#46 - Kyle McCord

How often had you sent out Galley of the Beloved in Torment before it was chosen as the winner of the 2008 Orphic Prize for Poetry from Dream Horse Press?

I sent some version of the book out for about two years. The second year, I decided I would just fully invest in my own work, so I sent the manuscript to a huge array of places. I felt (and still feel) like my work balances between a few traditions in a way that makes it tricky to publish. So, even though it was expensive, I think a wide range of contests was the best choice.

Tell me about the title. Had it always been Galley of the Beloved in Torment? Did it go through any other changes?

I came up with the title poem first. I actually wrote the poem as part of an emulation of a Lisa Jarnot piece, though, as often happens, the poem boiled out to be completely different from anything in Ring of Fire.

I suppose the truest test of a title is how you feel about it after the book comes out and is in the world for a bit, and I’m still very happy with the title. The book went through a phase where it was called A Nesting Doll, but the title didn’t offer much shape to the manuscript. As I began to imagine these poems as undeliverable monologues written by a lost beloved to another, it gave the book an identity.

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?

Winning contests is great. But (the inevitable but) I would say it’s much more important to have a press that’s a good vehicle for you and your work. If a press runs a free open reading period like Graywolf or Black Ocean and you think your book is a good fit, ship it over! Some contests can propel a writer into some level of prominence, but being on a press you love from the get-go, especially if they option future work, can be at least as good a deal.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m very grateful to Dream Horse, no question. The extra prestige and money has been wonderful. I do guarantee that plenty of folks who do not win contests will have books that are still incredibly visible and well-distributed. Winning a contest is a nice plus, but it’s much more of an icing-on-the-cake situation than people make it out to be.

What was the process like assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through as you were sending it out?

There is a part of me that still doesn’t feel like a manuscript is complete until I’ve laid out each page on the floor to form a crazy grid that I can walk around. It’s some part of me that still believes there is always one mystical, perfect arrangement just waiting to be called into being.

The book went through two major permutations—the A Nesting Doll stage and its final form. The sections were relatively clear to me from the beginning, but I did have this moment of epiphany when I realized that the then second section needed to be first.

How involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.? Did you suggest or have any input regarding the image that was used on the cover?

I didn’t have a ton of input on the interior of the book, but I doubt that’s uncommon with first books. I’m a Garamond fan (though lately I’ve begun to admire Perpetua), and my publisher had a font in mind that looked similar to Garamond.

The cover was a different story though. J.P. Dancing Bear, the editor at Dream Horse, selected thirteen paintings from an Australian surrealist collective and sent them to me to pick what I thought was best. After hounding friends for opinions, I narrowed it down to two wildly different designs: the current design and a painting that looked like a Hieronymus Bosch piece. I eventually concluded that the second, though wonderful, was a little too instructive in terms of what the book was going to be about.

If I had any advice for folks who are publishing a first book, I would say that it’s imperative to have some say in a book’s cover. I read a huge range of first books, and a beautiful, or conversely, not so stellar cover can really color a reading. Be sure to check out the design work of a publisher when you’re considering submission. If you really don’t dig a publisher’s previous designs, it’s pretty unlikely that you’re going to be happy with the look and feel of your book. It’s a worthwhile consideration!

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 really got my start as an intern at the Beloit Poetry Journal, so I’ve always seen journal publication as an imperative part of interacting in the poetry community. I had been placing poems for about a year before I got serious about sending out the book. I found homes for about a third of the poems.

I don’t know that I would send out a book until I’d at least seen how the individual poems had done in the realm of journal submission. It gives a person insight into what sort of audience might be most receptive. Sometimes, it’s not who you’d expect, which is great to know!

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?

Commas. Oh man, let me tell you about commas. The book went through five galleys (Galley of the Galley... funny, I know) and nearly all of the edits were comma-related. I didn’t have the same sense of grammar during the three years I worked on the book, so when I sat down to consider consistency, I had to make some extensive choices in regards to appearance and meaning.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your published book for the first time?

