Stemming from an idea I had to sell micro-chapbooks with per-feature poems, a new Setlist page has been added under the Readings tab. There’s nothing to buy there, just audio recordings of my features (for better and worse) to accompany the books so that people can relive the night/performance. Click on over to read a little more about the project as well as read and listen to the poems. A little gift from me to you to tide you over until the release of my three concurrent books in progress.
Fellow (and much better) poets Dogmatic and Sykes Hartmann and I are bringing poetry to Old Hights Brewing Company on January 25 as part of their Local Performers Showcase. Come get you some poems and really good beer! Time is still TBD, but mark your calendar. Because it’s a brewery reading in the dead of winter, I will be reading from Death Loves a Drinking Game and 61 Central.
In other news, content to suffer is officially complete! Finding a home for this chap has proven a difficult task, but stay tuned; I’m waiting patiently for a press to believe in this chap as much as I do.
Also, my first full-length since Death Loves a Drinking Game, The Sweet Release of Breath, is almost fully assembled. An editor I’m looking forward to working with is attached to the project, and I’m incredibly happy to be able to bring the best of these past twelve years of my poetic output into print (digital and otherwise).
A while back I had an idea for a chapbook, and I’m happy to announce that, after many years of doubt and procrastination; concept production failures; poem tinkering, reworking, and reimagining; and many a tussle over themes, my newest chapbook is being shipped off to a few publishers in the hopes someone believes in it half as much as I do (which is, in all earnestness, a heck of a lot).
Since it is up for grabs, I don’t want to give too much away about it. But a few details I (think I) can safely divulge:
– Its title can be read two different ways.
– The book is meant to be read each side to the center. (Which side you start on does not matter.)
– Each side collects poems on a theme reflecting one way the title can be read.
– This is the only time the poem used to start both halves will appear dissected (trisected?) and is the centerpiece of the collection . . . despite it being an actual bookend.
– The cover art, inspired by one of my favorite Franz Kafka stories, In the Penal Colony (“In der Strafkolonie”), loosely applies to both themes and, though nearly identical, subtly (at least I’d like to think it’s subtle) clues the reader into which theme each half focuses on.
– It’ll be roughly thirty pages.
– I don’t know how much it’ll cost, but I promise it’ll be worth it.
Did I mention that 2023 has been going really well for me? In addition to a low-key creative boom, I also fell in love. Hard. And, luckily, so did she. But we, as most people (or at least introverts) tend to do, didn’t actually think it was happening.
It was during this enormously frustrating and euphoric period that I was reading a Takuboku collection, and my emotional overflow funneled itself into the writing of several short poems. …and then several more short poems. …and then even more short poems. I was helpless on two fronts and enjoying every minute of it. So after I confessed to her, I put together this time capsule of my yearnings.
The title popped into my head while listening to the Nick Cave song “More News from Nowhere”; the word, nested in lyrics of a totally opposite hue, rang in my ears as soon as it was sung. The art came to me in a flash soon thereafter and is, at least I’d like to think, a gentle nod in the direction, via the lines’ placement and strokes, to Japanese characters and points to the reasons behind not only the form of some of the poems but the differences in focus and tone between sections I and II.
And because I was (and remain) so enamored of this woman with whom I fell so madly in love and who found herself a similar victim, I made it my mission to get this small collection of poems published. It only took one submission before Pining found a home at Alien Buddha Press. So it is my pleasure to announce that Pining will be available for purchase (from me and Alien Buddha Press) on November 14!
Long a part of literary history, broadsides are single-sided pages that feature one poem and some visual elements. But a strong and unusually strange bit of enthusiasm hit me one morning while reading: I have a poem about a fictional museum; why don’t I print it as as museum brochure? And thus my brochureside(tm) for “The Museum of Broken Promises” was born!
Printed in a limited run of 25 copies, these hand-numbered copies will be for sale for $3.00 at both of my features in southern and central New Jersey (November 17 and 19, respectively). The brochureside features the poem itself on the internal three folds along with some images closely illustrative of the imaginary exhibits, while the other side offers up a few Easter eggs and visual puns as well as a heartfelt dedication and not so heartfelt About The Author blurb.
To hear what you’ll be reading, click below:
“The Museum of Broken Promises” is inspired by and follows the tradition of The Idiom and Piscataway House Publications Publisher Mark Brunetti, who wrote and performed a number of poems about imaginary museums.