A Dark Address (Redux)
Printing my first book, rediscovering a poem, and starting a new self-publishing project
The last few years have led to a substantial backlog of poems and manuscripts for me, and I’ve wondered about the best way to handle these. While I’ve released my work through Dead Mall Press in the past, I’ve decided that further cluttering up the catalogue with the editor’s books would do a disservice to the other writers published there. After some reflection, I’ve decided to launch a new “Bookstore” feature here on the blog. There, you’ll see approx. half a dozen chapbooks of my own appear for sale across the next several months (unless I lose my mind in the process). All books will be $10 flat, shipping included. And if you pledge a paid subscription, the books will be heavily discounted (you’ll just pay a portion of the shipping).
On Sale Now
To kick things off, a print edition of my first book, A Dark Address, is available to order today (shipping begins September 9th). While a .pdf version was released in April 2020, this is its first time in print. With a new (to me) bookmaking method, I can now print collections up to approx. 120 pages in length. A Dark Address will be a side-stapled, 8.5 x 11 inch booklet of 65 pages.1 See the design below:
This book was a culmination of my earlier style, which was more lyrical and personal. Even though there are things here I would not write today, the book is one I’ll always see as pivotal: releasing it as I did, and when I did, was one of the most freeing moments of my life. But since it’s a reissue, I’m not going to be pushing it very hard, and I don’t expect many copies to sell. And that is perfectly fine. I just need it to be in print, as a kind of closure.
A Newly Restored Poem
For the most part, the book is the same as the one that appeared in 2020. I did some light editing and adjusting of titles, and I included a preface that puts it in context (especially regarding my decision to self-publish it). And one poem (“Song”) has been drastically improved. But the biggest change here is the inclusion of an unpublished poem that I meant to include but somehow lost. I’d written it sometime between 2018-2019, and I had every intention of putting it in the book, but my file organization was a nightmare at the time and it never made it. Recently, I found it while sorting through those old files, and not only is it going in the book, but I’m sharing it here as well. The poem is about as upbeat as I get: a love letter to my friends. (An in-text version is included at the bottom of this post)
More Books in the Works
Launching the bookstore with a reissue seems sort of anti-climactic maybe, but there will be plenty of new stuff soon. The timeline is not set yet, but I anticipate at least four titles to appear between now and next summer (you can find these listed and briefly described on the Bookstore page). I have other stuff in the works too, in various degrees of completion. But one thing at a time—or 4, or 5.
Also, as if that weren’t enough, there will be one last book of mine through DMP in October: I’m putting out a 70-page version of Interrogation Days, featuring all parts of this project that have appeared on DMP already in smaller chapbook form (Dysnomia, Civil Society, and Interrogation Days itself). Rounding it out, I’m including a section of new work that brings things into the present and explores continuity between the US "War on Terror” and the genocide in Gaza. Ultimately, having both A Dark Address and Interrogation Days together in full length print versions has been been too long in the making. I’m very glad to be able to put them out there now, and I hope you’ll check them both out.
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OK if you read this far, thank you. I’d be doing this if no one paid attention anyway, so it’s good to have you here. Truly.
POEM FOR MY FRIENDS
Loss is the secret each name keeps. Saying mine, you ask me to be, to quit my secrecy & talk to you. It’s morning. For a while yet we have the signs & streets, oaks, clover everywhere. We’re here & it’s been so long. A dream of us I keep almost recalling flashes across the hoods of these dark cars breathing fossils into the gravel & grass & the tiny bees in my imagination. There’s something we were we’ve forgotten & it’s lived on in us as a secret stumbled into in other situations, other rooms or hours. We drift along un- named inside a soft confusion as voices litter the cosmos of buildings & parking lots & letters still piled up on the countertop. I lose the thread & Ariadne is a cricket, here, drawing my eyes down to the fact of my left shoe, scuffs crazing it. This is how it goes: we become less ourselves & more this wave tracing our lives through music & coincidence. There is no reality in regret. The dead live someplace else, that’s all. Everything goes on. Beneath the oaks, rambling & undestroyed, we stand together in ordinary clothes. Morning ends. A breeze sways the traffic light, shadows print across the grass. And we're here, still searching one another’s face.
This “spineless” (lol) form was ubiquitous during the 60s and 70s in the mimeograph era. As I’ve learned more about those books, I realized that folding the pages was not necessary, and with a good stapler I could bind more pages together. I also have to credit Ryan Skrabalak’s Spiral Editions for showing me this too, as he’s released many outstanding volumes of side-stapled poetry.