Poem Book 2 Finished

I've been all baited breath waiting to tell you: I've just finished the manuscript for my second book of poems!

I was lucky that Phases fared pretty well. Published by Cascade Books in 2017, it was reviewed pretty broadly (for a first book) and by some very generous and careful critics. That is quite enough to be thankful for and so I am nervous about this, my second outing. Will it do half as well? Will people, you know, get it?

The new book will be called The Elegy Beta and I sent it off to the publisher in December, at a different press this time. I floated a few poems to the poetry editor there who had some lovely things to say and has been a constant encouragement ever since. At this particular place, the book has to clear the general board—and not many of those people are poetry folk. So we have a bit of an uphill battle to convince them that The Elegy Beta will be worth their efforts. They meet in February, apparently, so I've spent the last few weeks putting on the finishing touches.

Maybe they'll take it! If they don't, I'll let you know and will come up with the next place that I think might make a good home for it.

These processes are super slow; I may not hear back for months while the various editorial teams discuss the book's merits and likelihood of success, but if you're the sort to offer prayers, or if you simply liked Phases and want to read more poems, would whisper vaguely West on behalf of this project? Anyone who would like to stay in touch and hear updates about the book's progress can leave an email address below and I'll send word.

Whatever happens, I'm thrilled. These are the best poems I've ever made and I can't wait—if not here, then somewhere else—to see them in print and share them all with you.

Thank you to those who have offered encouragement, or tipped me off to likely publishers, or just been great, inspiring, people whose kindness shocks me into response. It's a joy to walk these byways with you. 

A Day in the Life

Buy on Amazon

I’ve just finished reading Ruth Goodman’s How to be a Victorian (Norton 2013) and I found it so informative and delightful I thought I’d mention it here. Like some other period histories, Goodman’s book relies on periodicals, etiquette manuals, and advertisements to render a portrait of daily life in the British c19, but unlike other such works, she actually tries most of the methods herself. It is interesting to hear about the methods of bathing in a typical Victorian household. I’ve often seen the ceramic pitcher and bowl on dressing tables in paintings and illustrations from the period and wondered just how they were used. But it is quite another thing to hear a twenty-first century woman bathing herself according to the methods—say, for example, using no soap or water but merely scubbing the entire body with a linen cloth— and hearing her relate that her skin glowed thereafter and that it somehow kept body odor at bay. I loved hearing that her experiment in Victorian haircare methods—no shampooing, only a weekly rinse and otherwise regular brushing with natural bristles—was so successful that she’s adopted it as her own regimen.

Or again, we’ve all heard over and over the feminist canard that corsets were a tool of oppression and so tight as to render women’s lives a dull dream of constant pain. But here this Goodman tries one out—effectively shrinking her waist up to 4 inches at one point—and saying that she’s rarely felt more comfortable: that it turns out using one’s abs to hold oneself up all day (or slouching when they’re exhausted, as most of us moderns do) is the real pain, and having a little external support not only corrects one’s posture, but makes one feel more elegant almost immediately. She says she felt like she could sit and read all day when corseted: what a life! Granted, she does say that it was itchy, but that isn’t the usual complaint. Also—something I didn’t know and had never conceived of—men used to wear them too. Apparently, corseting was not a gendered activity, especially in the early part of the century.  

Anyway, it’s all wonderful, even when it is depressing. One hates hearing about the long work days for little pay, about the age at which boys were sent off to factory or farm work (often 6 years old) to begin 12 hour days that would not cease for them till death or injury, but even so, the pride they took even at that age in turning over their wages to their mothers is touching somehow, despite everything else. 

A sympathetic, well-researched, and enjoyable project, this.

Big News

Phases

A little bit ago, I posted about my new poetry collection, 10+ years in the making and how I was ready to send it out. I'm excited, deeply humbled, a little giddy and a little scared to say that it's been picked up for publication this year by Cascade Books. I sent to them because 

• they're based in the Pacific Northwest (and if this book is set anywhere [other than Rome] it's set here 
• they have a small, carefully curated poetry roster, including Luci Shaw, Paul Mariani, Brad Davis, and Jill Peleaz Baumgaertner: poets I admire, all
• they published Joel Heng Hartse's Sects, Love, and Rock & Roll, which I adore. 

