Another peep at Clive's monograph

A beautifully designed and written book is a wondrous thing to behold and hold. Click on the image to see a larger one of this double spread of imprint page and title page for the upcoming Lund Humphries / Gray Mare collection of essays, Clive Hicks-Jenkins, already discussed here.

(Except: I confess that mine is not an essay but a wild melange of fictive pieces, tiny stories, essay-like snippets, faux holy-book passage with lots of parallelism, etc. I fear that I no longer behave. )

This image was pilfered from Clive's artlog by some ranging, roaming web-gremlin. Somehow seeing it made me realize why he uses that particular style of shoes for his angels--see the little black wing-vents on the shoes: winged like the heels of Mercury. I don't know why that had never occurred to me before. Just dense, I suppose!

Book edited meticulously by Peter Wakelin. Scrumptious design by Andrew Wakelin.

Poetry month shenanigans and more

APRIL IS POETRY MONTH (THANK YOU, ELIOT)

Dave Bonta will be doing a month of poetry reading--a book each day--for April, "poetry month." It's a good time to send him a book if you are a writer, and if you are a reader, he invites you to join in. Dave is one of the people I asked to participate in my upcoming series of posts on writing and publishing. (I have comments from four of the six writers I asked for comments, and am only waiting on the last two to begin.) He and Beth Adams are the founders of qarrtsiluni, that fascinating poetry 'zine, and Dave has moved from project to project, widening his presence on the internet. He'll talk about his kingdom on the internet here in the coming days.

MORE NEWS ABOUT MIKE IN VIETNAM

For the many who have paused to read my post from a few days ago about Mike's hilarious and sad adventure in Vietnam, the update is that he is thrilled with the volunteer work he is doing. It is exciting; every day he sees cases that are dramatic and that simply don't appear in the states. Every day he has chances to help and to change lives. The sweetest thing about all this is that the Vietnamese doctors and patients are grateful that he and his cohorts have come, and that in turn he is grateful to them for the experience and all that he is learning and seeing--it feels like the very reason a blue collar boy worked so very hard to pass through college, grad school, medical school, and a neuromuscular fellowship. Evidently it is neurology heaven for a doctor from a rural academic hospital!

MORE POETRY MONTH

Read an April book for April poetry month?

Pre-order discounts are still on for one of the loveliest books in the universe (hardcover and paperback), and that includes all distant galaxies. Design house Burt & Burt's use of a painting from Clive Hicks-Jenkins is wondrous, from the jacket to the leaves that sift through the pages of the book, linking prefatory pages to division pages. The contents are said to be pretty good as well!

Available by pre-order at your local independent bookshop and elsewhere in the brick-and-mortal world and online. To find ISBN numbers and such, check the Amazon page here. To see a big, beautiful version of the jacket, click on the image above.

Corey Mesler & more

Corey Mesler is one of the writers I consulted on my upcoming posts on writing and publishing--I asked him about the small press world from the point of views of writer and bookseller. You'll see him again later. But now he has a new interview up at Flutter. He is both poet and novelist, and Flutter asked him to put on his poetry hat. Here are a couple of bites from the pie:

10. What is your ultimate goal as a poet? Are there any specific awards or prizes you strive for?

Oh, I don’t know. I feel like I have been so lucky already. My goal as a writer, years ago, was to have one book in print, one ISBN that I could call my own. So, to have, as my loving wife calls it, a body of work, well, it’s just too sweet. Of course, I would love to have a novel published by FS&G, or Dalkey Archive, or McSweeney’s, or Dzanc, but, what writer wouldn’t? But, realistically, I am not going to land at Knopf. I am very happy with every single publishing credit I have ever received, with every press who has ever published me. I am a small press author and that is, I believe, a fine thing to be. I have received many Pushcart nominations, and, I suppose, just once appearing in that formidable year-end tome would be grand. Oh, and an Oscar. Someday I want an Oscar.

2. What is your writing process?

After years of late night, sad bastard, flesh-lonely, darkly scrivened verse in imitation of whomever I was currently reading, after years of zero discipline, I finally, after marrying my current wife who, among other things, centered me, became an early morning writer. I get up before anyone else, make the coffee for my wife and daughter, and then go to my room. I am normally in front of the keyboard by 6 a.m., every day of the week. Discipline came late to me but, at least, it did come.

* * *

And now I must go write some more and also whisk about the downstairs, attempting to make house-drudging light, before I dash off. Good week for lunch: had a lovely one with painters Yolanda Sharpe and Ashley Cooper and now am going out with novelists Peggy Leon and Alice Lichtenstein. Happy (slightly belated) birthday, Peg! Her new novel from Permanent Press is here.

Upcoming series of posts on writing

I am postponing the little bloggy series on writing and publishing for a few days because I decided to get comments from other writers. It will ramble a bit and try to answer the questions people ask me with some musings on persistence, giving up, luck, doing what you want to do, home and the writer, print publishers, the internet and publishing, and other topics. I'll have some thoughts from other writers, including Dave Bonta, Philip Lee Williams, Marsha Parker, and others.