Book news

So yesterday I woke up to a manila envelope in the kitchen. I usually stumble from my perch (i call the small bedroom I chose with a window overlooking the pond a perch) to fix coffee in the morning.

Kwame Dawes is the series editor for the book prize that my manuscript won this spring. It is exciting because I have always admired his work. It's even more exciting that I get to have my introduction to the world with two of my favorite writers, and with a prize that is connected to home. Interesting -- so many times I thought I was running away from home, from South Carolina. When I left for college, it was a running away from home. But here I am. It's interesting to think -- my first publication was about a home/house/South Carolina. My first book publication is coming out of the University of South Carolina Press (which is in my home, Columbia, SC)...I don't believe in coincidences. I believe in fate, in faith. I believe in "it was meant to be this way" and take things as they come.

But anyways. So this manila envelope. I sent Kwame my manuscript in May, and thought the process would be simply, "here are my line edits" and leave it at that. But no. Now I am considering this book in a different light, thinking of the variations and variations of stories I can tell by just switching poems around, by moving a comma. I spent all of my day 16 thinking about taking poems out and putting poems in and moving poems around and finding epigraphs and words to fit in places where there was a void...and you think the book is done after you write the poems. No so, my friend, not so. The proof is in the pudding, or whatever that is supposed to mean.

So, I did the damage, and shook myself up a bit. I'm going to have to let the new sketch of the book (by the way, titled "How God Ends Us"....look for it in February!) sit for a while before I decide if what I did was good or bad. I have to figure out a way to detach myself from the original version and let this one live in the world a bit before I kill it, or say, no, Kwame, this isn't working for me.

Not that I'd really say it. In a dream world, I'd stand up and defend my poems. But in that dream world, I'd already have five books of poetry published...and well, that dream hasn't come to fruition yet, buttttt I do see another publication soon on the horizon. I do.