Maybe this is what everyone says, but I don’t think anyone can understand what a wonderful moment it is when you see your work out in the world for the first time. I remember that during my MFA at UMass the program hosted a first book festival that included panels by folks whose first books had just been released. I remember Ethan Paquin from Slope was on a panel where he talked about sending two manuscripts out for two consecutive years and dropping thousands of dollars on the process. He gave a grim, but not necessarily unrealistic picture of how tough it was and is, and I took that seriously.

That was somewhere in the recesses of my mind when I opened the package and saw my book for the first time. It was sort of staggering and emotional all at once. Mostly, I would just say that I felt grateful.

How has your life been different since your book came out? What have you been doing to promote Galley of the Beloved in Torment, and what have those experiences been like for you?

I think there’s also a misconception that publishing a book is the end of process, but the truth is that it’s more of a midpoint. Releasing a book opens some doors, but it also makes demands on you as a writer. It can mean setting up readings, promoting the work online, and a slew of other time-consuming projects, even on the most active presses.

For me, it opened some doors that allowed me to go on tour with another poet on Dream Horse—Keith Montesano. It was the tour that changed my life more than anything. The tour lasted a little short of three weeks. Since then, I have felt more willing to be reckless in my work. I think a book release lends the author some legitimacy in the world of poetry and that legitimacy is so critical in a job where it’s easy to go unacknowledged.

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 often find myself telling the story where an audience member approached Robert Frost and asked what one of his poems was about. Frost responded to the question by politely rereading the poem verbatim. Anyone who has taken an intro to poetry workshop probably knows that what a poem is about may not be the best place to start. However, it’s still a question we’re responsible for as writers.

So, I would probably tell my curious fellow passenger that it’s a book of surrealist poetry that explores contemporary life and religious language mostly through the form of parables. I suspect this might be met with a long stare, at which point I might jokingly add, “it’s got animals in it too.”

I was just at Salvador Dali’s museum in Figueres, Spain, and I can tell you people love Dali even though it’s probably not in the public vocabulary to explain the significance of a dead horse blanketed with melting clocks. So, to say that surrealism is at a disadvantage in terms of audience reception just because it can’t always point to a singular subject as a focus, well, I’m just not sure that’s true.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

This is sort of tough, but I do wish that I’d understood earlier that the best supporters of poetry are poets themselves. It’s a lesson that became clear to me while Keith and I were on tour. I think a big part of marketing a book of poetry is knowing how to present the book to other poets as well as the general populace. Audience is such a huge question that I don’t know that anyone can really start grappling with until they’re standing at the front of an auditorium or bookstore after a reading waiting for someone to buy a book. It just gives you such a totally different insight on the nature and purpose of art.

What influence has the book’s publication had on your subsequent writing? Are there any new projects in the works?

I just had a new book of co-written epistolary poems come out from Gold Wake Press. The book is called Informal Invitations to a Traveler. My co-writer, Jeannie Hoag, and I had just finished writing and revising that manuscript when my first book came out. I think my third manuscript is probably more of a reaction to some of the things I learned from Galley. I wanted to try making an extremely accessible, I-driven book while maintaining the imaginative capability that is central in my work. It’s just a different style of book.

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

One SAT question a few years ago asked students “Is there such a thing as the modern day hero?” I’m not so vain to suggest that poets fill that role, but I would say this is indicative of the fact that one thing the world seems to suffer from at the moment is a dearth of belief in heroism. And maybe there is some basis to feel so distrustful, but I still believe we desperately need prophets, which is one of the roles of poets.

I don’t believe truly great poetry can ever flourish from nihilism, and I fear that sort of cynicism that obliges no action is becoming so prevalent any more. I think poetry, by its very nature, resists this sort of hopelessness. The wonderful thing about Whitman’s America is that it’s so much more than any of us could live up to, but by its utterance, in a way, it is real and what it asks of us is even more real. So, I think poetry has a lot to offer to the world, and maybe more now than in the past, the role poetry can and should play is so crucial. Hope requires imagination, and as poets, we have responsibility to protect and cultivate imagination in ourselves and the world around us.

