Shimmer, steam, somatic, sciatica

A happy thing that happened a week ago Monday, the day before my Personal Pinched-Nerve Apocalypse (more on that soon). Adroit published my short essay “Mycelial Mind.” As far as maintaining the mental habits the essay describes: well, I’m still a seeker, and I guess that’s the point.

The past week and a half brought several gifts. For example, I came home from the remarkable New Orleans Poetry Festival to a review of Mycocosmic in MER by Sharon Tracey:

In Mycocosmic, Lesley Wheeler’s sixth poetry collection, the poet uses the metaphor of fungi to thread a masterful spell of poems that shimmer with dark energy, electricity, and transmutations….There are definitions and derivations. Inventive language that sings as it steams. There’s “Rhapsodomancy” and a tarot deck. There’s humor, grief, wonder, and resiliency. There’s music: “branches shushing” and “dreams grinding slow like brass gears” (9, 34).

I mean, that’s lovely writing as well as generous reading, right? Rob McLellan also published an interview with me in his long-running “12 or 20 Questions” series. His smart questions focus on process, genre, and revision–I’d almost forgotten devising the answers weeks ago. Finally, I caught up with something that had actually been posted before New Orleans: an episode of Alyssa Milano’s Sorry Not Sorry podcast, “Writing As a Force for Good: Reporting from AWP ’25,” during the second half of which I wax poetic about mycelium (okay, maybe I’m a broken record). The interviewer had attended my “Underworlds & Mycocosms” AWP panel and asked if I’d be game to record something, so I said sure, and my answers make more sense than I would have guessed, given how scattered I felt. The podcast includes a wide range of small-press publishers, editors, and writers at various career stages, including undergrads, so it becomes a portrait of the convention that might be fun for people who missed it. Here’s the episode on Spotify although it’s on the other podcast places, too.

The New Orleans Poetry Festival itself was terrific, rich with different kinds of programming: short “lagniappe” readings, a panel about cool poet laureate projects, performance poetry happenings, a lively little book fair, good food nearby (no L.A. downtown concrete wasteland here!), and much more. I gave a reading with Tupelo poets and spoke on a great panel with the theme “Sacred and Somatic.” I finally met in person several poets whose work I’ve admired from a distance, and glimpsed the amazing Harryette Mullen, although I was too shy to say hello. People said kind things about my book, its snazzy cover, and my new mushroom-print dress. I had dinner with a beloved former student who told me that during a difficult period of his life, I’d made him feel seen, taken seriously as a person and poet. Again: lucky and nourishing convergences.

Yet life has NOT been all shimmer. On the way home, achy and tired, I contemplated the absurdity of flying to New Orleans while coping with the sudden and ferocious bout of sciatica that descended several days before, totally randomly–I was just in the process of sitting down when something twisted. I was nearly immobilized for a few days, then when things loosened up just a little, I got on a plane. I made the right choice, I think, but I was in pain most of the time, and pain makes events and conversations hazy. I liked my unfancy B&B in part because of the fridge and microwave, so after cutting out early from evening readings, I could lie on the floor alternately icing and heating my piriformis. I have been so carefully preventing contagious illness on this book tour through masking plus a swallowing a color-wheel of immune supplements, but I forgot that bodies can give out in a myriad of ways.

Again, I’m glad I went–better to be in pain while pleasantly distracted than in pain bored at home–and very grateful for so many kindnesses from the universe. Yet I’m a little down. Pain taxes a person’s energy all by itself, of course. The Guggenheim rejected me again. I’m behind on everything. I’ve been so looking forward to next week’s Madrid conference, but have had little time to anticipate and prep, and I wonder how much stamina I’ll have for sightseeing. The sciatica IS getting better, by slow degrees, but I’ve mislaid my momentum. Maybe it’s in the side pocket of my dirty suitcase?

As I do the prescribed stretches, I remind myself to think like mycelium. Fungi don’t care about grants and book sales. They just want to keep reaching forward in their underground way, knowing that sometimes they’ll hit obstacles but once in a while make a real connection. That’s where the juice is.

Down with Sciatica! Praise be to the poets and editors and reviewers and staying in touch, despite pain and worry, like Weirdly Inspiring Fungal Filaments! I have a few other revolutions on the brain, but we shall see.

Moving ahead, limpingly: I’m off to Madrid, of course, to give a talk called “Dirty and Decomposing” at the Fermentations conference at St. Louis U-Madrid Campus. Here’s an advance look at what comes next.

• May 4, 4:30 pm: Poetrio at Malaprop’s in Asheville, NC
• May 7, 7:30 pm: Virtual, Wild & Precious Life Series with Alyse Bensel & Rosa Sophia Godshall, https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89136734677
• May 11, 4 pm: Hot L Series in Baltimore, MD
• May 27-30: Poetry by the Sea in Madison, CT
• May 30, 6 pm: Toadstool Books in Keene, NH
• May 31: Massachusetts Poetry Festival: “Understories and Mycocosms” panel 11:30- 2:30 p.m. at the Peabody Essex Museum Morse Auditorium in Salem, MA
• June 3, 7 pm: Porter Square Books in Cambridge, MA, with Anna Maria Hong; 25 White Street

Then rest, and hallelujah to that, too.