Category: Unbecoming
Posted on June 28, 2020
by Lesley Wheeler
9 Comments
You know how obsessions grow on you and into you, like fungal hyphae bursting through carpenter ants’ heads and disseminating spore? I’m currently fixated on fungi, but a few years ago I developed a more explicable obsession with perimenopause and its sequel. Like puberty,…
Category: The State She's In, Unbecoming, UncategorizedTags: Beth Kanter, Darcey Steinke, mary ruefle, menopause, menopause literature, menopause poetry, mental health, midlife, Perimenopause, Sarah Manguso, uterine ablation
Posted on May 31, 2020
by Lesley Wheeler
6 Comments
…The dark threw its patches down upon me also, Walt Whitman wrote in “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.” Nearly as often as he reflects on his own tingling senses, Whitman, it turns out, writes about distance and solitude, sometimes expressing pain about it and reaching for…
Category: Shenandoah, teaching, The State She's In, UnbecomingTags: bridgewater international poetry festival, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Green Mountains Review, Massachusetts Review, Prospectus, Rose Solari, social distance, sweet, Walt Whitman, Washington Independent Review of Books
Posted on May 19, 2020
by Lesley Wheeler
3 Comments
Among my latest thrills: nearly stepping on a hissing snake; a double rainbow over an empty Main Street; a frisbee arriving by mail; and, oh yeah, publishing my first novel. On launch day for Unbecoming, I was shut in my house responding to student…
Posted on May 13, 2020
by Lesley Wheeler
5 Comments
My debut novel launches this Friday, May 15th, 2020. Here’s the story of how the book came to be. I was in my late forties in 2015, sending my oldest child off to college and feeling glum about the next phase of my life….
Posted on April 7, 2020
by Lesley Wheeler
1 Comment
I’m not processing very well, here at the quiet edge of apocalypse. Sometimes I’m fine, scared, down, or stir-crazy; often I’m busy teaching remotely, being fortunate enough to still have a job; generally I can’t concentrate. New York City has always been the center…
Category: Shenandoah, The State She's In, UnbecomingTags: Choice Words, Dear America, Ecotone, editing, Massachusetts Review, Publishers Weekly, publishing, quarantine, Rocked by the Waters, social isolation, uncertainty
Posted on February 25, 2020
by Lesley Wheeler
2 Comments
1. I am attending AWP 2020 because: a. I am legitimately excited about sharing my book, seeing literary friends, and hearing strong writers talk about what they do b. As a former board member amazed I ever carried that load, I’m glad to support…
Posted on February 9, 2020
by Lesley Wheeler
5 Comments
I’m dormant these days, sometimes “chafing the shell,” as Dickinson wrote, but also conserving energy and trying to stay focused. Some hibernaculum thoughts: I clearly know nothing about words or publishing, because I posted my most popular tweet ever this week and it was…
Category: teaching, The State She's In, Unbecoming, UncategorizedTags: 32 Poems, book launch, book promotion, Colleen Anderson, foxes, Hampden-Sydney Review, hibernation, Mock Convention, winter
Posted on January 6, 2020
by Lesley Wheeler
4 Comments
Last year, I substituted a mantra for a resolution: “breathe.” It helped a little. This New Year’s Eve I wrote up more resolutions, got upset about them, and then decided: to hell with self-improvement. I need fewer bullet points on my endlessly guilty, mildly…
Category: Shenandoah, Taking Poetry Personally, The State She's In, Unbecoming, UncategorizedTags: creative writing, Jeannine Hall Gailey, kindness, MLA, new years resolutions, Open Books, prayers, Seattle, spells
Posted on November 15, 2019
by Lesley Wheeler
2 Comments
When you write a poem that resembles a spell, prayer, charm, curse, or blessing, are you trying to make something happen, and if so, what or how? That’s what we talked about on the Uncanny Activisms panel I organized for the C.D. Wright Women…
Category: Shenandoah, UnbecomingTags: Anna Lena Phillips Bell, Anna Maria Hong, Ashley M. Jones, blessings, Camille Dungy, CD Wright Women Writers Conference, charms, curses, Franny Choi, Hyejung Kook, Jane Satterfield, poetry, prayers, spells
Posted on October 29, 2019
by Lesley Wheeler
3 Comments
Not to get too pagan on you, but this week I can feel wheels turning, for good and ill. On the good side: above is the cover of my first novel, to be released in June 2020. I’ve been so grateful for the excitement…
Category: teaching, UnbecomingTags: A Literary Field Guide to Southern Appalachia, book promotion, CD Wright Women Writers Conference, ecopoetry, ghosts, Laura-Gray Street, Lauren K. Alleyne, overwork, poetry, publication, Rose McLarney