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Kyle McCord is the author of two books of poetry. His first book, Galley of the Beloved in Torment, was the winner of the 2008 Orphic Prize. His second book is a co-written book of epistolary poems entitled Informal Invitations to a Traveler from Gold Wake Press. He has work forthcoming or featured in Boston Review, Columbia Poetry Journal, Cream City Review, Gulf Coast, Volt and elsewhere. He lives in Des Moines where he teaches co-edits iO: A Journal of New American Poetry. Find more information at his website: http://kylemccord.com/

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#45 - Luke Johnson

How often had you sent out After the Ark before it was chosen for publication in 2011 by NYQ Books?

I sent the manuscript to sixteen places, mostly first book contests, before it was taken by NYQ. About half of these publishers saw an early draft of the manuscript, one that looked much closer to my graduate thesis than does the final product. That version was selected as a semi-finalist for one of the big first book prizes, but by the time I’d found this out, I had already overhauled the manuscript. I probably sent the revised version to 7 or 8 places before I was invited to submit by Raymond Hammond at NYQ Books, who responded within a few weeks letting me know he wanted to publish the dang thing.

Tell me about the title. Had it always been After the Ark? Did it go through any other changes?

In my second year of grad-school, I was thinking about thesis titles and trying to identify my obsessions (if you’re not looking at your own writing, these are called ‘themes’). I snatched out line fragments, scoured quotes from the canon, Wordle-d my manuscript and looked at the most-used pieces of language—searching anywhere for something to call what was then my thesis. One of my professors used to talk about the continuum of titles available to a writer: from the concrete situational title that gives the reader a firm narrative foundation on which to begin (i.e. “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota”) all the way to the more abstract or ambiguous title (“Signs”) that does a different sort of cognitive work in forcing the reader to reconcile it with the content of the poem. Certainly, they both have their spot in the toolbox. But, in thinking about this, I realized that my favorite titles, both of individual poems (“Love Calls Us to the Things of This World”) and of collections (The Wild Iris), seemed to fall somewhere between the poles. I worry when I feel as though a title is stage-directing, dictating (or, limiting) the unraveling of a poem, so I look for a balance of story and metaphor. For me, a good title should have or imply both.

Back to the question: the book deals heavily with my parents’ ministries, their divorce, and my mother’s death. I wanted the book’s title to do situational work: establish the religious backdrop and affect a sense of loss and absence, but also of renewal. I was writing a great deal at this point—my second year of grad-school—spouting and pruning about 2 poems a week for workshops at Hollins. Whenever I wasn’t sure where to start, I’d sit down with a field guide, pick an animal and try to write my way in. So I had lots of these animal poems. They featured animals, but probably weren’t ‘about’ animals any more than Wilbur’s gorgeous poem linked above is ‘about’ laundry. Anyway, it was around then (’08), that I floated (bad pun) the idea of calling it just Ark. You know, because it was filled with animals. That seemed a bit too broad and inessential, but it did have the Biblical connotation I was looking for. I was intrigued by the idea of an aftermath, a survival of what seems then apocalyptic. After a bit of gnashing, I came up with After the Ark. A few weeks later, I wrote the title poem, the longest in the book, with the idea that it would be the last poem in the collection. The book has been called After the Ark ever since.

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 it’s important to separate the book from the job. When it comes to the book itself, I was never that concerned with the ‘contest-winner’ label. I just wanted a book of which I could be proud, one that would be aesthetically pleasing and widely available to readers. I had worked with Raymond before and knew that he was a great editor, someone who would take good care with the poems.

When it comes to getting a job teaching creative writing, it’s certainly not a bad thing to have won one of the prestigious contests. If one’s main concern is a job teaching creative writing, then it’s only reasonable to worry about winning one of those big contests (and be willing to wait for it, potentially). We’re fortunate to live in a time in which there are multitudinous ways to publish a beautiful book. There are many more fine presses than there are tenure-track teaching jobs. My advice to poets would be to send your poems to presses you think publish beautiful books—some of them will be contests, some of them won’t be. In the end, it’s about finding a curator for your work you believe in, one that in turn believes in your work. Fame and fortune will come later, or not at all, or cease to seem so important.

What was the process like assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through as you were sending it out?

