! BOOKS !

Posted on by Jami Macarty

Dear Gift Reader,

Hello, may you be healthy and in pursuit of what makes you happy.

I am happy to welcome you to this conversation about reading and making books. Today is a Big Day in my writing and publishing life. Today, December 2, 2025, is the official publication day for The Long Now Conditions Permit!

In this ! Books ! dispatch, I share with you the story of how my second full-length collection has come into being—from writing individual poems to their publication in literary magazines to the selection of the manuscript, The Long Now Conditions Permit, as winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize to finding the perfect cover image.

AnnouncingThe Long Now Conditions Permit!

THE LONG NOW CONDITIONS PERMIT
by Jami Macarty
University of Nevada Press, December 2025

The Long Now Conditions Permit confronts the persistent brutalities of our world through poetry that both names and resists the injustices shaping it. From the quiet sorrows of everyday slight to the overwhelming crises of ecological collapse and gendered violence, these poems document what is occurring—the horrendous and the intimate, the anguished and the magnificent.

With ethical attention, Jami Macarty’s collection engages the political, ecological, and personal forces that shape and mark our lives, offering an ecofeminist ethic of care as an antidote to extractive capitalism and patriarchal norms. Each poem meditates on power, insists on articulating what is being lost—and what must be saved and reclaimed. 

Amid the exploitation and violence, these poems find moments of grace: the scent of a sea rose, a desert walk in spring, the company of birds, Earth entire. The Long Now Conditions Permit is both tender elegy and urgent call, exhorting readers to grapple with the devastating failings of humanity and the saving possibilities of love. 

Winning the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize

On March 4, 2024 my second manuscript of poetry marched forth to its life as a book when I answered a call from Claudia Keelan, editor, who told me The Long Now Conditions Permit won the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize!

The 2023 Test Site Poetry Prize Semifinalists, Finalists, and Winners!

The Test Site Poetry Series is the collaborative book-publishing project of Interim: A Journal of Poetry and Poetics and the University of Nevada Press. Interim, established in 1944 by the late Wilber Stevens, is housed in the English Department at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and is one of the longest-running “little” literary magazines in the United States. Interim editors and poets Claudia Keelan and Andrew S. Nicholson serve as Test Site Poetry Series editors. The Test Site Poetry Prize-winning book is chosen by Claudia Keelan and an advisory board, which includes poets Sherwin Bitsui, Donald Revell, Sasha Steensen, and Ronaldo V. Wilson.

The editors and advisory board are looking for manuscripts that engage the perilous conditions of life in the 21st century, as they pertain to issues of social justice and the earth. The winning book will demonstrate an ethos that considers the human condition in inclusive love and sympathy, while offering the same in consideration of the earth. Because we believe the truth is always experimental, we’ll especially appreciate books with innovative approaches.

Now, some of the delicious words The Test Site Poetry Series editorial board members shared about The Long Now Conditions Permit!

from Sasha Steensen (on Facebook):

from Ronaldo V. Wilson (the book’s endorsement):

from Claudia Keelan (the book’s endorsement):

from Donald Revell (the book’s endorsement):

These poets’ words for The Long Now Conditions Permit, heart-expanding gifts!

Finding the Cover Photo

The first time I saw Masahiko Kuroki‘s photograph of the tree (above) was early December 2024, scrolling my Facebook feed. It was late at night after a long day’s driving in a highway-side hotel. I had been stressing over the just-right photo. The publisher didn’t care for my ideas, and I wasn’t wild about theirs. Such is the often fraught book cover conversation!

It’s a mystery as to why Masahiko Kuroki’s photo appeared in my feed. I wasn’t following him. I had never heard of him. Nor had I previously seen any of his photos. Yet somehow rather miraculously his photo appeared. When I saw it, I slid off the edge of the bed. Then recovering myself from the floor, I shined the image toward my partner’s face and asked, What about this for the cover? As if falling off the bed wasn’t enough!

When I shared Mashiko Kuroki’s photograph with the University of Nevada Press team, they said: “But we’re really loving the final image… It’s the most unique of all the images you’ve suggested, or that we’ve found, and I love that the tree can be interpreted literally as a tree, or with just a bit of imagination, as a woman with her arms outstretched.”

As we moved through the design process, their admiration for Kuroki’s photograph grew: “Again, our team just loves this image! It’s so evocative and interesting. I think it’s really going to pull readers in.”

And, as we arrived at the cover’s final design: “For what we’ve started calling the “tree woman” image here in the office, I still think this is the best option, by far. If you want something unique that you’re not going to find on another book cover, this is the image to choose. We were talking about it in our staff meeting this morning, and everyone agrees this is one of the most striking covers we’ve proposed in quite a long time.”

I experience Masahiko Kuroki’s photo viscerally every time I behold it. I feel an upward reaching within me. Masahiko Kuroki’s photo is perfect company for the poems in The Long Now Conditions Permit which feature the figures of trees and women and seek a freedom from the threat of violence that all too often pervades natural and domestic environments.

Thank you to, Masahiko Kuroki, for agreeing to accompanying my poems with his photograph!

Writing the Poems in The Long Now Conditions Permit

I freshly wrote or deeply revised all of the poems in The Long Now Conditions Permit over ninety-five days between January 2020 and January 2021. The poems were drafted/revised among a shifting cohort of other poets during five days in person at a goddess table in January 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic was just coming to our attention. Then, over three thirty-day online poem-a-day writing sprees in July 2020, October 2020, and January 2021. I loved the practice of trying to write a poem-a-day. The intensity! There were duds, but there were keepers. The process gave me an experience of seeing just what writing I could accomplish in a relatively short period of time. It showed me the momentum of daily practice and power of cumulative effect in writing. The practice offered me a community of writers. And I made some poetry pals!

Generous Publishers of Individual Poems

What makes a full-length collection? Individual poems! They are the building blocks and act as gateways from poem to poem, and engender conversations between poet and editor, poet and publisher. Individual poems have their own lives and are part of the lives of full-length collections. Individual poems are the beginning of a book, and they point to a book when it comes into being.

While searching for my book’s publisher, I tweaked the poems and tried out the revised versions by sending them out for consideration with literary magazines in Canada and the US. This editorial process offered me valuable information about which poems would make up the manuscript of The Long Now Conditions Permit. Sometimes the poems editors believed in were also the poems I believed in. Sometimes not. So, I had to figure out which poems mattered most to the life of the book.

