I sent it to quite a few
contests. It was finalist a dozen or so times, and it was even picked up for
publication in 2009. It was supposed to go into production within a year, but
at the end of the second year with no publication date in sight, I decided to
withdraw my manuscript. It was a trying experience, and I came very close to
giving up on the book at that point. However, in this instance, being
incredibly stubborn was a good thing because I decided to revise it one more
time and send it out for one more round of contests. It won the Accents
Publishing International Poetry Book Contest, and it was clear from the minute
I started working with Katerina Stoykova-Klemer, and the Accents team, that The Sounding Machine was exactly where it was meant to be. I
couldn’t ask for a more passionate, enthusiastic, and generous editor, than
Katerina—she is truly a force of nature—and I wouldn’t change a thing about the
publication path The Sounding Machine
took.
Tell me about the title.
Had it always been The Sounding Machine?
Did it go through any other changes?
The original title was
Oracle Bones, but I discovered that Peter Hessler wrote a non-fiction book
called Oracle Bones: A Journey Through
Time in China. I recommend it; it’s a wonderful book. It wasn’t hard to give
up the title, I never felt it was quite right even before I discovered
Hessler’s book.
I found a sounding
machine in an antique shop, and though I didn’t know what it was at the time, I
bought it. I just liked the look and the heft of the thing. It has a marquise
shaped base with a handle, much like a flat iron. It’s made of brass, and it
has a numbered dial on the base. I discovered that a sounding machine is a pre-sonar
nautical device that drops a line to measure water depth. I liked the idea of
plumbing the depths, sending a weighted pianoforte wire into the unknown to
bring back something substantial, something knowable. It seemed an apt metaphor
for a book of poems, and perhaps this book in particular since it delves into
some dark places.
It seems like there’s a
possible misconception among some poets who are trying to get their first book
published: that they must win a contest. Were you concerned about winning a
contest at any point? What advice would you give to poets sending their book
out now regarding contests versus open reading periods?
I think this is something
every poet has to decide for her or himself. I entered many contests, and I
also submitted to open reading periods. I didn’t see much difference between
the contest model and the open reading model. My main concern was that I
submitted to presses I respected.
What was the process like
assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through as you were
sending it out?
Assembling the book was
actually quite easy. The poems as a whole tell an overarching story, so the poems
are arranged more or less chronologically. There is information in some poems
that the reader needs to fully understand other poems, and that also influenced
the ordering of the poems. The main structure of the book didn’t change very
much. As I revised, I added poems, and took out weaker poems, but overall,
there weren’t major changes.
How involved were you
with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.?
I was very fortunate that
Katerina let me chose the cover image. I spent a long time searching for the
right image, and when I saw The
Annunciation, Pigeon Triptich by Tjaarke Maas I instantly fell in love with
it and knew it was the cover. Maas was an artist from the Netherlands who was
born in 1974. In pursuit of finding a personal god through art, she retreated
into a cave in the forest surrounding the Hermit
Monastery of San Francis. In 2004, her body was discovered near the cave, her
death the result of a fall.
It’s
difficult to articulate why this image grabbed me. There is something chaotic
about it, but from chaos recognition of the pigeons emerge. From chaos, beauty
emerges. The tilt of a head, curve of a back, a sense of motion, the individual
and the collective reveals itself to the viewer. There is energy in the bold lines,
and one senses an urgency to capture the pigeons, their essence, not just their
likeness.
What about the
publication of the actual poems in journals and magazines prior to the book
being published? Was there ever a concern for you to have the majority of the
poems published before you were sending out your manuscript?
I wasn’t concerned that
most of the poems have appeared in journals, mostly I think because this was my
first full-length collection, and though I wanted to publish a full-length
collection of poems, I was working poem by poem. I don’t know if that makes
sense, but now I have a second manuscript complete, and a third almost
finished, and I thought of them both more as books right from the start. I’ve
sent out a handful of poems from the second manuscript, and none from the third,
yet. I’ll send out poems from each, but not nearly as many as I did from The Sounding Machine.
