#52 - Anne Shaw

How often had you sent out Undertow before it was chosen for the 2007 Lexi Rudnitsky Prize?

I had been sending the book out for about three years, editing and revising as I went along. After each round of contests, I would pull the poems I thought were weaker and replace them with new ones I thought were stronger.  I also re-organized the manuscript a number of times.

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

The title went through at least four changes, and there were many other titles I contemplated. The book began as Enumeration and won the contest with the title Ignis Fatuus.  My editor, Gabe Fried, suggested Undertow as an alternative and I agreed. The new title still seemed to capture the essence of what I was getting at. It also fit with all of the watery poems in the book. Poets aren’t always the best at titling. It isn’t something we learn formally. I’ve been making a study of titles and titling for a number of years now. I think I’m finally starting to get the hang of it.

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 absolutely worried about winning a book contest, although I also sent to open reading periods. The concern is that the manuscript will get lost in the noise if it does not win. In some ways this is justified. However, there seem to be more and more venues for poetry publications all the time. I was just reading about the model of nano-publishing, where one editor who is an established poet picks a book to edit for a younger poet. They create a press that publishes that one book and that’s it. I think there are more and more creative models for getting work out there, not to mention selfmade chaps. It all depends on what you want for the book you are working on, who you hope will see it and why.

To a poet who has just begun sending out work, I would say that the most important issue is matching your work to the aesthetic of the press you are sending to. It took me a long time to familiarize myself with who was doing what. I would also recommend looking into alternative models of publication, especially if your work is doing something unusual that is difficult to place. However, I’d continue to send to both contests and open reading periods where you think they might be open to your work. You never know who is looking and with what set of eyes.

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

Ordering the book was a huge issue. I really feel that this is a separate skill from sitting down and writing; it’s something like writing a huge new poem using the poems you already have. The book went through at least four iterations and orders. I really wanted to place the childhood poems first, but a friend suggested putting the more experimental work first and I followed his advice. It turned out to be a good call.

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?

Persea was great about letting me have a say in all aspects of the book design. Soon after the book was accepted for publication, they sent me several mock-ups of possible page layouts and fonts. Gabe also asked me if I had any ideas for cover art, and I looked up and saw one of my favorite paintings by my partner, Alane Spinney, hanging on the wall of our bedroom. It pictures a maelstrom of purple waves. The first time I ever saw that painting, I said, “There’s nowhere to stand!” and that seemed perfect for Undertow. I was immensely pleased to be able to use it. I was also able to change the color of the surrounding cover from grey to blue, and to have input on the font that was used. I feel very fortunate to have been able to have so much to say about the final look of the work. As someone trying to make a complete work, I feel it’s important. The cover art and design have received many compliments.

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 about having the majority of the poems published, but I was concerned about placing some of the best ones in good journals. I also spent a lot of time looking at the publication credits of other poets putting out first books. It seemed clear that some folks had well-established publication records and others didn’t at all. I took the impressive acknowledgements lists as a sign that those writers had either been busy building their publication records, or had been writing a long time without (for whatever reason) publishing a book, or both. In my opinion, for a first book it’s more than about the quality of the work than about the volume of published poems going in.

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 of the fine-tuning on the poems had already been done, so the edits were minimal. Gabe Fried suggested a few changes to individual poems; we also took out a few. However, he let me keep those I really felt strongly about and didn’t exercise too much editorial privilege as far as changing individual poems went. All of the changes he suggested turned out to be good ones.

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

It was the first day of AWP in New York. Everyone was milling around the book fair and I searched out the Persea table. Gabe smiled a huge smile and said, “Have you seen it yet??” And there was a stack of my books sitting on the table. Later they sold out of the copies they’d brought. Friends I hadn’t seen in ages were coming by and buying it. It was amazing.

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

It’s been very different. I got a teaching job, for one thing, and I’m sure the book helped. I’ve also been able to build a much better publication record. I think the biggest changes has just been in terms of legitimacy. When you don’t have the book, it’s easy to feel like the over-eager little sister or brother of folks who do. Once you have a book, there’s a sense of being able to take part in a different kind of conversation. It’s a little strange, because chances are that your style, aesthetic, and the head you have on are the same ones as before.

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 hate that question: “What kind of poetry do you write?” Or worse: “You don’t write sad poems, do you?” I never know how to answer, because poetry is about exploring experiences that aren’t easily classifiable. I think there are themes running through my book: the power and influence of language, the problem of dealing with loss in a world that continues to amaze. But I wouldn’t say that to the person on the plane. At this point, I think I’d say, “ It’s about water. And birds. And being human. You should read it.”

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

I’ve started a website, put myself on Goodreads and other social networks, sent review copies, scheduled readings for myself. But it’s hard—at least, I’ve found it hard—to break through the noise. Because of my teaching position, I wasn’t able to do a book tour, so the book didn’t get as much exposure as it might have. The best experiences have been readings, where I was able to connect with other poets and students and meet really great people I wouldn’t have otherwise. On the whole, these experiences have been a bit frustrating, but very much worthwhile in terms of contacts I’ve made.

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

I wish I’d been more savvy about self-promotion, and particularly about lining up a reading tour for myself. I realized the press wouldn’t be able to do much, but I could have done a better job with networking. I think you have to be really aggressive in promoting a book of poetry, and even then, there’s no guarantee it will take off.