I'm calling it Phases, because it's more moon-y and map-like than self-concerned and confessional. Currently, I'm busy culling the manuscript of weaker poems and adding in some newly finished pieces that better fit with the press series. More "Sir John Donne" than "Jack Donne, rake," if you take my meaning. 

I've just had the news so it's all a little dizzying right now, but watch this space, follow my Fb page, twitter, or tumblr for (sporadic, non-spammy) updates. Meanwhile, rejoice with me! 

A New Collection

I've been writing poems since I was 14 years old. At least, those are the earliest poems I've saved, or that I know anything about. It seems to me sometimes that I must have started earlier than that though. Looking though old papers a few years ago, I found a stack of poems given to me by my 4th grade teacher--her own--that I remember her sharing with me during recess. There was one particularly fine line about a rabbit's having been run over by a train, "escaping on iron wheels into the Kansas blackness." I remember imagining that darkness more black somehow than ours, out on the Oregon coast. What kind of teacher shares her own verse with a 4th-grader, or, better yet, what kind of 4th grader volunteers to stay in from recess to discuss poetry with his teacher? This guy. 

In high school, I wrote all kinds of poems. Usually, they were rhymed and formal, Keastian and melodramatic, obviously, but still interested in the sounds of words at least as much as in my touchy feelings. I wrote poems in pencil on my desktops because I wanted them to exist only in time and not in space: to have worked hard at something and not to preserve it, not to find it precious. I wrote poems with a friend, a version of the exquisite corpse done through note passing to opposite sides of the class.  

In college, my freshman year RA recommended I take a Creative Writing class with Jill Peleaz Baugaertner. So I kept an eye on the schedule, but none were offered that year, nor the next. Flummoxed, I stopped by her office and asked "what gives? How am I supposed to learn to be a poet if you don't offer this important class?" She said she loved teaching that class but that enrollment needed to be met. 

"Well, I'll take it, and I bet I can get 3 friends to take it too. Let's just offer it and see what happens." 

Bless her, she agreed and the class filled right up.

After graduation, I headed to Flagstaff, AZ, mostly to hang around with my brother, who I'd missed while in college. Once there, I started to miss the life of the mind and so enrolled in the Creative Writing MA at Northern Arizona where I studied under Barbara Anderson and Jim Simmerman. Sitting in the Flagstaff library one day, I sent an email to Richard Kenney (whose book I had just picked up on a nearby shelf) from the University of Washington. I want in, it said, basically. 

"Well, it's a competative program, he said, "but here's what I'll do. If you send me some poems, I'll read them."

My advisors at NAU said outright that they'd never placed anyone at UW and that I was aiming a bit high. "That's like a top ten program," they warned.

Next thing I knew I was headed to Seattle to join to cohort in the MFA program taught by Heather McHugh, Linda Bierds, and Richard Kenney, who, under the auspices of the Rome trip, became a close mentor.

I started publishing individual poems right after college, but I've never been very good at submissions. First it was all the stamps, now it's recombining individual poem files into selections and uploading them through e-portals. That, and keeping track of where I've sent them and which ones I have out. But I'm trying to make a commitment to share more this year. I feel like all this work (my hardrive is full of casual essays, recollections, book ideas, and of course poems) is choking me. I need to get it out into the air so I can make some more things. 

To that end, I've put together a collection of poems. I've got enough for two books at least, but I've thinned it down to what I believe are my strongest pieces. None of the ones from college survived, and only one, I think, from Flagstaff. Six or so are new this year. I've had hordes of ideas for clever organizational schemes, including one based on Galileo's names for lunar regions, which have great titles like "Lake of Hatred" and "Sea of the Unknown," but I've dropped them all here and just tried to link one poem to the next based on shared imagery or some other evolution. It's just a gathering and I'm getting ready to send it out to publishers this summer. It's called Hail, and I can't wait for you to see it.