Thirteen editors of literary magazines selected individual poems from The Long Now Conditions Permit for publication in their the literary magazines they helm. I wish to acknowledge the hardworking and devoted editors, staff, publishers, and printers for giving time, attention, and space to my writing. Thank you, Geoffrey Gatza at BlazeVOX; Matthew Cooperman at Colorado Review; Haley Lasché at Concision Poetry Journal; Claudia Keelan at Interim: A Journal of Poetry & Poetics; Simone Muench at The Jet Fuel Review; Robert Julius and Alyssa Froehling at The Journal; Charles Kell at Ocean State Review; Richard Greenfield at Puerto del Sol; Jackie Janusis at Redivider; Jaimie Gusman at Tinfish; Eleni Zisimatos at Vallum Magazine and Vallum Chapbook Series; Gillian Conoley at Volt; Sue Goyette, editor of the anthology Resistance: Righteous Rage in the Age of #Metoo (University of Regina Press, 2020). Special thanks to Interim: A Journal of Poetry and Poetics, Vallum Magazine, and Vallum Chapbook Series for their ongoing support of my writing by publishing my poems in several issues between 2020 and 2024.

I take the time and space above to name these editors and publications as a gesture of gratitude because they took the time with and offered space to my writing. They are important to my writing life. And they are part of the valuable conversation I want to have about my poems and poetry in general.

Seeking a Publisher

In December 2021, I offered for consideration to The Test Site Poetry Series the first version of the manuscript. It was one hundred and twenty pages long! That’s long by most standards. Typically, the recommended length for manuscripts is around seventy pages. The manuscript’s title was, and has always been, The Long Now Conditions Permit. It was named a finalist for The Test Site Poetry Series. Spur! The next year and the one after that, the manuscript was on the shortlist with Canada’s Brick Books. Spur! Spur! Then, in March 2024 it won the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize! In all, I offered the manuscript for consideration forty-one times.

For me, the story of how The Long Now Conditions Permit came into being sums to two words: Persistence! Perseverance!

Now, Seeking Readers

Now, for my book I seek readers! Gentle, generous readers who will give The Long Now Conditions Permit the gift of their attention. I would love to count you as one of my poetry collection’s readers! Will you be one of The Long Now Conditions Permit‘s readers?

: : : :

Thank You Bows!

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to you, dear reader, for the gift of your attention! Welcome, welcome to those of you new to these dispatches on reading and writing books. May you find inspiration for your writer’s life here!

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to my precious community. To everyone who support my writing, especially women/women-identified writers for not coveting or competing, but sharing and supporting.

+ Thank you bows for supporting The Long Now Conditions Permit (2025): +Bows (continuous!) to my publisher the University of Nevada Press and staff for making my book The Long Now Conditions Permit with me. +Bows (continuous!) to Claudia Keelan and Andrew Nicholson, series editors, and the series board Sherwin Bitsui, Donald Revell, Sasha Steensen, and Ronaldo Wilson of Interim’s Test Site Poetry Series, who selected The Long Now Conditions Permit (University of Nevada Press, December 2025) as the 2023 winner of the Test Site Series Prize. +Bows (continuous!) to Claudia Keelan, Donal Revell, and Ronaldo V. Wilson for offering your word-endorsements! +Bows to Mashiko Kuroki for his luminous tree-woman photo for the cover! +Bows (continuous) to the editors of literary magazines who supported the publication of individual poems from The Long Now Conditions Permit: Geoffrey Gatza at BlazeVOX; Matthew Cooperman at Colorado Review; Haley Lasché at Concision Poetry Journal; Claudia Keelan at Interim: A Journal of Poetry & Poetics; Simone Muench at The Jet Fuel Review; Robert Julius and Alyssa Froehling at The Journal; Charles Kell at Ocean State Review; Richard Greenfield at Puerto del Sol; Jackie Janusis at Redivider; Jaimie Gusman at Tinfish; Eleni Zisimatos at Vallum Magazine and Vallum Chapbook Series; Gillian Conoley at Volt; Sue Goyette, editor of the anthology Resistance: Righteous Rage in the Age of #Metoo (University of Regina Press, 2020).

! BOOKS !

Posted on by Jami Macarty

Hello, Gentle Reader!

Thanks very much for meeting me here to talk about writing, making, reading, and reviewing books!

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken. | Oscar Wilde

Lately, I have been thinking about artistic attention, luck, and obscurity—and how each shapes creative expression. I gravitate toward intransigent, nonconforming artists (Gertrude Stein, Leslie Scalapino, Diane Arbus, Ana Mendieta, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Meredith Monk, Laurie Anderson…) who create on their own terms. Despite pressures to conform, I take inspiration from their windy lead and endeavor to do my own thing in the lines of my poems and in their forms on the page.

One can perhaps please one’s self and earn that slender right to persevere. | Marianne Moore

Honestly, few people pay much attention to my writing, which is sort of a gift. This freedom allows me to conduct experiments and make discoveries according to my own creative process and standards without being swayed by external expectations or trends. Without the anxiety of meeting an imagined reader’s standards of quality, I find joy and fulfillment in wordplay for its own sake. That often leads me to push language further to meaning’s margins and make a word-thing that surprises and pleases me.

Obscurity grants me artistic freedom and playfulness, and occasionally, my writing resonates with the “right” reader. That feels like true luck—when someone gives my writing their attention.

The lucky gift of attention! Judges MA|DE and Kevin Spenst named my chapbook The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024) a finalist for Meet the Presses 2025 bpNichol Chapbook Award! Woohoo! What an excellent surprise!

This recognition as a finalist is especially special because the poems in The Whole Catastrophe are, to my mind, not trying to be anyone else’s or other than themselves. They are doing their own sonic linguistic idiosyncratic thing on the page.

I’m oodles grateful for the 2025 bpNichol Chapbook Award judges’ acknowledgement.

Above is a screenshot from wee three-minute finalist video—the background cover photo of The Whole Catastrophe by Dennis A. Boyd, features thousands of sandhill cranes at Whitewater Draw Wildlife Area—shown at H of the Night.

Hosted by Meet the Presses collective, H of the Night celebrates Canadian small press publishing and the glory of chapbooks! Hurrah chapbooks! This year’s H of the Night announced the 2025 bpNichol Chapbook Award finalists and shared excerpts from our short-listed chapbooks.

I couldn’t have made my three-minute video without pre-production assistance from JRW and post-production stichery from the collective’s Aaron Tucker. Thank you! Thank you!

You’re cordially invited to tune in to H of the Night! Click to 38:51 to listen and watch my reading from The Whole Catastrophe which includes a dawn liftoff of birds in the thousands! It has to be seen to be believed in your heart!

The gift and luck of attention! From generous editors of literary magazines to whom I am grateful for giving my writing airtime: Two poems—”Once Upon a Time According to the Promise” and “What moves in the river is only the river”—in Diode; Four poems—”Two Autobiographies,” “To the Jury,” “Dual Scythes,” and “Mind of Snow”—in BlazeVOX-Poetry Extra Extra section; “The Fire Walker” in Taos Journal of Poetry; “Cold Record” in Action, Spectacle; “Snow is” in JMWW; “Backyard Fable” in SWIMM Every Day. You’re cordially invited to read some poems!

