OMG! My Chapbook! It’s Here!

Today I came home to a huge carton on my doorstep. From CreateSpace. Could it be–already?

Yes, Dear Readers. Yes it is.

My chapbook!

The front cover. Remember all that fuss over which of Mark’s photos to use? (Yeah, me neither.)

I am, as you might guess, giddy. It is 43 pages of poems, elegantly arranged over 58 pages, Oreo-cookied between one of the loveliest photos ever taken of fall leaves in the Methow River and three of the most embarrassingly glowing blurbs ever to grace a back cover. I can hardly believe it.

I’m profoundly grateful to Lana Hechtman Ayers, editor and publisher of MoonPath Press in Kingston, WA for inviting me, exactly one year ago today, to submit my manuscript for her to consider publishing; for her artfully selecting and shaping the poems into sequence; and for her meticulous care and patience throughout the process of editing and producing the chapbook. I thank Tonya Namura, too, for designing the cover so beautifully and laying out the text. This is my dream come true!

And my thanks to you, Dear Readers, for your enthusiasm and encouragement about this project. It’s been fantastic to be able to share this great news with you throughout the process. I’ll post details soon about getting copies of the chapbook into your hands.

Cheers,
Jennifer

News About My Poetry Chapbook

I’ve been trying to be patient, but I just can’t keep this to myself anymore. My chapbook of poems, Impossible Lessons, is at the printer, and I’ll receive copies of it in just a couple of weeks! When it arrives, I’ll post a photo of the cover, which turned out beautifully.

If you’ll happen to be in the Northwest corner of the Lower 48 on July 10 at 7:00 p.m., please plan to come to my launch reading at Village Books in Bellingham, Washington.

I’ll be making a bigger deal out of this as that date draws nearer, but I just had to tell you!

Another Snippetizer

Thank you for your kind response, Dear Readers, to the first excerpt I posted from my lyric essay last time. By popular demand (Cupcake, David), I’m posting another pony-sized segment. This one is about my noticing horses for the first time. It was at the Reno Rodeo Parade in June, 1970:

It was the June I turned four. I remember being transfixed by the flags, the marching bands, the drum majorettes twirling and tossing their shining batons. Then came the horses.

I suppose they were ridden, probably by ropers and trail riders and rodeo princesses. But what I saw were the horses—gold, black, dark red, spotted—and gleaming. The sharp brightness of the horses’ coats was matched by the sharp sounds they made, every jogged step punctuated by a hard clack as each steel-shod hoof met the street. The rhythms of the horses’ strides meshed with each other and unmatched, cadent and cacophonous. I listened, smelled the horses’ salty sweat, and watched their elastic bodies arch and stretch. I pulled on my mother’s hand, looked up into her face, and quietly spoke: I want one of those.