It came together, for the first time, as my MFA thesis in the spring of 2009. I had little to no idea where to start, but was fortunate to have a great support system at Hollins and an amazing advisor in Cathryn Hankla. Eventually, my manuscript settled into three sections. This version went out to all the major first-book contests and a couple of open reading periods. Christmas of 2009, I had a breakthrough with the structure of the collection. A friend had kindly and generously lent his eyes to my manuscript and he suggested I separate three triolets I had in a sequence titled “Chemotherapy Triolets.” Each triolet took place in a different season, and I tried setting them as frontispieces for the three sections of the book. Somehow, it was only then that it clicked with me that the structure could be something as basic and straightforward as a seasonal arrangement. After realizing this, I merely set the poems according to their season. Simplifying things in this way made it much easier for me. I felt as though I was over-thinking before, searching for minute tangential connections to provide the book’s sinew. The seasonal arrangement gave me bones. This skeleton took the indecision out and made the collection’s structure appear (at least to me) much more logical.

How involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.?

I felt intimately involved in the process of putting together the book. Raymond kept me in the loop throughout. He did everything with the interior design, and asked me to select an image for the cover. He stressed the idea that we were building a book together, an idea which was extremely meaningful to me. I imagine if I ever had any issues with layout, etc., he would have been amenable to changes, but I was thrilled with how everything looked from the first galley I saw.

Did you suggest or have any input regarding the image that was used on the cover?

After I found NYQ wanted to publish the book, I emailed a copy of the manuscript to an old friend who I knew to be a hugely talented graphic designer, Patrick Howard. He read the poems and we discussed a few concepts. Later, Pat sent me a draft. It was basically the same image as the one we ended up using for the cover, only where there is now a willow tree, there was an Ark. I loved the feel of a watercolor, and really dug the depth, texture, and range of the colors Pat used, but I worried an actual ark might be heavy-handed, so I searched through the poems again looking for images that repeat. I noticed willows recur and suggested maybe a willow could replace the Ark. He sent me another draft, and it would go on to become the cover. It felt perfect. I remain immensely grateful that I was so involved in this part of the process, and feel very lucky to have worked with a friend and artist as talented as Pat.

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 definitely think that having published individual poems in magazines lends your manuscript confidence. It also gives you confidence, something that’s important in a pursuit that can be mostly angst. Previous publications certainly won’t win you a contest or an editor’s support, but they can possibly gain a keener eye from a first or second reader. I would never include a poem in a collection just because it’s been published in a good place—it has to fit in more transcendental and thematic ways—but, I don’t think it hurts to establish some level of professionalism, some proof that the writer is actively participating in the literary community.

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?

By the time I found out NYQ wanted to publish the book, I was happy with most of the poems. So there weren’t many changes, though there were three that I decided to cut and one new piece that I added—we also shifted the order slightly in a few cases so as to have all the two-page poems on facing pages.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your finished book for the first time?

I know one of the first things I did was sniff it—and then I let my dog sniff it, as if to confirm that it was, in fact, a real thing. There had never been a smell before—books have smells, computer files on the desktop don’t. I remember alphabetizing the spine on my shelf between Heaney and Joyce, and immediately feeling ridiculous. I remember I slept with the book under my pillow. I remember not being able to sleep and knowing why.

How has your life been different since your book came out? Did it become a factor in getting a future job for you?

I currently work full-time at an excellent pet store in Seattle. I don’t think the book had much to do with me getting hired there. Every other month-or-so, I’ll teach an online composition class as an adjunct. Neither employer seems too interested in the book’s publication, which is fine and makes me feel more accountable when it’s time to actually write poems.

Occasionally, I’ll feel self-sorry and wish I could bring my love of poetry more completely to the center of my occupational attention, but at those times I comfort myself by thinking of Faulkner working at the electrical company while writing As I Lay Dying. It reminds me that writing successfully is about nothing more than getting the words on the page, however and wherever you can.

I hope, sometime before I die, to teach reading and writing. If the book helps get me there, that’d be great. For now, new writing happens before sunrise and has very little to-do with the jobs that bring home the bacon.

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?”