These publications are important to me because they are tangible artifacts of writing new or revising draft poems and sending out those poems for consideration, even while I am between projects—The Whole Catastrophe (September 2024) and The Long Now Conditions Permit (December 2025).

“Start a new project,” a writer friend advised me in a long-ago conversation about what to do when a book project is resting in completion. I took that to mean: Don’t wait! Write! So, I write. Of course the “rejections” (71 poem batches!) outweigh the “acceptances” (8 poems!), but both offer me what Marianne Moore called “that slender right to persevere.”

Some more lucky attention from organizers of readings and their audiences! Gathering with other poets—just look at those shining faces above—to read my poems aloud to an audience is nerve-racking and heart-special. It’s not like anything else.

If writing poetry is an inward-reaching gesture then reading poetry aloud to precious others is an outward-reaching gesture—two partner energies coming together in a gorgeous wholeness.

I and my poems have been out and about! In Santa Fe, Los Angeles, Tucson, and on Zoom with Mercy Street Readings and Lit Balm: An Interactive Reading Series. Click on the live link to watch my reading at Lit Balm!

At each event, I read a different mix of poems from The Whole Catastrophe and The Long Now Conditions Permit, adding in poems from The Minuses, Landscape of The Wait, and Instinctive Acts (out of print). It was creatively gratifying to connect themes across collections and discover what’s still relevant to me in the continuum of writing poems.

This year, I have also given my attention to other writers. In addition to teaching creative writing courses at Simon Fraser University, I moderated a panel at Tucson Festival of Books and offered workshops and a reading at the Mining for Gold Writing Retreat in Gold Bridge, British Columbia. These conversations were filled with the sweetness of learning and having fun with words!

A metaphor could change your life. | a fortune I received recently

Whether I offered a reading, moderated a poetry panel, or taught in a writing retreat, each of these occasions required accepting invitations, showing up, giving attention, and receiving attention. The luck of attention! The gift of attention!

: : : :

The Pluses!

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to you, dear reader, for the gift of your attention! Welcome, welcome to those of you new to these dispatches on reading and writing books. May you find inspiration for your writer’s life here!

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to my community of women/women-identified writers for not coveting or competing, but sharing and supporting.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to Vallum Chapbook Series and Eleni Zisimatos, Editor, and Leigh Kotsilidis, Designer, for making my chapbook The Whole Catastrophe (2024) with me.

+ Thank you bows to Meet the Presses and the judges of the 2025 bpNichol Chapbook Award for their support and acknowledgement of The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024).

+ Thank you bows to the intrepid organizers for making space for me and my words at Sandbox Music, Chatter: Contemporary Chamber Music, form & concept gallery, Tucson Festival of Books, Tucson Arts Poetry Society, Interim, Mercy Street Readings, Lit Balm, and to the very fine writers who joined me and shared space.

+ I bow to the editors who supported the publication of my poems and the publications where they were published: Jen Karetnick at SWIMM; Jen Michalski at JMWW; Adam Day at Action, Spectacle; Catherine Strisik at Taos Journal of Poetry; Geoffrey Gatza at BlazeVOX; Patty Paine at Diode.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to Claudia Keelan and Andrew Nicholson, series editors, and the series board Sherwin Bitsui, Donald Revell, Sasha Steensen, and Ronaldo Wilson of Interim’s Test Site Poetry Series, who selected The Long Now Conditions Permit (forthcoming University of Nevada Press, 2025).

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to my publisher Stephanie G’Schwind, and Mountain/West Poetry Series editors Donald Revell and Kazim Ali, et al interns at the Center for Literary Publishing (CLP) for making The Minuses (2020) with me.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to Beth Svinarich et al staff at University Press of Colorado for their beautiful support to me and The Minuses.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to monsoon storm chaser and marvelous professional photographer, Liz Kemp, whose monsoon photograph storms the cover of The Minuses.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to Nomados Literary Publishers, Meredith and Peter Quartermain for making my chapbook Instinctive Acts (2018) with me.

+ Thank you bows to (continuous!) Vallum Chapbook Series and editors Leigh Kotsilidis and Eleni Zisimatos for making my chapbook Mind of Spring (2017) with me.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to Finishing Line Press and editors Leah Maines and Christen Kinkaid for making my chapbook Landscape of The Wait (2017) with me.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to Vincent K. Wong for his friendship, creative collaboration, and for taking my author photos.

+ This bears repeating: Thank you bows (continuous!) to you, dear reader, for the gift of your attention! If you have any questions or comments, write me! I would love to hear from you!

! Books !

Posted on by Jami Macarty

Welcome to our meeting place where we talk about writing, making, reading, and reviewing books!

I am writing to you on Martin Luther King’s birthday. I write to you on this auspicious day to honor Dr. King and you, Dear Reader, as a member of my Beloved Community. Though Fellowship of Reconciliation founder Josiah Royce coined the term Beloved Community, Dr. King popularized it with the intention of advancing goodwill for all people sharing life on Earth.

I have been thinking a lot about the connections books facilitate and how reading engenders community, communing, and conversation. Conversations like the one I have with you here, and the conversations I have with other writers.

On December 11, 2024, Vallum Society for Education in Arts and Letters hosted a space for Canadian poet T. Liem to interview me on the making of my fourth chapbook The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024).

In the interview’s introduction, T. Liem describes their reader’s enagement with the poems of The Whole Catastrophe:

Read my response to T’s opening remarks and the entire interview, titled An Inked Shorthand of Marks, in which we talk about exploding vilanelles, what poetry can do for us, verbing and nouning words, and personal and ecological grief. Join our conversation!

When poets offer poetry readings together, they make possible multiple facets of connection and conversation between themselves, among their books, and with the readers/listeners who attend. On December 7, 2024, POG Arts Tucson and Chax Press hosted me, Sarah Rosenthal, and Valerie Witte at Tucson’s 326 Gallery to read from our recent poetry collections.

The action shots (above) of us, our introducers, and some of the beautiful audience members who extended their ears and hearts to us, made for a lovely, rich, full evening of conversation about books.

Sarah, Valerie, and I have planned more gathering places for ourselves, our books, and others in Santa Fe later this month and early February. Join us if you can!

Reviewing is another facet of conversation that spirals out from books. A review faciliates conversations between author and reviewer and between reviewer and other readers of the book, and carries the possibility of building a community of readers around a book. In 2024, I offered 40 reviews, totalling almost 12,000 words, to poetry titles. Two long-form reviews were published in Colorado Review and The Malahat Review. Thirty-eight short-form reviews were published in NewPages. I tried to write four reviews a month… See the list below for when I achieved that goal.