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

I think the biggest benefit has been the experience of putting a book together. With the second book (Shatter & Thrust, which is forthcoming on Persea), I had to think a whole lot less about structure and order. I just kind of plugged my ears against the thought that I was writing a book and wrote poems, scads of them. Only when the folder on my computer really started to fill up did I think about order, and then it was fairly straightforward. But I was cognizant as I was writing that the work was a bit different from the kind of poem I was writing in Undertow—I did a lot of stripping the poems of their earlier lyricism. I don’t think I deliberately wrote against my own style, because I find that very difficult to do, but I was aware that the work was moving in a different direction and I tried to let it do so. I don’t know exactly where the third book will go. I’m currently studying visual art—I’m sure this will have an effect on my writing. I already sense myself using language more materially. The next big project might be very fragmentary, or not be a book in the traditional sense but rather a series of interactive installations. We’ll see.

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

I’ve struggled with that question a lot. What is the value of poetry? I think that poetry, at its most crucial, helps us cope with our lives and experiences. It doesn’t so much gloss them for us as provide an act of recognition of the complexity of our lives. I think that’s important—the choice toward the complex. I think of it as a kind of handrail along the mountain—it lets the reader know that the human experience is not a wasteland—someone has been there before. I wish I believed that poetry could change the world politically, but in our current cultural climate where poetry is so devalued, I don’t see it. That’s ok—poetry survives because, like insects, poetry is both small and powerful. It can hide in the cracks. In a sense, it survives precisely because it is small and underfunded. That gives it a kind of integrity that one doesn’t see in the larger commercial world.

******************************************************************************************

Anne Shaw is the author of Undertow, winner of the Lexi Rudnitsky Poetry Prize, and Shatter and Thrust, forthcoming from Persea Books. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Harvard Review, Denver Quarterly, Black Warrior Review, Copper Nickel, Drunken Boat, and New American Writing. Her extended experimental poetry project can be found on Twitter and at her website, http://www.anneshaw.org. She is currently a student of the visual arts at the school of the Art Institute in Chicago. 

******************************************************************************************

#51 - Steve Kistulentz

How often had you sent out The Luckless Age before it was chosen for the 2009 Benjamin Saltman Award from Red Hen Press?

The version that was published had only been sent out twice. But other versions and other books had been floating around for a while. Like since 2000 or so.

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

I’d always hoped that my first book would be called World’s Tallest Disaster, after a painting by Roger Brown that I’d seen in the National Musuem of American Art in DC, but then Cate Marvin published her book, and hers was so thrilling that I felt like she’d really earned the title in a way that my manuscript hadn’t. Later, when I began to write more expansive poems, I found that they didn’t fit at all with the earlier ones I’d published in magazines. There are a few poems in The Luckless Age that I think have titles that could have merited being the name of the whole volume, particularly “Wild Gift” and “Places That Are Gone.” But those titles came from music, from an album by X and a song by Tommy Keene respectively, and I didn’t want to leave the impression that this was solely a rock-and-roll book. It’s a book in my mind about an era, roughly from the John Kennedy assassination to the end of the Cold War, and what better name for that whole window of time than The Luckless Age?

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?

My advice to poets is to read poetry. From being a voracious reader of contemporary poetry, I had a hunch about presses that would be naturally inclined to my manuscript. I thought my book would fit nicely at the University of Akron Press, where it ended up being a finalist; I felt the same way about Steve Mueske’s Three Candles Press, because he’s almost evangelical about poets with a distinct voice; and finally, I felt like Red Hen would be a good fit because the last few books from them that I’d read had a similar blend of lyric and narrative. And I was lucky enough to win Red Hen’s contest. Of course, those decisions were nothing more than a sort of informed supposition on my part, but I think that you can learn a lot about the aesthetics of a press by reading from their backlist. Even though the judges change from year to year, often times the screeners do not. So I think if you go the contest route, you have an obligation to be familiar with a press. It’s a waste of the poet’s money and the screener’s time if you’re sending a highly experimental manuscript to a press proud of its neoformalist catalog. At the time I was putting together this manuscript, I was finishing my doctorate at Florida State, and I bought all the books I could afford, and read the rest through that great service known as interlibrary loan.

I’m troubled by some contests, as I think most poets are, because there are still a few places that refuse to be transparent about their methodology. I don’t necessarily think that blind readings are the best way to go, but I do think a press has an obligation to disclose how the 700 manuscripts they might receive in a contest get whittled down to the 10 to 20 that go to a well-known judge. But ultimately, good work rises to the top.

So many excellent poets sabotage themselves by not sending out what I know to be very good work. So I guess my only piece of advice is to submit everywhere that you can, as long as you know that the press or the journal is a logical home for your work. And since I’ve read for contests and screened manuscripts myself, I’ll add this caveat: read the guidelines and follow them to the letter. A few years ago, I guest-edited a nonfiction section of the great indie journal Barrelhouse on dive bars, and you’d be surprised at how many submissions came in that weren’t nonfiction.

