field guide to autobiography

I am so incredibly excited to announce that my first full-length book, field guide to autobiography, will be published by H_NGM_N Books next year!!

This book has been a labor of love, & has changed and evolved in many ways since I first began writing poems toward it 3-4 years ago. In many ways, the book truly began as part of my MFA thesis back in 2006. I’ve been submitting this manuscript for the greater part of a year in its current iteration, & it had been rejected 15 times. I was beginning to feel very discouraged.

As a nearly-42 year old human who has been submitting & publishing poems for the past twenty (20) years, it’s been a long time coming. This is all to say – dear reader, please don’t ever give up on your creative self. If I can do it, you can too. 

Thanks for reading.

A bit about the book:

The book explores the inter-relatedness of various species through accreted fragments toward autobiography. How does a person begin to enumerate the many fragments & fractals that comprise a life? field guide to autobiography is an attempt at memoir through the lens of various animals & minerals including katydids, wrens, abalone shells, and apple trees.

snails

redstarts (for teens)

flycatchers

plover

loons

boobys

autobio – day seven

Allure of echinoderm symmetry

We marveled gasping in sea[wage] wa[te]r

 

My mom shook the Etch a Sketch with vigor

At the attachment a variation

We were trees we were leaves we were litter

 

This habit of margins

No scientific names found

Long, divided – but extending

Sometimes the wings are dark, especially in females

 

We chased balloons in the rain

Developed unique body plans

If I tattoo you with flowers, it will be a kind of protection

If I eat Lays with my Grandma, it will be connection

We avoided the porn, adjusted the Craftmatic

 

Distinguished from other brittle stars

Distinguished from the bottom-dweller

The rapture of pentaradial force

The wrath of a sessile ancestor

 

Oh, calcareous fatty deposits

Oh, carton of YiaYia’s Winstons

Yellow calla lilies callow in the breeze

 

We wanted a gut of snakes

We wanted a mouth teeming with stars

 

*italicized phrases appropriated from http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/7917328#page/196/mode/1up

mama, turn out the light –

The eggs are laid in the galleries

We wander, plucking faces from white walls

The yolk demands its attachment

The yolk broadcasts the feed

 

A nest of small beaks, a nest of plumes

In circles, circles

Wingless, a shiny cadence

Tufted f-stop heart 

Lets light in, brave

 

The fight is feathery distance but we claw its shimmer of idea

A hologram that pops up strata with puffed chins and chest

The shooting gallery where we fire and fire

A high squealing wah wah wah

 

first and last lines quoted from 80’s era editions of Field Guide to Insects (Embioptera order) and Field Guide to Birds (White-Fronted Goose) respectively…