book birthdays and bumps in the road
I noted on social media that it has been exactly a year since SEX & VIOLENCE made it's debit in a weird locked down, socially stirred-up time, where I'm pretty sure we were not only home bound because of covid, but also under a curfew that week due to folks smashing windows and setting shit on fire downtown. A chaos, mind you, that was probably only tangentially related to the protests and more about inciting violence and sewing discord. (So much never was accounted for-white nationalists setting cop cars on fire, weird piles of bricks dropped in some neighborhoods, cops just partying it up in alderman offices while the city was being trashed.) Not to mention, Trumpf nonsense and the social media misinformation that was running rampant nation-wide the weekend that the George Floyd stuff was coming to light (which led to so many unfriending of racist family members in the weeks after, I got whiplash) .
The day my copies of the book arrived I was just done with everything and, even though I was working from home, called off sick before my afternoon even started and went to bed feeling helpless and depression napped well into the evening. When I woke, my cat litter shipment had arrived and lo and behold, so had my copies of the book in all its pink texted sexy/spooky glory. I was not in the mood for celebrating, but my joy in the book returned in the month or so after and I set about doing the sort of promotional things that seemed stilted and strange in a time where the usual markers--readings and release parties-- and in general people just paying attention to things like new books and poetry (or anything at all besides how fucked up the world was.) were missing. It actually must have sold well enough to make the SPD bestseller list for June (perhaps because not a lot of books were releasing..lol..) and I had a great time making my little book trailers for it, which almost made me feel like my creative self again after months of being a dull pencil.
In hindsight, it's a book whose entire existence was unusually plagued by sadness and weirdness. I pulled the manuscript together as a distraction in the month after my mother died, and did so in a robotic, methodical way. When the good news arrived it had been accepted by Black Lawrence, I was mostly just sad that the first person I usually shared such good news with was no longer there. The book is a little bit melancholy (as per its title) the way that any book would be that includes Plath centos and me-too poems. Considering that the book that had come before it, LITTLE APOCALYPSE, was about the end of the world, this was somehow darker in a psychological way than armageddon (and that the publisher actually shuttered before it went to print, which seems fitting..lol...). This somehow felt darker to me. (weirdly, FEED, even though it deals with death and loss of mothers) feels more hopeful somehow. (Though I did note that the first time I saw that one physically in the form of my proof copy was January 6th after watching the Capitol violence unfold all afternoon.)
Incidentally, my previous BLP title, SALVAGE, is also celebrating it's 5th birthday this month, having been released in 2016, which feels even further away than it rightfully is. These poems are definitely lighter, or maybe it's just that their darkness is more relationship based. shipwrecks of lake michigan is a melancholy little series, as is radio ocularia. When that book was released, I was having a good time in life, or at least a less noteworthy time. We were still pre-election and facing the prospect of a female president. My mother was alive and well. I was having an unusually packed summer full of weekend trips and cocktails. My box of SALVAGE copies arrived that June at a high point and with a flourish.
I don't remember particulars about pulling it together in late 2014, though it must have been when I was having the pinched nerve issue and a lot of pain that November (while I was also putting the final touches and proofs on major characters in minor films, which would be out that coming March with Sundress.) The acceptance came in April 2015, when I was in Rockford for a week at my parents after cancelling that year's AWP plans due to funds, but with some extra time off work. I remember it was a happy triumph at a time when, not at AWP, I felt isolated from po-biz in general. A year later, I had a book and things were going well. It was a crazy summer, and I never quite got a proper release before it was fall again and I was super busy with Library things, but people seemed to be buying it and enjoying it. According to my royalty statements, it never sold quite as many copies (and still doesn't) as GIRL SHOW, my first Black Lawrence title, but it's still respectable and I adore the cover and all the little design details
Here's a hope that future books are born into saner times..keep an eye out for DARK COUNTRY this summer, so hopefully we'll make it through July without an apocalypse.
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