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

I’d say that there were really three versions of the book, including one that had a long poem at its center. It was a poem called “The Rosenstiel Cycle” that had won the Writers at Work Fellowship in poetry, and though I am awfully fond of that poem, it didn’t at all fit with the rest of the book. And because that poem had a certain measure of recognition already, I felt obligated for a long time to include it in whatever manuscript I was sending out. I’ve just started sending around a second book recently, and that poem isn’t in there either, so maybe it’s just an orphan.

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 convinced Red Hen to let me present them with a finished cover, and that cover was the work of a talented designer named Barbara Neely Bourgoyne. Barbara read the manuscript and came back to me with a design that was almost finished. We tinkered a bit with the fonts, but in every real aspect, the concept and execution was all hers. A Red Hen staffer, Leila Benoun, did the typesetting, and Mark Cull, the publisher of Red Hen, collaborated on little ideas that really brought the concept together, such as repeating the motif of dice inside the book in its table of contents. But Barbara came up with the idea of the dice hanging from the rear view; it was my idea to make the dice show snake eyes.

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?

It’s a different process for me, as I tend to write poems in batches, and the thematic connections between them don’t necessarily announce themselves until much later in the process. So I write, and I revise, and I submit in an almost continuous loop. Said another way, I don’t sit down with the conscious project of writing a collection of poetry. I’m constantly writing in a way that attempts to strip away the artifice I might put on in the classroom or in conversation and find out what it is that I feel at the deepest possible level. So whether a poem has appeared in a journal or not has little to do with whether it goes in the book. My litmus test has more to do with whether or not the poem feels emotionally open to me. One of the things I tell my students is that writing and publishing are two different things, which seems obvious. But I’m just as guilty of being the poet who obsessively checks his email or mailbox when there is work under submission.

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?

The only changes were as a result of copy-editing. I have a bad habit of writing these syntactically challenging sentences riddled with subordinate clauses, both in poetry and apparently in this interview. I tried to cut out a few of those in the editing process.

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

I’d been traveling that week, and so Red Hen shipped the books to my office at Millsaps College, and when I got home from my trip, I had all these messages from friends and editors who’d gotten their review copies already, and I hadn’t even seen the real thing. And it was a weekend, so the post office at Millsaps was closed. So I had to wait an extra couple of days, which seemed cruel and unusual at the time. So I saw the books for the first time on a Monday, and my wife and I toasted its arrival, and then I had that moment of writerly dread where I realized that I had to write another one. And then we opened some champagne, because it felt like the thing to do.

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

I’m guilty of making the same mistake that most writers without a book do, which was to think of publication as a panacea, but it’s not. One of my classmates from Iowa, Tom McAllister, wrote a really lovely memoir about fathers and sons and sports called Bury Me In My Jersey, and we compared stories about the things that happen to you when you promote a first book, like giving readings to an audience of three. Our inside joke is that we were going to write an essay about the experience called “No One Gives A Damn About Your First Book.” That’s not to say that the experience isn’t positive, but I think a lot of writers delude themselves into thinking that a book solves all of their problems. I know many talented writers from grad school who have two or even three books and who, for various and sundried reasons, still don’t have a tenure-track job, or the recognition that their work deserves.

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?”

The literal answer is probably that the book tries to dissect some of the more obvious myths of the 1970s and 1980s. I remember reading an essay by Stewart O’Nan. In it, he called Richard Yates the signature writer of the Age of Anxiety. I tend to associate that phrase age of anxiety with the height of the Cold War, that sort of black and white paranoia that evokes Rod Serling and Joe McCarthy in equal measure. My book argues that the 1970s and 1980s—far from being the benign era of kitsch that the mass media would have you believe—are the beginning of the end of the American dream.

It’s the low point for nearly every artistic medium except perhaps cinema, and it’s the period of our history wherein we abandoned the idea that we were all in it together. That communitarian ideal—believing in the kind of shared sacrifice that meant victory gardens and war bonds and a draft based on true random selection—has disappeared from American society, replaced with a sense of grandiose entitlement that I find really off-putting. There are probably a hundred other answers I could give to that question, but the easiest one is this; I want you to reconsider nearly every single value that you hold dear.

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

Every thing you do is a chance to market the book. Every thing. When people ask you for help, or to come read, or to talk to their nephew who wants to be a writer, say yes as often as you can.

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

I just finished a manuscript called Little Black Daydream. In many ways, it’s kind of the alternative universe version of The Luckless Age, except in this alternative universe, Spock doesn’t have a beard. I wanted to create a sort of post-apocalyptic book. When I was in high school, President Reagan made that famous joke about how he’d signed legislation that outlawed Russia forever. Little Black Daydream takes place in a world where we actually did begin bombing in five minutes.

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

I have to.

******************************************************************************************

Steve Kistulentz is the author of The Luckless Age (Red Hen Press, 2011) selected by Nick Flynn from nearly 700 manuscripts as winner of the Benjamin Saltman Award. His second book, Little Black Daydream, will be published by the University of Akron Press in 2012. His work in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction has appeared widely in literary magazines and anthologies, including Best New Poets and The Helen Burns Anthology: New Voices from the Academy of American Poets. He lives in Jackson, Mississippi, where he teaches English and creative writing at Millsaps College.

******************************************************************************************

#50 - Shane McCrae

How often had you sent out Mule before it was chosen for publication in 2010 by Cleveland State University Press?

