Facebook: Be sarcastic to me

For reasons quite unclear to me, a lot of young Indian facebook users have started liking my page for my book, The Book of Knots and their Untying. As far as I can tell, they are not (necessarily) purchasing copies from Amazon, and they are certainly not messaging me. I think it must be some kind of in-joke, the kind that is so dumb that it's funny. I used to do that sort of thing. When I was in college, I often attended the Saturday night movies in the chapel. The film board chose excellent movies:  La Dolce Vita, Casablanca, Repulsion, Metropolis. What my friends and I used to do was sit through the credits, and when "Grip" came up on the screen, holler enthusiastically and yell out the name of whoever the grip had been. It was stupid and pointless and harmless. Welcome, fans from India. I am proud to be part of your silly private cult.

It's a Book! Part 2: The Book of Knots and their Untying is here--and ready for you

At last. After nine years of writing and who can say how many years of living, my first book length collection has been published by Karen Kelsay of Aldrich Press. You can get it through Amazon (click the link) or I can mail you a signed and dedicated copy. You can pay through PayPal at pieplate8@yahoo.com. btw, thanks to Lynn Maya for wearing the shoes that provided me with the cover photo.

If you wish, click on the link at the upper left, just for the hell of it, and read the truly kind and generous things that Richard Garcia, Charlotte Davidson, and, David Ebenbach have written about my poems.


Below, the title poem:

Knots and Their Untying 

See how easy others write of knots.

Books show pliant ropes

lying over and under. Loaded knots

cannot be undone by crushing.

Always the challenge, pulling against holding.  

For mathematicians there are no knots, only

the counting of loops and crossings.

All knots are Gordian, made to slice.

Knot knuckle netting knitting: 

not one related to another.

Sounds entwined

yet nothing ties the words together. 

I learned knots that would not hold

in the enduring mystery

of tying my shoes.

Others found it easy, quick.

My unclever fingers worked

to manage the weaving.

Hold pinched what you cannot see.

Pull tight, not too soon, not too slow.

Untying a knot, easy

as talking to people who do not listen.

Persuade the fold to release both parts,

though the center promises to hold forever
against tugging and anger, hunger and haste.

Each knot works to be one though it is two,

two moving back to back,

mirrored without looking,

craning to catch the other pretending to oneness.

Tie a knot for memory, to outwit

the gap between you and your desire

when it eludes you, reminds you

             it is not you     it is not yours   

You are not the string around your finger,

holding close what wants to flee.

Step out of your shoes, unbind your feet.

Time to walk away.

I am very very pleased also to note that this poem received a Special Merit award in the (prestigious) Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial poetry contest sponsored by Comstock Poetry Review. I made it to the top 10! out of more than 1000 entries!!

It's a Book!

Or at least, it's going to be a book. Right now it's a couple of file folders and a Word file, entitled The Book of Knots and Their Untying. It is also the latest addition to the Aldrich Press, whose editor, Karen Kelsay, offered me publication Monday. Now I have a raft of new tasks:  develop a cover photo (the above photo is the first mock-up, but I'm not done yet); solicit blurbs from the more esteemed poets of my acquaintance (two refusals already, well, I didn't have to wait very long); get ready to set up readings once I get a publication estimate.

And also try to answer in my heart:  is it good enough? Am I a good enough writer to have a book? I have had reverence for books ever since I knew what they were. I was never a kid who scribbled on printed pages. I thought Doctor Doolittle was real because he was in a book. (Okay, I got past that one.) Maybe a writer is one who writes, as a dancer is one who dances. Maybe good enough needs to be replaced by what W.S. Merwin said in an interview about artists:  "Now is the time to do what only I can be doing."