Pocket Park is published!

Yes, October 1st came and the status of my book is no longer "forthcoming" but "adopt me!"

Going on press to check color was a huge good thing to do. I was sick with a cold, but with tissues on hand, I took the LIRR out to East Rockaway, NY. where Sandy McIntosh, publisher at Marsh Hawk Press, picked me up and drove us to the printers, Sterling Pierce. After four tries we approved a better cover than Michael Arguelles, the color tech guru, had at first shown us. He was patient and ultimately shifted the cover to another machine that was able to deliver more contrast and saturation than the one printing the interior.

The interior looks really good, it helps to be on glossy brochure style paper. After getting a first set of proofs at home last month I'd adjusted color slightly on nine of the interior photos (too dark or too light) and now they printed just fine. I've created a color setting in Photoshop for each printer I use so the screen emulates their color. It's working, I'd guess about 90% on target, since a piece of printed paper will never be as bright as the stained glass effect of a glowing monitor. Or in design-speak, two different color spaces, CMYK vs RGB (like comparing Olive Oil to Popeye in a battle of color strength).

Digital color printing still isn't the equal of a traditional full 4-color press...but...it's gotten a lot better in the last several iterations of the machines that churn these pages out. The digital printers are basically a seven foot long photocopier. Traditional presses can be the length of an Olympic sized pool and wide as a semi! My photos don't depend on subtle shifts in skin tone, that would be hard to do digitally. Pocket Park, visually, is about mid-tone gray and tan geometric urban planes contrasting with saturated hues of water and foliage. An urban park in color. With poems in black ink Garamond.

Sandy asked me to pick some photos from the book to put on the Marsh Hawk Press gallery section of their website. And to talk about how the book came into being, including my experience working with digital color. So here is my day wearing three hats: poet, photographer, and book designer. All three happy.

The skilled Michael Arguelles with me at Sterling Pierce, printers.
Due to head cold, I'm having a massive bad hair week.

Sandy McIntosh, publisher at Marsh Hawk Press.

4 pages to a sheet.

Look! My title page! Sandy tends to blink into the flash,
honestly he looked lots happier than this.

Good color all the way through.

Approved to print & bind.

Less is Less Unless it is More Good News

THE LESS AND LESS PART
Last week I visited the Utrecht Art store, near where I work, and discovered their big redesign of all their retail outlets meant they dumbed down their offerings. Gone was the large cutting table where I could layout boards and decide how to frame my art. Gone were the useful array of books on art and technique (now down to one woefully inadequate kiosk with a dozen fairly useless titles and not even one book on calligraphy) and the general air of being a place that mattered was gone. I had remembered an energetic knowledgeable staff, dynamic manager, shelves with many good choices of tools, papers, and paints...and discount tables. It is now a sort of E-Z artsy store, akin to the art section in the Micheal's Craft stores. The place was like the cat that had gone to be "fixed" and came back with depleted interests... clearly the digital world is affecting viability of art stores. Will they mostly go the way of bookstores leaving behind just a few small specialty shops catering to real artists?

Lately I've had a "Potemkin Shelf" feeling at the big Barnes and Noble (Broadway and 82nd Street). As if the books being turned face out were the last in line. There's a subtle thinning of the stock...just what Borders went through in its final months. It makes me sad. Bookstores have been a mecca for my cover design eye and a feast for my insatiable reading heart. And big mega stores just means more walking and looking and browsing—a place where I pleasantly split into two selves in one, my body relaxes into a slowly strolling trance and my mind and eye are darting and diving—reuniting at the end of the checkout line. Luckily I still live in a college neighborhood where print books will last as long as there are students and professors to read or assign them. Also, I thank the graces for the New York Public Library....