I’m not exactly sure, exactly—probably, I had sent it out fewer than 10 times. Although I think the contest-based publication model makes a lot of sense in a lot of ways, I just couldn’t afford to submit Mule that often. But I would have submitted it to more contests if I could have afforded it.

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

Mule had every worst title any book ever had—figuring out a title for the whole thing gave me a lot of trouble. Early on, the manuscript was half rueful, kind of yuck poems left over from my MFA years, and half whatever it is now. And I think this disunity made the manuscript basically unnamable. Eventually, I put a poem called “Mulatto” at the front of the manuscript, and then wrote a few other poems also called “Mulatto,” and, thinking I had a theme going, decided to call it Mule. It wasn’t until the book had been taken by Cleveland State that I recalled a friend of mine, Kara Andrade, had written a memoir called Mule years before, and I’ve felt a bit weird about the title ever since. Sorry Kara!

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?

Well, I would have liked to win a contest—that seems like it would be a neat thing—but I didn’t really think I was gonna win a contest since I’m not the book contest winning sort. Like I said, I think the contest model makes a lot of sense, but it’s also problematic—in part because it facilitates this notion that the only way to get a first book published is to win a contest. And that just isn’t true. If a publisher likes a manuscript enough, and if he or she can find the money, etc. to do it, he or she will publish that manuscript. I was very fortunate that Michael Dumanis liked Mule enough to publish it even thought it didn’t win Cleveland State’s first book contest.

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

The oldest poem in Mule dates back to 2005; it was written a few weeks after I had drastically changed the way I wrote poems. Because of this, the first versions of Mule were hybrids of pre-change poems and post-change poems. It was an unpleasant mess, really, but Jorie Graham took pity on me—I was workshopping with her at the time—and gave the manuscript its first sensible order. I reordered it many times after that, but if she hadn’t shown me how to order it in the first place, I don’t know that I ever would have sorted it out.

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 had some notions of what I wanted on the cover and strong feeling that I didn’t want any of the lines to overlap, but really it was Amy Freels at Cleveland State who designed the book. She was very patient with me, and endured my notions. And yes, I stumbled across the wonderful painting on the cover—it’s called Passing and it was painted by Michael Dixon—and sent it to Amy, and she made it work.

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?

In the years before Mule got picked up, I was sending poems out constantly—I wanted to be part of the writing community, to be part of the dialogue between writers in whatever small way I could, and publication in journals seemed like one way I could make that happen. But I wasn’t particularly worried about placing the poems with regard to submitting the manuscript.

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?

Huh. A lot? I think I did a lot of work, but it’s hard to say. Just before the final proofing stage, I compared the final version of the manuscript to the version that Cleveland State had taken, and the differences weren’t that many—I had cut out a few poems, and maybe added a few as well. Most of the changes were cuts. But it felt like I went through dozens of versions of the manuscript, so maybe I did? Inexcusably, every time I made a tiny change, I sent the revised version of the manuscript to Katie Ford. She was then, and is now, a saint.

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

I remember thinking that I needed to take a picture of the open box of books right away so I could post in on Facebook—and to maintain the purity of the moment, or whatever it was I was thinking, I had to take this picture before I had actually touched any of the books. Sigh. I don’t know why I do the things I do.

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

I’ve felt blessed mostly every day, even on difficult days, because I wrote this thing and some people maybe like it. For most of my life, I’ve wanted to be a part of the poetry community (communities, I know), whatever it is, and I’ve felt closer to becoming a part of that community since Mule came out. And I get to do things like this interview, which is, at this very moment, blowing my mind—I’ve loved the first book interview project since way back when Kate Greenstreet was doing them. Basically, it is my favorite interview series ever. So yeah, blessed.

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?”

Ha! I can’t image ever doing that! But if somehow it got out that I had written a book, I would probably say, lamely, that it was about stuff that had happened in my life, because I would feel presumptuous saying that the poems were actually about what I tried to write them about. Like, I wrote a bunch of poems about God, for example, but how could I say such a thing? And if I said instead that those poems were about me trying to write poems about God, well, then that would just be me being a jerk. I would be very bad at this conversation.

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

I worry that I haven’t done enough—I’ve done some readings, quite a few of them (or an amount that I think of as being “quite a few”), and I always love doing readings and I honestly wish I could do them every day forever. And I’ve done a few interviews, and I’ve had a lot of fun doing those. But I feel like I should be standing atop parking garages all over the country with a megaphone, shouting, “Hey! You should buy this book because I don’t want Cleveland State to get screwed on this deal!” I worry a lot about the people who have been kind enough, unbelievably kind, to publish the books I’ve written.

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

Actually, I think I got the advice I needed from reading first book interviews. I learned that my life wouldn’t change all that much, for one thing, and I learned not to expect the book to be reviewed right away or at all. I learned not to expect anything especially good, beyond the publication of the book itself, to happen. When your book is published it is a moment both for rejoicing and for making peace with whatever comes next.

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

Since Mule was published, I’ve felt a bit freer, I think—rather, I’ve noticed a bit of a falling away of self-imposed constraints I hadn’t known I had. But I’ve also felt a bit of self-imposed pressure to prove that the first book wasn’t a fluke, which I imagine is a common feeling to feel. And I can say happily that I have a second manuscript now called Blood—it took me about two years to write it; I started writing it right after Mule was taken. And I don’t know what the next thing will be, but right now I’m OK with that.

