I have been offered a bit of a deal in regards to publishing a book of poems. Until now I have only self-published. I print enough to have a few copies on my merchandise table. I have probably printed less than one thousand copies of my books through Blurb.com, but they seem to move steady enough. The same friend who puts out my albums on Black Mesa Records—Tulsa, Oklahoma based Kris Payne—has offered to start his own publishing wing in order that I might put out a book that goes into proper distribution and perhaps libraries, etc…
I do not submit these “poems,” or “poem things,” as I sometimes call them, to literary magazines or university published periodicals. I may have sent a few to the New Yorker, but my expectations have never been grand. I am in fact more of a songwriter who occasionally has a turn of phrase that might be considered poetic. I mean, you are basically a poet when another poet tells you that you are a poet. That is how it goes. I studied poetry at The Ohio State University under David Citino and Gordon Grigsby. They told me I was a poet years ago, and I just sort of kept that to myself while shifting on into the simpler, more romantic world of songwriting. Many of my songwriting heroes are disciples of poets too. Lucinda Williams, Bob Dylan, etc…people that clearly read tons of poetry and lived the troubadour life.
Anyway, all of this has me thinking about what I am going to do now that I am faced with the reality of publishing a book of poetry that may perhaps travel farther than my merch table. It has been an interesting thing—having poetry on the same table as vinyl and CDs. When somebody comes up to you and picks up an album off the table, they look at the back and the front, and they may have questions about whether such and such song you played is on that particular album. When you have a book of poetry, they can just open it up and start digging in, and that feeling is completely different for the one who wrote it. I like to say that if you put all your secrets and fears into a book of poetry, you are assured that no-one will ever see them, because let’s face it, nobody reads poetry. Okay, a few of you do, I know, but it isn’t what keeps the stock exchange running if you know what I mean.
Anyway, it was during the pandemic that I finally got the stones together to release a book of poetry, and now I have two books of just poems, and a few other books of essays, songs, more poetry, etc…
I believe what I am going to do is take what I deem to be the twenty best poems from the first two books, and add twenty new poems to make a collection of 60 or so, and put that out as my first book of poetry that actually has distribution and may go into a few libraries.
That is the idea for now anyway, and I wanted to share it with you.
I have to start somewhere. Here’s something I wrote yesterday.
It was somewhere
near the deep end
when I finally let go
sinking fast
to the slanted bottom
where you cannot sell your soul
because nobody is buying
until you’re all the way down
I swam the laps
I shaved the face
I drove the car
I mowed the lawn
I sent digital smoke signals
into the universe
that few will notice
and it’s never enough.
When will it be enough
to just watch the light
bend through leaves
with children’s laughter
in the distance?
I dreamed the dream
and barely noticed
until we danced.
FINALLY! :)