Orphan Lines

So the school year is ending over here and I am clearing out various bins in my office. I handwrite almost everything these days, poems, yes, but also blog posts, letters, casual essays, and academic articles, and very often, they remain on handwritten slips until I find the presence of mind or the time to put them together into something coherent. The system, such as it is, has drawbacks. For example, this. Rifling through papers slotting them into file folders, I have just come across some pages of verse, but I have no idea whose they are or what they are. Did I make these up? Did I copy them out from some source because I liked them? Was it a metrical experiment using random words (something I do sometimes)? Maybe it was an early version of my translations of Goethe's travel journal, which I have turned into a long poem called "Three September Seventeen Eighty Six," currently under review? Really, I have no idea. I Googled some lines and nothing comes up, so maybe I wrote them. Anyway, I don't think they're good enough to become real poems, but I also feel weird about just tearing them up, so I'll just put them here for safe keeping. If anyone knows them to be someone else's, or to sound eerily like something you've read in Goethe, feel free to let me know. 

What I lacked in freedom of movement,

Since the roads plotted my sure course,

I made up for in freedom of worship: kneeling before

any star or starlet suggested to me

by the authorities on such matters. 

Conscripted by my class, I still had bands

I could not listen to, and grew resentful for that.

The rebellion, that is so say, shrunk with the enclosure acts.

Odd, no? What is this thing? Then there's this:

Men in hats will save the world by

knowing whatever it is the people knew

who built it, and by being willing to learn

from the past enough to ensure a future

for the country and planet and their own

remedial and often pointless lives. These

salvations are available to men with hats

in a degree unique to their caste, although

accessible also by women in dresses. 

I don't know what's going on here any more than you do. 

What is a Chapbook?

ext month, the good people over at Finishing Line Press are putting out a chapbook of my poems, called Lunatic, about which you can read more here. I thought it a natural moment to say a few things about the form thereof. 

Chapbooks have a long history in English literature, and have nearly always been associated with poetry.  "Broadside Ballads" used to circulate for a penny, (also called "penny-ballads," and thereafter "penny-dreadfuls," when the form was taken over by throw-away adventure stories, the equivalent of airport reading like John Grisham or 50 Shades now). 

Anymore, chapbooks are mainly the purview of poets. Since presses are reluctant to put significant investment into an unknown author, they'll often put out a chapbook first, which is a (usually saddle-stapled) short-form of a book, no more than 45 pages, with which to test the likelihood of a poet's success in a full-legnth. Some poets put out several chapbooks: they're cheaper to buy, and can be more coherent as works since they're shorter. I have a friend, the terrific poet Matthew Nienow, who has three chapbooks out so far; the form works for him, and works well. 

As major publishers move away from publishing poetry in an economic era that rewards risk less than it might, small presses are stepping in and publishing smart, tight, little books in editions of 500-1000; they trade a smaller print run for a few more authors on the roster and make up the difference that way, or they focus on the book as a thing, which I had occasion to discuss in this review, and count on discerning customers' appreciation of the object as much as its contents to create a following.  Floating Bridge Press, Ugly Duckling Press, and Codhill Press are the best-known publishers of this smaller type, and probably make the prettiest books. 

Think about it like a band's putting out an e.p. before a full-length album. Sometimes it's because these are songs that don't fit in with the tone of the full-length somehow; sometimes they haven't written enough material to make a record, and sometimes the label isn't springing for the contract yet. Sometimes, these e.p.'s are extraordinary artworks in themselves: think of the great musical acheivements on e.p.'s proper or split 7" records: Pedro the Lion's Whole, Bloomsday e.p., The Gloria Record e.p., or the entire set of mailings from Postmarked Stamps.  

My little book is coming out soon on Finishing Line, for reasons you can read more about here. I designed the cover myself, but that is as far as my hand in the production reaches, so I'm waiting with baited breath to see how it turns out.  The poems were written over the last ten years or so, mostly following the completion of the M.F.A. at the University of Washington, and are part of a larger work from which I thought this sample representative, but which I think works on its own as well.

You can pre-order it here, should you find yourself possessed of a soul, $12.00, curiosity, sympathy for struggling artists, or any of the above.