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

It can, yes—it has. Much of the Hebrew scriptures and the Christian scriptures is poetry; the Qur’an is such an awe-inspiring text in part because it is very much like poetry, absolutely bursting with beautiful sounds. These texts in large measure made the world Westerners recognize as their own (and I don’t mean to prioritize the Western world at all, or to suggest that it ought to be prioritized; it’s just the one I know best), and the Homeric epics made the world before this one. And the Western world as it is today would also be unimaginable without Shakespeare. Beyond that, each person is a world, and I know people are changed as individuals by poems, and they then take their changed selves out into the world, and consequentially that initial change ripples outward.

******************************************************************************************

Shane McCrae is the author of Mule (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2011), and two chapbooks, One Neither One (Octopus Books, 2009) and In Canaan (Rescue Press, 2010). His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in The Best American Poetry 2010, The American Poetry Review, Fence, jubilat, Gulf Coast, Denver Quarterly, and others. Currently, he is studying for a PhD in English at the University of Iowa.

******************************************************************************************

#49 - Nicky Beer

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

Yes, in the sense that human endeavor can always create change in the world. It’s important to remember that “change” is a value-neutral term—poetry can create just as much dreadful, boring, or mediocre change in the world as it can good. But we should always have high expectations for it nonetheless. Maybe it’s that “change” isn’t just value-neutral, but by definition, it’s never stable or safe—there are always unimaginable repercussions to change. That’s what I love about poetry—the good stuff changes you in ways that you never could have expected.

How often had you sent out The Diminishing House before it was chosen for publication in 2010 by Carnegie Mellon University Press? What was the process like assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through as you were sending it out?

The manuscript was chosen for publication back in late 2008. I’d been sending it out for about four years at that point, and was starting to despair about how many times I’d been a finalist, but hadn’t gotten the jackpot. I’d started joking that I felt like Susan Lucci. However, I got some good and timely advice from Linda Bierds, who suggested that if I’d come close so many times without winning, it was probably a sign that I needed to reorder the book. Shortly after following her advice and sending out the newly ordered manuscript, I got the call from Jerry Constanzo at Carnegie Mellon.

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

For a while it was called Apocrypha for the Body, because of the anatomical poems within the book. My husband, the poet Brian Barker, eventually suggested changing it to its current title; after being attached to the former one for so long, it was liberating to see how a new title can help change one’s ideas about a manuscript. I enjoyed the dual idea of a “house” as both a domestic structure and a family line, and the ambiguity of the adjective—the sense that a “diminishing house” could be a house that was somehow shrinking, and the sense that this could also be a house in which one is diminished, as in a slaughterhouse.

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 would rather have my eyes gouged out with a rusty screwdriver than strike up a conversation with someone on an airplane. But let’s say that someone was threatening to gouge out the eyes of someone I love with a rusty screwdriver unless I did—okay. The short version I’d give them is that it’s about the death of my father. Hopefully that would end the conversation, and I’d be able to get back to my Entertainment Weekly and Courvoisier.

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 was absolutely concerned, in the general sense of just trying to get the book picked up—the passing years during which I sent out became a kind of slow panic in that respect, one that I’m guessing a lot of other writers can identify with. And of course, the pressures of the academic job market & its relation to publishing didn’t help much, either. But in terms of trying to decide whether one should chose a contest or an open reading period, I think the character and reputation of the press you’re wanting to work with is much, much more important than the means you choose to get published. The relationship that you have with them and how they respect and promote your work is going to last a lot longer than any prize money you might win. Of course, if you’re trying to pay off loan sharks, that’s a different story.

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?

Carnegie Mellon was very generous about this, and was very proactive about soliciting my input for the cover. I’d had the idea for a while of using a blueprint image, which they were very receptive to, and I’d sent them some mock-ups to illustrate the idea using blueprint images I’d pulled off the internet. Annie Jacobson, the designer, did a fantastic job in bringing it all to life.

And, in a very poetry-geek admission, I should say that I really liked the idea of my first book being blue, because Elizabeth Bishop requested a blue dust jacket for North & South.

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 was concerned about it a little, because I felt, rightly or wrongly, that a juicier publication list at the front of the manuscript might give a contest reader a reason to hang on to the work for a few minutes longer. But I didn’t let that keep me from sending out the manuscript. I’d seen enough first books with only a handful publication credits not to agonize over it too much. And, in the end, because it took so long to get the book picked up, a lot of the poems did wind up getting published before the book came out.

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?

Not a great deal—many of the poems had been finished for so long before the final proofing, and I’d felt pretty solid about where they were. But the weird thing is that once the book came out, I found myself wanting to fool with the poems much more—sometimes I’ll be doing a reading, and in the back of my mind as I’m saying a line aloud, I’ll find myself ruminating, “Huh—that line break could be improved,” or “Maybe I should have used ‘putrescent’ instead,” etc. Something about having something so solid and unchangeable in my hands must have brought out the Highly Perverse Editor in me.

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

That I wished my parents were alive so I could show it to them.

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

I am less consumed by a blinding envy when I meet other people with published books. Or rather, I can now focus my blinding envy on their talent and good looks, where it belongs, rather than on the fact that they’re published.