Faith and grief, and the ways in which we navigate them.

What have you been doing to promote After the Ark, and what have those experiences been like for you?

I’ve done a few readings, including one at my alma mater, Elon University, and one at AWP in celebration of my graduate program’s 50^th anniversary. Both were surreal, and for both I’m extremely grateful. It was so heartening to share the finished product with the same folks who were so insightful and encouraging during the book’s conception. The strangest was when I visited classes at Elon and all the students had copies of After the Ark. I would read a poem from the book and they would turn to the page it was on. I couldn’t get over the strangeness of it. Seeing one or two copies had up to that point seemed normal, but having them there en masse struck me as all-of-a-sudden real. It was terrifying and incredible.

Most of my active promotion has been web-based. It’s simply the most inexpensive and extensive way to spread the word. I’ve maintained a blog since 2007, one which I hope is about much more than self-promotion (though, a fair bit of that slips through). I’ve found a wonderful sense of community in the blogosphere and have been floored by the generosity of these folks, some of whom I know only by their links, fragments, and poems. The cultivation of a generous and dynamic community, whether virtual or otherwise, will have a much longer (and larger) impact than moving a few copies on Amazon. That said, it’s been hard to gauge if blog-promotion has led to book sales, but I try to think a little bit more about the long haul. I don’t want to force the book down people’s throats, but I do want them do know how to get it if they’re so inclined, so I added a PayPal button to the blog and started a group for the book on Facebook.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

Make sure the poems look good on the page, make sure you believe in every single one of them, and then let them go.

What influence has the book’s publication had on your subsequent writing? Are there any new projects in the works?

I like to think that the book’s publication has freed my synapses to things heretofore unexplored. I’m about twenty poems into a new project, one which at this point is almost entirely composed of near-rhyming couplets. I have little idea where it’s going, but I’m excited to find out.

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

The right poem read at the right time can turn an individual’s world on its head and, certainly, change it. But this can only happen if that poem finds its way into that person’s hands. It’s important to drag poetry around in the daylight, not just through institutions and outreach programs (though, these are excellent and important things, too), but in day-to-day interactions: talk to people at the pet store about Seamus Heaney, tell the girl from Pittsburgh about Jack Gilbert’s heartbreaking poems, memorize snatches of Bishop’s letters, leave a copy of 32 Poems on the lunch-table. I get annoyed when I encounter folks who are ironic or detached when they talk about their passions, something which seems to happen all too often in poetry. Poems can remind us of the things we didn’t know we knew. They can call us to a larger sense of attention, a clarity of thought and expression mostly absent from day-to-day discourse, but they can only do these wonderful things if poets help to make it happen.

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Luke Johnson was born in Ithaca, New York. He is the author of After the Ark (NYQ Books, 2011). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, Best New Poets, New England Review, Southwest Review, Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. He currently lives in Seattle, Washington, where he’s working on a new collection of poems. Find his blog at http://proofofblog.blogspot.com

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#44 - Nicholas Ripatrazone

How often had you sent out Oblations before it was chosen for publication in 2011 by Gold Wake Press?

I sent the manuscript to several small press open reading periods, but was fortune to get a very quick response from Gold Wake, so I withdrew the manuscript elsewhere.

Tell me about the title. Had it always been Oblations? Did it go through any other changes?

The title has always been Oblations--the lead poem in the collection existed before the book became a project, and later felt appropriate to the collection as a whole. The traditional definition of the word is an ecclesiastical one--offerings to God--but I wouldn’t consider the book purely devotional. I am Catholic, though, and there is a sequence of parish-based poems in the book.

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 did withdraw Oblations from several contests, so never learned what its possible fate would have been, but I knew it was a long shot based on the prose poem form. The contest system has led to the presentation of excellent poets (so many to name, but Alison Stine and Traci Brimhall are poets I’m reading now), but it does have its potential issues. The word “prize” is beginning to accumulate some interesting connotations; at least for me, it felt like a prize to simply have a book published. I’d advise poets to research a press before submitting, and not to submit wildly. I sent to Gold Wake because I read Blake Butler’s review of Donora Hillard’s Theology of the Body at HTMLGIANT. Gold Wake sounded like a publisher open to progressive representations of faith, as well as a supporter of the prose poem form.

