …
Defiance has always been one of my strengths, and I plan to keep fighting for Gertie. It’s partly because I believe in the book. It’s also because, despite constantly wasting energy entertaining negative self talk, somewhere deep down I believe in myself.
And this season, the Substacks delivered something for that, too. In a recent installment of Emily Mohn-Slate’s Be Where You Are Substack, June Gervais said, “My critical inner voice kept saying What if you can’t pull this off? What if it doesn’t work? So I started repeating: ‘I am keeping a promise to myself.’ That promise was I’m going to finish. When I shifted my focus to the promise, instead of this daily interrogation of my skill or the project itself, the doubts were less relevant. They were not authorized to cancel my writing session for the day.”
#1: I’m keeping a promise to myself.
#2: They are not authorized to cancel Gertie.
In addition to rage singing Taylor Swift and digging my heels in with my poetry manuscript, I’ve also been pursuing other pleasures where I can. Chris and I took a short hike to Vroman’s Nose, and I trained for (and ran in) a local 5K Run for Women. (Of course the latter took place in a downpour on a dreary, 50-degree day.)
I started running in 2004 but took an unexplained, unintentional break from 2020-2024. It feels really good to be back at it.
I’ll end here with my notes — and photos! — from recent creative activities. It’s a two-month report because when I came into the blog to write up my May recap, I realized I hadn’t done April yet. 🤦♀️ Thankfully, I keep lists in my journals! (Remember, if this kind of thing doesn’t interest you, feel free to skip it.)
APRIL 2025 WRITING
- Typed up free writes
- Revised a poem
- Participated in biweekly workshop with fellow poets via Zoom
- Attended a week-long writing residency with Jan Freeman at Mass MoCA
APRIL 2025 ART-MAKING
- 13 sketchbook spreads (this filled one up!)
- Moved one sketchbook idea to canvas (an ill-fated attempt, but an attempt nonetheless)
APRIL 2025 BLOGGING
- Completed a post re-capping March’s creative life
- Finished and published a resource with 40 examples of odes
- Created and published an Instagram carousel to promote the April poems from my Poems for Every Month of the Year blog post
APRIL 2025 INSPIRATION & ADMIN
(I could have placed these under their respective art or writing categories, but I’m trying to be honest about if I’m consuming inspiration more than I’m doing the work.)
- Daily Morning Pages
- Finished organizing my “creative life” thinking/to-do’s/inspiration into the Google doc created in March
- Artists’ Date with Jill Crammond (Common Roots Albany Outpost)
- Zoomed with my private “Second Best Witches” writing group
- Meeting with art mentor Christine Evans
- Ass in Chair Collective (an online creative co-working space) X1
APRIL 2025 READING
- Zero? (Maybe. Or else I dropped the ball documenting? Either way, it’s just zero books. I read lots of poems online each week.)
APRIL 2025 PUBLICATIONS
- Still zero; still not submitting
- Rejection from The Word Works for my Gertie manuscript, but it included a lovely note from the editor that it made it to the final round of consideration
***
MAY 2025 WRITING
- Final day of Mass MoCA retreat
- Free writes X6
- Printed Gertie manuscript and started to make notes for revision
MAY 2025 ART-MAKING
- Paintings on canvas X3
- Prepped 5 additional canvases
MAY 2025 BLOGGING
- Created and published an Instagram carousel to promote the May poems from my Poems for Every Month of the Year blog post
MAY 2025 INSPIRATION & ADMIN
(I could have placed these under their respective art or writing categories, but I’m trying to be honest about if I’m consuming inspiration more than I’m doing the work.)
- Daily Morning Pages
- Artists’ Date with Jill Crammond (Common Roots Albany Outpost)
- Rescued poem drafts from chaotic filing “system” and placed them (I found 679 drafts!) in a single location
- Attended Ass in Chair Collective (an online creative co-working space) X2
- Zoomed with my private “Second Best Witches” writing group
- Purchased (and assembled!) a new easel
MAY 2025 READING
- Finished The Life Impossible (novel by Matt Haig), which I started ages ago
MAY 2025 PUBLICATIONS
- Started assembling a fresh list of deadlines for full-length poetry manuscripts
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