What have you been doing to promote The Diminishing House, and what have those experiences been like for you?

I’ve done a fair amount of readings in the past year and half since the book came out, and they’ve all been a tremendous amount of fun. I’ve gotten to read at Central Missouri University, University of Missouri-Columbia, Southern Methodist University, Texas Christian University, Sarah Lawrence College, and at the Triptych reading series in Manhattan, the Chin Music series in Brooklyn, the Sarabande reading series in Louisville, and the Gypsy House series and the Bad Shadow Affair series, both in my adopted home city of Denver. I know it sounds corny, but they’ve all been really wonderful experiences—partially because I love doing readings, but also because of all of the incredibly talented and distinguished writers that I’ve gotten to read with as well. Not to mention all the dedicated folks who run these series—I don’t think it’s always widely understood how much hard work and headache goes into keeping those things afloat, and I greatly admire the people who do it, often against the odds, without much money, if any, and without the level of thanks that they truly deserve.

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

There are so many kinds of advice I could have benefited from in the thirty-four years before the book came out! “Never indulge in ‘Ladies’ Night’ in Tijuana,’” “Never date someone who says he does ‘A little of this, a little of that,” for a living,” “Never get a body piercing at an establishment that also does motorcycle repair.”

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

I don’t think the book’s publication has had a huge influence on my subsequent writing—I sit down to the same big ol’ blank page I did before I had a book, and still worry that I’ll never write another good poem again.

I’m trying to finish up my second manuscript, The Octopus Game, right now. Many of these poems are less explicitly autobiographical, which I suppose might be an unconscious pushing-back against the content of The Diminishing House. The majority of the poems are about cephalopods—primarily octopuses, but I’ve got a squid poem and a cuttlefish poem swimming in there as well. But if I have to have that conversation with a stranger on an airplane, I’ll probably say that it’s about fiery plane crashes.

******************************************************************************************

Nicky Beer is the author of The Diminishing House (Carnegie Mellon, 2010). Her poetry has been published in Poetry, The Washington Post, The Nation, Best American Poetry, McSweeney’s, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. She has been awarded a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, a fellowship and a scholarship from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, a Campbell Corner Prize, a “Discovery”/The Nation Award, and the Colorado Book Award for Poetry. She teaches at the University of Colorado Denver, where she co-edits the literary journal Copper Nickel.

******************************************************************************************

#48 - Jeremy Halinen

How often had you sent out What Other Choice before it was chosen as the winner of the 2010 Exquisite Disarray First Book Poetry Contest?

I didn’t keep perfect records, but from what I can tell from those I did keep, I sent out earlier versions of the manuscript at least 17 times, primarily to other first book contests, nine times in 2008, seven times in 2009, and one time in 2010. One of those earlier, less-polished versions of what eventually became What Other Choice, a manuscript entitled “Hardly Planet Yet,” was a finalist for one of the earlier contests I entered: the inaugural (2009) White Crane / James White Poetry Prize (a biennial poetry prize established by the White Crane Institute in collaboration with Phil Willkie to honor gay male poetry), judged by Mark Doty. That finalist status gave me the encouragement to continue sending out revised versions of the manuscript until it was eventually picked up.

During the years I sent out my full-length manuscript, I also sent out various chapbook manuscripts, comprised mainly of poems that ended up in the full-length manuscript. In 2007, I entered 11 chapbook contests and placed second in the Frank O’Hara Award, judged by Jim Elledge; my manuscript was also a semifinalist for the Gertrude Press Poetry Chapbook Contest that year. The next year I entered just one chapbook contest and didn’t place, but in 2009 I entered a few contests and my manuscript was a semifinalist for the Robin Becker Chapbook Prize (Seven Kitchens Press). In 2010, my manuscript was a runner-up for the same prize, judged that year by Eloise Klein Healy, and was offered publication, which I unfortunately had to decline as by that time my full-length collection, which contained most of the poems in the chapbook manuscript, had already been accepted and was scheduled to appear before the chapbook would.

A strange thing happened in early 2010 that I haven’t shared publicly before. A small-press publisher (who shall remain nameless and whose books I very much admire) asked to take a look at my manuscript; not too long after sending it to that publisher, I also submitted it to the Exquisite Disarray First Book Poetry Contest (and notified the other publisher that I was doing so but that I would withdraw the manuscript from the contest immediately if the other publisher wanted it). Shortly thereafter, I received an acceptance email from that other publisher. I immediately emailed Exquisite Disarray to withdraw the manuscript from consideration for the contest, but apparently they never received the email. To my great surprise several months later, I received an email from Exquisite Disarray notifying me that judge Kathleen Flenniken (author of Famous, winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize) had selected What Other Choice as winner of the contest. I was stunned and didn’t know what to do. First, I emailed Exquisite Disarray and told them what happened, that I had withdrawn the manuscript and that I was planning to stick with my current publisher. Then I had second thoughts: Exquisite Disarray was offering me more control over the production of the book and a larger print run. As they are a local press (based in Tacoma, which is not far from Seattle, where I live) I felt I would perhaps get more local publicity and have an easier time getting readings, etc. Furthermore, they were going to print the book on recycled paper and were going to use a local printer, both things that were quite appealing to me. That said, they were a new press, unlike the other publisher, and didn’t have a distributor. It was one of the more difficult decisions of my life; I consulted with a few close friends and former professors and with the other publisher, who graciously offered to release the manuscript, and finally decided to go with Exquisite Disarray.

