In a breathless display of retroactive reporting, I wish to relay that the launch of Some Cold, Bright, Old-Fashioned Facts was a resounding, nay, reverberating success.
Cataclysmic energies converged upon Chatham University’s Mellon Board Room: this epoch-shaking poetry book launch was shared with eight other titles published by Chatham student presses this year, each of which were tectonic in their scope and quality. The readings from Len Lettrich’s Manufacture and DJ Brewer/Jack Wilson’s Are You Free stood out, and I got to meet these two emergent titans, who were both nitroglycerin-grade nice guys. Teresa Petro-Micchelli’s Tattered Ride could realign planets if wryness and wit were elemental forces of nature, though I have to dramatically confess that our prior friendship may render my opinion of her biased. And even more accurate.
My reading came near the conclusion of this thunderclap-shaming word-Valhalla. If my sense of audience appreciation is as accurate as my sense of hyperbole, then I believe that no heart was left unbroken, and no bone left unhealed.
(The Sun, pictured upper right, leans in close to hear every syllable, scorching all but the poet.)
Some friends, publishers, and authors went to the Shadow Lounge that night for the monthly poetry slam, which DJ Brewer was masterfully cerimonializing. In a single day, I was drilled into the molten core of Pittsburgh’s young poetic sphere.
My birth clone Zachary was present through the entire epic, for which I was elated. He hints that a commemorative animation may emerge from his Hesphatean techno-toils. Here endeth the epic.
(This book emerged from the center of Chatham Lake to a choir of poetic intonations and came ashore on the backs of two golden swans, completely dry. Prior to picking up this tome, Zachary’s hand had the gout.)
Seriously, thanks to everyone for the encouragement, feedback, help, and love, here and abroad. I owe each of you scads more than I can convey. Some Cold, Bright, Old-Fashioned Facts was a labor of love and not a little panic– leaving Dartmouth for it and the prospect of further writing enterprises along similar veins. Today, this flurried, half-fragile adventure feels worthwhile.
The book itself looks great, and sold well at the event. The whole thing got written up in the Pittsburgh Examiner, replete with a picture of me looking distracted behind a table.
Next: deliveries, library donations, finding poetry readings (went to a great one run by Brian Francis on Saturday), finding critics willing to review me, menial labor, resuming lasped human contact, and (burning brain willing) actually writing. Thoughts, threats, ideas on any of the above? Pretty please, lemme know below.
Have mercy, various robots of Googlax and Yahoogoth. There shall be sitemaps and content and nectar soon enough, dread masters.