Family Business is out of print, though I did see one copy in early May of 2012 on the poetry shelf at Broadway Books, a small independent bookstore of the very best sort - check with them to see if it's still there and buy it through their website. I'm working on a related collection - Theories of Relativity - in which some of these poems, revised, will appear.
- commentary
This was a chapbook manuscript in an envelope - it grew out of its own cover. I'd had that cartoon taped on the door of my office for years; it'd been there so long I didn't even see it anymore. Working on poems about family, including my own), I saw once again how putting poems together, creating relationships among them, makes them different, new, fresh. And then, in one of those who-knows-why moments, I saw the taped-up cartoon, laughed out loud, and realized I had to use it. By the time I secured the rights, I'd begun working with Ash Creek Press, where Mac Kieffer thought of having the cartoon be the entire face of the envelope — making it, essentially, a book cover. Once we had that, I thought: I can put anything into this envelope, pack any of my poems in there, time after time! So I've been using it for gifts and treats and samples, a signature piece. Here on this page, however, it's an experiment in the rapidly mutating lit-biz of the 21st century: first in what could be a series of enveloped manuscripts, this batch of "fresh poetry" is Family Business, containing some of my most autobiographical work.*
This was a chapbook manuscript in an envelope - it grew out of its own cover. I'd had that cartoon taped on the door of my office for years; it'd been there so long I didn't even see it anymore. Working on poems about family, including my own), I saw once again how putting poems together, creating relationships among them, makes them different, new, fresh. And then, in one of those who-knows-why moments, I saw the taped-up cartoon, laughed out loud, and realized I had to use it. By the time I secured the rights, I'd begun working with Ash Creek Press, where Mac Kieffer thought of having the cartoon be the entire face of the envelope — making it, essentially, a book cover. Once we had that, I thought: I can put anything into this envelope, pack any of my poems in there, time after time! So I've been using it for gifts and treats and samples, a signature piece. Here on this page, however, it's an experiment in the rapidly mutating lit-biz of the 21st century: first in what could be a series of enveloped manuscripts, this batch of "fresh poetry" is Family Business, containing some of my most autobiographical work.*
- excerpt
The Elders Repeat Themselves
The condition of youth
is ignorance: they cannot
learn from us; they have to
bleed and gasp and weep.
Why tell them anything?
Why clutch their shoulders
pierce their eyes with ours
to fiercely whisper
all the burning years
into their open faces?
Given what we know
how can we tell them
what we say is true?
First published in Umbrella Summer, 2007.
The Elders Repeat Themselves
The condition of youth
is ignorance: they cannot
learn from us; they have to
bleed and gasp and weep.
Why tell them anything?
Why clutch their shoulders
pierce their eyes with ours
to fiercely whisper
all the burning years
into their open faces?
Given what we know
how can we tell them
what we say is true?
First published in Umbrella Summer, 2007.
- responses
I never read poetry before yours; I thank you for it.
— a neighbor in Portland's Hollywood District
* Some folks bought the very first version (a manuscript called, like its container, Fresh Poetry, and including two "bonus poems"); those copies are all gone now - as is the original Family Business.
I never read poetry before yours; I thank you for it.
— a neighbor in Portland's Hollywood District
* Some folks bought the very first version (a manuscript called, like its container, Fresh Poetry, and including two "bonus poems"); those copies are all gone now - as is the original Family Business.