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

The first title for the earliest version of the manuscript was “Position,” which is also the title of one its poems; I decided I didn’t want that poem to be the focal point of the book, so I changed the manuscript title to “Hardly Planet Yet,” which is plucked from a line of another poem in the manuscript, a love poem called “Buggering You Under an Apple Tree.” I liked the way “Hardly Planet Yet” sounded, and I also liked that its meaning was a bit baffling without the context of the poem it came from. Ultimately, although I considered another title or two (including “Some Queer Poison,” which I felt was a bit more attention-grabbing and flashy), I decided on What Other Choice (which was plucked from a line of “Or,” another poem in the book) as I felt it was perhaps the most flexible, layered, and thematically relevant title I came up with and because it fit so ideally with the cover art I chose.

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?

A book is a manifestation of a possibility or a set of possibilities. For such a possibility or such possibilities to be made manifest, one doesn’t need to win a contest, one needs to write.

I certainly don’t think poets need to win a first-book contest or any other contest, for that matter, but I think it’s often easier (although not necessarily less expensive) to send out to contests in the U.S. (I don’t know whether the contest model is used widely in other countries, particularly in countries where English is not the first language, and hope that it is not) than to send to open reading periods, in that the contests are often more widely advertised and thus easier to find. I happened to find myself in the rare position of actually having a choice between going with a contest publisher or another publisher, as I said earlier. It was a really difficult choice; so many variables to consider and so many unknowns. I won’t say that winning a contest wasn’t something I considered while making that choice, but it wasn’t the only consideration by any means. (Frankly, I wish the contest model wasn’t the primary means for promoting and funding first books in the U.S., but for now economic concerns seem to require that. I should mention that the Exquisite Disarray First Book Poetry Contest did not have an entry fee, unlike many other first-book contests.)

Everyone takes a different path to publication; what’s most important is that the work be strong; if it is, odds are it will eventually find a publisher, although it may take many years. My advice to poets sending out their first manuscript is: send it to both contests and to open reading periods. If you can afford to submit to several at a time, do so. And try to be patient; although I admit the wait isn’t easy, it’s worth it: it will allow you to continue to revise and strengthen the manuscript. I’m very glad that it took as long as it did for my book to be published; had an earlier version been published, I would be a bit embarrassed by it, I think.

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

It went through many versions; I saved a new version every time I made changes, whether minor or major, and I have more than 100 versions saved on my computer. The process was a mixture of pain and pleasure. I very much enjoy revising individual poems, but deciding which poems belonged together in the book and in what order was difficult. Luckily, I had some readers of various versions of the manuscript give helpful suggestions about that. Nathan Whiting (one of my favorite poets and author of, among many other books of poems, the fabulous This Slave Dreads Her Work as if She Were a Lamb Commanded to Be a Musician) was kind enough to put the poems in a completely new order for me, which was extremely helpful and served as a guide as I continued to revise the manuscript and move poems around.

Many friends, some who are poets and some who aren’t, provided very helpful feedback on individual poems and on the manuscript as a whole, and I’m ever so grateful.

I continued to revise poems in the book (and to ask for and receive feedback on those revisions from a few very generous friends—including Elizabeth Colen, Greg Laynor, Dana Guthrie Martin, and Katherine Stribling—and my ever-patient sister, Anne) until the night before the final version was sent to the printer; I was so afraid I was going to overlook something. I read the book over and over during the month before it was published, and made many changes, some fairly major (including cutting a poem or two, adding an epigraph, and changing some poem titles), during that time.

Let me show you an example of what I did to one poem, titled “Position,” the day before the final version of the book was sent to the printer (it was risky, I think to make such radical changes so late in the game, but I’m glad I did). Here’s the version of the poem prior to the final version that appears in the book:

"Position"

Perhaps I was dreaming airplanes

and in my dream I lived in an age before airplanes,

an age in which birds ruled the air with wing and with song,

so that, in my dream, I was daydreaming nonexistent things

and was therefore surprised when I woke in an unfamiliar field,

my anus bleeding into dry grass, an airplane passing above me

like the ride last night from the bar to this far, unfamiliar field

and what happened here, in this space covered now by an airplane’s

small shadow, that can neither be remembered nor forgotten.

And here’s the final version that appears in the book:

"Position"

Perhaps I’d been dreaming airplanes in an age before airplanes

in which birds ruled the air with wing and song

and was therefore surprised when I woke in an unfamiliar field,

my anus bleeding into dry grass, an airplane passing above

like the ride from the bar to that ordinary field

and what happened there—in that space shadowed briefly

by the airplane—that can neither be remembered nor forgotten.

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

I was quite involved with the design of the book, in an advisory role; luckily for me, Exquisite Disarray let me have my talented sister, Anne, do all the design, so I worked closely with her on it, which isn’t to say that I did much of the work on it myself; she designed it all; she gave me choices and her professional opinion, and I gave her my approval and feedback. I trust her judgment over mine when it comes to design/layout (we’ve worked together on design projects for several years, as she’s designed each issue to date of Knockout Literary Magazine, which I’ve coedited with Brett Ortler since 2007). I’m thrilled with the work she did. I can’t imagine a more fitting or beautiful cover or interior design.