What was the process like assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through as you were sending it out?

The book coalesced quickly, as I knew I wanted to have a consistent number of poems per section. The ordering of the earliest version was very similar to the final book.

How involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.? Did you suggest or have any input regarding the image that was used on the cover?

Very involved--and that’s a nod to Jared Michael Wahlgren, the publisher and editor at Gold Wake. My wife contributed the cover photograph of a local historical barn, and people have said that image sets the tone for the collection, which is nice to hear. Jared was great about communicating layout possibilities and font changes--I can’t imagine a smoother publication experience.

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?

Only when individual pieces began to find homes in places like West Branch and Beloit Fiction Journal did I begin to really view the project as a full book rather than a chapbook. In the end, nearly half of the poems were published elsewhere, but it was cool to have certain poems only available in the book.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like most of your focus is in short fiction. Can you talk a little bit about your ideas regarding the prose poem versus flash fiction, or why you chose to publish a book entirely comprised of prose poems?

Although I’ve published a good amount of stories, and had a fiction concentration in the Rutgers-Newark MFA program, one of my professors (Jayne Anne Phillips) said, listen, your tendency is toward the poetic. I appreciate the distinction between poetry and the poetic. Some people who read the book call it flash fiction, others look to the weight of the final sentences as similar to the punctuating final lines of poems. The baseball poems feel the closest to stories, while the barn poems feel comfortably within the realm of the poetry. I think a reader’s inclination and experience moves him or her toward one of those alliterative titles of form.

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?

Most changes were cosmetic, as I’d given the content of the poems a few drafts before collecting them into a full manuscript.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your published book for the first time?

I received a proof copy in the mail while I was between houses (we’d just sold our first home and were about to move into a new place). We’d been staying with family, so I had about 4 different potential addresses, and was worried UPS would send it to the wrong location. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to do with it--was it bad luck to read it? Every other book I’d ever read was written by someone else. But I finally sat down with it and the reading was a wonderfully affirming experience. I’m still thankful that it exists.

How has your life been different since your book came out?

I guess I’m more comfortable with publicly saying I’m a writer, at least when prompted. I still teach public-school English in New Jersey and adjunct at Rutgers University, but I guess my slightly-mysterious second existence is now becoming a bit more palpable to people. Life was great before the book, and now there’s that little bonus.

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?”

Barns, baseball, miscellanea, work, and parishes: those subject headings work as a tagline response. Beyond that, I’d say quirky sketches of eccentric people meant to reveal the oddity, and sometimes beauty, of the mundane world in front of our faces.

What have you been doing to promote Oblations, and what have those experiences been like for you?

The release party for the book is at CakeShop in New York City on August 7^th, as part of the PoleStar Poetry Series, a great program curated by poet and publicist Melissa Broder. It will be nice to read again alongside Paul Lisicky, who actually saw a few of the poems in their earliest versions while a visiting professor in the Rutgers program. Earlier this year I read from the book as part of the Soda Series in Brooklyn and at a few NJ bookstores. Support has been incredible, which is quite humbling.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

Be absolutely thankful and gracious to any and all support you receive, whether it’s someone coming to your reading (which is a decision they’ve made and time they’ve given to you), buying a book, sharing their appreciation for the work, etc.

What influence has the book’s publication had on your subsequent writing? Are there any new projects in the works?

I have 2 poetry manuscripts making the rounds (one lineated, one prose poems), both written after Oblations was accepted. I finished other manuscripts also: a novel, a short story collection, and a proposed anthology. Fingers crossed that some of that work makes it out into the world.

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

One’s individual world, certainly. And at least focus or refresh our understanding of the world. Slow us down, a bit. Help us to accept that the world can be concurrently imperfect and beautiful.

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Nicholas Ripatrazone is the author of Oblations (Gold Wake Press 2011), a book of prose poems. His writing has appeared in Esquire, The Kenyon Review, West Branch, The Mississippi Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, Sou’wester and The Collagist. He lives with his wife in New Jersey.

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