2024 REVIEWS: An offering of 40 reviews!

Reviewing is much more than a numbers game to me. I think of my reviewing as a practice in attention for myself and as service to writers in my/our creative community. I focus my attention especially on the underrepresented voice of writers who identify as women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ, and the small presses within the publication world. I write reader’s response reviews to understand how a book has impacted me, to support the writers and publishers of books, and to support the magazines that publish reviews, which in turn support me by publishing the reviews I write. Together we form a big, beautiful community, congregating around books. Hurrah, books!

Before there can be any of the outward spiralling from books described above, there is the inward spiralling as reading impacts my reader’s imagination. Books teach me how to read. They teach me the thrill of discovery—of knowledge, interest, art. They offer company, and through representation, inspire me to be the person, woman, and artist I want to be in the world we share.

If you have been following these ! Books ! posts, then you may recall #mypersonalBigRead project. Begun in 2018 to address the stacks of unread books towering around my desk (and, if I am honest, throughout my house), the project now centers around my education in poetry and connection with other writers and readers.

In 2024, I read 262 books! Here are the stats for the project’s seven years:

Ahem, that is a total of 2000 books, Dear Reader. I read 2000 books in seven years. I have to repeat it to believe it. Perhaps because I was a child of a single parent who neither read to me nor encouraged me to read, perhapas because I have a learning disability, perhaps because I am scared each time I pick up a book, wondering if I will be able to read it, reading 2000 books in seven years is a big deal! Hurrah books! ❤

: :

The Pluses!

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to you, dear reader, for the gift of your attention! Welcome, welcome to those of you new to these dispatches on reading and writing books. May you find inspiration for your writer’s life!

+ Thank you bows to my community of women/women-identified writers for not coveting or competing, but sharing and supporting.

+ Thank you bows to Vallum Chapbook Series and Eleni Zisimatos, Editor, and Leigh Kotsilidis, Designer, for making my chapbook The Whole Catastrophe (2024) with me.

+ Thank you bows to T. Liem for their generous and generative conversation on the making of The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024).

+ Thank you bows to POG Arts Tucson, Chax Press, Sarah Rosentha, and Valerie Witte for making and sharing space.

+ I bow to the editors who support my reviews and the publications where they were published: Denise Hill at NewPages; Stephanie G’Schwind at Colorado Review, and Jay Ruzesky at The Malahat Review.

+ I bow to Claudia Keelan and Andrew Nicholson, series editors, and the series board Sherwin Bitsui, Donald Revell, Sasha Steensen, and Ronaldo Wilson of Interim’s Test Site Poetry Series, who selected The Long Now Conditions Permit (forthcoming University of Nevada Press).

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to my publisher Stephanie G’Schwind, and Mountain/West Poetry Series editors Donald Revell and Kazim Ali, et al interns at the Center for Literary Publishing (CLP) for making The Minuses (2020) with me.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to Beth Svinarich et al staff at University Press of Colorado for their beautiful support to me and The Minuses.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to monsoon storm chaser and marvelous professional photographer, Liz Kemp, whose monsoon photograph storms the cover of The Minuses.

+ Thank you bows to Nomados Literary Publishers, Meredith and Peter Quartermain for making my chapbook Instinctive Acts (2018)with me.

+ Thank you bows to Vallum Chapbook Series and editors Leigh Kotsilidis and Eleni Zisimatos for making my chapbook Mind of Spring (2017) with me.

+ Thank you bows to Finishing Line Press and editors Leah Maines and Christen Kinkaid for making my chapbook Landscape of The Wait (2017) with me.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to Vincent K. Wong for his friendship, creative collaboration, and for taking my author photos.

+ This bears repeating: Thank you bows (continuous!) to you, dear reader, for the gift of your attention! If you have any questions or comments, write me! I would love to hear from you!

! BOOKS !

Posted on by Jami Macarty

Dear Gentle Reader,

Hello! It has been a while. Where have I been? Paddling on the river of words, of course!

How about you? How do your words flow? And, what words flow to you through books you are reading? I’m curious.

One idea I have for flowing your words: Join August’s Write, Write, Write, the five-day generative writing course I offer in person at Simon Fraser University. Writers in the course meet for 2.5 hours Monday-Friday to experiment with language, engage in word-play, and pursue their stories, poems, and memoirs, while dissolving writing blocks and befriending the sometimes cranky inner critic. Is one of the remaining seats available, yours? I would love to write with you!

Invitation: Join me in Write, Write, Write this August.

More invitations as you read on…

Publication news to share

Haiku Hike 2024 | Serenity

2024 marked Tucson’s Fifth Annual Haiku Hike Literary Competition. The 2024 theme: Serenity. Haiku entries were judged by Tucson’s Poet Laureate, TC Tolbert. The Stats: 2,069 haiku were submitted; 1,385 submissions came from Tucson; 29 different states were represented in the submissions; 27 different countries were represented in the submissions.

I entered three haiku in the competition. And, one of my haiku won! Tralala! Of the 2,069 haiku that were submitted, there were 20 winners. Each of the winning poems was embossed on clear plaques which were then planted in big pots of flowers that line one of Downtown Tucson’s major corridors for all pedestrians to read (See map below).

A wee story: The day I took myself on the Haiku Hike to see and read each of the 20 haiku when I arrived at my haiku there was a lovely person there already visiting with my poem and I overheard her say, “Oh, I like this one.” Is there sweeter music to a poet’s ears?

Preview each winning haiku in the 2024 Haiku Hike Literary Competition with accompanying images taken for the Downtown Tucson Partnership (DTP) by JJ Snyder Photography.

Invitation: Then, after you take in the 20 haiku, write some of our own.

Cascadia Zen

To celebrate the publication of Volume one of Cascadian Zen: Bioregional Writings on Cascadia Here & Now, anthology co-editors Paul E. Nelson, Tetsuzen Jason Wirth, and Adelia MacWilliam came to Vancouver and convened with contributors Kate Braid, Daphne Marlatt, and me (Jami Macarty) at People’s Co-op Bookstore for a lovely and loving community-based celebration of Cascadia. Image L to R: Kate, Paul, Adelia, Jason, Daphne, and Jami.

Invitation: Listen to the reading’s audio.

A Journal of the Plague Years

Some of you know that during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, I wrote the essays “Endangered Species” and “Protest, Police, Pandemic & Palimpsest—Tucson, Arizona” accompanied by poems for The Journal of the Plague Years, Susan Zakin, Founder and Editor.