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

I found the image. The moment I saw it I knew it had to be the cover image (I don’t think I would have settled for anything else), and happily for me, Bill Kupinse, the president of Exquisite Disarray, agreed with me that it was the perfect fit for the book.

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 certainly wanted to have a majority of the poems published before the book was published, but not necessarily before I started sending out earlier versions of the manuscript back in 2008. I started sending a number of the book’s poems out in 2006, before I even conceived that they would be part of a manuscript. Once I received the offer from the publisher who originally offered to publish What Other Choice, I immediately started sending out the poems that hadn’t appeared in periodicals to as many magazines as I could find that had an issue coming out before the book’s planned publication date, partly because I thought it would be good and free publicity for the forthcoming book. Unfortunately, it turned out that there wasn’t time for more than a few of them to be picked up in time for that, so I needlessly spent a lot of energy and paper and time on that. Several of those poems did end up being accepted by some good magazines that I’d been trying to place work at for some time, only for it to turn out that they weren’t going to publish their next issue before Exquisite Disarray was going to publish my book, so I had to withdraw those poems from those magazines.

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 don’t think a day went by from the time I signed the contract with Exquisite Disarray until the day the final version was sent to the printer that I didn’t do some editing of the poems. I was extremely critical of the poems. Among other things, I sharpened the syntax, heightened the diction, changed line breaks, and worked a great deal on the rhythm and music of the lines.

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

I first saw a copy of my published book at the Richard Hugo House here in Seattle at a release reading of a new poetry anthology. I remember having a hard time restraining myself from flipping through my book during the reading. It was fun to hold it. I was amazed when I finally looked through it all at how well it had turned out, especially considering that it was printed only about two months after I heard that it had won the contest. An enormous amount of effort on my part, on my sister’s part, and on Exquisite Disarray’s part went into getting it to print so quickly, and I was relieved to see that it paid off.

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

I do more poetry readings and interviews, and occasionally editors of literary magazines solicit poems from me now. Oh, and I get to read reviews of my book (including this recent one), which has really been fun.

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?”

Well, I generally read on airplanes and avoid speaking to anyone other than the flight attendants, so I probably wouldn’t, but in the off chance I did, I’d probably say it was about questions of fate and free will, love, sex, identity, power, violence, and death, but not necessarily in that order, and I’d probably only be scratching the surface. I don’t think books of poetry can be easily (or at least fully or honestly) categorized. It’s hard enough to try to categorize a single poem, let alone a whole passel of them. There are too many aspects to poems; poems branch out in so many ways and cover so much territory with so few words that it’s really breathtaking. A successful poem can sometimes take the reader or listener out of time, to a level of nearly pure consciousness, transcendence over the ego. But that’s not exactly what you asked. I think you meant more whether a book of poems can be summarized, not categorized. The thing about poetry is that it really can’t be summarized; so much is lost in attempts at doing so: the delivery and texture of the language itself, the layering of suggestion and possibility, the collapsibility of time, repetition and variation, etc. I don’t think one can say what a poem means, either; one can perhaps sense it, but when one tries to define it, it slips away. Can anyone say what a river means, or what wind means, or what sexual intercourse means? Neither can one say what a poem means. A poem, like a river, like wind, is a force, however, to be reckoned with.

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

Well, it’s a lot of work to promote a book, especially a first book of poems. I’ve done a number of readings and interviews, including an extended two-part filmed interview with Elliot Trotter that can be seen here. I’ve used my Facebook status more times than I care to recall. I’ve done lots of research about reviewers and sent out review copies. I’ve submitted the book (and Exquisite Disarray did as well) to a number of book awards. There are more things I should do, certainly, like setting up an author’s website, but of course there is a limit to what one can do. It can all be a bit daunting and exhausting at times, but sometimes it’s a lot of fun. Doing readings and doing interviews, such as this one, are the most fun types of book promotion, I think. One thing I’d like to do is have a preview of my book filmed and put on YouTube or Vimeo, something I’ve noticed more poets are doing with their books now, including Steven Reigns, whose book Inheritance has a haunting preview film.

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

I can’t think of anything; if someone missed something important, I still haven’t figured out what.

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

The book’s publication freed me to focus on other work and gave me a confidence boost. I am currently working on several new books that are in different stages of completion. One is a book-length erasure poem. Another is a book of short linked poems. Still another is a book of poems based on the title character of poet CAConrad’s fantastic The Book of Frank. Yet another is a book of prose poems. And the last is rather amorphous at present. Wish me luck!

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

I don’t think the world needs to change. I think that people need to change. And I do believe that poetry can change people, those who listen to it and read it and those who write it and perform it.

******************************************************************************************

Jeremy Halinen co-edits Knockout Literary Magazine. What Other Choice, his first full-length collection of poems, won the 2010 Exquisite Disarray First Book Poetry Contest and is available at alibris.com. His poems have also appeared in Best Gay Poetry 2008, Crab Creek Review, the Los Angeles Review, Poet Lore, Sentence, and elsewhere. He resides in Seattle.

******************************************************************************************