I’ll just say it. I want to publish another poetry collection. The last, Clinician’s Guide to the Soul, came out in 2008. Yes, I still have plenty of unsold copies. No, there has been no demand for a new book. Yes, a number of the poems I’ve written since then have found their way into print. No, I have no idea how I’d manage distribution of a new offering. But I know the title—have known it for years now. It is hovering.
A couple of weeks ago, we took several cartons of books needing new homes to Friends of the Library, a large used bookstore near here. It was immediately apparent that others had been spending some of their quarantine time doing the same sort of culling. It was nearly impossible to enter the store what with cartons stacked up inside and out. We were told to leave ours outside on the crowded sidewalk with all the other large and small containers, some sealed, some open to the elements. Damp book covers stared back at us forlornly. Will our donations ever be catalogued, shelved and resold? I felt both guilty and sad abandoning them there.
That said, I can’t seem to resist the urge to gather up uncollected poems from the scattered periodicals in which they’ve landed and rescue those languishing in computer files. I want to use them as puzzle pieces from which to create a whole new story for the readers I always imagine when I write. I want to illuminate them with visual art, lay them out in a pleasing way. I want to make a book with a spine, ISBN number and barcode. The print run would necessarily be modest—I could call it a limited edition.
If nothing else, it would be a souvenir, something to remember myself by.