book birthdays and ballyhoo

In the fall of 2011, I had kind of given up hope on poetry. I was still in a strange period of not writing very much if at all following the completion of my MFA in 2007, which had soured me on poets having their fingers in my work for far too long. Instead, I was focusing on the chapbook series, which was growing, and the Etsy shop, which was thriving from around 2008-2010 in a way that sometimes seemed frightening and would have me making soap and candles in the middle of the night, spending weekend working on jewelry,  and frantically photographing vintage when I had good light in my apartment.  It would wane as 2011 went on, and by year's end I would abandon ship for a standalone shop and kind of refocus mostly on books, art, and paper with a few other lovelies thrown in. I had completed my thesis, GIRL SHOW, in 2007 and it had been snapped up by the publisher of my first book, Ghost Road, though the operation kind of began to fall apart soon after, with the official word, due to an editor's health predicaments, they would close in 2009.

I wasn't quite sure what to do with the book then, and sent it only to one publisher who I'd had my on for a couple years and was still relatively new sometime in early 2010. It was a while before it was accepted. Meanwhile I played out my usual personal life romantic dramas and got drunk a lot with librarians every week and placed writing at the back of my mind except for those James Franco poems that I started more as joke with friends. One Saturday in October, I received a very nice message from Black Lawrence, the only place I'd sent it asking if it was still available. I was gobsmacked, since I had long given up hope and possibly even interest in publishing more books at that point (and sometimes secretly wondered if I should be writing at all.) 

Technically, the book was my third full-length (at least that I wanted anyone to see) but it would eventually make its debut at AWP 2014 in Seattle, which after a harrowing 2 day train ride, I landed in underslept and slightly hungover after writer drunken shenanigans (because while writers cannot drink as much as librarians, they try)  I had signed my first book excitedly in Atlanta in 2007 and here I was 7 years later with the third book (well technically it was  #4 because that slender little book of prose, SHARED PROPERTIES had slipped solicited by an editor in mid-2013, but at the time, I considered it the third poetry book, but the lines would blend and shift over the years.). 

It was shiny and pretty when the first box arrived at the studio a few weeks earlier that January, when I was battling my usual winter blahs and a recently deceased kitty. The cover, which wrapped around slightly around, had turned out even better than I expected, and part of me was happy the book had been delayed since that more recent artwork would not have existed if it had been published earlier on. While the poems inside already felt like the past for me, they were sound and its still something I can stand on. The structure of the book formed very much by my group thesis seminar in the fall of 2006, but most of the changes I had made to please my thesis advisor the next spring to get the thing actually approved  had been reverted. I had a had quite the past year 2006 into 2007 on all fronts (mono, rending heartbreak, exhaustion of working full time in addition to classes) and was too tired to argue, but it seems foolish now that I didn't stand my ground.

Nevertheless, the book that was accepted and published was the version I would have wanted. It was also my most best-selling title with the press and still retains that status today, despite a couple other books that came after (SALVAGE in 2016 and SEX & VIOLENCE in 2020.) BLP is retiring it to out-of-print heaven this year after a strong decade, so it seemed important to celebrate its birthday, especially since it almost never made it out of manuscript, I do have a good size stash of copies for sale on my own and you can find them used in a couple places. 

More importantly, however, that little yes that came that Saturday in the fall of 2011 gave me a renewed sense of purpose that maybe not all was lost, and combined with those silly James Franco poems, got me writing furiously again in early 2012 and then I just kept going. 

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