Then, for a while, I served as the Poetry Editor for the journal. In that capacity, I had the chance to acquire a group of terrific poems written by poets I respect. Four of those poets—Lauren Camp, Maxine Chernoff, Paul Nelson, and Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer—and their poems join my essay, “Endangered Species” in the journal’s anthology A Journal of the Plague Year (Blue Books, 2024), which Dean Kuipers at Red Canary Magazine called “A fascinating and cathartic read about an experience that is not over, but keeps getting weirder and more dangerous.”

It is gratifying for me to see my efforts as a writer and poetry editor come together in one volume.

Invitation: Read my and the poets’s poems.

Orbis International Literary Journal, #208-Summer ’24

A poem I started writing in January 2020, “The Giant Redwood Addresses Subhradeep Dutta” was given space in Orbis #208. This is my writing’s second appearance in Orbis, and I am grateful to Carole Baldock, Editor for her kind attention to my poems. All in good time, my prettys!

Reading & Writing Practices

I have been keeping up with writing a poem ish thingy each day. As for my reading practice, I am not reading as many books as I sometimes do, but what I am reading feels just right. Since I last wrote you, one long-form and seven short-form reviews have joined the words of the world. You can find all of the reviews I have offered, among other things on this site’s Poet page.

Invitation: You are cordially invited to peruse!

Forthcoming! Forthcoming!

Soon, Interim – A Journal of Poetry and Poetics (Since 1944!) will be publishing their “Finalist Issue,” featuring the semifinalists, finalists, and winners for the Test Site Poetry Series prize. That issue will feature some poems from my Test Site prize-winning manuscript The Long Now Conditions Permit (forthcoming University of Nevada Press) and a poem from my forthcoming chapbook The Whole Catastrophe (#38, Vallum Chapbook Series, summer 2024). I am right now in the process of proofreading the galley for the chapbook, so stay tuned for more about that process and and my fourth chapbook’s publication…

: :

The Pluses!

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to you, dear reader, for the gift of your attention! Welcome, welcome to those of you new to these dispatches on reading and writing books. May you find inspiration for your writer’s life!

+ Thank you bows to my community of women/women-identified writers for their generous, loving support, inspiration, and encouragement.

+ I bow to hardworking editors, publishers, readers, and printers at literary magazines and anthologies who publish individual poems and who have supported my writing, especially TC Tolbert at Haiku Literary Competition; Paul Nelson at Cascadia Zen; Susan Zakin at A Journal of the Plague Years, and Carole Baldock at Orbis International Literary Journal.

+ I bow to the editors who support my reviews and the publications where they were published: Denise Hill at NewPages; Stephanie G’Schwind at Colorado Review, and Jay Ruzesky at The Malahat Review.

+ Thank you bows to Vallum Chapbook Series and editors Leigh Kotsilidis and Eleni Zisimatos for making my chapbook The Whole Catastrophe with me.

+ I bow to Claudia Keelan and Andrew Nicholson, series editors, and the series board Sherwin Bitsui, Donald Revell, Sasha Steensen, and Ronaldo Wilson of Interim’s Test Site Poetry Series and the Besty Joiner Flanagan Award in Poetry.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to my publisher Stephanie G’Schwind, and Mountain/West Poetry Series editors Donald Revell and Kazim Ali, et al interns at the Center for Literary Publishing (CLP) for making The Minuses (2020) with me.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to Beth Svinarich et al staff at University Press of Colorado for their beautiful support to me and The Minuses.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to monsoon storm chaser and marvelous professional photographer, Liz Kemp, whose monsoon photograph storms the cover of The Minuses.

+ Thank you bows to Nomados Literary Publishers, Meredith and Peter Quartermain for making my chapbook Instinctive Acts with me.

+ Thank you bows to Vallum Chapbook Series and editors Leigh Kotsilidis and Eleni Zisimatos for making my chapbook Mind of Spring with me.

+ Thank you bows to Finishing Line Press and editors Leah Maines and Christen Kinkaid for making my chapbook Landscape of The Wait with me.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to Vincent K. Wong for his friendship, creative collaboration, and for taking my author photos.

+ This bears repeating: Thank you bows (continuous!) to you, dear reader, for the gift of your attention! If you have any questions or comments, write me! I would love to hear from you!

! BOOKS !

Posted on by Jami Macarty

Dear Gentle Reader,

Welcome, may you be well, and in these sorrowful days of wars across and the warming of our planet, may you be doing all that you can to care for yourself, your family, and your community.

As Earth’s poles reach maximum tilt away from the Sun, I want to share with you the light I have been basking in this year. The light I refer to is the sparkle and warmth from the connections my writing made with editors, publishers, and readers. It is truly something wild and special for me to contemplate how my dreams of writing manifested from my imagination to words on pages the eyes of readers held. Fireworks blossom in my heart! These connections are ways I am keeping my faith and hope for the future. A future where the destructive impulse is if not eclipsed then matched by the creative impulse.

During this time when open, honest communication seems ever so fragile, easily breaking down, words seeming to fail us, join me and let us celebrate our connection to words, to the expression and connection language makes possible between us. In this dispatch from my writing desk, like others I offered this year on January 27, 2023, April 23, 2023, and June 30, 2023, I focus on making and reading books. The full-length collections and chapbooks of poems I am making, the books other writers have made that I read, and the books I reviewed.

Books, so full of wonder and the possibility of discovery. Books, such portable art objects. O, what they hold! They hold individual poems, reaching out their hands to readers. The book’s provocative cover art illustrates and associates the writing within. Here are the covers of the anthology and literary magazines where my writing found homes in 2023!

Poems from my first and second books, The Minuses and The Long Now Conditions Permit, respectively, along with a poem from a forthcoming chapbook, have been published since my last post. Allow me to share the details of those sparkling occasions with you here.

Vallum cover art: Casey Flynn

In October, Vallum 20.2, an all-online issue with the theme “Endings and Beginnings,” featured my poem “Late afternoon autumn, a trembled alternative.” If I am counting accurately, this is the eighth poem of mine since 2015 that Vallum‘s editorial team has selected for publication. Hurrah time eight! For your ears and eyes: Read or listen to me read “Who the Strummer” from 16.1, “Lustrous Fugitive” from 18.1, and “Is Occurring” from 19.1. The Vallum team also selected my chapbook Mind of Spring (no. 22: out of print, but available digitally) as the winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. Vallum‘s ongoing support is not about numbers; it is about what those numbers suggest: Vallum‘s ongoing confidence and belief in my writing. That is a gift precious to me. A gift for you: You can read (download, too!) the entire 20.2 issue, chock full of beautiful, lyric, elegiac poems, including excerpts from Vallum‘s latest chapbooks—Wellwater (no. 37), by Karen Solie and Lifecycle of a Mayfly (no. 36), by Maya Clubine—on Vallum‘s website. I am ever grateful to Eleni Zisimatos, Poetry Editor, and T. Liem, Managing Editor for their kind attention and for the Vallum team’s ongoing support of my writing.

