May 9, 2022 • 112 pages
Paperback: 978-1-950774-92-0 • $17.00 Ebook: 978-1-950774-93-7 • $9.99
Against a constellation of solar weather events and an evolving pandemic, Jeannine Hall Gailey’s Flare, Corona paints a self-portrait of the ways that we prevail and persevere through health adversities while facing an uncertain future.
Gailey juxtaposes eclipses and hurricanes with a body's many medical challenges, including neurological symptoms that turn out to be multiple sclerosis, highlighting the miraculous while melding the personal with the political to tell a story of a world and body in crisis. Alongside harbingers of apocalypse, foxes, cherry trees, and supervillains populate the page. Flare, Corona faces calamity head-on, illuminating the power of humor and hope to brave the ever-shifting landscapes of personal and ecological adversity.
Jeannine Hall Gailey's poems are incandescent and tender-hearted, gracefully insistent on teaching us how we can live in a beautiful and perilous world, the ways in which we can brilliantly and stubbornly survive.
Writing the Poems in Flare, Corona
by Jeannine Hall Gailey
Preamble
I’m going to talk about writing one of my favorite poems – one of the first you’ll read in the book – from Flare, Corona, called “Calamity.”
“Calamity” is probably a typical poem for me, in that it is in couplets and switches between darker and lighter notes, humor and seriousness. Godzilla makes an appearance, and also a verse from the bible.
Inspiration for the Poem
So, I started to write this poem in November of 2019 – when I started reading about a Chinese doctor who was put in prison after he talked online about some patients – lab techs – who died of a strange virus. I thought, I’ve seen this disaster movie before.
It was also right before Thanksgiving and hearing so many people stressing out – you may remember in 2019 politics was particularly fraught – about family encounters during Thanksgiving, which became the first line of the poem.
The Title
The original title was “Calamity Jane” because of my personal history of “disasters” but I cut the Jane out before I submitted it, because I made it less of a personal poem, and more universal.
The rest of the poem kind of flowed from the many ideas of what a “calamity” might entail – UFOs, meteors, even a sports team’s loss, or, even getting snowed in on Thanksgiving.
Themes and Placement in the Book
One of the themes of Flare, Corona, is survival – in many forms. I thought this poem might be a good thesis poem for the book – that is, encompassing its themes, but in a slightly more lighthearted form than some of the other poems about the same subject – and that’s why I decided to put it so early in the book.
Also, it was one of the first poems I ever had accepted and published at Poetry Magazine – and I was really excited about that. (I’d been submitting since I was 19! Lots of encouraging rejections, but the first acceptance was when I was 46!
Form and Sound
A lot of sound informed this poem – a lot of alliteration, “s” and “e” sounds. I like playing with sonic devices. The couplets make the poem feel a little more formal, and I have a few sort-of-sonnets in the book – called “mutant sonnets,” because they’re always a little off. Just like me! Ha. This one didn’t quite qualify, but I like couplets for making poems feel neat and purposeful – it also works well with short, punchy lines. I also used a mix of enjambment and end-stopped lines, to give the poem a little more energy and movement as you read it.
This poem first appeared in Poetry Magazine in April 2020, then in my book Flare, Corona.
Calamity
Your family is coming over for Thanksgiving.
Even worse, it’s snowing.
Headless robots are playing soccer with your soul.
UFOs have been sighted overhead.
A meteor is definitely heading straight for you.
It might miss, but then again.
Tonight a city is being decimated by Godzilla,
or was it a bunch of genetically-engineered dinosaurs?
Either way, I hope you’re lizard-friendly.
Tonight you have to give a speech
and that girl who hated you in third grade
will be in the audience. What have I ever done
to deserve this? the prophet asks, tearing his robes
in the desert. God responds: how long you got?
A plague of egrets, of eaglets, of egress.
A black hole has just opened up and it is
already swallowing someone else’s sun.
Did you see the team play last night? A travesty.
Someone is always preaching about doomsday.
Who are you wearing? Because tonight
your life will be required of you. Grab a bag,
a sword, a water bottle. Go out swinging.