How much work did you do
as far as editing the poems from the day you knew the book would be published
to its final proofing stage?
I didn’t have to do a
great deal of final editing. There was a great deal of editing along the way,
but fortunately when it was selected for publication by Accents it didn’t need
any major work.
What do you remember
about the day when you saw your published book for the first time?
It was unreal in the best
possible way. I was quite moved, and emotional about seeing it. As I mentioned
earlier, I had almost abandoned the book. I decided to send it out to one more
round of contests—just one—if it didn’t get published, I was going to start
sending out my second manuscript and tuck The
Sounding Machine in a drawer.
How has your life been
different since your book came out?
My writing life has
changed. There’s a sense of relief of having published a book, but I also feel
like I needed to get those poems out so I could move onto other obsessions. The
poems in The Sounding Machine were
the poems that demanded to be written. I needed to write them in order to be
able to move past them both personally, and as a writer.
If you struck up a
conversation next to someone seated on an airplane, and after a few minutes you
eventually told them that you were an author who had a book of poetry
published, how would you answer their next question: “What’s the book about?”
I live in Qatar so I
spend a lot of time on planes. I try not to strike up conversations because
it’s very difficult to sustain, and awkward to get out of, on a 14 hour flight,
and truth be told, I’m trying to get out of answering this question.
I suppose it’s about
everything, and not about everything. It’s about something, and it’s definitely
not about nothing, except sometimes when it is about nothing. It’s about my
life, but it is absolutely not about my life. It’s about the truth if the truth
were made wholly and partially out of lies.
What have you been doing
to promote The Sounding Machine, and
what have those experiences been like for you?
I’ve been using social
media probably to an annoying degree to promote The Sounding Machine. In my defense, since I live so far from the
US, it’s harder for me to do readings so I have to do what I can. When I’m in
the US, I participate in readings, and I’ve read on this side of the world too.
I pester people to review the book, I set up a website, I send postcards, in
short, anything I can.
What advice do you wish
someone had given you before your first book came out?
I had wonderful teachers
and peers in the MFA program at Virginia Commonwealth University, so I don’t
wish for any advice. The best advice I got in general all along the way was to
revise ruthlessly, write fearlessly, and persist, persist, persist.
What influence has the
book’s publication had on your subsequent writing? Are there any new projects
in the works?
I think there’s a sense
of relief that the first book is out there, but a writer still has to stare
down the blank page whether he or she has published one book or twenty. I have
two manuscripts under construction. One is ready to submit, the other is close
to completion. I’m currently working with two colleagues Michael Hersrud and
Jesse Ulmer on the final edits of The
Donkey Lady and Other Tales from the Arabian Gulf. It’s a book of folk
tales illustrated by VCU Qatar students. They did incredible work, and I’m
excited that it’s coming out from Berkshire Academic Press in early 2013. I’m
reading for the 6th anniversary issue of diode poetry journal, and I recently launched Diode Editions which
is currently running a chapbook contest.
Do you believe that
poetry can create change in the world?
Yes, through the
individual lives and minds that were changed by poetry.
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Patty Paine is the author of The Sounding Machine (Accents Publishing), Feral
(Imaginary Friend Press), Elegy & Collapse (Finishing Line Press),
and co-editor of Gathering the Tide: An Anthology of Contemporary Arabian
Gulf Poetry (Garnet Publishing & Ithaca Press) and The Donkey Lady and Other Tales from the Arabian Gulf (Berkshire
Academic Press). Her poems, reviews, and interviews have appeared in Blackbird,
Verse Daily, The Atlanta Review, Gulf Stream, The
Journal and other publications. She is the founding editor of diode poetry journal and Diode Editions.
She is an Assistant Professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University in
Qatar where she teaches writing and literature, and serves as Assistant
Director of Liberal Arts & Sciences.
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