Cascadia Zen cover art: Rick Bartow

Also, in the tenth month, “Equals Rains,” a poem from my first full-length collection The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), came to print in Volume One of Cascadia Zen: Bioregional Writing on Cascadia Here and Now (Watershed Press, 2023). In this anthology, my poem is in conversation with the writing of Vancouver’s Daphne Marlatt, Meredith Quartermain, and Fred Wah, and writers from California, Washington, and Writer’s Heaven, respectively, such as Brenda Hillman, Jane Hirshfield, Tess Gallagher, Joanne Kyger (1934-2017), and Denise Levertov (1923-1997), among others. Writers I love! Writers I am thrilled to share space with. My many thanks to editors Tetsuzen Jason Wirth, Paul E. Nelson, Adelia MacWilliam, and Theresa Whitehill for including my writing in this beautiful book!

In November, Colorado Review 50.3 | Fall/Winter issue featured “From Hill’s Slant,” another poem from my second full-length collection, The Long Now Conditions Permit. This is a special accomplishment because I have wanted to be published by Colorado Review for a long time. I persisted and kept sending them poem batches. I love the feeling of my persistence meeting their “yes.” Gleefully, “From Hill’s Slant” rubs shoulders with the writing of Cole Swensen, John Gallaher, and Brandon Krieg, among other writers I admire. I am grateful to Matthew Cooperman, Editor, and Lauren Furman, Managing Editor for their time and care with my poem.

And, in this twelfth month, Laurel Review 56.1 features my poem “For L,” an elegy for my friend and poet, the late Lusia Slomkowska (1954-2014). I have in mind that this poem will gather together in a chapbook with some other elegies I have written. By sweet confluence, “For L” shares space in this issue of Laurel Review with a poem by Matthew Cooperman, Poetry Editor of Colorado Review (above), where my poem shares space with John Gallaher, Poetry Editor of Laurel Review. Hurrah, these connections, these stitched-together shapes and patterns in the great quilt or poetry! Hurrah the good company of these readers, writers, and editors in my Writing Practice!

Now, to share a bit about this year’s Reading Practice. Since 2018, I have been conducting a year-long reading extravaganza with a simple goal: To see how many books I can read. I wrote about the discoveries from previous years of #mypersonalBigRead in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022. This project is a sort of numbers game, though I do not read just to rack them up. I maintain my integrity while reading books I have always wanted to read, books I have been coveting from my once extra-to-the-bookshelves, towering, and now mostly shelved stacks, books recommended to me, books I am invited to consider for review, classic and hot-off-the-presses books, books that appear as if by mysticism in the field of my attention.

This year marks the sixth year I have challenged myself in #mypersonalBigRead. Each year has had a different personality—from 2018’s beginning excitement to 2020’s trouble concentrating to 2022’s grounded breadth. 2023 has been the most personal, intimate reading year. I have read more of what I most wanted to read, more slowly, savoring, and I have read everything I could get my eyes on by the poets Jane Hirshfield, Joanne Kyger (1934-2017), Sharon Olds, Sylvia Plath (1932-1963), and C.D. Wright (1949-2016). That deep reading and study expanded my thinking about language’s possibilities and bolstered my writing of poems and reviews.

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While some years I reached a tally of over three hundred titles, so far this year I am at two hundred twenty. Of those books, I have reviewed one chapbook (for Amazon), one mixed-genre book, and twenty poetry collections. The reviews of the poetry and mixed-genre books found homes in Canthius, The Malahat Review, The Miramichi Reader, NewPages, and Vallum.

How do you decide which books you will read? Might a review pique your interest? Consider yourself most cordially invited to read my reviews as a way to consider whether or not you would like to add any of those books to your reading list. The links to those reviews can be found on the Poet page (scroll a bit) on this (my) site.

If dear Reader, you have read to this next word: “amazing,” then thank you! I am thrilled by and grateful for your attention. And, I hope what you have read inspires you in your writing, publishing, and reading endeavors.

Read! Write! Persist in and with words!

: :

The Pluses!

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to you, dear reader, for the gift of your attention! Welcome, those new here. May you find inspiration!

+ Thank you bows to my community of women/women-identified writers for their generous, loving support, inspiration, and encouragement.

+ I bow to the editors and existence of the anthologies and literary magazines Cascadia Zen, Vallum, Colorado Review, Laurel Review, Puerto del Sol, The Ocean State Review, where I gratefully find support and community.

+ I bow to the editors who support my reviews and the publications where they were published: Denise Hill at NewPages; Manahil Bandukwala at Canthius; James M. Fisher at The Miramachi Reader, and Jay Ruzesky at The Malahat Review.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to my publisher Stephanie G’Schwind, and Mountain/West Poetry Series editors Donald Revell and Kazim Ali, et al interns at the Center for Literary Publishing (CLP) for making The Minuses (2020) with me.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to Beth Svinarich et al staff at University Press of Colorado for their beautiful support to me and The Minuses.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to monsoon storm chaser and marvelous professional photographer, Liz Kemp, whose monsoon photograph storms the cover of The Minuses.

+ Thank you bows to Nomados Literary Publishers, Meredith and Peter Quartermain for making my chapbook Instinctive Acts with me.

+ Thank you bows to Vallum Chapbook Series and editors Leigh Kotsilidis and Eleni Zisimatos for making my chapbook Mind of Spring with me.

+ Thank you bows to Finishing Line Press and editors Leah Maines and Christen Kinkaid for making my chapbook Landscape of The Wait with me.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to Vincent K. Wong for his friendship, creative collaboration, and for taking my author photos.

+ This bears repeating: Thank you bows (continuous!) to you, dear reader, for the gift of your attention! If you have any questions or comments, write me! I would love to hear from you!

! BOOKS !

Posted on by Jami Macarty

Well, my dears, my friends, soon December and 2021 will be a wrap. Here I am one more time this year to say hello and share of myself and my practices of writing and reading books.

I took December entirely off from any other word-work (as editor, mentor/teacher) to make way for my own at-home writer’s retreat. During the month, I planned to work with the poems I wrote between January 2020 and January 2021—about 120 of them or about 150 pages—with an eye on assembling a second manuscript of poetry. I made the time and space and set my intentions. Even so, I did not know what I would get done.

A lot got done! The reason I know about how many poems and pages I have is because I compiled, read, and revised all of them. Some poems arrived at more wholeness than others, some were set aside because they did not inspire me to further engagement, some are resting after word-surgery. I am saying I worked on all of the poems to one extent or another, arranged them in groups according to where they are in the “done” continuum, and now have a working draft of a new manuscript. What a marvelous month of devotion to my imagination it has been. Tra La La!