THE GOOD NEWS PART
Yesterday I ran over to Book Culture and bought a used paperback copy of William Carlos Williams book long poem Patterson. I am writing a book of poems about a small urban park—sharing space with my photos. I'm looking for inspiration, other ways of seeing. This tip came from Paul Pines, "one of the best collections of cityscape poetry is by my old friend and mentor Paul Blackburn in a book called The Cities, published by Evergreen. I recommend it highly. And in all of his work Paul had an eye for detail and ear for sounds and speech that was peerless and informs his work. He was a protege of Williams, whose classic book Patterson is another great one (both alluding to Lorca in some way, his Poet in New York). That book by Paul contains his great good-bye to W.C., "Phone Call to Rutherford," that great moment when Williams, unable to speak because of his heart attack, says, "...you have made a record on my heart."" I had looked at passages from Patterson back in college but what a different rich cornucopia it is to me now! Thank you for the leads.

So this brings me to my news, my book, Pocket Park, will be coming out Fall of 2013 from Marsh Hawk Press!!!!!!! I have 4 months to take the rough manuscript and finish, rewrite, reimagine, and find where I can add or subtract. What are the best city park poems you have read? Let me know, I'm stoking my imagination for the work and play ahead.

Giving good cover

I enjoyed making this cover for All Screwed Up, a memoir by the very talented Steve Fellner. It is almost finished. I met Steve after I designed the cover for his first book, Blind Date With Cavafy, which won the 2006 poetry prize at Marsh Hawk Press and the 2008 Thom Gunn Award for Gay Male Poetry. He liked it enough to ask his new publisher, Benu Press, to please use me to design this book too. And they did. You gotta read Steve. He's smart, funny, and gets your attention. He grew up some in trailers; bowling, adoption, and being gay all added to his crazy childhood misadventures. So I made a real mobile out of corrugated cardboard using a red hanger, clip art (touched up), and glitter. Jim cut the letters out with a pocket knife. The back cover was made in photoshop by merging several photos. The mobile is twinkling in my living room.

I still have the paper cup I used to create Steve's other cover. I found the cup in a gutter in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn when I was with a photography class taking shots at twilight. I put the cup on the hood of a car and snapped it. Then I redrew the image in the coffee cup to be guys holding hands. That part I did in illustrator and then merged it in photoshop with the photo I'd taken.

I wonder if he will want something other than a paper product for his third cover?

AWP and me. Or, have book, need markets

No, I didn't actually go to the biggest baddest literature conference happening in NYC this year. It was booked so early I couldn't get in, but on Saturday, the last day, the bookfair was open to the public.

The bookfair filled three huge floors of the Hilton. Apparently the first floor is usually clogged and tumbleweeds move freely on the third. To my delight, both the Alimentum and Marsh Hawk Press tables were facing each other on the second floor limbo. This facingness allowed me to move back and forth and eat chocolates placed to entice. I talked to Paulette, publisher of Alimentum, about designing a color insert of a heavily illustrated piece. Cool. Then back at MHP I talked to Sandy, our managing editor, about going to the AWP in Chicago next year. If I help run the table I can get a good chunk of my expenses covered.

I sold a copy of my book. I gave some copies away.

I walked around and handed out hot pink flyers advertising our book contest. I didn't have to look far for the hungry new MFA students. Barbara, who is the heart of the press, was endless energy presenting our books. Rochelle, who is not well, managed to be there every day and spent the afternoon telling our latest prize winner, Karin Randolph, how to promote herself and sell her book. I met people who felt like instant friends and hugged friends for an instant.

I found tables of publishers and writing programs that I love EVERYWHERE. Small Beer Press, A Public Space, Poetry, Tupelo, The Frost Place, Fairy Tale Review, Edward Tufte of the fascinating visual information books (the assistant says he likes to be called E.T.) and on and on. Tables and journals and books, oh my.

But all this muchness has a downside. It is now absolutely clear to me that more than enough poetry is published in the US. One could feel like a mere drop of sweat in an incredibly large bucket. Best not to think about that. One writes. Others write. Some are driven to publish and we thank them for it.

Best of all an agent and two publishers may be interested in helping to bring The Poets' Grimm (fairy tale poem anthology) back into print. Our publisher went out of business. Used copies are selling for $100 on Amazon and we get weekly emails from teachers and readers wanting the book. Have market, need books.