Thank you so very mucho to everyone who supported me during the days and weeks of words this month, especially JRW.

To support my composing and revising and organizing, I read a bunch during the month—and throughout the year—and found a lot of good company. If you have been following me here, then you know this is year four of #mypersonalBigRead.

Drum roll… I did it; I read an average of one volume (full-length collection of poetry, chapbook, magazine, memoir, fiction) each day of the year. Actually, I read a smidge more than that; I read a total of 374 volumes in 2021! The four year tally: 1,185 volumes. Here are the stats…

Even as I tally the numbers there is a wafting of disbelief. Just as with my intention to take a personal writing retreat for December, I made the plan to read up a storm during the year. In doing so, however I have no idea what I will do or actually accomplish. I think that has something to do with who makes the plan and who sits in the chair at the desk. The difference between an idea and fingers to the keyboard or eyes to the page. Making the plan and then seeing what I can/will do feels like a big experiment. So, I surprise myself. The results of my efforts and labors surprise me. I like that. Surprise is special.

May the last few days of 2021 surprise you! And, may 2022 unwrap and unfold in surprise for all of us!

I send you my very best of everything for health, happiness, safety, and creativity.

::

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to you, dear reader, for the gift of your attention!

+ Thank you bows to all of the writers whose books, chapbooks, stories, and novel I read; your efforts inspire me to bring my words into the light.

+ Thank you bows to all of the editors whose support brought forth the books, chapbooks, stories, and novel I read in 2021.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to my publisher Stephanie G’Schwind, and Mountain West Poetry Series editors Donald Revell and Kazim Ali, et al interns at the Center for Literary Publishing (CLP) for making The Minuses (2020) with me.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to Beth Svinarich et al at University Press of Colorado for their beautiful support to me and The Minuses.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to monsoon storm chaser and marvelous professional photographer, Liz Kemp whose monsoon photograph storms the cover of The Minuses.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to Vincent K. Wong for his friendship, creative collaboration, and for taking my author photos.

+ This bears repeating: Thank you bows (continuous!) to you, dear reader, for the gift of your attention! If you have any questions or comments, write me!

! Books !

Posted on by Jami Macarty

Happy third month of 2021! Dear Reader, I am grateful for your lovely company here, where I share information about my books, the books of others, and my reading practice.

Since the publication of The Minuses a year ago this month, I’ve been writing to you to share “the constellation of pluses” around my during-the-pandemic-published poetry collection. What are “the pluses”? Pluses take the form of reviews, interviews, and reading invitations I and my poems have been lucky to receive. In this post, I will also take account of books I’ve read so far this new year as I begin reading my way through my fourth annual personal Big Read: #mypersonalBigRead2021.

Bill Neumire on The Minuses: “Macarty theorizes, “The poem exists, arises with and between the poet and the reader; the poem could be thought of as the meeting bridge.” Flannery O’Connor, drawing from Pierre Chardin, told us everything that rises must converge, and in the Sonoran Desert, described with replete taxonomical detail covering its flora and fauna, Macarty gives us a persona that sends herself “into the desert to become a third person.” If, as Don Paterson tells readers in his tome-length new reflection on the very nature of a poem’s exigency, “silence is the space in which the poem makes its large echoes,” this book is humming with desert silence, and forcefully compelling in its echoic impact.”

Bill Neumire offered The Minuses an expansive, attentive, and thoughtful review in issue 17:2 “Space” of Vallum, a magazine of contemporary poetry published in Montreal, Quebec. Vallum, edited by Eleni Zisimatos and managed by Leigh Kotsilidis, gave two poems from The Minuses a home: “Nor’easter” and “Helicopter” appeared in issue 13:1 “Open Theme.” Vallum is also the publisher of Mind of Spring, my second chapbook of poetry and winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. Vallum and the good people who edit and manage it are special and important to me.

Set in a desert borderland, Mind of Spring, a poem in three parts, uses contemplation as a compositional element to call to attention the social, cultural, environmental, and personal mechanisms of war. Written across borders—both visible and invisible—between homelessness and home, estrangement and intimacy, lyric and language, the poem reflects on an accreting grief for the world and meaning of the observed, while offering the reader an alternative to the commodified and monetized.

Mind of Spring, #22 in Vallum Chapbook Series, sold out of hard copies, but is available in digital format at either Vallum or 0s&1s, literary playground. Consider yourself invited to visit Vallum—to check out Mind of Spring and to read Bill Neumire’s review of The Minuses in issue 17:2 “Space”!

: : : :

Now, to my reading practice, which consists of challenging myself to read a volume, or part of one, each day of the year. For me, a volume is a collection of poetry, a chapbook, a magazine, a literary journal, a novel, memoir, essay collection, etc. I’ve written about why I’m doing this in other posts. The main impetus that prompted this Big Read was the realization that books were stacking into to-be-read towers around my desk. I seemed to be buying books, but instead of reading them I was coveting them. The mounting stacks were causing anxiety about when and how I would ever get to all of the books. Rather than pull out my hair, or do nothing, I decided to just start reading and see what I could read. The first year, 2018, I read 300 volumes. In 2019, I read a few more than 300, and in 2020, I read 200 volumes. I have to type it out: I read 800 volumes in three years. That number also gives you a sense of the to-be-read towers to which I’m referring.

The stacks have dwindled considerably, but there are still more books to read. In 2021, I intend to keep reading.

Here are some of the volumes I read in January 2021. For the first month of the year, I had the loose intention to read mostly writing by women, and that’s what I did. Seventeen of the twenty volumes of poetry and nonfiction essays depicted are written by women. The remaining eleven volumes I read during the month were written by a mix a binary and nonbinary writers, and were read in digital formats. Included: ~250 poetry submissions of three to five poems each—that’s about 1,200 poems!—for The Maynard, the poetry magazine I co-founded and edit.

Reading is, of course, teaching me a lot about myself, writing, the world—and about reading. There are times when I think about reading to such an extent that I no longer quite grasp what it is or how to do it. Reading is getting weirder for me. During a recent think on reading, I came to realize that reading scares me. I’m not convinced I can do it or be good at it. Every time I pick up a book I have the question: Will I be able to read and understand this? Nevertheless, that doesn’t stop me; I just keep reading.

Here’s February stack! For February I made the intention to read Black and biracial writers. I wanted to do something tangible to celebrate, honor, elevate, and be an ally to Black poets and writers. This stack contains 23 (one volume is three-books-in-one!) volumes of poetry, stories, essays, and memoir—all by Black and biracial writers from the US, Canada, Kenya, Ghana. Additionally, I challenged myself to write a reader’s response to each book; you can read those on my Facebook page.

As of today, March 1, 2021, I have read 65 volumes, with #66, Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay, on the go. The recently released The Selected Works of Audre Lorde, edited by Roxane Gay, is on my list!

I acknowledge that reading and having the time to read are privileges.

I’ll be back in touch soon with more reviews of The Minuses and to share more about my reading practice in 2021.

Thanks very much for joining me here, for reading me! I’d love to hear about what your reading practice and what you’re reading. Leave me a comment!

: : : :

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to you, dear reader, for the gift of your attention! If you have any questions or comments, write me!

+ Thank you bows to reviewer, Bill Neumire, for his attentive, thoughtful, generous review of The Minuses.

+Thank you bows (continuous!) to Eleni Zisimatos and Leigh Kotsilidis et al at Vallum for their confidence in and support of my writing.

+ Thank you bows to the writers and publishers who brought their grand accomplishments of books into the world.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to publisher Stephanie G’Schwind, and Mountain West Poetry Series editors Donald Revell and Kazim Ali, et al interns at the Center for Literary Publishing (CLP) for making The Minuses with me.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to Beth Svinarich et al at University Press of Colorado for their beautiful support to me and The Minuses.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to monsoon storm chaser and marvelous professional photographer, Liz Kemp whose monsoon photograph storms the cover of The Minuses.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to Vincent K. Wong for his friendship, creative collaboration, and for taking my author photos.

+ This bears repeating: Thank you bows (continuous!) to you, dear reader, for the gift of your attention! If you have any questions or comments, write me!

The Minuses

Posted on by Jami Macarty

 

After years of working on the poems,

various versions of manuscript
An owl-high stack

after signing off on the final proof,

after burning the owl-high stack of manuscript versions,

after disposing of every last ashen comma and colon,

after the boxes containing the books arrived at my door,

The Minuses at my door

after the boxes containing the books were opened,

and, after eyeing and drinking in the realization that The Minuses is in print! is published! books are in hand!

I’m resting on my laurels*.

 

  • *After spontaneously using this phrase, I did a bit of reading on the orgin of the laurel wreath and its associates in Greek mythology, namely Eros, the god of love, Apollo, patron of archery, and Daphne, a river nymph. The story: Apollo made fun of Eros’ use of arrows, so Eros took revenge by shooting Apollo with a gold arrow, instilling him with love for Daphne, and shot Daphne with a lead arrow, instilling her with hatred for Apollo. To be free of him, Daphne was turned into a laurel tree, which is evergreen because Apollo rendered it thus. Fashioning himself a wreath out of the laurel branches, Apollo turned Daphne into a cultural symbol for him and other musicians and poets. Rather perfect, yes?

 

Current mood: a yellow rose and desert monsoon, gratitude-infusion!

Thank you bows to my publisher: Stephanie G’Schwind; the photographer of the cover image: Liz Kemp, and the horizon of poets, who offered their endorsements to the book: Gillian Conoley, Claudia Keelan, and Daphne Marlatt.

 

! Books !

Posted on by Jami Macarty 
It is the Muses

Who have caused me
to be honored: they 
taught me their craft

-Sappho

The Cover

First the possessive. My books. The Minuses, a full-length collection forthcoming (Feb 2020) in the Mountain West Poetry Series published by the Center for Literary Publishing joins my three chapbooks, Instinctive Acts, Mind of Spring, and Landscape of The Wait.

Don Revell and I would very much like to publish your manuscript as the spring 2020 MWPS title if it’s still available… 

-Stephanie G’Schwind

I received the offer to publish on Labor Day, September 2 at 4:29 PM (PST). I had spent the entire day laboring over a new version of the manuscript, inputting edits and so on. At five O’clock I saved and closed the file, then checked email. A half hour earlier, Stephanie G’Schwind, director of the Center for Literary Publishing wrote to me: Don Revell and I would very much like to publish your manuscript as the spring 2020 MWPS title if it’s still available…

What to say. This. I’m over Saturn’s moon. Over Jupiter’s moons.

That plus Laura Linney’s character Sarah in Love Actually when Karl is going to stay. Like that.Love Actually

 

 

 

The autumn months were a happy flurry of editing, proofing, selecting the cover, and various other things that go into making a book a book. Tuesday, December 17 at 2:25 PM (MST) I signed off on The Minuses. The book is scheduled to be out for Valentine’s Day. Can you think of better sandwich for a poet than one made between Labor and Love? More and more soon, soon…

After I signed off, I became aware of how mentally fatigued I was. The months of proofreading and decision-making took a toll. When I looked within for words and that feeling I have for them–a love affair–it was absent. Where was it? Tired!

But nothing a ritual fire couldn’t clear!

I gathered all of the hardcopy (used on both sides) versions of the manuscript I could find and burned them! As I sat in the heat of the fire I chanted gratitude to the poems that are The Minuses and welcomed those that may come:

if you will come 

I shall put out 
fresh pillows for 
you to rest on

-Sappho

 

♦

Second books written by others. As in 2018, this year I intended to read a book a day. With travel and the vicissitudes of life that became read as much as I can when I can.

Above some of the books that I look up to from 2019…

I resolved to start this reading practice (at the close of 2017), after becoming acutely aware of the sky scrapers of books surrounding my desk. I seemed to be coveting books, but not reading them–at least not at the rate I was buying them. Simultaneous to this awareness was the co-arising of anxiety at how many books there were towering, looming. After the overwhelm subsided, I decided to start reading… just to see what I could do. Et voila!

From this reading practice, I have learned about:

  • Attention–what keeps mine
  • Comprehension–it’s dependent on attention
  • Taste–how not to judge myself for what I like or don’t
  • Company–what I read for
  • Inspiration–o, to read what hurries me to the page

Above some more of the books that I look up to from  2019

Here:

[ the Results! ] #mypersonalBigRead2019       

166: Full-length collections of poetry
64: Chapbooks (poetry & nonfiction)
51: Journals
22: Fiction, Nonfiction, Memoir
____________________________
Total = 303 individual volumes in 2019!

[ last year’s Results! ] #mypersonalBigRead2018       

205: Full-length collections of poetry
67: Chapbooks (poetry & nonfiction)
21: Journals
7: Fiction, Nonfiction, Memoir
____________________________
Total = 300 individual volumes in 2018!

Notably, I read more than twice the number of journals, more than three times the fiction, nonfiction, memoir, and three more titles in 2019. The stacks in all categories continue to melt and so does the anxiety and overwhelm. Replacing them: confidence and the knowledge gained from the experience of this deep reading practice. There are still some hours left in 2019. To books!

ONWARD!